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[scorpionhugs]

Player Information

Name: Bramble
Age: 30
Contact details: bramblepatch or bramble#6628 on discord
Other characters: none

Character Information

Name: Scorpia
Canon: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Canon Point: immediately post-canon
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: 26

World Information: Fandom Wiki. Scorpia is a native of the planet Etheria, and more specifically was born and raised in the Fright Zone.

Personal History: Scorpia's wiki page.

To elaborate a little on the wiki's "past" section: a lot of what we know about the Fright Zone's transfer of power to the Horde comes from Scorpia herself, who would have been too young to fully comprehend what was happening and who was subsequently raised to be a Horde military officer. Given that the only picture she seems to have of herself with her mothers depicts her as a toddler and that the sorcerers of Mystacor believed that the Horde had captured the Black Garnet, I believe that the fall of the Fright Zone was more violent than she describes and that her grandfather's treaty with Hordak was the result of a military defeat that involved the death of his daughter and/or daughter-in-law, not the voluntary handover that Scorpia implies. Scorpia's safety was likely one of the concessions her grandfather managed to get out of Hordak, and while her status as the heir to the previous regime was openly known among Horde leadership (she specifically says that it's mentioned in force captain orientation) and acknowledged by the international community (she's formally recognized as a Princess, with access to diplomatic events such as Princess Prom) she was prevented from forming a connection with her family's elemental runestone and as a young adult did not hold any unusual power or authority among the Horde's force captain ranks ("force captain" being an entry-level officer rank that's granted, on screen, to soldiers several years younger than Scorpia).

Personality: Scorpia is, despite her physically imposing appearance and upbringing within the upper ranks of a heavily militarized dictatorship, a cheerful, outgoing, and intentionally positive person. She begins each day with reciting affirmations into her mirror, followed by what she readily admits to herself is "pushing down doubts and insecurities." Her physical mannerisms are self-assured if sometimes a little thoughtless; Scorpia is comfortable in her own skin (and carapace), and she doesn't so much underestimate her own strength as overestimate her surroundings' ability to withstand it, and she's often embarrassed by her own tendency to bend, dent, or knock over things. Generally speaking, she's more cautious of other people than she is of inanimate objects. She's physically affectionate with those she likes, sometimes to the point of struggling with other people's physical boundaries - a self-proclaimed "hugger," but also her tendency toward physically manhandling people she likes is tempered mostly by her acute awareness that her claws are clumsy, very strong, and potentially dangerous to those around her. As a result, she rarely grabs at people, but she's entirely comfortable embracing or even scooping up most people that she views as her friends. She's also broadly comfortable with physical affection from other people, if a little unused to being the recipient of such, although she dislikes having her tail touched (in part because of personal space, and in part because she's aware that sometimes she stings reflexively when startled).

She's intensely loyal toward individuals, with an immediacy that her loyalty to institutions and ideals doesn't really have. It's not that she doesn't have the capacity for loyalty to a cause, but that loyalty is usually centered in her allies and immediate superiors rather than in an abstract concept of the cause or in a more distant leader. While she had a healthy respect for and fear of Hordak as a ruler, she didn't have a particular attachment to him or curiosity about his goals beyond the public policy of expanding Horde territory. Like many of the other orphans raised as child soldiers in the Fright Zone under Hordak's rule, Scorpia spent most of her life not questioning the morality of the Horde's expansionist military culture, and in her case, this was reinforced by a need to believe that her grandfather did the right thing for the Fright Zone and for her family by surrendering to Hordak. Personal loyalty to her family and to specific other soldiers with whom she formed a personal bond could serve as a kind of emotional buffer and allow her to compartmentalize between her affable nature and the violence, often against non-aggressive or civilian targets, she participated in on behalf of the Horde.

Also, she genuinely enjoys fighting. She takes pride in her physical prowess and enjoys being able to use her immense strength without worrying about the damage she causes in doing so, and within the context of the Horde, military training and combat was the primary available outlet for that kind of physical energy. In battle, she prefers to fight hand-to-hand, or rather hand-to-pincer, and frequently throws opponents off of high precipices or into the path of oncoming war machines.

On the other hand, as a princess herself, she never really held the other princesses in the same kind of awe and fear that Adora's squad was taught to, and thus didn't really buy into the ideological superiority of the Horde; rather, her attitude toward her royal peers during her time in the Horde was more of a defensive social anxiety. She believed that she stood no chance of being accepted by Etheria's other elemental princesses, due to her life-long association with the Horde and the Fright Zone's historical tensions with their neighbors, and was able to turn this insecurity into justification for working against them and maintaining her loyalty to the Horde. The great irony, of course, is that while Scorpia was comfortable working within the ranks of the Horde and carrying out the Horde's violence on the other kingdoms of Etheria, she is still fundamentally a deeply loyal and positive person, which makes her completely unsuited for the backstabbing internal politics of the Horde and a very good fit for the mutually supportive environment of the Princess Alliance.

Scorpia's capacity for personal loyalty and willingness to follow another's direction makes her a very good team player and a natural second-in-command - she's less than comfortable with taking a leadership position herself, in part because she's spent most of her life being groomed not to assert herself as the rightful heir to the Fright Zone, but she's good at acting authoritatively and carrying out another person's plans. The other side of this coin is that she often has difficulty in asserting or even fully conceptualizing her own morals and boundaries, and may take part in cruel or unethical behavior without fully recognizing the harm that her leader or the group is doing. Scorpia is rarely a bully on her own initiative, but she's only too willing to take part in bullying once the group has identified an acceptable scapegoat. She's entirely willing to work within more egalitarian structures, but the structure has to be firmly in place first, or championed by somoene she's already attached herself to. Her loyalty also comes with a sometimes naive assumption that her allies are similarly loyal to her - she makes excuses for Catra's behavior for much, much longer than she should have, and after she finally admits that she can't back Catra any longer and leaves to join the Princess Alliance, she gives the other princesses her complete trust pretty much as soon as they agree to accept her.

In many ways, Scorpia's defection from the Horde seemed likely from her initial introduction in Season 1, just through the sometimes heavy-handed coding of a children's show - in contrast to the more prickly, standoffish, and openly cruel villains, she was still an upbeat, cheerful, sometimes goofy person who cared deeply about her teammates and liked hugs (and, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power being the kind of show it is, "hugs" have always been a significant part of how the heroes relate to each other). However, it wasn't something that she saw coming until her actual desertion in the middle of Season 4. As previously mentioned, she had no moral objection to the Horde's aggressive conquest, and her relentless and very intentional optimism, together with her confidence in her ability to hold her own in physical combat against most of her allies, meant that she was able to weather a lot of casual hostility and emotional abuse - or at least to compartmentalize and suppress the damage. Her perception of the heroes, especially of Catra's childhood friend/longtime crush Adora, as rivals for Catra's affection and approval further served to keep her from seeking common ground with them. It wasn't until Catra had proved herself to be a threat to other people that Scorpia cared about that Scorpia started to re-evaluate her own priorities. Having been pressured into cooperating with Catra's decision to exile Entrapta and then lie about it, Scorpia's guilt brought a certain amount of perspective with it, and as a badly spiraling Catra pushed Scorpia away, that perspective came into much clearer focus. Ultimately, though, the reason that Scorpia cut ties with Catra and with the Horde was to protect Entrapta's modified sentry-bot Emily, which she'd been looking after in Entrapta's absence, from Catra. Not being able to protect herself from Catra (or Catra from Catra, for that matter) was not enough to drive Scorpia away; she needed an immediate, exterior target for her loyalty before she found the impetus to remove herself from the situation.

Key themes: Scorpia's key themes can be loosely grouped under the header of knowing her own worth - her confidence and belief in herself are very much genuine, but she still privately struggles with having been denied a huge aspect of her identity in being prevented from taking on the political and magical responsibilities of princesshood, and she spends most of the show learning how to assert healthy boundaries with people she cares about and take care of her own mental and emotional needs.

Main Motivation: As she would put it, to be the best friend she can be! Scorpia enjoys meeting new people, and she takes pride in being dependable, supportive, and fun to be around.

Skills:
Physical strength: Scorpia is already physically huge - stands somewhere around 7' tall, broad-shouldered, massive scorpion pincers in place of hands. Even considering her size, though, she's disproportionately strong. At one point she lifts an armored tank over her head and throws it, and while she visibly had to exert herself, she doesn't seem to have injured herself in the process. Her tail is not prehensile but is dexterous and strong enough that she's able to use it to sweep people's feet out from under them or, with the right momentum, fling people out of her way.

Claws: Scorpia's pincers are sturdy enough to be used as a blunt weapon, and have a strong enough grip force to sheer through narrow steel pipes and break concrete. She's able to exercise a reasonably precise degree of control over her grip strength, but otherwise has very little manual dexterity - she may drop things, her writing and drawing is shakey and childish, and she struggles with the controls or interfaces on most technology built for humans.

Venom: Scorpia's tail can deliver a paralytic sting - the victim collapses and may briefly lose consciousness, but recovers fully within a few hours. She finds this unseemly and notably does not use it for combat purposes: the main times we see her use it are an accidental sting when someone startled her, and incapacitating an ally who could not otherwise be persuaded against a self-destructive course of action, and both times she was deeply embarrassed.

Horde combat training: Scorpia is highly skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and while she's not a great tactician, she's observant and quick-thinking enough to be a good strategist and able to adapt in the field, and she's good with logistics and organization. She has a basic understanding of a variety of weaponry and vehicles, although if the controls are too fine she may have difficulty operating them with her pincers. She's kind of hit-or-miss at subterfuge - Scorpia's hard to disguise and if she's not sure what she's doing she tends to psyche herself out, but as long as she keeps her confidence up she's surprisingly good at misdirection.

Electrokinesis: Scorpia's connection to the Black Garnet runestone allows her to shoot bolts of dark red electric energy, or to electrify conductive materials. Since said connection is relatively recent, she's still learning how to use this, and honestly she's still kind of scared of it, which makes it difficult to use it to best effect.

Hugs: Scorpia gives very good hugs.

Item: The headpiece/faceguard she's wearing in her icons - it matches her carapace, but it's a piece of armor that wraps around the back of her neck and tucks beneath the collar of her shirt.

Sample: A couple of meme threads: Navigating social awkwardness with Wrong Hordak and navigating unfamiliar surroundings with Catra.

Notes: Showrunner Noelle Stevenson has stated that Scorpia and fellow princess Perfuma start dating after the finale; I'm choosing to take Scorpia from before this development in the interest of not making her spend her early days in-game pining over her new girlfriend. She's still very fond of Perfuma as a friend and I'm fully open to the possibility of exploring the ship if a Perfuma apps into the game and her player is interested, but I don't really want to start the game with the emotional blow of dragging Scorpia away in the middle of the honeymoon phase of a new relationship that's never shown on-screen in canon.