#and even if it was just 10000 years ago for both alteans and humans.... were in the stone age.

[swagging-back-to]

i was just about to show what i think altean markings look like (full body) when i realized that lance is borderline skeletal?

both of them are. their legs should not be that small. where is thick thigh lance.

#their legs look like arms #why are they so small? #are they starving #??? #is that the problem? theyre starving? #i think no one talks about how food goo almost definitely doesnt actually have all the nutrition humans need #and also how and why would alteans know what humans actually need? how would they know anything about humans? #time moves differently even on other planets in our solar system. time moves differently for other species on our own planet #even humans have varying perceptions of time. #10000 years ago in altean years/galran empire years could literally be 10 billion years for us humans #and even if it was just 10000 years ago for both alteans and humans.... were in the stone age. #english was not a thing; so alteans couldnt have learned it at all before they died out.and no idc what they say no species would be able #to immediately pick up and understand and use a language flawlessly before they even know that the species around them speaks it #(allura came out of the pod saying 'ugh where am i' before anyone said anything to her in english) #especially because vld only takes place in 2100.

[bloodyshadow1]

I fell like a huge problem with both the conflict between how Allura views the Galra and the paladins do, along with how Allura views the Galra and how the audience reacts to what’s on the screen.

As a primary western audience we’ve seen hundreds of shows like this where a character is prejudice against a group of people and how if they’re a good person they’ll be redeemed or if they’re bad they’ll stay prejudice.  The problem is that the Galra are a terrible allegory for racism, no minority group has ever taken over most of the world through violence for thousands of years.  Allura doesn’t hate the Galra because they’re Galra she hates them because they have an empire that spans star systems with a tyrannical dictator who destroys planets just to further his goals of getting Voltron who betrayed her family, murdered her people, and destroyed her world. Allura is one of three (two at the time) known survivors of an altean genocide, she her distrust of the galra is more than justified in my opinion.  However as I said as a western audience we’re trained to think that she’s a racist for not trusting any Galra.  

I’m not saying the way she acted towards Keith was in any way okay, but that’s why she apologized, she knew she was in the wrong with him at the very least.  And again she works with the Blade of Marmora, we know they’re the good guys as the audience since they’re the rebels against the empire so they’re obviously the good guys and we’ve seen Thace save the team, but Allura as someone inside the story isn’t privy to any of this information doesn’t owe them anything and it does sound very suspicious, they’ve apparently been active for decades seeing as Keith’s mother had a knife and he barely remembers her, but Allura hasn’t been awake for a year after sleeping for 10000 years with the last thing she saw was Zarkon enclosing in on them so she’s bound to be spectacle.  

As for the dissonance between the paladins and Allura there are a lot of areas where they miss each other in how they view the Galra and the Galran empire.  The paladin’s know that the Galra are the bad guys and they are the heroes brought from far away to defeat the evil threat, it’s a story they’ve all probably heard/seen a thousand times.  But it’s not a story to Allura and Coran, who remember the kingdom of Altea and the Voltron Alliance that spread worlds, until Zarkon betrayed them.  Zarkon was probably one of Allura’s heroes growing up seeing how Coran went on about how close the original paladins were, she’s probably known hundreds of Galra and is aware there were good ones.  Just as she’s aware that the best of them can become monsters and that monster has been conquering world after world for 10,000 years as a supreme leader.  As humans we can’t really fathom anything much less a person 10,000 since written language isn’t that old so it’s just unthinkable to humans but Allura has lived it, she’s slept through it, even if she knows good Galra did and can exist, under Zarkon’s hand they most likely didn’t last long, and seeing as the Blade of Marmora seem to be the only Galra rebels against the empire she’s not exactly wrong.  

The paladins come in as outsiders who know the Galra are the bad guys who need to be stopped, they view themselves as heroes, and while they’re not wrong and Allura and Coran encourage this, I have a feeling that a huge part of the whole reforming Voltron idea comes from Allura wanting vengeance more than almost anything against the Galra.  As I said before Allura most likely has known dozens if not hundreds of Galra, including Zarkon who was probably the paragon of the Galra people, the paladins have know barely three counting Ulaz.  They view the Blade of Marmora as part of the bad guys team turning good and fighting the bad guys, Allura views them as good guys and allies who turned bad and after letting the bad guys do what they want for 10000 years getting cold feet and want to be good again.  It’s obviously more complicated than that, but you could see how a princess who was betrayed and lost everything probably less than a year ago in her memory doesn’t like this idea.  Shiro who spoke the most with both Sendak and Ulaz views Sendak as a monster and Ulaz as a savior, he’s not wrong that Ulaz is good, but Allura doesn’t have a reason to trust him other than Shiro vouching for him when he barely knows him.  Shiro has a good heart and he was right to trust Ulaz in the end and the Blade of Marmora, it doesn’t change the fact that Ulaz or the whole Blades could have betrayed them as easily as Rolo did a season ago.  It was rude of her to still question Ulaz’s sincerity after he sacrificed himself to save them all, which is why she apologized and changed the topic, however she also isn’t wrong when she says that one life matters little to the Galra empire as a whole.  Galra soldiers are brainwashed into beleiving there is great honor in dying for the Galra empire to the point where the grunts would rather stay on a doomed battleship than escape despite the generals knowing better and the robeast they just fought was made from Proroks who was a tossed aside pawn for the galra and Zarkon because they believed he was a traitor.

Voltron is a cartoon so of course Shiro is right in the end about Ulaz and the Blades but it doesn’t mean that Allura was wrong to be distrustful seeing as it was pointed out Shiro doesn’t remember much about his time as a prisoner except for this memory that he just so remembers at that very moment that conviently leads them to the one of the few good Galra that exist to fight Zarkon.  Hell the Blade of Marmora members are shown to be far more cautious and paranoid than Allura is and aren’t shown to be in the wrong for it for the most part.  Allura isn’t right in the way she treats Keith and the Blade of Marmora, but if it wasn’t a cartoon than Allura wouldn’t have been shown in the wrong so much, like her attitude would have kept her alive on Game of Thrones and she does come around.  She apologizes to Keith, she risks her life to save him and the other paladins, and she does so by fighting beside the Kolivan and Antok two galra.  So the whole issue shouldn’t be boiled down to Allura’s a racist and she’s horrible just like Shiro shouldn’t be seen as an idiot for believing the best in people even when they’re suspicious.  

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #allura #princess allura #galra #zarkon