#i think lotor died at some point but it's not 100% clear to me (no idea how that happens). also he is? or is not? redeemed?? (no idea)

[klanced]

honestly a part of me envies that you never watched past season 4 because you never had to witness the downfall and instead got to hear stuff out of context which sounds 10x funnier

it was very fun watching from the outside as people desperately searched for klance content because it was just like ummmm. erm.

#i watched a couple episodes of season 5 and 6 out of context. specifically the krolia and keith episodes. but other than that nada #it was very fun watching people react because they would post like they were dying but then the screenshots were like totally nonsensical #vylanka #ask #i know at some point they play family feud (no idea how that happens) #shiro is a clone sleeper agent (which i called in season 3 lol) and he & keith fight (no idea how that happens) #i think lotor died at some point but it's not 100% clear to me (no idea how that happens). also he is? or is not? redeemed?? (no idea) #they go to earth at some point (no idea why that happens) #adam dies (no idea why that happens) #allura and lance start dating? lance puts a bucket on his head?? (no idea why that happens) #ALLURA DIES?????????? (no idea why that happens) #lance is a farmer (no idea why that happens) #and that's basically all i know #everyone and their mother posted screenshots of the shiro & adam moments and the keith & shiro flashback so i guess i watched those eps als

[blue-bower]

Lotor Rewrite

I’ve given my thoughts on how horrendously Prince Lotor’s character arc was handled. I’ve reblogged a couple posts that sum up my thoughts on the matter. https://blue-bower.tumblr.com/post/185061129226 https://blue-bower.tumblr.com/post/185061352401 https://blue-bower.tumblr.com/post/182574536376 So, this is going to be my personal re-write of the end of season 6, and the events following in seasons 7 and 8. This is not going to be a rewrite of the entire last 2 seasons; I'm just focusing on Lotor (and Allura later on). There's just so many forced/rushed plot points and distasteful choices on the writers' part that it would take an entire essay to break everything down. But ultimately I feel like Lotor - and at the very end of the series, Allura - were given the worst treatment of any character. Also, keep in mind that it’s been four years since I’ve watched the series in full, so I may not be remembering things 100% accurately. But frankly I do not feel like returning to season 6-8 again just to flesh out a headcanon. This also isn’t a fully set-in-stone fanfic or script, just a general gist of ideas. I have several ideas for potential rewrites with various branching paths.

There are two main ways that I believe the end of season 6 could be revamped.

In the first rewrite, the plot twist with the dead Alteans in the lab never happens. A lot of people saw it as a very ham-fisted way of adding conflict for the hell of it. There could (and imo, should ) still be an Altean colony founded by Lotor, and Romelle would still be a character that is introduced to the Paladins at some point. But I feel like the only thing she would really contribute - at least in season 6 - is siding with Allura in trying to warn Lotor about the dangers of messing with quintessence. If she had a bigger part in the last couple seasons, I personally would have liked to see more of her learning magic and fighting from Allura.

In my opinion, there was already a plot element in place that could have just as easily led to a conflict and possible falling-out between Lotor and the Paladins: Giving the Galrans access to unlimited quintessence. It baffles me that no-one at any point even questioned this, or tried to warn Lotor of the possible ramifications of handing over this kind of power to a power-hungry empire. They just went along with it. So I think they should have steadily built up the unease with going through with this plan, ultimately leading to a battle over whether the gate should be destroyed. It could still be revealed that Lotor did have the ulterior motive of starting his own empire, using quintessence for his own gain. But it would still paint Lotor as a sympathetic antagonist, who truly believed he was doing the right thing.

If the twist with the Altean colony & lab has to happen, then at the very least, it should have been given more time to be resolved. The audience should have been given more answers.

So in this rewrite, the confrontation with Lotor and Romelle still happens. She explains what she and Keith saw, she explains her brother's death and sees Lotor attempting to cover up his death. Lotor still looks like a deer in headlights, but also seems to look guilty. He doesn't deny the facility existing, however. Cue his ass still getting knocked out by Allura. 

Whether the facility happens or not, season 6 still leads to Voltron and Lotor confronting each other at the rift gate. In the first scenario, Lotor tries to reason with them; he claims that under his new leadership, the Galrans will not be using the rift for evil purposes. In the second scenario, Lotor pleads with Allura to let him explain himself; that he never intended to kill Alteans. Allura and the Paladins are conflicted on what to do, and whether to believe him. Most importantly, though,

Allura does not compare him to his shitty abusive father.

If anything, I think she may point out that he's actually a lot more like Honerva than he's willing to admit. It still stings, but doesn't send him into a violent frenzy or a cringeworthy monologue fitting of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. Allura tries to compromise with him; she says she'll come with him to the Altean colony if he destroys the gate. He refuses.

I can see either of these rewrites branching into two potential scenarios: A solo battle between Lotor and Voltron like we saw at the end of season 6, or an interruption to their confrontation: A fleet of Galran ships appearing in an attempt to claim both the phase gate and Voltron. Lotor and the Paladins are forced to cooperate, and get into a battle with the Galrans. Lotor realizes the only way to get them to back off is to destroy the gate, but he also tells the paladins that his ship can phase into the Quintessence field at will - which prompts Voltron to do the same. He convinces them to phase there with him after they destroy the gate.

In either of these conflicts, Lotor starts to lose control of himself in the Quintessence due to his stress and heightened emotions. In a rage, he starts phasing in and out of the quintessence field in order to attack the Galran fleet outside, despite his own advice on staying hidden. The Quintessence starts messing with his mind, making him start to go power-mad (because let's face it, this scene is still hot).

The Paladins try to get through to him, and Lotor fights off the darkness that corrupted his father. But it isn't enough. Voltron is forced to fight him, and blasts him into unconsciousness.

And instead of leaving him to fucking rot in the quintessence field, they manage to save him in time.

Mortally wounded, they place him in a stasis pod. It's going to take him a while to recover, but it's clear that the quintessence is healing him - and quite possibly making him undead like his parents.

In the meantime, Allura wants Romelle to take her to the colony (or the research facility if that plot point stays), but Romelle keeps refusing, saying it's too hard for her to go back - not to mention the fact that travelling there is extremely dangerous and has the effect of warping time - plus it's imperative that Voltron focuses on undoing the damage done by Lotor creating a rift in spacetime. 

I see most of season 7 playing out as normal, since it mainly focused on the Paladins fighting for Earth. I feel like we should have gotten a season 9, because there was just too much going on in season 8 and not enough time to tie up loose ends. The main plot point I would change is Lance’s confession. He does still confess his love to her, but acknowledges that she may not reciprocate it. And she doesn’t. She tells him that she’s just not in a place to move on yet, or pursue another relationship. And he respects her decision.

After Lotor recovers, he isn't quite the same. He seemingly hasn't been corrupted the way his parents were, but his Altean marks are now permanently glowing bright purple, and his eyes are glowing light yellow, mirroring the vision that Honerva had of him.

The others reveal that everyone's actions in the Quintessence had altered time, and two years have passed. He feels remorseful for his actions, but also angry that the Paladins didn’t listen to him. They nearly get into a fight with him because he is still somewhat unstable, and very clearly carrying a massive amount of power within him due to the quintessence, putting him on par with Honerva’s abilities. Allura demands him to take her to the colony, against Romelle's wishes. Lotor’s powerful magic enables them to transport the castle/ship directly to the colony; something they weren’t able to do before because of the massive amount of spacial distortion coming from that region. And again, depending on whether the facility is kept, it can go one of two ways.

They arrive at the colony, and it’s clear that the Alteans don’t worship the ground he walks on the way they did before. Not only do his glowing eyes remind them of Zarkon, but Romelle has been sowing the seeds of distrust in some of the Alteans since the beginning. I know a lot of people were expecting Romelle to be outed as a traitor, but personally, I don’t really see her as the type to try and frame him. I just believe she genuinely disrusts him because of what Galrans did to Alteans in the first place, and she doesn’t feel comfortable with him declaring himself as their new ruler. But hey, maybe there could be a twist that Romelle lied about the facility all along? Some food for thought. But the combination of genuine unease about the half-Galran, and the testimony of what happened between him and Voltron, makes it clear to Lotor that he no longer has their complete trust. If the facility stays: When they arrive at the colony, there is almost immediate distrust and maybe even hostility toward Lotor. As it turns out, before Romelle returned to the Paladins, she told other Alteans what she saw that night her brother died. He tries to talk them down, explain that what he was doing, he did for the sake of Alteans and their future. Some of the Alteans don’t believe Romelle to begin with; others want to banish Lotor. Since he can’t persuade the masses to believe him, he tells Allura to come with him. When they arrive, Allura sees the chambers that Romelle described. When asked about Romelle's brother again, Lotor explains that he tried to save him, and that he never intended to kill the Alteans. He only wanted to harvest a partial amount of quintessence, because it would be the key to locating Oriande. This would make sense as to why he specifically needed quintessence from Chosen Alteans. But somewhere along the lines, something went wrong with the process. Lotor attempted to cover up the deaths, partially out of shame, but also because he knew Romelle already didn't trust him and didn't want more reason for her to lead a revolt against him. Though he feels remorse, Allura calls him out on his bullshit: Covering up the tragedy was a cowardly move. The consequences of Lotor always being the type to leave unfavorable outcomes in the past and keep moving forward have finally caught up to him, and now it’s his responsibility to face his mistakes. At the very least, he gives the Alteans’ bodies a proper burial. The arc ends on a somber note. Lotor is not a hero, nor a villain. He is the culmination of the tragic life that he had been forced to live; for better and for worse.

After this point, it's up in the air as to how the last season (or two) could be rewritten. I can still see a plot with Honerva trying to recruit Alteans to her side in the time span that Lotor was gone, manipulating them into believing that Lotor would have wanted them to continue Honerva’s experiments, and to fight Voltron in revenge for what they did to him. But ultimately, Lotor would confront them and force them to surrender.  All I know for sure is that, before the final endgame battle, Lotor would sacrifice himself for Voltron and to protect the universe. Likely in a very intense, emotional battle against his mother. I know that the most ideal outcome would be for him to stay alive, marry Allura, and rule the new Altean colony together. But this series has never been a stranger to death and the theme of sacrifice. If done well, I think a heroic sacrifice - especially from a character that was previously a villain - can have an extremely positive impact on a story. Maybe, in a scene mirroring his first encounter with the White Lion on Oriande (maybe Honerva has taken possession of the White Lion instead of just destroying it?), he would realize that fighting won’t do any good anymore. He’s forced to surrender. And in doing so, frees the white lion, the massive amount of quintessence within him, and all of Oriande. Honerva no longer holds power over the Alteans. And in a tragic sense, it means that she can no longer be accepted by Alteans either.

I’ve been very back and forth on whether or not Allura would still die in the end. I completely understand the fanbase’s frustration with the decision to kill her off. It felt very gross for PoC fans to see a main PoC character die in such an unceremonious manner. It felt like a cheap way for them to pay homage to the fact that Allura dies in the original series. But like I said, if done well, the theme of heroic sacrifice will leave a positive lasting impact on a series. On top of that, Allura has been shown since the beginning of the series to be an extremely self-sacrificing character. She was willing to put her life on the line on many occasions; and I almost feel like the scene with her surrendering to the white lion was foreshadowing her ultimate fate. If Allura does stay alive, then I feel like she would become queen of the new Altean colony, but would still leave on diplomatic missions across the universe. Altea IS NOT RECOVERED after all the space-time bullshit. The universe doesn’t just magically overlook complete time paradoxes to bring back dead planets. Allura and the Alteans have long come to terms with the fact that they will never get their original home back, but they can start anew. But, if Allura does die, then it damn well be a goddamn Iron Man from End Game moment. No cheap off-screen Deus Ex Machina, no half-assed goodbyes. Her sacrifice would leave a lasting impact through the universe/multiverse. We’d need a solid full episode of the Paladins (AND CORAN BECAUSE HOW THE FUCK DID THEY LEAVE HIM OUT OF REACTING TO HER DEATH) mourning her passing. Truthfully, the ultimate reason I believe they both might die is because I’d want to keep the final image of the series (before all the epilogue stuff). It’s such a profoundly beautiful image that perfectly encapsulates the sacrifices that Allura and Lotor made in order to bring peace to the universe. 

And that’s obviously meant to be Lotor right next to her. The figure is purple. You can see his hair, boots, even the outline of his skirt thing. Why would they put this in if Lotor was always intended to end up as a villain? The fact that they kept that silhouette after treating his character arc so poorly makes it clear to me that he was meant to have more of an overall impact on the story, but was ultimately thrown to the wayside just so the writers could go “WhAt A tWiSt!!!”

And that about wraps it up. Like I said, there isn’t one set storyline that I have in mind, because I have a few different ideas. IMO literally any path the story could’ve taken would be better than what we were given.  If anyone has any suggestions or feedback, feel free to comment/reblog and add your thoughts. Again, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve watched the series in full, so there may be some key moments I’m forgetting. What would you change?

#voltron #voltron: legendary defender #lotor #prince lotor #vld #headcanon #allura #princess allura

[eldunea]

you know one thing that has been missing from both this blog and my previous blogs is…where the fuck do i headcanon the plot goes after my cutoff at which i start going canon divergent? so, i will be adding the following plot details to lotor’s bio in its own section. note that some of the plot points below had been plotted with my ship partner mani/@empathicleo. she has now left tumblr, but i still wanted to credit her anyway since some of this is stuff that we came up with together. 

in writing this, i have attempted to keep all the protagonists’ development + their most important actions the same as before--as much as i possibly could--so as to cause minimal disruption to the muses of muns who rely primarily on canon events to build their characters’ development. rp partners can choose to change parts of this timeline while rping with me to be more consistent with their muses. 

a note to allura RPers: it’s canon to this timeline that lotor has feelings for allura, but i left things open-ended so those feelings don’t have to be reciprocated. a further note to RPers of lotor’s generals: just because the generals canonically start working with the paladins and this is more or less retained in the timeline, doesn’t mean that the generals and lotor have to be friends. whether or not your character chooses to reconcile with him, the choice is yours. 

if any other RPers (or people in general really) have any questions about this timeline, feel free to message me.

enjoy! <3

CANON DIVERGENCE

♕ canon divergence starts after s6e3 (the dungeons and dragons episode). there’s no big colony revelation bc spoiler alert my boi never did that shit. lotor and allura come back from their quintessence harvest and do their kiss, everything is hunky dory. until.

♕ lotor discovers kuron is a traitor soon after returning from the harvest and has the same response to him as he did to narti betraying him--he just knifes the bitch without even asking for his alibi. kuron is badly wounded, but survives. lotor is imprisoned again for “betraying” the team.

♕ kuron is caught working for haggar (somehow). far from clearing lotor’s name, this only makes things worse. while under haggar’s mind control, kuron claims that he and lotor had been working together the entire time to lead haggar to oriande. he also claims that lotor had only attempted to dispose of kuron 1) once he no longer needed him and 2) to make himself look better to the paladins. honerva makes him do this so that lotor will be cut off from his allies, the paladins, and will have no choice but to return to her side. she predicted that he might hate her because of what she did as haggar, so she wants that extra insurance to make sure she can nab her son back. not to mention, she is one possessive bitch, and wants her son all to herself instead of having him hang around with the people she perceives to be enemies.

♕ keith decides that lotor is too dangerous to be left alive and plans to kill him. the other paladins agree. visibly distressed, having lost his composure for the first time since he worked with the paladins, he tells them he is panicked because if he dies, his altean colony won’t have a leader anymore. when asked why he never said anything about the colony before, he tells them that he didn’t say anything because he was afraid that the paladins, if captured, might reveal the colony’s location under torture. the paladins don’t believe him at first, but he agrees to be hooked up to that funky device the castleship has which reads memories, and when his thoughts are downloaded into the database they can see that the colony is real; they can also see that he and kuron had nothing to do with each other. though some of them suspect that he has been able to fool the thought-reader, the paladins allow him to take them to his colony.

♕ when they arrive at the colony, they see (surprise surprise)…honerva. she has long since known about it thanks to the way she has stalked her son’s movements over the ages, and now she’s revealing herself to them as the mother of their savior who will help protect them. she lies to lotor that she is not haggar, that haggar had her imprisoned for ten thousand years and only now has she broken free. lotor believes her and in tears, he embraces her. everything seems happy again.

♕ lotor completes the sincline mech while he is in the colony.

♕ shiro is also brought back at this point.

♕ the paladins soon sense that something is seriously wrong with the colony. after some investigating, they see that experiments have been carried out in the colony--but these were done by honerva, not lotor. lotor, horrified, privately confronts honerva, but honerva says that if he stops loving her after this, she’ll pin the crime on him and mind control the surviving victims to say that it was he who experimented on them, not her. lotor, unwilling to lose his mother’s love, ultimately sides with his mother against the paladins and insists to them that their evidence must be mistaken--someone else must have been doing the experiments. when the paladins accuse honerva of being haggar because only haggar could have wielded the advanced magiscience that they saw in the experiments, lotor also vehemently denies this even though he knows it in his heart to be true.

♕ the sincline vs. voltron fight ensues. allura drops the “you’re more like zarkon than i ever could have imagined” and lotor fucking loses his shit. lotor does a giant rant about how when voltron was formed, it was used not to liberate people but actually to keep them oppressed as per my headcanon here--which is why he created a new mech, a robot that was free of such an imperialist history. he says that he had always intended sincline to replace the voltron mech, but none of the voltron paladins appear to be worthy of it—in fact, he doesn’t even think the paladins are worthy of life. keith counters that he’s making the history of his new mech just as shitty if he’s using it to defend honerva’s actions. they fight some more and lotor is about to give the paladins the death blow, destroying them along with voltron. but affected by keith’s words, he stops and backs away. voltron gets up and all the paladins yell at him about what an ass he’s being. pidge tells him that he claims to care about his alteans soooooooo much, yet here he is, throwing them all under the bus in order to protect an abusive monster. allura asks him why the hell he is chasing after the love of a mother who never loved him in the first place and never would, when he has people who would have grown to love him right here. these are what finally get him to disarm and disembark from his ship. the fight is over.

♕ honerva is pissed. she was counting on her son to destroy voltron for her, but clearly he had a change of heart. out of pure rage she attacks him right then and there with the intent to kill. voltron fights her and barely escapes with their lives, nevermind the fact that honerva isn’t even in a mech at this point—she can fight them all on her own because she’s just THAT OP. three-way fight between lotor, voltron and honerva ensues; honerva appears to have been killed. but the thing is? they never saw the body. >:3

♕ voltron is distracted meanwhile, because sendak has just declared himself the rightful emperor and the galra have just invaded earth. sendak chose earth specifically to get under lotor’s skin, because he knows that humans are part altean—not to mention, he wants to commit genocide against the “last alteans” in order to cement the fire of purification’s legitimacy. and yes, lotor is racist toward humans, but he doesn’t view them as vermin who need to die. instead he views humans as helpless, clueless beings that he has to protect, and he will protect them just as much as any full-blooded altean. cue season 7 starting at “the last stand, part 1″ but with 100% more lotor. any threads with MFE pilot muses begin at this point in the timeline.

♕ as for how romelle shows up at this point in this timeline? she and her brother bandor sneak aboard the castle of lions because she thinks lotor is up to no good. they are discovered. lotor scolds them for coming so far from home by themselves and insists on sending them back, but the paladins think that he’ll be more accountable with a pair of his citizens watching his every move, so the two of them stay. at some point, though, sendak kidnaps allura, bandor and romelle and tells the paladins and lotor that if they try to rescue allura, bandor and romelle will be killed. lotor doesn’t even hesitate to jump in and save in allura, resulting in sendak killing bandor. romelle blames lotor for her brother’s death.

♕ lotor kills admiral sanda for betraying earth to sendak. that musty bitch can go die.

♕ back in the colony, honerva is up to no good. to punish lotor for his “betrayal,” she does exactly what she blackmailed him with: she tells the entire colony that he had been secretly carrying out experiments on the altean people, and that he tried to use voltron to kill her—his own mother! the shock! the horror!—because she had threatened to expose him. she tells them that only she can be trusted to lead them now; many alteans stay loyal to lotor for one reason or another, but a massive chunk of them are now on honerva’s side and she springs into action. immediately she imprisons everybody who disagrees with her. then she gets a ton of alteans to travel to oriande to carry out her next plan: build a mech that can kill lotor, then search every reality for another lotor to replace him with—a “perfect son” that will love her in spite of all her atrocities and obey her every whim.

♕ for a short while, lotor and the paladins take some time to chillax on earth and help rebuild after stopping the invasion of it. lotor’s friendship with the paladins and the MFE pilots deepens, and he starts to abandon his racist beliefs about humans. he feels at home here—he feels like earth, even in its destroyed state, is the closest thing the universe has to the lost altea, and it’s certainly the closest thing he has ever had to a home planet. they can’t go back to galra HQ because hepta and the fire of purification have taken that over whoops. casual threads that take place on earth can take place at this point in the timeline.

♕ some s7 events (including discovering macidus + hearing about the fracturing of the galra empire, the feud, the “little” adventure, the fight in “the journey within”) also occur at this point in some way, shape or form. at the end of each, they return to earth as their base.

♕ luca and tavo, the two defected alteans in canon season 8, escape from oriande and find their way to earth. they come to warn lotor and the paladins of what honerva is doing, and that they must come immediately. cue the battle in oriande which happens in s8e6, except lotor is fighting alongside the paladins.

♕ s8e7 (“clear day”) happens as usual, except this time allura takes in the rift creature after the clear day festivities, not during. allura asks the paladins whether she should take it in, all of them say no but lotor says yes—he states that no great victory came without a great cost, and this is no exception. at first she doesn’t, but after a while of considering lotor’s words, she does. the creature grants her the ability to enter honerva’s mind, but when she and the paladins do enter honerva’s mind, it comes at a huge price just as lotor predicted.

♕ s8e8&9 (“knights of light part 1 and 2”) happen, except with a twist, and also without the bullshit redemption of zarkon—HE COMMITTED GENOCIDE ACROSS THE UNIVERSE FOR FUCK’S SAKE WHY DID HE GET A HAPPY ENDING LIKE THAT. when honerva flips her shit that the paladins have entered her mind, she takes control of allura, and makes them vessels of hers so she can attack the paladins through them. it looks as though the paladins will be forced to kill allura in order to protect themselves, but knowing this is not an option, they simply retreat. but lotor, not wanting to lose the one he loves, intercedes. honerva’s curse on him that took away his magic breaks, and he is able to use magic to extract the rift creature from allura and banish it himself. as in canon, allura is rendered comatose by this, but survives.

♕ s8e11 (“uncharted regions”) happens but with a twist. honerva manages to take the sincline mech from lotor and fuse it with her own ship to pierce the many realities.

♕ s8e12 (“the zenith”) happens, with lotor inside the voltron-atlas and coran piloting the castle of lions. honerva goes to the perfect reality where she can be with her “perfect son,” only for him to reject her just as he does in canon.

♕ s8e13 (“the end is the beginning”) happens, except there’s no bullshit redemption for honerva after she destroys all realities except for one. instead, when honerva and the paladins are alone at the collective consciousness of all reality, the paladins are alone at first. allura tells the group there’s only one way to bring all of reality back, and it’s to sacrifice—specifically, they will need to give up the sincline, the castle ship, and honerva. lotor tricks his mom, telling her that if she just goes toward the bright light in the background and brings the sincline ship with her, she will finally be able to reunite with zarkon, and that he will be willing to be her “perfect son.” he appears to follow her in the castle ship, but disembarks from it at the last minute, sending the castle of lions to its final rest. honerva is at peace at first when she sees zarkon in the distance, but when she sees the rest of the old paladins staring angrily at her she realizes she’s been tricked and sent to her death. she begs zarkon forgiveness but he turns away, dooming her to an eternity alone.

♕ altea and daibazaal come back, as in canon--but unlike in canon, there isn’t much rest for the paladins. given how much the galra empire is steeped in a culture of prejudice and violence, and given how many galra don’t accept lotor as their emperor, the paladins emphatically still need voltron to ensure peace across the universe. as such, the blade of marmora cannot transition to a humanitarian organization, although it can start carrying out more humanitarian missions. as much as i wanted to believe that the happy ending at the end of s8e13 could be true, i’m just being realistic here.

♕ oh yeah and just to be real specific about this, allura doesn’t die. she deserves to be alive and happy!!!

♕ the end :P

#alma te anul; the history of self. || HEADCANON #lotor #voltron

[spacekittiesiguess]

Lotura and the initiation of touch

This is based on a discussion from the Lotura discord as well as my own thoughts about this, and why I think Lotor is coming back and isn’t meant to be the “bad guy” (which I never really believed he was, but yeah). Putting this under a read more because it’s gonna get rambly. What can I say, I like to babble about space elves.

For anyone who decides to get upset about this because of the whole “genocide” thing - for one, words mean things. Not trying to be bitchy here but please, read the definition of the word because I can ten thousand percent guarantee that Lotor was in no way trying to destroy the Altean people. For another, we have one version of events and while Lotor did admit that people died, we don’t know how or why. We don’t even know for sure that he was draining quintessence. So yeah. If he was, and if it was for nefarious purposes then fine, I’m just saying not to go all out on that until we know the whole story. This meta has nothing to do with that, but it seems like anything about Lotor or Lotura lately is subject to that sort of weirdness.  

ANYWAY - 

Lotor is a poster child for emotional abuse. He’s a textbook case in the way he reacts to things, and his trust in Allura followed that pattern as well. I’d go so far as to say that he trusted her much more quickly than I ever expected him to, but I guess in war the timeline does speed up.

We see them softening toward each other every time they interact, to the point where she’s willing to go into Haggar’s lair with him alone for what had to be hours on end. He did take her hand to ask her not to go while there, but he held her fingers rather than her entire hand, and she could easily have broken his grasp if she’d chosen to. She didn’t. Even on the way there, she took his arm of her own volition. He did bend it so she might, but he never asked her to nor indicated that she should, and by all rights as Emperor he could easily have done so and not been at all out of line. But he didn’t.

Oriande was yet another display of walls coming down between them. Lotor sharing with her the story of the colony he was in charge of was obviously painful for him, and while they didn’t touch there, if you watch the scene where they talk about it Allura is the one shown looking at him adoringly from behind. He turns slowly, and I think he was expecting disgust for what he’d shared, but when he saw that she was gazing at him almost lovingly he lit up. 

As a survivor of severe emotional abuse, I can say definitively that this is 100% accurate. Nothing Lotor has done over the course of the show has been in any way unbelievable to me, someone who lived through a lot of what Lotor did (although obviously my parents weren’t the heads of an intergalactic empire). His trust in Allura was quick, and some might see that as unrealistic, but I think it’s even more likely when you consider that Lauren herself said that Allura was the first trusting relationship Lotor ever had experience with. He latched on because he knew he had reason to.

And he wasn’t alone. Not in the slightest. We see it most obviously in season 6, but even in season 5 it was blatantly clear that Allura was falling for him just as much. The two of them had light in their eyes when they looked at one another, and their relationship was built on trust and respect to the point that Lotor never initiated touch with her at all aside from catching her fingers in Haggar’s lair. Every other time? Allura was the one to go for it. 

She went for the kiss in season 6 episode 2. After they returned from the Rift she stared at his lips the entire time, from the second he helped her out of Sincline. True, he leaned in first, but she was staring so deliberately at his lips he’d have been a fool not to. 

And it’s just really good to see, both as a woman (because yay, Allura having agency and not just reacting to advances but making them herself!) and as a survivor of emotional abuse. Because as great as it is that she went for it, it’s even better that she was showing Lotor he was worthy and wanted in a very obvious way, something he very likely never experienced before.

With examples like Lance who seems to see Allura as a prize rather than a complete being with her own feelings and agency, the way they show Lotor being the more passive of the two of them at least in their initial approaches has been really, really good to see. 

#lotor #allura #meta #lotura #relationship stuff

[novarasalas]

Second Look Review: Heart of the Lion

My shortest one yet. It’s highlights from here on, because I waited until the last minute!

We open this episode with Shiro waking up in a medical facility. Again. He’s just gotten an implant for a new prosthetic.

Since this is Shiro, of course it goes wrong.

Waking up in pain surrounded by doctors is par for the course for people with chronic illnesses tbh. Poor Shiro, this just keeps happening.

But Allura is here to save him.

I didn’t notice the first time that the gem in her tiara is glowing. I had though she just knew it would help.

This is better. That means that this passing of the baton has been fated.

When this whole mess started, she was the only one that knew what they needed to do. She was there to teach them about the Lions, and the Empire, and everything else going on in the universe.

She was a princess, a well liked and trusted one at that. Everyone followed her because they knew she’d lead them right.

But here on Earth…

In the last episode, Shiro introduced her only as Allura, not as Princess Allura. Admiral Sanda even had a few words for her:

Sanda: Maybe you should leave the matters of Earth to the people who live here.

To Allura’s credit, she didn’t even flinch at that. But it made it very clear that she wouldn’t be taking a lead here.

Here, she’s not a princess. She’s out of her area of expertise. She knows nothing of Earth and how it’s organizations work. And they have no reason to fall in line behind her.

And the thing is, Allura knows this. She doesn’t, at least outwardly, seem to be bothered. I’m sure it’s something she expected, actually.

So, she uses the gem from her crown to save Shiro. As she pulls the gem from its setting, the crown clatters to the ground. That’s Allura’s link to her people. That crown most likely belonged to her mother, who maybe have inherited it from her mother.  And she’s thinking of this; she hesitates for the barest of moments. But in the end, she gives all that up for Shiro.

It’s all about symbolism. We get the whole story later on.

---

A recon mission gives us a great moment with Pidge and Keith.

He gets it now!

That recon mission leads them to formulate a plan: a simultaneous sneak attack on 6 bases at once. They’ll do this by connecting with their lions, who are still parked on that moon of Saturn. I mean...why the hell not? It’s magic.

That plan works for everyone except Lance.

What happened here? Was he distracted by the thought of his sister being in danger? Was he hung up on some old insecurities? Was he just scared?

All of the above?

I’m gonna tell you a secret: I really like Lance.

I’ve gone on about Keith and Hunk and how they grow as characters, but Lance has grown right along with them.

This next bit, where he closes his eyes?

I reject the idea that this is him accepting his death. Instead, he’s focusing everything he has on calling his lion. It’s not the first time he’s done something like this.

He’s focusing because he knows that if he dies, his sister dies, Voltron will fail, and Earth will be destroyed.

That’s some pressure. I couldn’t do it, myself. I’d have thrown up from the stress at least 3 times at this point.

Lance is a hero. I’m so damn proud of him.

Too bad the whole thing fails anyway

Thanks, Sanda.

–

Just an extra thing:

So, we get some Lance and Allura interactions this episode, and...uh...Hey, look, I’m 100% down with Allurance, I am. But it’s kinda…

Allura: I wanted to say...stay safe out there.

This particular part is a call back to when Lance told Allura to come back safe as she and Lotor were heading into the rift. That I get.

Lance: Get back safe.

Allura: I will.

The rest of the shy, bashful looks between them this season, though...how did the planning for this go? I really feel like maybe they forgot that they were supposed to continue the build up for this relationship for it’s confirmation next season. Like they finished writing the whole season, then realized “Oh shit, that! Right!”

It’s not terrible. It’s just out of place.

And to be honest, it makes me laugh. It’s just a little awkward and goofy.

In summary:

Well, everything's been terrible for them the whole season, why stop now?

Allura and Shiro swapping roles a bit was a welcome plot point, and only gets better later on.

A thing I didn’t mention is how much I like that the whole team can now connect with their lions. Keith’s been alone in that for far too long.

Next up: It’s happening.

#second look review #voltron #voltron legendary defender #shiro vld #allura #lance vld #long post

[airagorncharda]

I finally watched Voltron, and quite liked it! My review of the show, and also the fandom, is below:

So, the show is right up my alley, I liked the animation and characters a lot, and I’m very very pleased with the effort the writers have gone to to include a multitude of representation, especially considering it’s a remake of a show that had extremely bland character designs! Genuinely I ended up really caring about the characters and I’m excited for the last season.

So my feelings on the show are, like, 70% positive! 

That being said, I definitely have some--

°˖ ✧ Complaints about the show itself!   ✧˖ ° 

Characterization:

Mainly, that the characters were basically 2d characters until like season 6. Five seasons is a long time to wait before giving anybody character development, guys. Or even, like, character TRAITS outside of their base trope. 

Hunk is a big guy / the fat comic relief character, so his character traits involved eating, cooking, vomiting, and being a coward, and the jokes about him were all about him being fat. Oh, also he’s the “stable” one of the group. This is a complaint on multiple levels, since it’s fatphobic and obnoxious, but it’s also obvious and two dimensional character design.

And all the characters were like that, basically. 

Allura was arguably less so than the paladins, but only to a point. When Matt showed up, he was more 3d in the first like 2 minutes of screen time than the entire main cast had so far displayed in multiple seasons, because all of his character traits weren’t instantly predictable. Side characters tended to be more interesting and less predictable than main ones, which was just kind of weird.

Shiro and Adam:

I honestly just wish that the writers had been allowed to make their relationship more explicitly romantic, and thus make their breakup more explicitly a breakup. Instead it was kind of vague, which I understand wasn’t the writer’s faults, but it still felt a little weird.

Lotor:

I just feel like they slightly mishandled the end of his arc. I wish they’d either made him more clearly 100% wrong, or else more clearly explained why he wasn’t 100% wrong, which brings my to my last one:

“Galra need Quintessence!!” ft Lotor

This is my main complaint about the show (at least 20% of my frustration with the show is this one thing), because.....

Why?

Why do they need it? Did I miss a line where it’s literally ever explained why the galra NEED quintessence? Or even WANT it, as an empire? We know why Zarkan needed it, and why individuals need it (it’s immortality juice with drawbacks they don’t care about) but I never got the impression that the entire galran empire is immortal-- and even if they are, then they shouldn’t be. “Help us maintain our immortality at any means necessary!” should have been answered with “No.” followed by “Learn to deal with your mortality like everyone else.”

Literally, Lotor was like “We just need unlimited quintessence, and then the galra will do whatever we want!” and nobody in the entire cast was like “cool, we’re on board so far, but like, what exactly do you need it for?”

I still don’t understand what it was all for.

°˖ ✧ Complaints about the fandom! ✧˖ °

I feel like I’m kicking a hornets nest by even bringing this shit up, because:

This fandom is goddamn cursed:

Nobody in this fandom seems able to agree on the character’s characterization, I suspect largely because they barely had any for 5 seasons. Instead of saying “these are my headcanons” and letting it go, though, I keep seeing people being adamant that their headcanons are canon and anybody who disagrees is wrong / bad.

People in this fandom appear to be largely unable to stay in their own spheres of interest and let other people enjoy other interests. Every tag is full of negativity.

I think it’s a really bad sign when most of the best artists and writers in the fandom try to keep away from the fandom, and a lot of people have been deterred from watching the show at all because the fandom is so apeshit.

I’ve seen people being called a lot of names, told they should die, and called pedophiles based on which adult characters they ship with each other. It’s been a wild ride and I only dipped my toes into this fandom. I’m not planning on going much deeper.

K/l/a/n/c/e is a plague:

Let me be absolutely clear, I am not talking about the ship. The ship is fine, I can see why people like it, I have no problem with it. 

The problem is the shippers that it is impossible to avoid.

There doesn’t appear to be a single tag I can go into that doesn’t contain meta about this ship being canon. People who ship this ship are the worst perpetrators of my previous point (they’re the ones I’ve seen saying all that shit), and they flood other tags with negativity, and meta about their own ship. 

I’ve never been more tempted to refer to someone’s ship as their agenda, either. The only thing that seems to matter to them is whether or not it’s canon, which is... wild... because that’s really not the point of shipping? And because it’s not canon. Sorry, but there’s only one season left, and they haven’t laid any groundwork for it. Also neither of them is the canonically mlm character, and I doubt they’re going to turn this show into one with 3 main mlm characters within the last season.

And yet.

When I say there isn’t a single tag I can go into that doesn’t contain meta about this ship being canon, btw, I’m not exaggerating. I went into the Allura tag. Meta about how k/ance is “canon”. The Shiro tag. Meta about how k/ance is “canon”. The Allurance tag. Meta about how k/ance is “canon”. The Lotor tag. Meta about how k/ance is “canon”. The fucking "Garfle Warfle Snick" tag! Meta about how k/ance is “canon”. “Adam Voltron” tag??? Fucking meta about how k/ance is “canon”.

And even when it’s not meta, and it’s just comics or art or fanfic ideas, the thing that frustrates me is that it’s constantly things like “What if Lance [does something Shiro already did @ Keith] @ Keith!” and “What if Keith [does something Allura already did @ Lance] @ Lance!” and “What if Keith and Lance [did a thing two other characters have already done]!” with zero self awareness that their AU has already happened in the literal show, just with different character combinations than they’re interested in. They seem to only care about those two characters, and only care about them in relation to each other, and it’s exhausting.

Allura:

1) People who draw Allura looking less black than she does in the show are cowards. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen and it’s Bad.

2) People who are baffled by the concept of Allura and Lance having a relationship, and spend lots of effort trying to convince people that they’re friends or that the possibly canon endgame of them dating “came out of nowhere” and “doesn’t make sense” etc. 

You’re racist and we can see you.

Shiro and (mostly) Adam:

The people who decided that Adam was Shiro’s love interest after Adam was introduced in a flashback in which he broke up with Shiro (as far as I can tell they were mostly k/ance shippers who were excited to have a “gotcha” @ sh.eith shippers) and then lost their absolute minds when Adam died... exhaust me.

The people who are calling Adam’s death “bury your gays” and “queerbaiting”.................. exhaust me a lot. The context of Adam’s death is not what either of those terms mean.

I understand that it hurts when queer characters die, because so many queer characters historically have died. That doesn’t mean every single time queer characters die is automatically homophobia. This show did not kill all their queer characters, and it didn’t even kill it’s MAIN queer character, OR kill the main queer character’s love interest (because that’s never what Adam was presented as or meant to be). And Shiro IS a queer character. He’s not being baited, he’s still queer even when Adam isn’t present. Newsflash, Adam’s purpose as a character was to convey canonically that Shiro’s been queer the entire goddamn time.

I don’t necessarily like that they chose to kill him, but I don’t think the context was homophobic. He died in a war, along with many other people. 

And furthermore, who did you want them to kill? They needed to kill at least one existing character from one of the main cast’s backgrounds for narrative reasons. The options they had, because of how much effort they’ve put into filling this show with representation, were:

Characters of color

Pidge’s mom

That’s... literally it. Characters or color and women (especially older women), btw, are also constantly killed off in media the same way queer characters are, to further other character’s narratives. This is what happens when the cast is primarily rep for marginalized people and the story involves war. Characters die. And when the only characters that exist are from marginalized demographics, the choices about who dies are never going to feel good. That doesn’t make them based in bigotry, or even necessarily bad choices, just because they hurt. 

°˖ ✧ Conclusions! ✧˖ °

Fun show with a few frustrating elements and a cursed as Fuck fandom.

#there's probably more but that's all I can think of at the moment #my thoughts #readmore #voltron #I hesitate to even tag this but it's gonna end up in the tag anyway because tumblr's search system is fucked

[devilsofficialfanfic]

The Name of the Game

Chapter 22: That Would Be Enough

A/N: My 100 followers celebration fic is ready to go whenever I get 2 more followers (who aren’t porn bots) 😉

-

Lotor wasn’t sure how long he expected Zarkon to keep them here, but it had already been three days.

Meals were delivered three times a day, by sentry, but otherwise no one was allowed to come or go. There was no one Lotor wanted to visit him anyway, since Sendak was here with him already.

The anticipation was going to drive him to distraction. He had no idea what to expect anymore; this was so far removed from any situation he’d ever been in.

Sendak was right. It was useless to simply wait until Zarkon died, or was killed. That day might never come, unless he made it happen.

He had no idea how to do that.

Others had tried to dethrone Zarkon, and they had all died for their efforts, either quickly, or slowly, agonizingly, in the witch’s lab. He could expect his fate to be no different. If Lotor challenged Zarkon directly, then he was no longer protected by law and tradition that prevented Zarkon from slaying his own son.

Sendak… No, he couldn’t allow Sendak to do that.

So…

So he had to wait for the judgement to be handed down. Wait to know what Zarkon intended before he could come up with a plan to counter it.

He hated waiting like this, when it served no purpose.

But at least Sendak was here. Sex was off the table -something about the pall of some uncertain, but almost certainly tragic, fate hanging over them did no favors to his libido -but the soft, unguarded intimacy was nice enough on its own. It reminded him that, as bad as things were, he didn’t have to face them alone, as he had with everything that had come before.

Sendak intertwined their hands, which Lotor knew was a ploy to get him to stop tearing at his claw-sheaths. He hadn’t even realized he’d been doing it. Rather than address that, he said, “No one would blame you if you walked away now. My father might drop this whole thing, if you renounced your feelings.”

“He might not,” Sendak pointed out. Then, softer, fonder, “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not going anywhere?”

“It’s not that,” Lotor protested. “I just- I don’t want to see you hurt, and if we have to continue this in secret, and be more careful, then…”

“We would always run the risk that someone might find out, no matter how careful we were. And you told me that when your father was dead, you would marry me.”

“You said you would wait as long as it took.”

“And I will. But I do want to marry you, and, more than that, I want you to be safe. And you never will be as long as your father is alive.”

“He can’t kill me,” Lotor said.

“But he can hurt you. He doesn’t even have to lay a finger you. You’re so anxious and afraid right now, and he hasn’t really done anything yet.”

“But he will.”

“Yes, and I want to protect you from that. So let me.” He nuzzled the back and side of Lotor’s neck, and Lotor let himself relax a little into it. “What do you need?”

“I- I don’t know. For now, I think...just having you here, with me, is enough.”

Sendak made a pleased sound and kissed the tip of Lotor’s ear. “I’m right here, as long as you need me.”

-

“Were you alright, at least, while I was gone?” Sendak asked. “I know the timing wasn’t ideal, and I know… But were you…?”

“Yes, more or less,” Lotor said. “I’m glad you knocked Prov out, though, because-“ The pieces fell together, suddenly. “Oh no.”

“Because what? Lotor?”

“Fuck! I’m going to kill him! That bastard, that weblum-brained piece of-“

“Lotor.”

“Prov…” Lotor paused to consider how to say this in a manner that wouldn’t result in Sendak immediately trying to go and kick Prov’s ass. Not that Prov wouldn’t deserve it. Not that Lotor wouldn’t like to see it happen. “Thought it would be a good idea to...solicit favors from me while you were gone.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I told him if he ever touched me again, he’d regret it. But he was rather...angry.” Lotor had been, too, with far more reason. “At the time, I dismissed it. But what he said, after, when you… So perhaps he…”

Sendak’s ears were almost all the way back, and he was absolutely fuming. “He deserves far more than a concussion. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lotor shrugged. “I can handle myself. It wasn’t serious, and he clearly didn’t expect me to fight back. Some males do think with their cocks all the time, don’t they?”

“I am going to kill him,” Sendak said very calmly. “And then I am going to bring you his heart after I rip it out of his chest.”

“How romantic.”

“I’m serious, Lotor. I will not allow anyone to disrespect you ever again, especially not in that manner.”

“Then make an example of him. The far bigger problem is that he must have run and tattled to someone. My father, perhaps. Or maybe the witch.”

Sendak looked suddenly uneasy, as most did when anyone even mentioned the witch. “Why- why would you think that?”

“I had an interesting conversation with her, just before Prov’s face became intimately acquainted with a wall. The timing is...suspicious.”

“Have you ever considered, my love, that you are paranoid?”

“It’s not paranoia when everyone is actually out to get you.”

Sendak didn’t have a counterargument to that, probably because Lotor was right. “Defeating your father will be difficult enough on its own. Taking on the witch, too, though…”

“With my father gone, she would lose all the power she has amassed. She won’t stand idly by while we attempt to dethrone him, whether she is involved in this or not. She’s not Galra; without his support, she’d have nothing.”

“She’s not Galra?”

Lotor frowned. He’d always known that, somehow, without anyone telling him, and he’d thought it was obvious. “No. Whatever she is, she isn’t that.”

“As disgusting as Prov is, I’m not sure we can lay on the blame for this getting out on him. I- One of the lieutenants under my command implied that our… relationship was something of an open secret.”

“And during our peaks, it was fine,” Lotor insisted. “No one could blame us for that.”

“But it’s become clear, I think, that whatever our relationship is, it isn’t one of convenience.”

“This is what I was afraid of,” Lotor said softly. “You speak of what I deserve all the time, but what about you? Surely you deserve better than this. I love you, but you are putting yourself in danger. You could die for this!”

“I am not going to die,” Sendak said. He said it like he knew, like he was certain. He said it like a promise. ”And I think, my love, it is rather pointless to keep going around in circles like this. I love you, and I am staying until the day you tell me, with all honesty, that you want me to leave.”

“I could never do that,” Lotor said, reaching up to stroke Sendak’s cheek. “I love you too much.”

Sendak turned so he could kiss the palm of Lotor’s hand. “Then I will stay.”

The door slid open and, with a silent look of understanding, they both turned to face whatever would come.

#vld lotor #vld sendak #lodak #soft lodak #tnotg

[madmud2730]

I’m up and awake so let’s talked Voltron’s final season

obviously spoilers below

I could tell right away Lotor was going to turn into the enemy. Not because he’s Galra and only with the Paladins because he was exiled by his father and thus went with the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if they were also my enemy two minutes ago” but because of how heavy handedly nice he was with Allura. Throwing out compliments everywhere, constantly telling her that they’d be nowhere if not for her. He was clearly manipulating her through positive reinforcement and using her naivety and trust to get her to reinforce his ships.

I knew I was going to die when Shiro started to see what Haggar/Honerva was up to. It confirmed every suspicion I had about him after season 3 and I knew nothing good could come of it.

I’m glad Hunk made an effort to learn Galra culture, with the logic that they’d be working more closely with them so they needed to understand in order to work better.

I’m SUPER glad Hunk and Pidge were constantly referred to as engineers. Like, finally, some good fucking content. We always knew they were smart and capable, but there’s something nice about actually having a title for it, you know? And for Hunk to flex those muscles on that planet with a shield. HOT DAMN.

I sort of have mixed feelings about Lance’s development. While I’m glad he grew closer with Allura by reassuring her when she needed it I’m a little unhappy with his broken heart arc. Did he really think he stood a chance when she made it quite clear she had no interest? But that bit about Allura being a different crush for him because she made him want to be better was nice. Made his feelings ring a little more genuine to me.

Krolia and Keith. It was both good and bad. The flashes into the past were pretty god damn convenient as far as telling Keith his mother’s backstory so she didn’t have to do it verbally, but it worked from a story telling standpoint. I really didn’t like how we only got one future flash though out of all of them. Krolia said the flashes would give brief visions of past and future, but we only got one future and five (six?) pasts. Seems a little conveniently one sided. Also way to spoil there was going to be a gigantic fight with Shiro at the end.

God that moment when Haggar finally took full control of Shiro too. My heart broke into a million pieces. He tried so hard to resist but she had him in the palm of her hand.

On that note - the place with all the Shiro clones. Absolutely frightening and disturbing. I’d like one please. Not one Shiro clone facility, one clone.

FUCKING

I DIED KEITH

I was so mad at that. I was so god damn mad about that because I didn’t want him to be dead but he was/is. He wasn’t safe anywhere, or just teleported away, he was dead and merged with the Black Lion.

But, on that same note, a meta post I read pointed out how it makes sense too. Shiro living within the essence of the Black Lion explains all the Black Lion’s pilot choices. It rejected everyone except Keith because Shiro wanted Keith to take the mantle, regardless of how unworthy he was. The Black Lion also actively rejected the clone because Shiro knew who/what it is and rejected it up until lives were in danger and he had to reluctantly let the clone into the fold to save everyone.

That final fight was beautiful from animation stand point but kinda underwhelming from a story telling stand point. Lotor just went suddenly mad because... ? I’m chalking it up as a mixture of abuse and quintessence side effects. But really, his sudden shift in “I am burning the universe down and erecting myself as a god” demeanor was a wild shift.

Then again, he lifted himself as a messiah to all those lost Alteans.

On that note, I’m glad Alteans are now a confirmed not dead race. Allura and Coran don’t have to be the last ones. There’s a colony out there, just waiting for them.

I can’t think of much else besides the ending at this point, which was heart breaking. They lost their space home. Now where are the lions going to dock and recharge? I suppose the Alteans could build a new one, but still. I’m a person who has a hard time of letting go of things and letting big changes happen, so losing the castle was hard.

But we got Shiro back too. The actual Shiro. And his 100% white hair look is a lil ugly but I still love him anyway. Baby needs rest and a snack.

White hair kind of confirms quintessence interference though and now I head canon Haggar/Honerva wasn’t watching everything through his eyes but his white floof. You will never convince me otherwise.

#madmud watches Voltron #spoilers

[velkynkarma]

So that happened--s4 thoughts

My thoughts on season 4, below the cut in case you didn’t catch the spoiler tags.

So. That happened. I kind of have mixed feelings on this season. I know already people are either love it or hate it. I wasn’t particularly wow-ed by it, but I didn’t hate it either. A lot of stuff happened, but at the same time, it kind of felt like it didn’t? After all their progression it felt like they just came back to square one. I dunno. There are still a lot of questions hanging out there, but I guess we’ll get those with S5. Maybe. Anyway, let’s get to my thoughts! Still no word on “Ryou” or “Kuron,” but I don’t think the concept is tanked just yet. I’m thinking Naxzela was supposed to be the trap he was supposed to set, unwittingly. When Shiro explains his plan, he takes care to point out where all the intelligence comes from, but when he points out the chain of planets with a weak link of Naxzela, he specifically says “I’ve identified.” Information that comes direct from Shiro with no additional source is suspect, especially when the entire thing was a trap set to get Voltron there and blow up the entire area of resistance, and especially when the entire plan hangs on that one piece, and especially when Shiro is the one that designed the plan in its entirety. And the weak link he “identifies” just happens to be the one place that’s rigged with a planet-sized bomb, a feat that had to have taken months at the very least to set up…and we are told it has been months since Lotor made off with his comet and Shiro has been in place, enough time for Haggar to confirm her pawn is in place, even if he doesn’t know it. We also know, thanks to her manipulation of Narti, that she can watch things through other peoples’ eyes if given time to properly set them up for it. If this Shiro is a clone or a pawn, she could certainly gain intelligence this way. It may have even been the reason Shiro couldn’t originally pilot the Black Lion—it sensed the wrong presence. And her plan was almost solid. The reason this “explode Naxzela” plan did not work was solely because Lotor turned on the Galra Empire at exactly the right moment…even Allura’s resistance was not enough to save them. Shiro was the one that put them in that position. Shiro even negated Lance’s initial orders to run when the pillars were first forming—Lance tells Pidge to plot a course for escape, and Shiro says to wait, they should figure out what it is. Those precious seconds they don’t run end up trapping them and nearly killing them. And even if he doesn’t know he’s the one that deliberately led everyone to a trap—even if it’s entirely subconscious, and he resists with everything that’s Shiro’s personality after to try and help everyone escape—that plan still would have worked but for one unpredictable factor: Lotor. Nothing Shiro could have done then could have saved them once the trap was sprung. He could have unwittingly killed all of them without ever realizing it. On the note of conspiracies, I’m not entirely convinced Narti is dead either. Lotor is a clever bastard. He likes playing with his opponent’s thought process. I think there is a reason he specifically chose Narti to come with him when he visited Haggar, even though Axca is his usual right-hand general. Narti has a few properties that Haggar can’t predict; Haggar’s druids could not figure out how Narti did her mind-wipe/mind-control thing, or that it was even her. Lotor has already used the strategy of letting his opponents “see” something that he was really controlling in past episodes, it would not surprise me if he deliberately let Haggar see something via Narti before Narti shuts it down while “playing dead.” Narti is Lotor’s ace in the hole. If she’s “dead” she’s free to move, because nobody is expecting her anymore, and she has a power nobody in the main Galra empire seems capable of predicting or understanding. She can literally go in and out of places without anyone ever remembering she was there. Her cat didn’t panic either, just sat there next to her and waited. I have to wonder if Axca is in on the plan too, though, as she was pretty adamant about trusting Lotor, and specifically took the lead in stunning Lotor for “capture” before Ezor and Zethrid could murder him for their own safety. Capture that he escaped pretty quickly (by doing something really trippy with his arms holy crap wtf was that?!) Lotor joining the alliance is at this point a necessity for him. His original plan did not work, he needs to study or steal Voltron in order to pass through realities, and the realities seem to be his primary goal for some reason. It’s still not clear why, but he seems pretty hellbent on going through and collecting the super-charged quintessence in it. Why would he need that? He doesn’t appear to have his father’s quintessence starvation thing going on, and he clearly has no love lost for either of his parents. It doesn’t seem he’s doing it for them. On the generals, my original guess was going to be that Axca, Ezor and Zethrid would have joined the Voltron alliance. Clearly their loyalties aren’t to the Galra empire, and that’s not really surprising either—based on the way the generals talked about them in S3E1, they’re all Galra half-breeds, and blood purity seems to be a big thing in the Empire. They were loyal to Lotor, enough to attack the Galra empire for his own ends. He broke that chain, so the first thing they tried to do was save their own ass by turning him in, but if that’s not an option…”If you can’t beat’em, join’em.” But we didn’t see them again, so my guess is either A) Axca is in on the aforementioned speculated plan, and is cutting Zethrid and Ezor in on it, or B) they’re going to go into play in some other way to save their lives. I’m not sure they could form any kind of alliance with Voltron if Lotor is also there as there is now bad blood between them…although curiously, Lotor was surprisingly understanding about the three of turning on him. Which is weird, as he has shown he can get violent over disloyalty or failure, just like his father, even in Season 3. And to round out the conspiracy train, wtf is up with Zarkon’s armor this season? It’s deliberately hiding his face, which we never actually see. I wonder if he’s entirely 100% alive again? He’s feeding on that super-charged quintessence stuff, it seems...he’s now wearing the same tanks that Galra warden used in S2E10. He was also curiously not a focus this season, despite being the big bad. The summary of what he does this season is put on his armor, tell Haggar she was dumb for putting Lotor in charge, and then flip his shit when Lotor turned on him and spend the rest of the season hunting him down and nearly killing himself (for a third time????) in the process. Very weird...and also, an interesting distraction technique. Haggar seemed curiously uncaring about Zarkon this season, too, which is a big change from her steadfast loyalty in seasons 1 and 2. They barely interact. For the Naxzela incident some Galra generals even tell her ‘dude should we get Zarkon and take care of this’ and her answer is ‘no, we got dis, don’t call him, he’s too busy chasing Lotor.’ I am absolutely positive Zarkon would never have approved the Naxzela plan, not because of the wholesale murder but because Voltron would have been destroyed too, and he wants that more than anything. She’s working behind his back, and possibly keeping him busy on a wild goose chase. But what’s most interesting is the biggest change for her this season is she has her memories back now—we see her practically having a mental breakdown looking at her reflection with her skin color changed, envisioning how she used to be. She remembers that her and Zarkon had a pretty solid relationship, and her first reaction is to put as much distance as possible between them and start going behind his back? I’m not an expert on relationships but that strikes me as very weird. Now, Keith. I’ve got some friends who are big Keith fans and I have a feeling they’re already not liking this season since Keith is barely in it, which really sucks for them. I am sorry, my Keith-fan friends D: On that note though, I’ve been noticing a really weird trend for Keith through all 4 seasons so far. Each season introduces a major plot element of awesome thing for him, and then next season it’s like that major plot point or element just...doesn’t exist anymore. “Lol, we thought this was awesome and we introduced this but then we decided no.” Here’s the breakdown currently:

Season One: Keith goes lone wolf and unlocks the Rail Gun on his Red Lion against Zarkon himself, the turning point in him surviving the first part of the battle and establishing these alternative weapons exist. This weapon has literally not been seen again since, making it seem a bit deus-ex at this point. Keith doesn’t use it again, and neither has Lance.

Season Two: Keith is Galra!!!!! Blade of Marmora!!!! Big surprise!!!! Also his connection with Red is like SUPER STRONG!! Never uses his blade in Season 3, the BoM connections are barely touched on outside the first season, doesn’t even pilot the Red Lion anymore

Season Three: Keith, you’re the leader now. It’s super important and we’re going to spend the entire season building up this Important Position you’ve taken as being the leader. We’re even going to clash you against Shiro as leader just to prove you’re important as a leader, too.  Teamwork is important, you need to learn that and stuff. Oh wait, never mind—Season 4 called, they want your lone wolf persona back. Kthnx.

Season Four: Keith’s totally BOM now. I wonder how long THAT will last.

At this current pattern, Season Five will include Keith leaving the Blade of Marmora for his next plot hook of the season. I’m calling it now. That said, we did see some character elements of his return or get stronger despite his limited appearances, which I found intriguing. In the first episode he goes back to ostensibly save his companion, and maybe that was part of it, but he also went back to save the mission and get the data, and says as much. This is a call back to the ruthless big-picture Keith we saw a little of in season 1, which could possibly be set up as a point of contention for him later. It’s been hidden a little recently with his big focus on Shiro, which seems to be the one thing Keith will break that “the world before you or I” mentality. Keith was also (scarily) about to do a suicide run to try and save the world, which means he is not exempt from his own big-picture focus. I wonder what that will mean later. Other big character reveals—Matt is back! Now, I’m gonna confess, unpopular opinion here, I wasn’t a huge fan of Matt back in S1. Less because of his character (I mean...he didn’t have any character back then, other than ‘really likes ice samples’ and ‘literally nobody thinks he’ll survive a fight, including himself’). More because of his voice actor. I dunno, his lines in S1 felt very flat and fake to me when surrounded by a cast that just felt so natural. I’m happy to see that his VA got a handle on it though for S4, because he grew on me. I actually really loved Pidge’s episode to find him, which gave her some great development, and I love seeing their interactions. Probably one of my favorites this season. I also adored seeing him, Pidge and Hunk geeking out and getting their tech on together, and it was cool to see him co-piloting in the Green Lion! (You can get more chairs, incidentally. Interesting). He actually has a personality now too! That’s great. I am still curious about a few things that he never bothered to explain though, like why the rebels rescued him (him specifically? Were they just liberating an entire cell block?). Or the fact that he never really interacted with Shiro outside that one initial meeting, which was odd. You’d think he’d at least be like “hey, thanks for risking your life to save mine that one time” or at least “holy shit what did they do to your ARM.” And what about Sam? That poor bastard, he was barely talked about either. He’s out there too somewhere, somebody save him! And last big character point of interest for me, in the very last episode, Lance and Allura had a really great moment. I found it interesting that although pep talks are Shiro’s thing, it was LANCE that convinced Allura she could empower Voltron and get them out of there, even without training. (They mentioned training too, I’m guessing that will be a focus soon for Allura). Actually, Lance had a few interesting moments in this series where he took more of a lead role, which I found interesting. His are more subtle (and buried in a mountain of moments with him being exited about showing off in the shows and morale parades), but there are a few instances in which he does take control or leads the team in the absence of a leader. When the refugees are attacked and Keith is absent, Lance gives a few initial suggestions about how they should attack that are not-quite-orders, but they are suggestions the others take. As stated earlier, Lance is the first one to say they need to run on Naxzela, which would have been the right move, but Shiro shuts it down (which may have been a subconscious trap). I think he’s learning to be more impulsive and commanding in a pinch and starting to learn more split-second reaction from his new Lion. I don’t think he’d be quite ready to lead the full team (he still appears to be very attention driven which is not a strong quality for a leader), but he’s certainly maturing. Okay, now on to some less obvious or detail observations! By far the hardest episode for me to get through was S4E4. I can take all manner of angst, intense fight scenes, etc, but secondhand embarrassment kills me, and this ep had it in spades with the whole “Voltron show” thing. It was funny, I’m not gonna deny that, I was laughing a lot too, but I was also pausing like every thirty seconds because I Just Can’t Even. The puns, the references to every sentai show ever, the way Lance was getting so into it, Coran’s weird hybrid accent, “forming Voltron,” I just. Agh. But by far, the biggest call out (or possibly smack in the face) was this one: Coran: Except for you Shiro, I’ll never get rid of you. You’re our most popular character!!!! Lance:…wait, YOU’RE our most popular character?! Shiro: -_- Methinks the team has heard us on this one. Also, in the first episode, I’m not gonna lie...when Keith got himself ejected into space—AGAIN—I was half expecting the Red Lion to just break formation and abandon the parade to go save him. With Lance still in it. Though that probably would have caused more angst in the long run, if Red still considers Keith its “real” paladin enough to go save him. That would mean Lance can’t measure up, or that Red picks a paladin that abandoned the rest over him. So I guess it’s good that didn’t happen. KALTERNECKER LIVES. And has her own little area on the ship with holograms to look like Earth. And they can get milk from her which means she had a baby cow recently. And Hunk makes milkshakes with her milk! And Coran and Allura love them and don’t get brainfreeze but think the cow just makes them! And Lance has to show them how to milk a cow and they are completely 10000000% appalled. I fucking died. At all of it. 10/10 best part of the whole season. “This is our cow.” “How did you—” In the same episode we learn they FINALLY got their Mercury Gameflux II working, so that’s awesome. I adore that Lance was just sitting around in his PJ’s playing video games. I wish he’d recruited Allura and Coran to help him win. Haggar has a rank, “High Priestess.” Which implies some degree of religious belief. However, almost everyone else outside the druids appear to refer to her as “the witch.” Which implies some societal divides between the main Galra and the druids. Hmmm... Not that it came as a surprise to anyone, but Lotor confirmed his mama is Haggar. Still no idea when he was born though. Hmmm... When he does make this reveal, he actually pointed out something that I myself had been puzzling over a lot since S3. Alfor claimed to have destroyed the rift by blowing up Daibazaal. But it’s a rift to another reality. Would blowing up the physical matter it happened to appear on do anything to destroy the tear itself? I had wondered how Alfor’s attempt was even successful, and apparently it wasn’t. Still want to know what the hell he plans to do with this knowledge, though. BUT WHERE THE FUCK WAS SLAV THIS SEASON OKAY. SHIT and I just realized Shiro never used his bayard WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT IS FOR FUCK’S SAKE OKAY! That’s a lot of thoughts, and I’m sure I’m forgetting quite a lot, but there’s my initial feedback.

#voltron season 4 #voltron spoilers #voltron #velkynkarma thoughts

[blossom765]

Voltron season 8 vent

Okay guys. Let's do this. I'm not attacking anyone who liked the season. Feel free to not read this if you did

But, if you're like me and have been traumatized by Voltron season 8 then may we vent.

Let's start with allurance. To begin, it was the worst romance I have ever seen in my life. Allura clearly only went to Lance in season 7 because she was heartbroken. Lotor and her broke up and then and only then did she start liking him. I don't know about you but that is pretty toxic in my book. Lance seemed desperate to have a girl. After everything we've seen all series ( especially red not responding to Lance after the blushing scene) Voltron expects us to believe that we are going to be okay with Lance and allura. Everything the staff has said about allurance: it would be detrimental to both characters, Lance was going to be a first choice, Lance was going to get someone he needs. All of it was pretty much lies. Yes, allurance would obviously be detrimental. It also gives the message that if you keep pushing and aggressively flirting even when the other person does not like it, it's okay, because guess what they'll like you back soon. It's also okay to need, absolutely need a lover even if you're not considering their feelings because you are heartbroken and need love in your life.

Lance was confident to have a romantic endgame and can you guess what, it was pointing to Keith. I should say that I'm a klance shipper but I respect all ships and I only ever ship something with hard evidence and trust me klance had a shit ton. I don't want to go through all of the evidence because we'd be here all day but here's a few

BONDING MOMENT

Romantic parallels

Romantic and fond looks

The lion switch

The list goes on.

I'm afraid that Voltron is a prime example of queerbaiting and I'm not saying this because I'm salty about no klance. I'm saying it because it's true. Queerbaiting is when bait viewers in to thinking a queer couple will be cannon even though they have no intention of doing it. I know Shiro ended up married with a man and the kiss was shown but there are just a few little problems. We don't know the other guy's name and we haven't seen any romance between them. Having romantic development off screen is not only terrible writing but also doesn't make as much of a progressive stride as we wanted. It seems they only put that just to say look how supporting we are of LGBT rep. If klance had become cannon, which obviously it should have, then that would make one hell of a progressive stride. A gay/bi interracial couple in a kids show. BTW, Lance and Keith were obviously bi and gay. Color symbolism and their own actions prove it. Lance and Keith developed apart and together and they should have been endgame. If it wasn't going to be the staff had plenty of times to shoot it down. I'm aware that they legally can't give spoilers but they shot down shieth kaxca and pretty much allurance so why didn't they shoot down klance instead of giving a false sense of hope. Because they were catering for more viewers. I know they said in an interview that they weren't trying to bait or cater to anyone and I really believed in them but obviously I was wrong and disappointed. Klance is extremely popular and by not shooting it down and shoving more and more evidence for cannon klance down our throats they could keep a lot of the viewers entertained and keep them watching the show waiting for cannon klance. I cIould go on forever about queerbaiting but let me end this part on this, allurance was a forced detrimental romance and show runners aren't as progressive as we hoped they we're.

Let's move on to the plot.

Honestly, it hurts to begin. Let's start off with a brighter note. The super weapon. It was handled okay. Could it have been better, yes. Was it the worst, no. Now, let's move on. Honerva. She was pretty much a mental psychopath, but that all changed with a pep talk. Now I'm not denying that talking can help people out. That's why I'm writing this because I need help recovering. But, we are talking about someone who manipulated and was ready to destroy literally everything and that all stopped with a talk from the enemy. Let's take an example from avatar. Ozai, a simple villian but s good one. You know how they handled his defeat so good because they defeated him. They didn't defeat him by giving him a speech. Sure, aang tried to reason with him but, he was a cruel fascist who wanted power and control at the cost of others. Talking to him wouldn't erase the monster he is and devastation he caused and that's part of what made the ending satisfying and made the show something you rewatch over and over because you aren't dissatisfied with the ending. Honerva was a 100 times more terrifying and psychotic. That's one of the only compliments I can give to this show now. She was ready to destroy everything for her happiness and didn't want others to be Happy if she couldn't be. So why make such a scary villian have the worst ending. I'm not saying that villians can't be turned around. It's amazing when they do. But, a main antagonist as destructive as her being defeated with paladin help, yeah I don't think so. Let's move on to Keith. A fan favorite who had a very dissatisfing ending. It's great that he's helping rebuild the galra but, he was a complex character who had trouble letting people in. He accepted family love and friendship but if you thought the next stage would be romantic love you get to eat shi. Obviously I'm not saying he has to have a lover, that's one of my problems with allurance but I am saying that he is gay and has a crush on Lance but, apparently they scratched that. Romance isn't the only thing that did that poor boy dirty. It was also a strange power he has that was never explained. Right away, Keith was a mystery with him sensing the blue lion even though he was not it's paladin and being able to kill the druid in a very strange way. But, was this explained no. They didn't even mention it, my God. Now Lotor, we learned a lot about him like how he was an innocent little boy with a disturbing childhood. But, guess what no redemption, no forgiveness, no help for him. I assume that when Honerva combinded her Mecha with lotor's that she killed him. And do we see him again so we could get a better at for him. NO NO NO! He lived an unhappy life and died. Apparently he's happy now but if you think about that idea it's saying that you can't get back up from pain and loss and only in death will you be Happy. Boy, Voltron really likes it's toxic messages. We also don't know why krolia looks so different from standard galra, how ezod found got on the atlas, why Keith just turned galra in his fight with kuron, or what the red and blue stars mean, were they there to foreshadow allurance (ugh) or bait viewers for klance (grr), why the fuck Shiro and Lance are holding the LGBT sign, what was the point of altean Lance, James and Keith not talking about what happened when they were kids.

The creators said they wanted to end on the show on the highest note and failed badly. They crashed and burned.

Entertainment has the power to develop people and tach them. This show has spread some of the worst messages I can think of. The show was probably the biggest queerbait in ever, gave a message that it's okay to practically harass people, you can only be Happy in death, etc.

Voltron was the first fandom I ever obsessed over. I believe the people working on it we're good people that wanted to help the world advance. But, this experience has given me nothing but pain and sorrow.

Well feel free to share your thoughts. I'm going to go meditate and breath. Clear my head. Maybe watch Madagascar again. I could use a laugh.

If yoy have any advice on how I can recover and not get trust issues about shows and their creators, I'd love love to hear them. I need all the help I can get.