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everlastingfable · 3 years

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a jumbled mess of my thoughts about voltron

This’ll probably be the messiest post you’ll ever read. I’m done trying to finish this and edit it into something coherent, so I’m just combining the 3 drafts I have written out into one massive post. I doubt anyone will read this whole thing, but each draft is a sort of rewrite of the last, so there’s a lot of overlap. But there’s also a lot of new thoughts too as I kept thinking about this. There’s also a lot of unfinished thoughts.

There’s mostly negativity in this btw. This fandom had/has an amazing ability in making you think that this show was utter garbage. on par with riv//erdale or s//pn, but it really wasn’t. Like many shows they had weak points, it was never perfect, but it’s much better than we’re told to remember it as.

Intro from Draft 3 because I liked the way I started it:

This is all of my thoughts about Voltron, the show itself and the fandom. I have tried to write this post out for over a year or two now, so it was originally intended to be my final thoughts about the show. Obviously, it’s evolved since then into whatever this is. There may be some things that I’ll be wrong about, because I’m not about to dig through hundreds of discourse posts and old interview videos to prove a point that I doubt anyone’s gonna care about. This will 100% be based on my thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

That said, I don’t even know how to begin to describe how much I love this show. I’m probably one of the few people who have no regrets about enjoying this show as much as I do. I’d wholeheartedly recommend watching it, because it’s genuinely a good show. Voltron did the unimaginable for me. I don’t usually enjoy sci-fi stories. I especially don’t enjoy mecha stories. Yet somehow, Voltron combined the two and made a show that I loved so much I can’t stop thinking about it even though it ended over 2 years ago.

Draft 1: thoughts about a year after it ended without rewatching any seasons since it ended

It’s been about a year since voltron ended. I never wrote my thoughts about s8/the show then so here it is now. Because I decided to wait a year I honestly don’t remember a lot of specifics. But I still have a lot to say about it. This is very long and is basically everything I have to say about this show. I love voltron. It’s been an important part of my life during college. 90% of all papers I wrote were about voltron. But as much as I love it, I won’t deny that it fell apart at the end.

Note: I tried to categorize these thoughts so I don’t get off topic and can talk about everything fully. But because they overlap so much there’s definitely some minor repeats when I connect two parts but decided to hold off talking about it all the way until the right section.

PRODUCTION

This is something I’ve expressed concern over while it was airing, but in a span of 2 and a half years, they premiered 78 episodes. That’s a lot, especially when you consider that production for s3 started after s1 premiered. There’s a lot of really good voltron review videos out there that aren’t just “oh I’m so cool I hate voltron” but there was one that talked about how the production was a mess and the writers couldn’t make up their mind for the endgame ship. And while that doesn’t sound like an important issue, it really does show when it comes to how characters are written together and (I think) the fandom war.

Summarizing what that video said because I don’t remember who made it, the writers/producers never made up their mind on which ship was supposed to be endgame (klance, sheith, allurance, kallura). And this really does show in the show itself. I don’t like klance. I especially hate it because of my experience with the fandom, but I won’t deny that they were sometimes written romantically. The same goes for sheith. And that’s the problem.

I don’t think the world building parts of the show was fully developed either. Shiro was supposed to be a teen like everyone else but then he was an adult. His and keith’s relationship was honestly vague for a good while. I don’t think anyone really knew how each characters’ relationships with each other was supposed to progress. Was allurance always supposed to be endgame? Because they didn’t really interact that much until like season 6, and then it was kinda sudden from what I remember. There was very little, if at all, parts where we were shown oh allura might like lance romantically. Keith’s relationship with the main cast didn’t exist for like 3 seasons. It was messy.

Speaking of which, keith disappeared for a good portion of the show. I assume it’s because steven yeun was busy. Which is fine but then I think about how quickly voltron came and went, I wonder why they couldn’t slow down a bit so they could still have steven voice keith during those episodes. Maybe it’s because of how much I love keith, but he honestly felt like a central character to me.

If I think about teen titans, for example, this show also had 5 main characters. Sometimes certain characters would get a spotlight for a season, but all-in-all they were fairly equally represented. It didn’t feel like robin was the main character. But that’s how I feel about voltron. Keith, and shiro to an extent are the main characters. A good portion of the plot relies on them. Shiro got kidnapped, keith leads them to the blue lion. Shiro is the leader with keith has his right-hand man and they mostly interact with each other. So when shiro “dies” and keith takes over, it starts to feel like keith is now the main character. Now he’s the leader and the arc is about him growing into becoming the black paladin and stopping lotor, who is his main enemy. But then he disappears.

Again this is most likely because of my bias towards keith, but the episodes after that felt lackluster. Lance didn’t really get his character growth to become a good second-in-command. Because that development was supposed to be based around keith. :P. A big part of lance’s growth is to learn to stop needing to feel that he’s better than keith. And him accepting keith as the black paladin was a huge part of it. But with shiro as the leader again lance loses that development. Keith’s not in the picture anymore, and the person in-charge was already in a leadership position and has nothing to learn by being there.

Before I go way too deep into my thoughts about the plot/characterization, I do want to mention the animation. The fighting scenes are amazing and one of the most beautiful 2d animation I’ve seen. That is, when it is actually animated and not just the camera panning on a still image. Here’s where my biggest concern over the time comes in. 2 years is absolutely not enough time to animate that many episodes. I was genuinely worried for the animation company because it could not have been a good experience. And yes, we got more episodes sooner, the quality definitely dropped and it’s a real shame. Who knows when we’ll get another american cartoon in this style. I love this animation style but it takes time and a lot of skills to do, so not that many companies do it. I honestly wished they took their time with the show not just to get more time to animate, but also to flesh out some of the plot.

PLOT

As hunk said in one episode, they don’t linger on dramatic events that just happened. This show is very fast paced, and that’s not a bad thing. But they never took the time they needed to really feel the weight of everything that happens. Keith’s galra heritage reveal was basically swept under the rug. So was the shiro clone, lotor’s death, zarkon’s death, naxzela, and so many more. In general, that was a big problem with how the episodes went. If it wasn’t for the sheer number of fanfics covering those topics, they were really swept under the rug. It honestly kinda felt like the writers didn’t know what to do with the aftermath of their reveals. But some of these were pretty essential to the plot of the story.

Keith’s part galra! So he doesn’t look it but there had to be obstacles with voltron forming the coalition. He’s part of the race that caused this war. I honestly think we should’ve seen that reveal become part of the plot, or what was the point of it? They could’ve just as easily wrote keith to be a regular human just like everyone else. Taking the time to add that part of his character needs to have some significance in the story. And yeah, they had krolia appear but she wasn’t really a significant character except to kinda magically fix keith’s problems. In general it felt like they forgot parts that they were foreshadowing with keith. Why could he turn purple sometimes? Did that quintessence he was hit with fix him or help him hide the galra parts? Why does he look so human? What is up with him having that quintessence sensitivity? I’m all for shows ending with some questions unanswered because sometimes it’s impossible to answer it all and let it feel natural, but this just felt like they forgot or decided it’s too much of a hassle and just ignored it.

Okay going into more specifics now, s8 was kinda meh. It especially felt bad because it came out the same day as spiderverse which had a very similar villain motivation, but objectively done better. I think honerva’s motivation came out of nowhere. We see in the flashback episode that she was so intent on getting knowledge that it literally destroyed daibazaal. So, it was established that her motivation is knowledge. Even though she lost her memory and regained it, as haggar she was still very focused on quintessence. We know she was gathering a lot of it, and maybe they said it and I forgot, but we never knew why. Family wasn’t really shown as a motivation for her. Even with lotor it didn’t seem like she wanted to be a family again, but instead was using him for her own unknown motivations. Anyways, the season felt awkward. And the new dynamic they had really needed more time. The last season should’ve expanded to be at least 2 more. It would’ve fit a lot better imo. S1-2 would have zarkon as the main villain, s3-6 would have lotor, and s7-8 would have haggar, who was also the puppeteer throughout the entire show. But she didn’t appear for s7 and her motivations didn’t really make sense in s8 so it evidently felt rushed. There were also so many major characters in s8 we needed more time to see them interact.

So the ending with allura becoming constellations. Gonna be honest that whole last part had me confused. Especially with the fact that I barely remember what happened, why are the old paladins like trapped in the lions? I could excuse the other 4 but zarkon? Especially a zarkon that’s not corrupted? It was weird and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and that’s all I’ll say about that. I don’t even want to try to suggest an alternative because I think that whole last half of the season is so messy it can’t be fixed. But it was so obviously pandering to the fandom it hurt. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted lance to be altean in response to keith’s galra heritage. The shiro/curtis kiss was very “look see he is gay and not just because we said so” while nice, was very weak (why wasn’t keith in the shot?).

Despite my complaints, I remember liking s8. I really liked the addition of the atlas, even though it didn’t feel like we were watching voltron anymore sometimes. S7 had to be one of my favorite episodes since s2. Not to say that s7 is better or worse, but I really like it because it felt like a genre shift. I usually don’t like space sci-fi or mecha stories. Voltron somehow managed to combine the two and make me love it. S7 did not feel like either of those. First, a good half of it took place on earth. And I believe two episodes didn’t even have the main cast, and when team voltron finally made it to earth, voltron wasn’t even there until the final battle. I genuinely loved it. I think it was a very well done invasion/apocalyptic story that doesn’t get told in animation that often. But if I think about s7 with the rest of the show, it was awful. It broke up the tone the show usually had and it was a very different way of storytelling that voltron didn’t have before. It wasn’t a space sci-fi mecha story, it was an apocalyptic action story. Voltron was so unimportant they sat on a moon for episodes. It stopped becoming voltron and started becoming a spin-off.

I do have to add that I absolutely loved the color themes in s7. We already had purple for the galra, but in s7 it was very obvious that alteans are themed blue and earth is themed with orange. I loved it so much and it was great. I do like that they gave shiro something to do. Honestly not killing him off in s2 made him an awkward character afterwards. But I didn’t like that they brought back sendak. There was no explanation for it and it wasn’t good imo. He didn’t really do anything besides conquer earth then die. Haggar was also absent the entire season which definitely didn’t help her storyline in s8 because we didn’t know what she was doing the entire time except abandoning everyone who was loyal to her.

I’m usually not a fan of time skips, it has the tendency to gloss over character development or create glossed over recap. Honestly I wish voltron spent more time over the blade of marmora massacre or just the bom in general. They received no rest. Literally everyone part of that group died except for kolivan. Speaking of that episode, there was no explanation for how keith was able to know where macidus was about to appear and that honestly bugs me. There’s so much about keith we don’t know. He has so many abilities we were just never told.

Again a lot of problems within team voltron is that there was never any follow up on things that happened, like keith leaving the team. He becomes the black paladin and no one bats an eye. Lance did make one comment about keith leaving but then it wasn’t ever mentioned again. I get that the writers/producers wanted the dynamic the original had, but they didn’t take the time to work up to it. Keith wasn’t a natural leader, but he suddenly is because he spent 2 years on a space whale with his mom and a space wolf. Like I mentioned earlier, voltron feels like keith is the main character but then they dropped him for a few episodes, realized that he’s important and added him back in while saying “oh he went through a time skip so he grew into the role he needs to be in now”. It feels like a cheap pay off.

I’d like to specifically talk about my thoughts on each season and work back but honestly I don’t think I can remember s3-6 separately. So they’re being chunked together.

Lotor had the potential to be a really great villain. But he had to be foiled with keith. They have a lot of similarities that I think could’ve really played off well together. Lotor isn’t really allowed to have a leadership position. Yeah he was technically in charge while zarkon was recovering, but haggar didn’t really allow him full control. But, he was a great leader. He knew how to read his enemies and form an alliance. Meanwhile, keith had a leadership position thrusted to him, and frankly he wasn’t a good leader. He tends to keep to himself so he never really has to make decisions with a team. It could’ve been great, but shiro had to still be in the story. I’m honestly conflicted about this because on the one hand, I think it really ruined character developments for the main cast, but then I loved the clone shiro plot line. I think keeping shiro prevented keith from growing. He was able to remain dependent on shiro instead of actually bonding with the rest of the paladins. And of course he had to just go awol. Also, lance didn’t really get to have as prominent of a role as I think he could’ve had with keith.

These seasons are also when the lions stopped being sentient robots that specifically choose their paladins to just really cool spaceships. We don’t get that level of bonding that was so prominent in s1 and 2. That’s also something I’m conflicted with. I think the lion swap was a great way for character developments, but it also removed a lot of it. It kinda made the bonding feel useless. The swap also changed the dynamic of the group. Instead of shiro and allura being co-leaders, and everyone else feeling like they’re on equal footing, it felt like Keith was the leader with lance being a needed right-hand man. Hunk and pidge were off doing their thing and allura was a leader but also not. Maybe if they had spent more time working with this dynamic it would’ve felt better. But they didn’t and it didn’t. Voltron also implied that allura was the only one that could control the castle ship, but then she goes to become a paladin and who’s driving the ship?

I do wish we could’ve gotten more about the altean colony and the reveal about lotor’s plans, but that got overshadowed and forgotten by the clone shiro reveal. Maybe I just missed it, but I wasn’t sure what the galra empire and lotor were collecting quintessence for. Was it just to make mechs to rival voltron? Lotor’s death was also very unclear.

The coalition was a much needed thing, but I think very badly executed. They were gathering people from malls. These people are regular civilians who probably don’t know how to fight or fly a ship. I thought it was really weird that they were just getting regular people (aliens?) to sign up like they’re applying to be part of the army. But we never see them maybe join the rebel force matt is part of to learn how exactly to help. I think about avatar and how they also had a rag tag group of people to fight against the fire nation, but these weren’t just regular people living in a village. They were either warriors or very skilled benders. The voltron coalition was just regular people. That genuinely annoyed me because the voltron show just felt like those army propaganda ads, but exciting. Not to mention it was a very hard to watch episode.

It was definitely making fun of how the fandom complains about how characters are getting reduced to a certain characteristic. But it wasn’t done in an entertaining way like the ember island players episode from atla because some of those were legit complaints (like hunk being the fat/food guy) and that stuff wasn’t resolved. Like the ember island players made fun of sokka constantly talking about meat or katara crying all the time, but the show made it very clear beforehand that these characters are much more than that. Is hunk really more than the food guy? As far as the show mentions, the only things he’s done was make the machine to help find the blue lion, and help save the balmera. All of which was in season 1. After that hunk honestly took the backseat in voltron.

I mentioned earlier, but the time skip on the space whale felt like we were cheated out of keith’s character development. I mean we got development, but we didn’t get to see it. The vlog short showed that keith believes a lot of his problems stems from not having a mom (and a dad) in his life. But instead of seeing keith learning to trust and open up to people despite having so many people in his life leaving him, we get a cute montage of him with his mom. As if it makes sense that two years with his mom would fix everything. (side note, I know a lot of people were saying how obvious it was that krolia was keith’s mom, I genuinely did not know until she said so at the end of that episode).

I’m not gonna talk about my thoughts on s1 and 2 because I’m pretty sure I live blogged those and honestly I don’t think I remember it.

CHARACTERS

Now I’m finally talking about the characters and I’m starting off with keith as if I haven’t talked about him enough already. I love keith. He’s undeniably one of my (if not the) favorite characters ever. And he’s obviously a fandom favorite if we’re considering the two biggest ships in the fandom. Or maybe he really is just the secret main character of voltron. We know so much about him, for someone who loves keith, it’s great. We basically know his entire backstory, and yet we know no one else’s (except maybe lotor but even that’s iffy).

I never rewatched a single voltron episode since it ended, and I can’t watch any of the connected shows (meaning shows that have the same ppl that worked on it or the same fans, think dragon prince and she-ra) because the fandom was the absolute worst one I’ve ever been in and parts legit trigger me. I am fascinated with fandoms. I love it. I chose my major because it was the closest I could get to just learning about them 24/7. But the voltron fandom was so incredibly toxic and over two ships? Honestly the fandom itself was a major reason why I couldn’t get super invested in the later seasons. I get afraid when it seems like a certain ship might happen. I actually hoped that certain characters just didn’t interact. (I’m not gonna get much deeper in this because I don’t want to touch this topic with a ten-foot pole, at least not now) Aside from that, I think that the plot and characterizations for voltron got really messy post s2. The lion switch was never handled well imo, and post switch the lions lost that sentient personality that was established in the first two seasons. It also didn’t make sense aside from the writers wanted everyone in the original lions. Or at least, we never got the proper character developments into those roles. Keith left right after becoming the black paladin.

I think another major problem with the show is how some decisions felt like pandering. I remember hearing that they didn’t kill off shiro because he was a fan favorite, so he had to stay for marketing and to make more money. But then keeping shiro alive would’ve derailed the original plot idea. I wish I could see how the story would’ve played out with shiro staying dead.

Draft 2: rewatched the show then started writing this

So I wrote a draft of this like a year ago, realized I don’t remember the show much, so I rewatched the whole show and started rewriting my thoughts.

Pre-rewatch thoughts: It was a good show that was poorly executed

Mid-rewatch thoughts: it’s a really good show that just has some weak points (the second half of lotor’s arc, team voltron’s importance in season 4-6 it feels like a lot of filler episodes until keith shows up again)

End-rewatch thoughts: it's actually a really good show. It has some weak points and some really strong points. Season 8 was confusing though. I went through most of it going yeah okay I guess that can happen.

Final verdict: it's a genuinely good show

What went wrong

It ended on its weakest season, which was also the most abstract and different season. While the main antagonist changed throughout the seasons, it still continued to be the galra empire. Even when lotor joined, the team was still fighting fractions of the galra empire. Meanwhile, season 8 didn’t have any conflict with the galra. The antagonists were honerva and the alteans, who are very different types of villains compared to the galra. There was also little build up to that change. Sure, we got to experience that briefly in season 3 when they went to the alternate reality, but I don’t think that was built up well. Also, the protagonists and the audience are just not prepared. We don’t know how the alteans work like the extent of their abilities, but we were given dozens of episodes to learn about the galra. As a result season 8 just wound up with me feeling confused and thinking “uhh sure I guess they can do that, that makes sense maybe?”

It could not pick who its protagonist is. Yeah the five humans plus allura (and coran?) are the main characters but most shows with multiple major characters still focus one one character as the protagonist. Like atla has aang, adventure time has finn, umbrella academy has five. Voltron just never picks someone and the group constantly changes too, so you end up having to not focus on any character for the sake of time. Of course not all shows do that. Teen Titans had each season focus on a particular member of the team, and tbh I was wondering if that was what they were planning for the show, especially when season 2 was so Keith focused but guess not.

It feels like they did not have the time to fully flesh out the story. Voltron came and went so incredibly fast. They had 8 seasons (technically 6 if you group up the halved seasons). But also the show only lasted 2 years. It honestly horrifies me to think of the time crunch everyone on the team was going through, especially the animators. You can see the drop in quality as there were very few scenes that involved actual animation for the middle bulk of the show. So then, how much time did they have to develop the story, in addition to execs telling them what they can and can’t do. There’s so many arcs that seemed to start then get forgotten, and I don’t blame the writers for that at all. Although I wish we could’ve learned more about Lance and the Altean sword and Keith with his apparent quintessence sensitivity, they probably just didn’t have the time to plot those out.

It had too much outside influence. Such as, the writers wanting to kill off shiro, but then being forced to keep him on the show because the execs said to. And honestly, the fandom. For example, the whole last episode with Lance getting the Altean marks (an obvious omage to ppl wanting Altean Lance).

What went right

There’s a reason why the show became so popular (aside from being a reboot of a popular 80′s show) and it’s because of the characters. I’m not about the whole “we become attached to characters because the writers did them wrong but we fans can see the potential and that’s why fan works are better” bs that I see going around this site all the time. The first season particularly wrote these characters so well. They’re relatable but also intriguing enough for you to care about what’s going to happen to them.

Some thoughts regarding popular fandom discussions:

It’s a plot-driven show with character-focused fans

I like to think of there being two ways to tell a story: by being character-focused or plot-driven. Plot driven shows are ones like atla, young justice, legend of korra, etc. There’s a conflict that gets introduced and the story revolves around that conflict. Character-focused shows are ones like adventure time or we bare bears, they’re less concerned about a plot line and focus more on the characters interacting with their world. Of course all stories incorporate both parts, just some focus more on one than the other. So, here’s where I think a lot of the issues about voltron and the fandom comes from. Voltron is a very obviously plot-driven show but the fandom is very character-focused. I won’t deny I loved the episodes about keith. Season 4 and 5 were hard for me to watch because I missed my boy. But that’s where the arguments come from. People get upset that their fav isn’t in the spotlight

It didn’t queerbait

I understand watching a show for representation, I really do, but voltron is not that show and that's okay. Not every show has to be revolutionary in its representation of marginalized people. I won't pretend to know the harmful tropes for marginalized people. My consumption of media is not usually diverse. But I will stand by my stance that a large part of voltron's later seasons is about the casualties of war. So of course a lot of people died. I also firmly believe that the producers had a much easier time adding diversity to their own created characters than the main voltron characters, because of rights and all that complicated nonsense. So as a result the ones who were more expendable and could die were also the same characters that they could add diversity too.

I’m gonna add the definition of queerbait here so we’re all on the same page: Queerbait is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation.

But here’s the thing. We were told at comic-con or one of those cons that Shiro is gay, and he had a boyfriend. They actually gave us that. Yeah it wasn’t as explicit as She-ra got, but that’s another point for later. There was no lying about it. Shiro is canonically gay, and his boyfriend was Adam. If anything, this whole thing came out of wanting Keith in a relationship with Shiro or Lance. Yes. I will admit, there are plenty of scenes between Keith and Lance, and Keith and Shiro that can be read as romantic. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but did any of the cast members tease the possibility of Kl//ance or Sh//eith (VAs don’t count, sorry but they don’t really have a say in the story)? Because unless they did, and they did repeatedly, the fandom queerbaited themselves. So many people in the fandom were so certain that Keith would be in a relationship with one of them, there was basically an all out war. Even if there was a chance, did you really think the creators (who were pretty active in early fandom days) would continue that development? It was so so toxic they were forced to shut off any possibilities of that.

In regards to minority characters

Again, I'll admit vld is not the place to go for real, proper representation. Their characters tend to be characters that happen to be a part of a minority rather than a minority character. wtf does that mean? Well, you can swap (earth) races for just about any character and it wouldn't make too much of a difference in how they act. There's some lines that wouldn't work like Lance's "I'm just a boy from Cuba" but other than that there would be no significant change. Of course this goes down to preference. Would you want a minority character whose struggles reflect those in real life and as a result be defined by that aspect of themselves, or do you want a character that just happens to be a part of a minority group but whose life is not really affected by that?

Draft 3: months after the rewatch, mostly an attempt to reorganize the previous two drafts

I’m gonna start with the negatives just to get the ranting off my chest. Season 8 was bad. Yeah. No argument there. Although I wouldn’t say it was bad in the same way Game of Thrones and Supernatural was bad. Rather, it was an interesting and complex premise that didn’t have the build up it needed and honestly needed a few more passthroughs to iron out some parts. At worse, I felt it was confusing to the point where I just accepted whatever new worldbuilding thing they threw at me. The issue with Season 8 vs Seasons 1-7 is that Season 8 had a completely different villain, and a brand new cast dynamic. We got 7 seasons (65 episodes) developing the Galra as the villain. We got to learn who they are, their motives, how they operate, etc. Not only that, but they were pretty basic and easy to understand villains. They’re conquerors. They don’t have any sort of magic, they really just use brute force to attack and enslave the planets. In striking contrast, the Alteans in Season 8 weren’t conquerors. They didn’t care about controlling the universe. They also had magic abilities that our main characters don’t understand and didn’t explore. Season 8 had villains who could create illusions, mind control, and manipulate quintessence. The Alteans are leagues beyond the Galra in terms of complexities as an antagonist, but they didn’t get nearly enough time to be fully developed.

Also, Season 8 essentially doubled the cast size. So despite the fact that we have yet to see much of Keith-as-the-black-paladin Voltron group dynamic, now that screentime is being balanced with the MFE pilots and other Garrison characters. Essentially, there were too many characters, and too little time to flesh out the ideas of this season. A side note, Haggar’s (Honerva?) motivations were lame. I think it would’ve been much more interesting if her plans were just to continue the research she did 10,000 years ago with the rift. That would’ve also brought back the rift monsters which we never got an answer for. What even are they? Instead, her goal to have a family again is really weak. Even in the flashbacks she never showed any care for the more familial aspects of her life. It didn’t make sense for that to be her drive. It also didn’t help that Season 8 came out on like the same day as Spiderverse and the antagonists for both had the same goal, but Spiderverse did an immensely better job.

Another thing that didn’t make sense to me was Keith giving the speech to the rest of the Galra. He is not the right character to give that speech. Sure he’s Galra, but he didn’t even know for most of his life. For him to say “we” like he’s also a citizen of the Galra empire feels so weird. He never grew up with the Empire’s influence, and we never saw him experiencing Galra culture with the Blade. He learned about the Galra as an outsider, and despite the fact that he’s part Galra (he doesn’t even remotely look Galra), I don’t think that gives him the authority to say a speech like that. The speech is similar to Zuko’s at the end of ATLA, and that makes me feel like it would’ve been a lot better had Lotor said it. I think even Kolivan would’ve been a better fit than Keith.

The more I’m writing about Season 8, the more I’m remembering just how messy and confusing it was. Additionally, the last bit of Season 8 was so obviously pandering to the fandom it gives me second-hand embarrassment. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted Lance to be Altean in response to Keith's galra heritage. The Shiro getting married was just to make it more obvious that he’s gay, but had no build up. (There were definitely more but I didn’t write myself a list and I’m not rewatching that season)

Second, “Voltron queerbaited”. [this was posted before here]

Speaking of which, Voltron premiered summer of 2016 and ended in winter of 2018. That’s about 2 and a half years where they aired 78 episodes. That’s stupid fast, especially for an animated series. I’m constantly worried about what the people working on that show had to endure. For sure, Season 3 with Shiro coming back wasn’t written until at least Season 1. I recalled the execs demanding that Shiro not be dead since he was a popular character. It’s honestly concerning how little time they had to work on the show, and it unfortunately showed. In the later seasons, a lot of the shots were just still frames that moved across the scene. And the plot line with Lotor could’ve used some work. Although, I think Shiro being forced in there was also a reason for it being so shaky.

I honestly hate Seasons 4 & 5. I cannot tell you what happened because my brain keeps erasing it. Obviously, the lack of Keith had a huge impact on my opinion of those seasons, but it also felt like a whole lot of filler episodes, and not the fun ones with character development. With Keith mostly out of the picture, and Lance becoming the right hand of Voltron, that should’ve been a great time to develop Lance to become a second-in-command. To have him go through an arc where he overcomes his insecurities. It would’ve also been an amazing time to develop his and Shiro’s relationship. But we didn’t get any of that.

I genuinely believe Keith was supposed to stay the black paladin and Shiro wasn’t supposed to come back. Keith would be an amazing foil to Lotor. They’re both half-Galra. They’ve both been given a new leadership role that they don’t want. The middle arc always felt so weak to me, and as I mentioned earlier, the Allura/Lotor interactions were awkward. It feels shoehorned in because someone has to interact with Lotor and I guess the writers decided Allura was the best option?

Season 3-6 felt like the epitome of what happens when showrunners are forced to do whatever the execs say and have no time to properly develop their story. I’ll forever be bitter at all the character and relationship development we lost because of that. We never got to see Keith really learn to open up to the team and start to trust others. But Keith still had to get to that point, which is why I assume they had the time jump for him. It’s so disappointing because we lost what could’ve been a great character development. It also made Keith being the Black Paladin again feel cheap. We didn’t get to see the struggle he had to be the leader Shiro saw he could be. He was just suddenly leading them and they worked like a proper team.

Voltron also had a lot of plot holes. Now, I don’t expect shows to answer every question, because it’s impossible to tie everything up and leave no questions unanswered in a natural way. But, there’s a lot of things that felt like the beginning of a plot line or honestly needed some answers. Like, Lance shifting his bayard to a sword. What was the point of that if it was never mentioned again? It felt like that was an important start to an arc for him that just got forgotten. Also, what was up with Keith’s quintessence sensitivity? How was he able to sense where that druid was. How did he know he could summon his bayard to him. I think the part that bugged me the most was that Keith was the only one who did that. Also, Keith’s eyes becoming slitted during his fight with Kuron was never addressed, and I really wish it was. It felt like such a throwaway moment that could’ve been interesting to explore more. Although I’m not too upset with that one as I think we were given enough to piece together a reason for it.

#have fun with this monstrosity of a post #over 7k words #personal #my thoughts about #frxstguardian #kingofthewilderwest #honestly the only two people this post was intended for #I give up!!

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omoi-no-hoka · 5 years

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How to Choose Japanese Manga/Books for Studying

In an ask recently, a user asked me what reading materials I recommend to study with.

I’ve covered the standard textbooks here, and today I’ll talk about how you can determine whether an authentic material is suitable for your studies. All of this advice is based upon my studies in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), as well as my personal experience learning Japanese.

What’s an Authentic Material?

Authentic materials are print, video, and audio that are not classroom materials, but are things made for Japanese (or any other target language) speakers. A mock advertisement in your textbook is not an authentic material because it is not made for a Japanese person, but an actual Help Wanted ad in a Japanese newspaper is an authentic material.

Authentic materials can be just about anything audio or visual. Manga, light novels, newspapers, magazines, jpop songs, anime, news broadcast, etc.

Today I’m just going to focus on visual authentic materials, but if there’s interest I could make a future post about audio materials too.

1. Decide Your Method of Reading: Intensive or Extensive

When reading to study a foreign language, there are two different ways to go about it, intensive reading or extensive reading.

Intensive Reading

Reading and looking up every single word you do not know, even words that aren’t essential to understanding the main points of the story.

Pros: you learn a lot more vocab

Cons: it takes considerably longer to make progress

In order to do this method effectively (and by effectively I mean “resist chucking your book out the window in a fit of rage”), you must comprehend ~70%* of the content.

Extensive Reading

Basically what you do when you read in your native language. You read each page, and even if you come across a word you don’t know, you keep going. You only look up words that keep coming up, or that hinder your overall comprehension of what’s going on.

Pros: you cover more ground and get a bigger sense of accomplishment

Cons: you can miss out on smaller details

In order to do this method effectively, you must comprehend ~90% of the content.

Neither reading method is better than the other. Choose which style suits your personality best. Personally, I’m one of those people that has to know every last morsel about everything, so I only do intensive reading.

2. Determine How Difficult a Material Is

Up above I said you had to be able to comprehend either 70 or 90 percent of the content depending on the method you want to go with.

In extensive reading, you need to be able to understand almost all the words because you can’t stop to look up a ton of stuff. If you have to look up 15 words on a page because you can’t understand what’s going on, you’re not doing extensive reading--you’re doing intensive reading.

Now, as for the 70% I put on the intensive reading, there’s a bit of give with that, depending on how patient you are haha. If you’re okay with a crawling pace, the comprehension could be 10% if you want. But if you’re like me and you’re a bit hasty, you’re going to want to be able to comprehend around 70-80% of the vocab.

So how do you figure out how difficult the content is? Pick a random page and the first 100 words on it, and count the words you didn’t know. Subtract the words you didn’t know from 100, and the answer will tell you roughly how much you can comprehend of the text. Easy, right?

3. What Makes a Bad Material

I’m betting that anime/manga is what got most of us interested in learning Japanese, and there’s probably that one really nostalgic manga you’re dying to read in its original Japanese format.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but just because you love a series doesn’t make it a good learning material.

Things to Avoid in a Material

Lots of technical, scientific, or military jargon

I know that this wipes out a large swath of series, but the point of reading this is to learn Japanese, and there’s a good chance that most of the vocab you would learn would not be usable in conversation. Why waste the time learning 白刃取り (catching a blade between two palms) when you could be learning something more practical?

Period works (Edo Era and further back)

Many (but not all) period pieces contain a bunch of obsolete words, and the last thing you want to be is one of those gaijin that uses “gozaru” unironically. I tried using the expression 村八分 (ostracism) and got laughed at by my coworkers just last month because that just makes people think of villages in the Edo period.

Long Chapters

Particularly if you’re doing the Intensive Reading method, it’s important to give yourself a sense of accomplishment. It took me an hour to read one page of a book for one of my classes, and 30 hours to read ONE chapter. It was the most frustrating and endless experience I’ve had to date. Pick manga (because chapters are short) or short stories. (I really recommend Hoshi Shinichi’s “short-short” stories.)

Don’t be like poor Kagome

4. What Makes a Good Material

I have saved the most important condition for your material until last.

Are you ready?

Here it is:

Make sure it’s something you like!

I know that this is so basic I shouldn’t even have to say it. But listen, for one of my Japanese courses in uni, I had a semester to read one of Haruki Murakami’s novellas. It was the most difficult and frustrating semester I had because not only was it super hard for me vocab-wise, it was boring as hell. I didn’t enjoy the story, and the ending was so

alskfjksldfjsd

It’s been 6 years and I’m still triggered. It was awful, and it made me feel like all of this toil, all of this suffering, had been for nothing. I thought that I hated reading in Japanese. But actually, when I pushed myself to try reading a manga I liked, I learned that I didn’t hate reading Japanese--

--I just hated reading Murakami.

If you find a material that is the right difficulty level and is appropriate for your purposes but you don’t find it interesting, it’s likely that you’ll get bored of it and quit halfway through. But if you like a material enough, even if it is too difficult for your current level, your love for it can give you the extra boost of motivation you need to push through it.

My favorite manga series of all time is Rurouni Kenshin. It was the first anime I ever watched, and it kinda started me down the road I’m on. So I decided to read the manga, and oh man is it a chore. I’ve read 14 volumes and have looked up 1,577 words as of today. It has a bunch of obsolete Japanese, it has so many sword words holy bejeezus (this is where I learned 白刃取り, btw), and it can take me hours to get through a chapter sometimes.

But I love that series with everything I am, so I don’t care how long it takes.

Really, what matters more than anything is that it’s something you are really invested and interested in.

5. How Soon Can I Start Reading Authentic Materials?

Did you know that the average native Japanese person cannot read a newspaper until they are a freshman in high school? That is how hard Japanese is. For the native speakers.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer here, but I would recommend you wait to use most authentic materials until you are N3 or N2. I finally began feeling comfortable reading stuff in Japanese around when I passed the N2. I understand that Chi’s Sweet Home is popular for beginners, so that isn’t to say that there are no authentic materials to be found for new learners, but they are very hard to find.

But hey, if you are determined enough, there is nothing that can stop you from reading what you love, and nothing worth having is easily won. Ganbatte!

#study japanese #learn japanese #study kanji #learn kanji #japanese language #nihongo #japanese #study resources #jlpt #langblr #japanese langblr #studyblr #ask #Anonymous #japanese resources #ask me anything

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drabblemesilly · 7 years

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Connor McDavid #17

Requested by Anon: could you do a connor mcdavid imagine based off of the song 7 by catfish & the bottlemen? thanks!! love your writing btw!

*Thank you so so much!! I love Catfish & The Bottlemen and I love this song! I hope you don’t mind but I based this story off of this video. Enjoy! :)

Also, when I was writing this, I realized that this story can be the prologue of this original Connor drabble. I am seriously recommending that you read it after this one (especially for the new readers)! :) Thank you!! Again, it’s THIS LINK. :)*

Word count: 1, 356

You really should stop biting your nails. It’s a bad habit and you know it. It’s also a nervous tick and you’ve never been more nervous in your life than when your grade eight teacher made you sing in front of the whole school – you were not a good singer.

Oh gosh, that was the worst. Good thing Connor was there to genuinely cheer you on. When everyone started to laugh at you, he stood, clapping, and in his uniquely Connor way shouted, “bravo, bravisimo!”

Even then, when Connor McDavid thinks you’re worth a clap and a cheer, everyone listened. At fourteen years old, everyone already respected Connor. Not only because he was the best hockey player in his age division but because he was someone everyone just sorta looked up to.

There was no doubt in your mind that he would be drafted first overall.

When he called you late last night, saying that he was back home and that he wanted to meet up and celebrate, his voice sounded like he was still floating on Cloud 9. He was just drafted a month ago and just got back from Edmonton after signing his first professional contract.

Three years.

He’s going to do such great things in those three years.

Too bad you won’t be there to witness it.

There was a movement in your periphery and you turned your head to see Connor, all handsome and freshly showered, walking towards you. His hair was still wet but the summer breeze is blowing it from every angle. He had one hand tucked in his pocket and the other behind his back. He had an ear-splitting grin and he was watching you with such gentleness that tore your heart.

You let that vision of him burn in your memory – for later.

God, you love him so much.

Connor stopped in front of you, the goofy smile still on his face, “Oiler,” he said giddily, pointing on his chest and hopping from one foot to another.

For a minute, you let your love take over and you leapt from the park bench to drape yourself all over Connor, “you know I am the proudest, right?” you told him, kicking your feet off the ground and pushing yourself up to kiss his cheek.

Connor held you close to him, his arms tight around your waist. He gave you an earth-shattering kiss before putting you down, “we haven’t been here in so long.” He looked around the deserted park that no one really goes to anymore.

“Yeah,” you said, “I wanted to meet you here because I needed to say something,” you said slowly, not letting him in on the weight of what you’re just about to say exactly.

You and Connor McDavid lived in the same neighborhood just a few minutes outside of Toronto. You met when he was still a snotty-nosed Toronto Maple Leaf-wannabe and you were a nosey little girl who can’t skate if her life depended on it. You used to bring extra Kleenex and he taught you how to glide on the ice. Perfect combination.

Falling in love and getting together seemed like natural progression.

He must have finally sensed the underlying sadness you were feeling because he cleared his throat, “what’s up?”

When you were a kid, your dad would always say ‘just take the band-aid off.’ Most of the time, it was just him reminding you that if the truth will hurt, no matter how you try to sugarcoat it or how slow you ease into it, it will still hurt.

“I’m staying,” you whispered, looking into the distance.

He snorted, “well, duh,” he chuckled, “I know you’re going to school here.”

You shut your eyes tight for a beat before looking at him, telling him everything you wanted to say with just your eyes, “I’m staying,” you repeated, slowly this time.

A flash of realization dawned on his face and his mouth opened and closed a couple of times. His cheeks started to flush and he scoffed, “are you breaking up with me?”

Instead of answering him, you said, “Edmonton is too far, Con,” you whispered, looking down on your lap, “it’s in a whole other time zone.”

You heard him slap his palm on the wooden bench, “we survived Erie,” he reasoned, “why would Edmonton be any different?”

You took a calming breath to stop yourself from crying. You knew he was bring up Erie, “Erie is three hours away, Connor,” you said, “Edmonton is –“

“In a whole other time zone, I heard that,” he was angry now. You can hear it in his tone but you don’t have it in you to actually lift your head up and look at him, “fuck,” he exclaimed.

Connor stood up and for a second you thought he was just gonna leave you but then he turned around and pointed an accusatory finger at you, “you’re throwing everything just because of this long distance shit?”

Your tears started to free fall but you stopped yourself from sobbing, “I don’t want you caged,” you told him, “it’s gonna take a toll on us eventually and Connor,” you said, finally looking up, “we’re young. I need you here.”

He blanched, “it’s not like I can just trade places with Marner,” he said angrily. Mitch Marner was drafted fourth overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs.

You gathered all your strength and met his eyes. He wasn’t crying but you can see the tears pool. There was so much heartbreak and anguish in those eyes that you just had to look away again, “I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“Yeah,” he said, scoffing. He started to pace in front of you, “and here I was clearing my schedule because I wanted to spend as much time with you before training camp starts,” he let out a sarcastic laugh, “I can finally sleep with all the girls I want.”

You winced, “that was a low blow.”

He stopped pacing and glared at you, “it was? Well, I’m sorry if I’m lashing out at you when five fucking minutes ago, you acted like everything was fine with the world.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair, “next time you break up with someone, give them a head’s up, why don’t you?”

Connor dropped back to sit next to you. He was breathing like he just finished running a marathon, his anger still reverberating.

You sat there listening to him take in gulps of air, feeling like the coward that you are.

After a while, you heard him talk, “this is not you,” he said quietly, his eyes looking forward, “you’re a risk taker, you never back down,” he wiped his face with his palm, looking tired now, “I’m counting on you…” he said before correcting his statement, “I was counting on you.”

His hand was resting on the edge of the bench. You put your hand on top of his and felt him flinch. That hurt but you didn’t let go. Not when this is probably the last time you’ll ever get to hold him.

“I’m scared,” you told him honestly.

“And I’m not?” he asked incredulously, “I’m scared shitless here. I’ve never been that far away from my family,” he paused before adding, “from you.”

When you didn’t answer, he tried again, “you told me we were soul mates,” he reminded you, “you always said we were.”

“We are,” you agreed, giving him a sad smile, “but not all soul mates end up together.”

You gave his hand another tight squeeze before leaning in to kiss his jaw, “I love you so much and you’re going to be great but this is it, Co,” you cried, “it’s not going to work.”

You stood up and willed yourself to walk away and not to look back.

Connor stopped you with his words, “take a risk.”

You turned around and saw him slumped on the bench, his shoulders shaking. When he felt you looking at him, he lifted his head up, the sun making his tears shine on his face. You’ll miss him so much.

You tried to smile but it was the hardest thing to do, “I’m not that much of a risk taker after all, Connor.”

#connor mcdavid #connor mcdavid imagines #nhl imagines #hockey imagines #imagines #drabble #drabbles #my writing #fanfic #edmonton oilers

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