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ganymedesclock · 7 years

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If Lotor were to learn that Keith is a hybrid, do you think he'll try to persuade Keith into joining him? Of course it won't work but I can't but feel that at some point Lotor is going to play mind games with Keith (or Lance because he's insecure) in order to tear team Voltron apart.

I mean, I know it’s certainly a popular fandom idea that Lotor’s going to try and lure someone away from Voltron, but...

On Lotor’s strategy

Voltron is not really Lotor’s target as much as Voltron, to Lotor, is a potential obstruction and a means to an end. He got up in their face to mess with them in season 3 because he was after the comet, and to have that, he needed to know they had Voltron. The Thayserix stunt in s3e3 was basically Lotor wanting to nail down that odd discrepancy and make sure Voltron actually had a chance of succeeding, before he threw them at the rift.

Ultimately Lotor wanted the comet, and as soon as he got it, he shifted focus away from Voltron. The only reason they still engaged after that in s3e6 is that the team came after Lotor and pressed the attack while Team Lotor was trying to steal the giant teludav component.

And what happens after that? Well, according to Keith in the season 4 trailer: “[Lotor] hasn’t been seen in months, this might be our chance to track him down!”

Lotor’s gotten what he wants from Voltron. From here on out, the only way Lotor’s really going to engage with Our Heroes is trying to get them out of his way- or potentially get something else from them. He is seemingly in the market for a teludav so I wouldn’t rule out an attack on the Castle of Lions to try and steal theirs.

Beyond that, though, I could see Lotor picking at Voltron... but potentially because he’s trying to build allies out of them. In which case he might go underhanded and try to pick them away from the group or encourage one of them to act as a spy, but it’d probably be more likely Lotor would actually just want to genuinely appeal to their good nature. Why?

On the history between the two teams

Because people forget- that little shindig between Keith, Hunk, and Acxa in the weblum is something on Lotor’s radar as much as on the paladins. And while we see Keith recognizing Acxa when they cross weapons in s3e6- Acxa doesn’t have that moment of realization, because she doesn’t need to.

She’s known who Keith was this entire time.

There’s no way Acxa, did-you-just-talk-about-my-prince-in-that-tone Acxa, didn’t pass on her experience in the weblum to Lotor. Lotor’s team operates and intercommunicates very closely. Acxa in particular is often one to talk up and explain things. So either Lotor’s team is already aware of everything from the weblum incident, or they’re missing some details that Acxa didn’t think were important, and will offer as soon as they do seem important.

So what went down in s2e9?

Well...

Keith and Hunk saved Acxa’s life.

Despite misgivings about trusting a galra blatantly working for the empire, Keith makes it very clear, within Acxa’s earshot, that they need to help her if nothing else just because she’s a living person and nobody deserves to be left for dead in a weblum. Keith is at times tense and hostile towards her, and harsh when she turns out to ultimately rob him, but it still stands, important takeaways that Acxa, and Lotor, would get from this:

Voltron is honorable. If nothing else they can be trusted to stick to their own creeds and said creeds are about helping people.

Voltron’s Red Paladin some amount of galra heritage, not normally visible. (they also know his name’s Keith because Acxa heard Hunk greet him by that name)

Reinforced by their collaboration with the Blade of Marmora, Voltron does not really have reflexive hard feelings towards the galra as a species.

On Lotor’s personality

Another thing to consider here is that Lotor is not immediately going to hear Keith is half-galra and start tapping his fingertips together because smells like opportunity.

There is a reason Lotor has surrounded himself with, and placed in powerful positions, people who are mixed race galra. This seems, way more than utility or pragmatism, actual genuine empathy, for their situation.

Lotor likes the generals. He works with them because he enjoys their company, is comfortable around them, and agrees with how they think. We see him happy to give them tasks they’ll enjoy, we see him talking to them fondly, and casually in a way that his ultimately facetious presentation to the main empire was not. And it also stands that overwhelmingly, Lotor spends a lot of time with the generals when he basically ignores most of the main fleet.

In s3e6, him chewing the generals out even fairly lightly by the standards of this show is a big deal because we virtually never see it happen. Furthermore, it’s an unusual situation because we virtually never see Lotor away from the generals in the first place to have that kind of distance.

My point is- these people are Lotor’s friends and the reason why Lotor spends so much time thinking about mixed race galra and their situation is because he has strong personal feelings about this. This is the uniting thread between him and his four closest friends and it’s pretty clear at least part of his utter disdain for “the old way”- Zarkon’s way of operating- is that in many ways that’s something that would want to destroy the only friendships Lotor really has.

Lotor seemingly “passes” as a full-blooded galra- the empire doesn’t know he’s of mixed race himself. But his generals are looked down upon as second-class citizens, and he’s considered improperly close to his subordinates. Racism and classism are not set up in Lotor’s favor.

So Lotor isn’t going to see Keith’s heritage as an opportunity to screw him over. He’s certainly not that desperate for leverage on Voltron that he’d bite his tongue and do something he’s opposed to. His team has so far been able to stay mostly ahead of Voltron. We might see Lotor twisting the knife a lot more if he’s cornered and scared as implied by the season 4 trailer, but I still doubt that he’d go for Keith’s heritage.

Not just because harping on people’s fear or distrust of the galra is Lotor shooting himself in the foot since he’s trying to establish his own foothold in the hearts of the universe’s populace and he’s also half-galra.

But hearing Keith’s got galra heritage and internalized self-loathing is going to actually pluck Lotor’s heartstrings and his response actually might be more of a danger to the team because it might, actually, be fairly heartfelt.

Because the thing about Lotor I keep coming back to is- Lotor, in many regards, is a shade of gray, not really one thing or another but a harmonious blending of allegedly stark and disparate components. We see this in his aesthetic, his strategy, almost everything he does. Fluidity and adaptability- and carving out his own niche in between alleged opposites.

And one of those alleged opposites is that Lotor actually is an empathetic person, and a manipulative one. He’ll lie, but he’ll never be completely facetious. In practice we see that a lot of what he said in his big speech to the empire, he legitimately means and will push even when it doesn’t serve him.

He basically told the empire what he planned to do with new planets, and, that’s the exact content of his recruitment spiel to Puig. He wasn’t there to put the Puigians back in chains, he was there to offer them a seat at the table, and even though he came in very aggressively, and used them to further his own ends... you know what we don’t see? Any implication whatsoever that Lotor went back and hurt the Puigians besides using Narti to control their leader- and Narti definitely didn’t stay there.

So that’s the thing. If Lotor really wants to talk Voltron around- which he might or might not, depending on his situation? He’s not just going to spew whatever they want to hear. That’s not Lotor’s style.

No, I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if Lotor plays on things, with a clear agenda, but also, with a heartfelt angle to it.

Keith’s heritage is one thing, but more importantly Keith’s yearning to relate to people on his heritage was what slipped out interacting with Acxa. Acxa was just a stranger, just some unknown galra, but Keith really wanted that to work out. He wanted them to be friends. He wanted to be able to trust Acxa. Because at that point, Keith was feeling very much like an alien in his friend group.

You don’t think entirely outside of practical pursuits and getting a leg up on Voltron, that’s gonna resonate with Lotor who seems to have built all of his close associates out of people who haven’t really been able to fit where they were? Where, again- Lotor’s whole thing is carving out a niche for yourself in a world that says you have to be one thing or another when you’re not really completely either?

And I come back to, Lotor isn’t always straitlaced, morally, but he seems to at least respect the same ideals Voltron does. In the sense that he actually, scornfully, kind of calls them out on Puig- if the Puigians are in open revolt against the empire, where exactly is their protection that this coalition is supposed to grant them? Lotor and his team are highly skilled but it does say some worrying things for your defenses if a four-man strike team can retake an entire planet in a day.

Lotor is a fan of teamwork. He’s a fan of solidarity. He wants to appeal to people genuinely and positively, and not just string them along. He sure as hell will, if he needs to, if that’s furthering a goal, but the cutthroat tactics come out either with people Lotor specifically distrusts (like Throk) or people who’ve already spit on the hand of friendship, and even then, Lotor’s got a hell of a lot more restraint than Zarkon’s ever shown.

So I’d say, I wouldn’t even say for sure if Lotor potentially trying to appeal to Keith is necessarily going to be a bad thing! Hell, we might actually see a situation where two of the generals bail out one of the paladins as a kind of- “there, we’re even for the whole weblum thing.”

It’s possible that Lotor might actually warm up to the paladins because he can trust them to have basic standards for potential enemies, like Acxa- and one of the things Lotor has the greatest disdain for is the empire’s whole attitude of “anything besides unmitigated aggression is for cowards and weaklings.”

There’s a reason, even though it would be ‘unpopular’ to his audience, Lotor made a big show of sparing Throk when in Lotor’s personal assessment Throk was too dangerous to keep around.

There’s a reason Lotor showed off his ability to keep ahead of people scheming against him but ultimately spared that person.

There’s a reason Throk’s ultimate fate is delivered at the hands of Haggar, acting on the vicious, cruel, victory-or-death attitude that Lotor’s already condemned.

Because Lotor knows that doesn’t work- that’s why he uses it to cover his own tracks, because the empire’s not going to listen to Throk. And for himself, when he’s running the show- Lotor would just as soon be completely rid of it.

Even when Lotor’s acting cruelly, his contempt for that aggression shines through. He smirks when Throk is taken out because the empire’s bellicose policies are once again nailing them in their coffin and protecting him. After all, amnesia in this setting has been rather porous. It’s very likely if Haggar hadn’t murdered Throk for his inability to cough up an immediate answer, he eventually would have remembered who attacked the base- or set out to figure out who did.

What this means going forward

Ultimately I doubt it’s going to be this simple. Lotor has a lot of things about Voltron he can respect, and a lot of things about Keith’s situation he can empathize with, but, he’s also between a rock and a hard place.

Everything about the season 4 trailer suggests things are going to go south for Lotor. We see a lot of tense faces out of him, his nervous insistence of “My father’s on his deathbed and I am in control.”

At a glance, that sounds like villainous gloating. But the thing is, Lotor doesn’t say those lines when he’s comfortable and confident and actually sitting on an advantage.

When Lotor’s got an advantage, he’s breezy, cheerful, informal. When he’s talking stiffly about superiority... well, we mostly saw it when he was confronting Haggar in s3e5. “I am the leader!”

That’s defensive snapping because Lotor feels cornered. And that line about “I am in control” sounds very similar to the way he talks to Haggar- that is to say, it suggests, ironically, that Lotor is feeling anything but in control.

And Keith’s comment that Lotor hasn’t been seen in months is another worrying nod to how Lotor’s feeling. Because Lotor is someone who retreats, and withdraws, when he doesn’t like his odds. If he doesn’t like a fight, he’ll try to avoid showing up for it.

If Lotor’s hiding, he’s tense.

What all of this means to me is? Personally, I think Lotor has some respect for Voltron at this point. Practically they agree more on morals than Lotor does with his father (see, the utter contempt Lotor reacts with when Haggar compares him to Zarkon).

But at the same time... Lotor is also pragmatic, and, as mentioned, he isn’t really afraid to push the boundaries of his own values if he’s scared and endangered. So I don’t think Lotor would want to, for example, maliciously exploit Keith’s desire for recognition against him... that doesn’t mean he necessarily wouldn’t, depending on what else is chasing him.

Lotor’s not like Zarkon. His desires aren’t necessarily completely irreconcilable with Voltron’s survival or even victory. But a powerful motivator for Lotor is pretty clearly that he’s terrified of Zarkon and Haggar actually closing their grip on him again. And he cares about the generals as well- who have publicly thrown their lot in with him. Who, as very obvious minorities who are very strongly looked down on within the empire, are going to be in a lot of danger if he gets publicly cornered as a traitor.

If push comes to shove and the empire starts putting pressure on Lotor he’s going to feel a lot less sporting towards Voltron. And that might drive him to go further into nasty, ruthless tactics in order to get results- because he can’t afford to lose. His cozy little strike team with the generals is a nice arrangement but, like Voltron itself... they don’t have any dead weight to toss off.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lotor #Keith #Acxa #readmore #long post #Anonymous

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