#operation kuron

[angstandhappiness]

INTERESTING IDEA

Why do you think Haggar needed a clone to spy on Voltron? What could she possibly do to a clone that she couldn't have done to the original? I suppose Ulaz could theoretically have disabled the webcam function when he uploaded coordinates to Shiro's arm, but I doubt anything of Haggar's would be that simple.

You know, that’s a very good question and I honestly don’t know that we’re going to get any answer at all for it.  But -

if I was writing it, here’s how I’d tie up some of the loose  ends of things.

Because honestly - not only 1. how did Haggar know that Shiro was going to become a paladin of Voltron (or does she just keep spare body parts of all her many many experiments lying around ‘just in case’?) to make a clone in the first place but 2. why did she make so darn many of him because even given the fact that some were ‘failures’ roughly eight hundred clones is a bit - excessive (and only viable as hidden spies just so often, certainly not eight hundred times)?  So what the heck was going on with that?

I think Haggar getting a spy into the Voltron team via the clone was her being an opportunist.  Which I love her for.  But I don’t think it was her original plan at all - and very possibly not her end game either.

Let’s start here.

Haggar says he could have been their greatest weapon.  She says this while calling him Champion.  It indicates, to me at least, that his ‘ultimate weapon’ status was something she’d latched onto before he became the Black Paladin, back when he was still the Champion.  She had plans for him then.  He’s in possession of a very high tech Galra arm that can go up against ‘upgrades’ that came after it but even more his hand jacks him in to all kinds of Galra information and security systems.  That’s - awfully weird to give a slave you’re not going to do anything else with.

Next point is that there’s no way Haggar could have known Shiro was going to find the Blue lion (or be on the team that did), rocket off to a castle that had been hidden for ten thousand years, wake up the only person in the universe that knew where the lions were, have just the right number of people with him for the team and then, to top it all off, become the Black Paladin himself and form Voltron.  I don’t care how much you cover possibilities when you plan there is no sensible or believable way she could have planned for that.  Even having the Red Lion in hand and suspecting where the Blue one was, still predicting Shiro’s roll in it all is - pretty wild at best and excessive at worst.  I can’t imagine it would occur to her to try to put a slave, even an ultimate weapon, in the seat of one of the lions Zarkon was coveting to the point of insanity.  That he did and it happened and he became the Black Paladin of a successful Voltron and took down a huge chunk of the Empire and her Emperor had to have been way out of left field.

Which leads us to point three.  Because it was a good possibility she knew about Shiro’s condition but there’s no way she could have predicted how he would die.  Yes, he did have a disease that was going to run a timer on him but there are a lot of things that could have happened to him and Team Voltron and him dying but the team surviving is plausible but pretty wiggly to try to predict, especially assuming that his team would be aware when he died if it happened.  Because chances are nine out of ten getting killed while with your team is something someone would witness or you’d at least leave a body behind for.    I’ve seen speculation that Shiro’s body was pulled loose and Haggar got it and all and while that’s interesting, it doesn’t look like canon went that way.  So unless Haggar is going to predict incredibly well that he’s going to die when no one sees it and his body is going to poof so there’s no evidence - her coming up with a clone to replace him might make sense but she wouldn’t be betting on it.  Dead people usually leave bodies behind.  She might have kept a clone or two on hold ‘just in case’ but I can’t see Haggar putting all her eggs in that basket.

And lastly - she created an army of clones.  You don’t send an army of clones to fill a single spot and you don’t let the rest of the clones wander around where they might give up the trick by being spotted.  But she had close to eight hundred of those suckers on ice.  (I keep saying eight hundred because there was a post drifting around that someone had counted them all and I’m just going to go with that number but even if it was only four hundred that’s still way too many clones for a one man job)

So we’ve got a role Haggar had planned for Shiro way back when he was a gladiator, that she created an entire army of clones of him for and chances are high the empty spot he left behind when he ‘died’ that she filled with a clone was just her being an opportunist. 

Granted - it was an amazing opportunity and she’s far too smart not to take it.  I am going to guess that she could do things with the clone - like take him over and see through his eyes and use him as a stand in for her with the White Lion - that she couldn’t do with the actual Shiro.  Now the obvious answer for why she couldn’t do it with the actual Shiro is ‘because plot’ but if we’re going to fill in the writer’s blanks for them we can point out that taking over Shiro or at least spying with him in season one and two would have been the sensible thing for her to do and she never did.  Haggar is, above all things, pretty darn sensible.  So we’re going to have to assume that she simply couldn’t.  Having access to a clone, grown from scratch and upgraded with a new arm that does more but looks the same, Haggar probably had more tinker time and a more specific purpose so the clone, and his arm, was probably outfitted as a unknowing spy from the start.  You’ll remember that all those clones in the tubes had both arms and were based off Shiro’s younger form.  One could speculate that she could have gone straight up ‘white tuft Shiro’ if simply replacing him had been her plan all along but she’s got younger version Shiro in there and obviously did ‘touch up’ (God, that’s horrible and its never even alluded to in canon) on the clone who eventually joined Team Voltron.  She’d apparently been releasing clones singularly into the wild for some unknown time before then as well, so news of there only being four lions had obviously gotten around by then (remember Keith yelling it at the allies at dinner, so it wasn’t exactly a well guarded secret).

Anyway, indication is that the clone that joined the team was an opportunity and not one that Haggar had originally intended to use the clones for, just one she fixed up and put on the path when she saw the opening - and she tinkered with him to make him spy accessible for her purposes before she released him in ways she hadn’t with the original Shiro because her plans had been different when she’d been working on the original Shiro.

So - what was Haggar building an army of Shiros for (beyond fulfilling every fans’ dream)?

Let’s look at the way Shiro fights.  He’s all over the place, isn’t he?  He’ll use whatever weapon he has at hand.  He’s incredibly graceful yet powerful and when he’s pissed he’s downright brutal.  He tends to only have a passing acquaintance with gravity during fights and he’s incredibly adaptable and agile.  He’s excellent at analyzing an opponents weak spots and he’s very skilled with Galra tech.

What else fights that way?

I give you the theory that, originally, Haggar was preparing to build an army of grasshopper robeasts and she was going to power them with Shiros.  Things weren’t entirely in place.  She was still working on getting the komar right and then she was going to have to figure out how to make it mobile and she was potentially still working out the schematics of making the robeast fluid enough but she had a lot of the pieces in place and Haggar plays for the long game.  She figured out the komar and Lotor showed her how to create the kind of robeast/ship she needed.  Losing her cloning facility with her pilots for the thing was probably a pretty hard hit - but, lucky lucky, opportunist that she is - she was given an entire Altean colony and plenty of time to exploit it. 

Shiro could have been her greatest weapon.  And if you think the Altean in the robeast ship was terrifying in a fight, I’d be even more so thinking of a several hundred Shiros in an army of those robeast-ships. 

[year-of-the-lion]

Thought of the night (as I've begun season 4): a facet of Kuron's mission could very well have been to drive Keith away from Voltron.

It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Keith's the only other person capable of piloting the Black Lion and thus leading Voltron. He's shown that he has the potential to be an effective leader, even though he started out with neither experience nor willingness to do so. He also knows Shiro better than anyone; if there was a single person on Team Voltron who could have realised something was off, it would have been Keith.

There's also one more point that's probably the most important: Keith is relentless. He understands the stakes of the war they're fighting better than any of the other Paladins, and he's been shown repeatedly to be able to play those stakes— it tends to be the others that prevent him from doing so (see him advocating for leaving Allura rather than delivering Voltron to Zarkon, or him pushing to chase Lotor rather than focus on evacuating refugees in 4.01). Had he grown and matured as Black Paladin, it would have spelled trouble for Haggar and the Empire, because that's the same kind of tactical ruthlessness you see in someone like Lotor, who is a pain in the ass to go up against.

Enter Kuron. Kuron who has the face and the voice and the memories of the person Keith trusts most in the universe. Kuron who's enough like Shiro that any differences will be brushed off.

Kuron whose differences from Shiro are absolutely devastating.

On the surface, it seems like Shiro! He encourages Keith to accept his position as Voltron's leader...except his actions don't reflect that. It's very manipulative in my eyes, how he simultaneously praises Keith's growth and puts him down. How he tells him that "Voltron needs a strong leader" but repeatedly undermines his strength by issuing orders that he knows the others will listen to over Keith's.

Kuron tells Keith he needs to be a strong leader while doing everything he can to make him seem a weaker one.

All of this comes to a head with Keith feeling like he doesn't have a place with Voltron, especially not as the Black Paladin, and definitely not once 'Shiro' can pilot Black again. Instead of being brought into his own as a leader, he's had his insecurities reinforced, and the only option he feels he has left is to leave for good, and taking with him the only person on Team Voltron who could have posed a legitimate threat to Kuron's infiltration.

[rorimoon9597]

Lance has always been obsessed with Keith's hair for some reason. He didn't know why at first, but as time went on, it became so clear that he wanted to run his hands though it and feel it on his fingers.

He made comments about it being an ugly mullet to hide that fact. It didn't work, especially not when he confessed to Keith before he left for the Blade.

What? He was going to lose the chance to say anything anyway! And he was so happy when Keith kissed him to shut him up and told Lance that his feelings were reciprocated, he felt as if he were on cloud nine.

Since coming back from his fight with Shiro's clone (who they're forever going to refer to as Kuro as in 'Operation Kurone'), Keith has experienced some changes.

For starters, his eyes were more purple. Before they'd been a grey colour with purple undertones, but now they were properly purple. Then his canines were sharper, practically fangs, and his eyes would sometimes change. When he was angry, his irises would become slits and the sclera of his eyes would become yellow. It was hot, in Lance's humble opinion (Pidge called him an alien fucker when he said that at first. Lance said that Keith's dad was the true alien fucker. Shiro sprayed the water he was drinking everywhere and choked when he said that).

The most noticeable change happened to Keith's hair though. The ends of it lightened, until they were purple. It looked so cool, and it connected Keith to Krolia more. His hair stayed black, but now when it gets out it was purple.

Keith... Didn't think the same way as everyone else.

"I feel like I'm losing my dad. I've only ever looked like my mom, and the one thing that has ever connected me to my dad was my hair." The team had stopped on a planet for a rest, and Keith and Lance had gone off together to hunt down some meat and gather fruit and vegetables.

Lance stopped and grabbed Keith's wrist, forcing him to stop and turn to face him.

"You're still connected to your dad, Keith. It's just not entirely in your appearance," he said. Keith frowned.

"What do you mean?" He asked. Lance hummed.

"You said that he'd go head first into danger, right?"

"Yeah..?"

"And that he was a hero?"

"Where are you going with this?"

"According to your mom, your dad was kind, and reckless, and a hero and someone she loved enough to leave to keep safe."

"Mom said that?" Keith asked, sounding surprised. Lance nodded. "Where are you going with this anyway?"

"Because those are some things that you have in common with your dad," Lance answered. Keith opened his mouth, then closed it.

"... You're right," he eventually said. Keith reached up to his hair and fiddled with a purple end. "That stuff... Does connect me to my dad..."

"I'm never wrong about people things," Lance said, confidently. Keith smiled down at him (that had happened during the two year time dilation that Keith and Krolia went through, and Lance found that he liked having to look up over looking down).

"You know more about people than I do," he agreed. He pressed a kiss to Lance's forehead. "Thank you."

"Anything for you," Lance said. He pressed a kiss to Keith's lips. "Now, let's go catch something that Hunk can make into a good meal."

"Alright."

They worked quickly, and made their way back to the campsite with food that all of them could eat. Hunk was quick to take care of the food, Krolia helping him while Romelle stayed by Allura's side.

Lance sat on a log, and Keith settled himself between his legs. Kosmo flopped down with them.

Lance ran his hands through Keith's hair, smiling as Keith joked with the others and treated Shiro and Romelle like Lance treated his siblings - by annoying the hell out of them out of love.

Lance leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of Keith's head.

"I love you," he whispered. Keith hummed, tilting his head to look up at him. There was a smile on his face reserved just for Lance.

"I love you too," he replied.

_______________________________________

Based off of this post I made

[diabolik-boys]

late to the party but blogs I appreciate! :') (and general thanks)

I got tagged in the post going around (a few weeks ago sorry about that) about blogs that others appreciate and I kind of wanted to make my own post about it because I'm going to elaborate on blogs I enjoy (and it would become a very big blog post and I'd feel a little guilty adding onto post directly and making it super long with my ramblings of a madman)

Regardless, I got tagged by @hanakohanabe here, and @mukami-kuron-mrsadisticcat (@theshiningidols-koukuron) here. Thank you so much you two :') I get really emotional thinking about it, and it means a lot to me.

For my friends:

@renamami My shining gem, you've stuck with me throughout some of my hardest moments, and I appreciate knowing that every day, I can wake up and send you a message or see a message from you, and we spend most of our days together. You're an essential part of my day to make it feel normal, and I appreciate you more than my words can express. I love you dearly, and want to see you smile. I know you can fight through any hardship that comes your way, even if life feels like it wants to take you on another difficult journey. You ground me and help keep me here day by day. You'll never stop making me proud to be your friend. I love you, and thank you for being my best friend throughout everything. I'm proud of you always.

@mukami-kuron-mrsadisticcat (@theshiningidols-koukuron) Kuron, you've been such a wonderful friend to me all throughout my time of operating my blog. I appreciate all of the support you have given me, and for simply messaging me whenever I needed a friend to talk to and some support. You run an amazing blog. I find myself often just reading through it time after time thinking of how Kuron fits into the world of Dialovers so perfectly. I consider him a canon Mukami brother. The effort and hard work you have put into your blog shines through effortlessly. And I'm always going to admire you. You're a wonderful person, and a dear friend. Thank you.

@mukami-kou-dazzlingpinkidol Kou! Right along with Kuron, you extended your friendship and support for me at a time I needed it the most. Thank you so much for your kindness and for the support for me. I have always cherished any conversations I had with you or Kuron, and it has meant the world to me.

@hanakohanabe Hime, you've stepped into my life whenever I least expected it, and I really appreciate everything you've done for me. You've listened to me some days when I needed it the most, and your friendship has been really appreciated. Thank you for your love and support for me. I hope to continue spending time with you and having a lot of fun together! You're a wonderful person, and I admire your dedication to your blogs! You're a precious friend, and I appreciate you very much.

@ruki--mukami/@goldazu Jas! It's so good to hear from you anytime we get to message, and I have long admired you and your dedication to Ruki and how amazingly you portray him. I am so thankful for everything you've done for me, and you have been such a kind friend to me for a long time. Thank you for taking time to listen to me whenever I needed it most, and for your friendship. I hope you are doing well, and please be sure take care of yourself! Breaks are important, and I'm really proud of you!

@amistyshadow Misty, I appreciate you sending me messages just to check in on me, and I've really grown to appreciate your kindness and company. Thank you so much for lending an ear when needed, and for your support for me as your friend. You've been really kind and have extended yourself to me whenever I needed someone to talk to, and that has always been so kind of you. Thank you.

@briyettaspring Ginger, thank you so much for your friendship and for spending time with me. I've had a lot of fun talking with you, and I have really appreciate you listening to me whenever I needed it and for being my friend. Thank you for being so kind to me, and I hope we continue to grow closer!

For blogs I've interacted with a little (thank you so much!) and hope I get to know more: @eyelessdoll-y, @bobateasilverpearl, @mermaid--bride/@cutelih, @lavander-aavaros, @ajumierose, @diabolikpersonals, @sumire-bride, @kirua9, @bluebird-dolly-bride/@dryams03, @iricathel, @kindan-no-kanojo, @thatonefrenchwitch

I appreciate all your blogs and I admire what you do.

I admire a lot of blogs on here, but I hope I can get to know you all more. I also want to shout out @the-mostdiabolik-of-lovers/@fruit-of-infidelity, @bluebird-dolly-bride/@dryams03, @iricathel, @kindan-no-kanojo, @mino-diabolik as I really like all of your OC blogs and have checked every once in a while to read up on their interactions. Thank you for keeping this community interesting!

Also @diabolikpersonals, I admire you very much. Thank you for all you do.

I am pretty shy, but I would love to connect with more people and make more friends. If you ever feel lonely, feel free to send me a message or an ask.

I'm really busy a lot of the time nowadays, but I will do my best to keep on posting on weekends only.

Thank you all to my followers as well. You keep me going. :')

As always, much love. - Admin Azusa

[discordiansamba]

went back to get these caps because I think this is something a lot of people missed. Hepta, Sendak's lieutenant during the invasion of Earth is the same person who was in charge of the ship that operation Kuron was being conducted on. so that's fun!

[astralscrivener]

for the fic ask game! ★✎ϟ (for this one, in my case it's gotta be every angsty moment you write, especially every time keith cries or has a breakdown in soopits lmao <3<33)

★ what was the scene you most wanted to write in [fic]? what was the hardest scene to write?

gonna use SOOPITS for this question as well! in terms of chapters that are already posted, for what i wanted to write:

keith's almost assassination. i had been sitting on that for YEARS. that chapter started as a oneshot idea shortly after s3 aired (and the fandom put together in like 5 minutes that "shiro" was a clone). the oneshot never came to fruition, and then when i started SOOPITS i realized i needed to use it. desperately. the broganes angst. the klance angst. the chaos of "oh okay so we just have a secret assassin on our ship drifting in space. cool cool cool". very among us. i tried to write an among us oneshot a few years later during late 2020 and then realized that was essentially the entire s5-6 arc

the s6 finale (6.06 & 6.07). i had the ending of s6 planned FOREVERRRR i had the scene of lance in the black lion in my mind for YEEAAARSSSSS i had the keith & lance vs kuron + shiro vs sendak fights in my head FOREVERRRR i would constantly make music videos in my head to those chapters on my walks to class for a good 2 or 3 years. i dearly miss walking across the quad with starset or the score or hidden citizens blasting in my head.

the KEITH BREAKDOWN in OPERATION KURON (6.05). another chapter i had rattling around in my mind for years. like hey it sure is fucked up that your older brother is actually a clone who tried to kill you! you know all those walls you had up? it is NOT going to be enough to hold this breakdown off. MAN. MAN

hardest scene? the goddamn TRIAL. before the current chapter which is giving me grief (gameshow rewrite), the trial chapter took me AGES. i started it in like september 2019. by the time i updated it, it was ten months later. july 2020. covid had started. everyone's lives were in shambles. i rewrote it dozens of times. i watched judge judy as "research." i had extensive talks with nicole. i hated writing that chapter so bad but i feel like the ending was rewarding enough

✎ how do you think readers would guess a fic was yours if you posted anonymously?

so i actually do have a reliable answer for this. keith and lance almost always have a very "us against the world" kind of mindset in my fics, and i guess someone reading one of my fics one time didn't look at the author that closely and realized it was me when they did their whole "you and me" "us against the world" shtick so. devoted klance ig! disgustingly in love dumbasses!

ϟ tell me what moment/scene in [fic] made you sicko in the window.jpg to read and i’ll tell you which scene made me feel that way to write

my GODDDDDDD first of all thank you. i also go bonkers over writing keith being emotional. he's very repressed in public / in front of the team and in private he is a mess and emotional. boy has walls up

scenes that made me sicko in the window to WRITE are indeed all the scenes where keith is emotional, especially those scenes in s4 (particularly 4.05) where he tells off kuron. stand UP for yourself bestie !!!

also, all of the scenes in 6.06/6.07 with keith, matt, and lotor, and then in 7.01/.02/.03 with keith, matt, and pidge. i LOVE writing keith and matt as friends/relating to each other, but also i love writing keith and pidge as besties who relate to each other. i am having a GREAT time making matt avoid his own trauma.

oh and also? the entire operation kuron chapter. actually just all of 6.05-6.07. absolutely fucking bonkers. cackling at my monitor the whole time

thank u for the asks these are fun !!

fic ask game!

[stellacordis]

main verse: healing wounds. (post-s7, disregards s8)

The paladins’ defeat of Sendak’s armada and Honerva’s komar mech ushers in some universal reprieve and a period of healing and restoration for Planet Earth. Keith is the last of the paladins to wake up, having sustained the most serious injuries from the lion fall and the battle before it.

Two things happen upon his release from the hospital: he is promoted to the title of Commander, making him the youngest O-5 in Garrison history, and he is ordered to take a period of extended leave where he is to do nothing but focus on the healing of his wounds, both physical and emotional. Keith is too restless to remain idle for long, so Iverson allows him to occasionally provide flight demonstrations and instruction to aspiring young cadets. He and the other paladins fall into a steady rhythm, assisting with the rebuilding efforts for both the Garrison and planet Earth as a whole, feeling relieved to finally have reached a period of peace.

But that peace is only a short-lived illusion for Keith; at night, he’s plagued by weird, clairvoyant dreams. These dreams are partly after-effects of his time in the quantum abyss (clear visions of the past and blurry glimpses of the future), mingled with illusions fed to him by Honerva and her druids through his quintessence sensitivity. Unbeknownst to Keith, only some of the things he sees are real past events and true future possibilities while the rest are all fake: hurtful ‘memories’ set to twist his perception of the past and terrible bad-end type of events intended to rattle him and drag him further away from the people he cares about.

Honerva’s goal? To finish what Operation: Kuron started and cripple Voltron through a psychological attack on its black paladin. With her biggest threat out of the picture, she’ll be able to bring back Lotor from the quintessence field with the power of Oriande and help him regain power as the Galra’s true emperor.

Though Keith already suspects some of the things he sees in the dreams are not real, he has no way to explain them. Repressing what he sees, he attempts to carry on as usual, though his rising insecurities lead him to raise up walls that the others had dutifully worked to lower over the past few years. Eventually, the frequency and rising intensity of the dreams become suffocating and drive him to a point where he can’t even allow himself to sleep for fear of what he’ll see.

An attack on his person by the druids starts unraveling the mystery for him and ultimately directs Team Voltron toward facing their greatest enemy yet: Honerva herself.

[violethowler]

Me, My Self, and I: An Analysis of the Operation Kuron Storyline

Back when seasons 3, 4, and 5 released on Netflix, Voltron fans were split into two camps regarding what was going on with Shiro: One camp insisted that we were still seeing the same Shiro as the one we saw in the first two seasons, while the other argued that the current Shiro was a clone programmed with the memories of the original.

On the surface, the show’s 6th season appeared to side with the clone theory fans, and I saw multiple people who had argued for it being the same Shiro lamenting because they felt that all the development Shiro had gotten after the end of Season 2 had been wasted now that we knew the Shiro we’d been following since Season 3 wasn’t the real one.

Even then, however, fans who supported the clone theory were upset because they felt that the resolution of the original Shiro’s consciousness being transferred into the clone body was effectively killing off a separate, unique character who deserved to have his own life independent of the original Shiro.

Yet while I could understand where both sides’ complaints were coming from, I never had that same feeling of outrage.

At the time, I assumed it was just because I noticed that it served as a bit of meta commentary on how the original 80s cartoon took two identical looking characters in GoLion and melded them into a single character.

But after talking to @leakinghate​ and @dragonofyang​ a while back, I realized that there was a deeper meaning and symbolism to the whole Operation Kuron storyline that, in hindsight, I had managed to pick up on subconsciously thanks to being exposed to similar ideas in other stories.

And once I became aware of those similarities, I couldn’t help but look back at Voltron and realize that many of the assumptions the fandom has about the details of Clone!Shiro’s story are not actually supported by the show’s lore.

For example, despite the paladins referring to him as such in Seasons 6 and 7, the idea that the Shiro we see in Seasons 3-6 was a clone in the usual sense that we expect from science fiction - that is, being a unique individual made from an existing character’s DNA with their own separate consciousness who develops their own identity and personality independent of the person they were created from - is not actually supported by the show’s lore.

For starters, the only people who use the word clone to refer to the other Shiro are the human characters, who do not have any intel on how “Kuron” was created. Meanwhile, none of the characters who are involved in Operation Kuron use the word clone to refer to him at any point in the series. In fact, even Haggar herself treats “Kuron” and Shiro like they’re the same person when she’s telling him to lead Keith away in S6E05. When you would think that if there was no point in pretending anymore she would at least acknowledge that he’s not the original.

Furthermore, based on what we are shown of the technological and magical capabilities of the Galra empire, it is not possible for Haggar or the Galra to just download Original!Shiro’s memories into Clone!Shiro’s head. Pidge and Hunk speculate in S2E03 about the possibility that the Empire implanted fake memories of escaping in Shiro’s head via his prosthetic arm are part of an elaborate trap. But not only are they proven wrong, but the series never even confirms that such a thing is within the mystical or technological capabilities of the empire.

The Galra military is never shown doing anything tech based with memory manipulation or the kind of brainwashing that would be required to make “Kuron” think that he’s the real Shiro.

Meanwhile on the mystical front, the only person in the empire who is shown doing anything that involves messing around with other people’s minds is Haggar. And the only abilities that we have seen her demonstrate in that regard are:

Looking into someone’s mind and viewing their memories (seen with Zarkon in S3E07).

Using a person as a conduit for Haggar to spy on the person’s allies (seen with Narti in S4E03 and Shiro in Seasons 5-6).

Removing a person’s spirit/consciousness from their body and storing it inside herself (seen in Season 8 with the spirits of the original Paladins).

Forcing someone to comply with her orders and bend to her will (seen with Shiro in S6E04-5, Lotor in S8E06).

Flipping a psychic kill switch and remotely killing someone from a distance (seen with Luka in S8E01).

Projecting someone’s consciousness outside of their body (Seen with Zarkon in S2E03, S2E07, and S2E12).

Transferring a person’s consciousness from one body to another (Seen with Myzax in S1E02 and Prorok in S2E03).

Nowhere does she demonstrate the ability to create an exact copy of a person’s memories and personality that can then be implanted into another person’s mind so thoroughly that they think they are the first person.

Based on what we’ve been shown of Haggar’s capabilities, the only way it’s even possible for the clone to have Shiro’s memories and personality is for Haggar to transferring Shiro’s spirit into a new body.

Which is pretty much the same thing that we’ve already sen her doing when she creates her Robeasts in Seasons 1-2.

She transfers the test subject’s quintessence from their original body into their larger, robotic one. And her words to Myzax in S1E02 Some Assembly Required indicate that the Robeasts are all meant to remain aware of themselves in their larger form and have all of their memories intact.

Because why would Haggar bother asking if Myzax wanted revenge against Shiro if he wasn’t even going to remember anything after she turned him into a Robeast?

This basically implies that all of the extra Shiro bodies that we saw at the cloning facility in S6E05 The Black Paladins were basically the organic version of empty Robeast shells - lifeless and incapable of independent movement until Haggar does her ritual to transfer the pilot/model’s quintessence into the new body.

And she has previously demonstrated that physical distance from her target is not an obstacle to being able to transfer a person’s soul from Point A to Point B. Because Season 8 shows that Zarkon was one of the spirits trapped inside her mindscape, even though she wasn’t anywhere near the planet he died on in S5E02.

In fact, “Kuron” being Shiro’s soul moved to a new body would also explain how Haggar and the Operation Kuron staff knew to release “Kuron” when they did. How could Haggar know Shiro was missing from Team Voltron unless she already had the ability to locate, and therefore manipulate his consciousness.

But there’s still one question about the logistics and timeline of “Kuron’s” creation.

Because in S6E06, Shiro indicates that his consciousness has been inside the Black Lion since the end of Season 2.

So how exactly could Haggar have yanked his spirit into a new body if he was inside the Black Lion from the end of season 2?

Well perhaps it’s something akin to how Steven’s gem turned into a copy of him when White Diamond removed it in the finale of Steven Universe Season 5.

That even if she couldn’t get his entire soul before he got absorbed by the Black Lion in S2E13, she only needed a fraction of Shiro’s consciousness in order to animate the new body.

In theory, this could hypothetically allow her to split Shiro’s mind into multiple bodies at once, explaining why S6E05 showed that she had made so many extra bodies.

It would also mean that the merging of the two Shiro’s in Voltron was the equivalent of Steven and Pink Steven fusing back together: Two halves of a single individual being made whole again, rather than one character being sacrificed for another.

But if the lore indicates that this is one Shiro with two bodies rather than two separate characters, why does Shiro treat his clone self like a separate person?

In one of my older essays, I pointed out how the visuals of Season 6 frame Haggar reclaiming her identity as Honerva in S6E01 as a parallel to Shiro and “Kuron” being merged in S6E07

Once Honerva goes through her “merging of two selves”, she tries to distance herself from her actions as Haggar, acting like the things she did to Lotor and others were done by someone else.

And her reason for doing that is obvious: she doesn’t want to face the fact that she hurt and abused her own son.

So following the parallels between, Shiro treating his actions in Seasons 3-6 like they were committed by a separate person logically reflects a similar level of denial. 

Like Honerva, he doesn’t want to face the fact that he’s capable of doing the things he did as “Kuron”.

Because Shiro in Seasons 3-6 is not as patient or compassionate with his team. He’s less considerate of others, and focused on his own priorities above everyone else’s.

And Season 6, he physically attacks and in at least one case injures the people he cares about.

Thanks to WEP’s meddling with Seasons 7-8, the payoff where Shiro recognizes and makes peace with that part of himself got left on the cutting room floor.

But the parallels with Haggar helps to at least make it clear what the writers were going for and what the point of this whole storyline was.

I’ve seen multiple people over the years note that Honerva’s transformation into Haggar, particularly the state we saw her in immediately post-Rift and shortly after Lotor’s birth in S5E02 and S8E02, can be read as a metaphor for Post-Partum Depression or something similar.

If you use their status as parallels to apply a similar logic toward the existence of “Kuron,” then the entire clone subplot can be seen as a fantasy representation of how Shiro is affected by his PTSD.

He goes through a traumatic experience and comes out mostly the same as he was before, but slightly off enough that he doesn’t feel right.

He initially hides his struggles and tries to pretend that everything is fine, downplaying what he’s going through. But eventually the strain starts to become too much and he tries to reach out for help, as we saw him attempt with Lance in Season 5.

But as we saw, he was brushed aside and his concerns were not taken seriously.

Without support, Shiro eventually reaches his breaking point, culminating in a fight with Keith in The Black Paladins, where - in contrast with his silent and stoic demeanor when carrying out Haggar’s orders - he repeatedly taunts and antagonizes Keith as if he's trying to goad Keith into killing him.

But Keith refuses to leave Shiro or let him die, and makes it clear in S7E01 A Little Adventure that he will never give up on him.

By refusing to let go in S6E05, Keith demonstrates that he will always support Shiro unconditionally, no matter what. This allows Shiro to finally begin to heal and come back to himself.

He’ll never be the same as he was before, but all the pieces of himself are finally whole again.

As I’ve outlined in older essays, the main theme of Shiro’s character arc is learning to accept that you don’t have to deal with your problems alone, and that needing support from others does not make you weak.

So when viewed in that context, the entire Operation Kuron subplot serves as a demonstration of what happens when Shiro doesn’t get that help and keeps on trying to deal with his problems alone.

TL;DR: While I understand how the idea became so widely accepted, the concept of “Kuron” as a separate character from Shiro is a fan headcanon that isn’t supported by the show’s lore. Instead, the themes and patterns of the narrative indicate that the “clone” is literally Shiro’s soul in a duplicate body, and the whole Operation Kuron subplot is intended to represent the consequences of his reluctance to let others help him manage his PTSD.

[spacedaddysblog]

Can we recap what Takashi Shirogane has been through?

He was abducted by aliens and tortured for information about the blue lion, something Earth couldn't even fathom.

He was forced to fight in a gladiator ring and eventually kill his opponents to survive.

He was singled out by a 10,000 year old witch and had his arm removed and replaced with a killing prosthetic.

He was experimented on by alien witches--Sendak's words.

He was broken and reformed and had done shameful dark things-also Sendak's words.

He was put in isolation of his own cell where he learned to time the sentry patterns-season 1x10

Then he escaped and got a brain injury so he didn't remember everything that had happened. He didn't understand the arm or the scar on his face and only remembered bits and pieces of a traumatizing year. His imagination was likely running wild and he was afraid of what he was missing. "What else have they done to me?" was probably a very reoccurring thought.

Let's take it to Kuron:

He woke up in a Galra lab-which was probably very traumatic because of memories of Shiro's missing year. He didn't have Shiro's brain injury so he probably remembered everything.

He escaped and crash landed on an ice planet and almost died falling off a cliff.

He injured his leg and was forced to walk on it through snow and a blizzard without anything to keep him warm.

He went without food or water for his time freezing and injured.

Upon finding water he was attacked by a giant spider crab WHILE starved and injured. (That's just some shit luck 😂)

He was held captive by aliens who literally thought about eating him. Then he escaped and was isolated and starved for a week.

Once he was rescued he was rejected by the Black Lion which had to have been confusing. He assumed the Lion teleported him to the Galra and when he didn't remember anything likely thought that he had done horrible things to become unworthy like the last time he'd been a prisoner. Then he had to watch as Keith wouldn't pilot the Black Lion or lead the team when he was always right there and ready and wanting to do so.

He suffered through PTSD alone and his teammates abandoned him when he became difficult-EXCEPT LANCE ❤❤❤❤

Then his mind was taken over by Haggar and he was enslaved again and forced to hurt the people he cared for.

During his fight with Keith the remainder of his arm was torn to shreds to be replaced with scalding hot metal.

Then his team called him evil and cast him aside to replace him with Shiro.

Back to Shiro:

He died and was stuck in nothingness for months with no way to contact and get help.

He was revived by being put into a clone's body he watched infiltrate his team and live his life which had to have felt very violating.

He woke with only one arm and the remainder of it lost to Galra tech.

He finally gets home and finds out Adam is dead from the Galra invading. He never gets to say goodbye or get his closure.

His arm is replaced with one that probably makes every day tasks very difficult and makes him stick out.

We also found out that he had a degenerate muscle disease and was looking at dying at a young age after having to lose control of his body.

I love Shiro because he is a survivor and no matter what he went through he kept his good heart. He will always be my favorite character. 💜💛💙💚❤

[headspacedad]

VLD AMV [Shiro/Kuron] Call Me A Casualty

[fullscoreshenanigans]

"Lackluster" is really interesting in the context of 04man internalizing a sentiment openly shared by the scientists in regards to him and how that would contribute to him lashing out negatively on top of his original's dedication to perfectionism I'm assuming he inherited. The struggle of striving for that while knowing he would never be the original and hating that for everyone who knew the original, he would never be free of his shadow (not entirely 1:1 but some overlap with Emma losing her memories in canon).

Lackluster in the narrative automatically condemning him is disheartening given the ever-prevalent themes of identity and personhood that come with clone storylines in general, but also with TPN rejecting the idea of the mass production farm children being any less deserving of life than the premium farm children and Emma being…Emma. I have such a hard time seeing her use that adjective in reference to the value of any living being with the focus on intrinsic, fundamental worth as opposed to a person's character being determined by their actions/choices. (This is also how Ray operates and is one of the personal issues I have with the framing of some angsty takes about his relationship to Isabella. It's not their shared blood and attributes alone that bring him grief; it's that, from his perspective, he proved he was her son by actively choosing to use the children around him for his own gain and believed he deserved to die for it. "This is the best way…I used them." Very pointed in his word choice.)

This is also me being burnt out on the worst handling of a clone storyline in recent memory for me in the form of VLD's clone Shiro/Kuron throughline. It completely ignored the life this character had built with the team he became a part of and all the active good he did for the sake of forcing him to fill an antagonist role because Evil Optics™ and they couldn't figure out any other way to get rid of him. Incredibly disappointing and lazy, devoid of any nuance for the common themes of the throughline in the name of adhering to the 80s lion line-up.

Can you tell us more about #Brown Eyed!Norman? =)

For sure, anon! This all started with @fullscoreshenanigans' post [https://www.tumblr.com/fullscoreshenanigans/735265331344474112/this-makes-me-insane-for-giving-me-ideas-so?source=share] about Norman having brown eyes instead of these piercing blue ones we all know and learned to love (or not, how this posts shows (●ˇ∀ˇ●). From the second I saw these edits, the idea of a Norman with brown eyes taking over the place of „the original one“, playing around with the idea of Norman actually being cloned in Lambda 7214, like we all assumed when the particular chapters dropped back in the day.

Some major points this AU contains for me(!):

brown Eyed!Norman is one (!) clone of og Norman, as perfect as one can be, but developed with the flaw of having brown eyes instead of blue ones

Norman was slowly dying due to the experiments performed on him in Lambda, so genetic material was collected and several copies of the genius boy prepared

BE-Norman‘s number is actually 22194-04, due to him being the fourth clone being bred, and he regained consciousness after Norman as well as the other three experiments died due to… unforeseen circumstances ¬_¬

to prevent to be replaced too (he was a lackluster copy after all, because of his eye colour) 22194-04 killed the rest of the clones due to cutting off their life support. One could argue he didn’t even commit murder because they weren’t alive yet, but… he knows what he did and couldn’t care about it too much

to fool the rest of the cattle children being held prisoner in Lambda, the new Norman used blue contact lenses the scientists gave him before to conceal this flaw of him. No one of his underlings noticed, of course not – how could they, when he was William Minerva, God of the cattle children and destroyer of all demonkind?

of course the charade began to grumble when Emma, Ray and the rest of his family arrived at Paradise Hideout; from the start, they had the feeling something was off about him, but couldn’t really pinpoint what

lacking memories, changes in behavior and preferences and of course their heart telling them that’s not their Norman led Emma and Ray to investigate Norman’s private rooms. There Emma stumbled across a pack of blue contact lenses… and being caught in the act from Norman, he then finally starts spreading the facts about himself and of course their beloved friend not being in this world anymore, but merely replaced by a lackluster copy…

I have to say, it’s not a fully developed story, but more of an idea, playing around with some fucked uped ideas and story bits. Maybe I will do more with it in the future. Maybe not. But be sure, anyone jumping on this bandwagon is very welcome to add their own takes and ideas!

Thanks a lot for asking!

[canadarama]

I will forever lament the fact that they killed Kuron (when! he wasn’t even guilty!! he was trying his best!!) instead of giving us Ryou

[aurora-313]

Kuron: Fine, smart ass. Name me one instance in a game where Paladin isn't the best class?

Shiro: Classic World of Warcraft.

Kuron, grumbling: ... Shit, you're right.

[void-tiger]

Haggar: [scans Shiro’s brain]

Shiro: [“build a beeeaarrr it’s buildabear workshop! magic everywhere!”]

Haggar: I must have it.

-

Druid: ...what are we doing, Mistress?

Haggar: Build a Shiro

Druid: but...how many

Haggar: YES.

[operationkuronzine]

Sales closed

A very big thank you to all of our contributors and those who purchased the zine!  It was an experience.  We have closed our sales and have only a handful more to send out, but they should be going out soon.  All pdfs should have been sent out.

If you haven’t recieved a pdf, or are wondering if your package has shipped, please dm one of our mods (@/xukies for shipping, @/punkinpinkglitter for pdfs).  

Thanks again, and hopefully 2021 sees you all well.

[tiredpals]

I wasn't in the fandom early on so I don't really know what it was like but I DO remember seeing Clone Shiro discourse on my dash and I know hindsight is 20/20 but I can't comprehend that shit like dude disappears, is released from a cell where he literally sees a vision of himself, "operation Kuron" is stated which means CLONE in his native language, and then his first contact afterwards they say Galra spy like 50 times and Shiro then proceeded to cut his hair differently and act completely out of character after his lion rejected him. Like what was the thought process. What was the reasoning for the debate.