#Could it be the mistreatment of the LGBTQ+ staff on the show that came to light; only for the remaining staff to canonize-

[astro-b-o-y-d]

One of those ‘non-x fans; pick something that happens in the show’ but it’s about Color Show and the options are 'pick which of these writing choices pissed you off the most’

[cutiepie-keith-blog]

Lance, sweetie, what have they done to you

So how about that finale huh?

Yeeeeaah, wasn’t that… Something.

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But, okay, real talk here… Given the state of the fandom, I feel like I need to add my two cents to the situation. Which situation you may ask? 

The Voltron Cast queerbaiting its audience with its characters? The terrible way they handled the villain’s overarching narratives? No. None of that here.

I’m talking about the finale. That trainwreck to end that dumpster of a final season. That absolute worm-infested cabbage mulch that brought a pickaxe to keep digging when they hit rock bottom. But forget about cinematography or allegories because there’s already dozens of other blogs that tore it to bits and explaining how it’s a disgrace to the sacred art of animation and serialization.

Instead, I’m ranting about how they mistreated my favourite character, Lance McClain.

So how did the Voltron staff do him dirty? Let’s see… Which one of these options sounds the most plausible…?

Killing off his chances for a character arc

Problematic stereotyping

Retconning CANON LORE to accommodate this sloppily written finale

All of the above

Did you choose 4? Congratulations! Here’s your prize:

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Part 1: “Character arc? What’s a character arc? Is that a sauce?”

Ugh, it’s like the showrunners didn’t even CARE about writing Lance’s development. Season one and two were brilliant because they offered a set-up for his internal growth from a self-depreciating goof to confident marksman. 

I guess the writers never heard of following through, though, huh!! 

A constant from season 1 was style over substance when it came to Lance, and each time a new season dropped we all waited for something - ANYTHING - that would show us that he had grown; that we were witnessing the development of a fully realized character.

But no. Lance is just comic relief! He’s funny! Look at him failing to flirt! Hahaha! It’s funny because he’s stupid!

But he’s really not! And we all know this! Lance has been shown time and time again that he is a competent character... That’s why it’s so painful to watch his importance be relegated to that of a side-character. ESPECIALLY after his motivations were so clearly established.

In episode one, what did Lance say to establish his motivation? 

“I’d love to explore the cosmos! There’s a whole new world out there!” 

He, THE Lance that wanted nothing more than to explore the great wide galaxy and live free-spiritedly… You’re telling me THAT Lance would give all of that up to separate from the rest of his team (who up to this point he regarded very clearly as family) to live a quiet life?? You’re telling me that the Space Paladin, Lance McClain - after saving the universe - would drop every relationship he made with his team… To be a FARMER??

And oh yeah, he’s Cuban and they made the Cuban boy a farmer.

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Part 2: They made the Cuban boy a farmer

AKA the ‘Look how WOKE you are now, Netflix’ second half because the whole Lance becomes a farmer thing comes a bit later.

Gather ‘round the dumpster fire, children, and let’s just take a moment to remember how PROBLEMATIC it is that they made the CUBAN boy a farmer...! Oh, Voltron showrunners, you absolute uneducated walnuts! The way they did it was so forced, too, and it made Lion King (2019) look sincere; So let’s start at the beginning...

In the original series, Lance was a one note ‘prince charming’ that existed as the pretty boy that would end up with the main girl, Allura, so you can only imagine the sheer, utter EUPHORIA I felt when I saw the first hints, the traces, the signs of a 3 dimensional character from him.

And then Allura...! My Queen! They gave her a personality too! So how could I not love them being a canon couple!

I’ll tell ya how. They killed off Allura, that’s what. And let’s ignore that one tiny detail that the only main character chose to kill was Allura, the BLACK PRINCESS because that’s a whole other rodeo that I ain’t ready to play clown in just yet. 

And what happened to our soggy cardboard cutout of Lance do when forced to deal with grief??

Well to start, the death of his alien girlfriend suddenly made him an alien too so?? Okay?? Are all the rules of the universe worthless now?? Because according to the rules that the showrunners set with Keith being half-galra, you can’t change SPECIES. 

There’s being artistically adventurous on one hand and then there’s throwing whatever shred of artistry out the window. 

OH HO HO BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! (And spoiler alert! This is the part where Netflix making Lance a farmer kicks in)

Now we all know Netflix is a company that is well known for being progressive in the film industry because of how they cast minorities in their original films and series, and they’ve made it clear time and time again that they support LGBTQ+ community. 

Hey Netflix, REAL progressive of you to play right into the stereotype of (Here it is) MAKING THE CUBAN BOY A FARMER. With Takashi Shirogane, japanese fans of the original series had a new strong leader to look up to. And what’s more was that they showed him marrying his husband in the finale!

And Lance? Out of heartbreak and sudden alien-ness, he abandoned all his dreams to explore the universe to become a farmer in some throwaway planet. 

All the other fans from Central America (e.g. that’s ME) now get to see a once in a million chance of mainstream representation not as something to look up to, but as another disappointment perpetuation the steel wheel of assumption.

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IN CONCLUSION: UGH

Good riddance to this show. 

I will never forgive the V:LD staff for ruining NOT ONLY my favorite show, but my favorite character in all of fiction. 

*mic drop*

[nothingman]

After weeks of public criticism — and an advertising boycott involving more than 80 companies — Fox News has dropped Bill O’Reilly, the longtime TV host who has repeatedly faced claims of sexual harassment, according to a press release Wednesday afternoon from parent company 21st Century Fox.

O’Reilly, whose juggernaut show The O’Reilly Factor propelled Fox News to the top of the cable news rankings, is currently on an Italian vacation until April 24. Earlier this week, several outlets reported that Fox executives were on the cusp of deciding O’Reilly’s fate, which has been in limbo ever since details about his history of alleged sexual misconduct came to the fore this month. In his 8 pm time slot, O’Reilly will be replaced by Tucker Carlson.

His departure will be another big blow to Fox News, which lost its other major star, Megyn Kelly, in January and its founding CEO Roger Ailes last summer, following a sexual harassment lawsuit from former host Gretchen Carlson, as well as several other allegations. All of these events have a common thread: the alleged culture of misogyny at Fox News.

Many factors led to O’Reilly’s demise at Fox News: Public opinion shifted against him recently, and executives at the family-run company have been increasingly concerned about its reputation as a toxic workplace for women. On top of that, O’Reilly was also the target of a successful advertising boycott, a form of activism that has proven particularly effective in recent years. Americans might be increasingly divided, but corporations have to sell across the aisle — so even if O’Reilly’s core viewership was mostly indifferent to the scandal, outrage from the rest of America was powerful enough to take him off the air.

How the final days of Bill O’Reilly unfolded

O’Reilly apparently has a long paper trail of workplace harassment complaints, but this was not widely known until a New York Times story two weeks ago, which revealed that Fox News has paid out more than $13 million in settlements to five women between 2002 and 2016. (Kelly has said that O’Reilly’s behavior toward women was one reason she left Fox News for NBC.)

Details from one of those settlements were already public. O’Reilly allegedly told producer Andrea Mackris to buy a vibrator, and described a fantasy involving her, a shower, and a loofah. Mackris also claimed that O’Reilly threatened her: “If any woman ever breathed a word I'll make her pay so dearly that she'll wish she'd never been born. I'll rake her through the mud, bring up things in her life and make her so miserable that she'll be destroyed.”

The Mackris lawsuit was settled in 2004 for $9 million, which is about half of O’Reilly’s current salary. But the latest revelations from the New York Times show that O’Reilly was involved in multiple settlements involving workplace harassment, and that his misconduct may have continued up until the present.

Eleven days after the Times story broke, O’Reilly went on vacation. But even during his absence, his show remains Fox News’s biggest hit — a sign of its status as the gravitational center of conservative television. On Monday night, with guest host Dana Perino, The O’Reilly Factor still received more viewers than CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, his top two competitors, combined, according to TVNewser.

So until this week, there was still speculation that, owing to his stature, O’Reilly could ride out this wave of bad publicity.

The four factors that pushed O’Reilly out

What made it impossible for O’Reilly to keep his job? A few things.

First, his star is dimming. Though his ratings still put him on top, they have fallen — and public opinion has also begun to turn. A Morning Consult poll shows that even among people who watch the show, O’Reilly’s favorability ratings have fallen 7 percentage points between the first and second weeks of April. And overall, only about 38 percent of Republican-leaning Americans want Fox News to keep O’Reilly’s show, while 31 percent want it canceled, and 32 percent had no opinion. That’s not a lot of enthusiasm among the people who are supposed to make up his core viewership.

Second, new allegations keep coming in. The Times investigation brought forth Wendy Walsh, a radio host and O’Reilly Factor guest who accused O’Reilly of reneging on his offer to make her a regular contributor after she refused to go up to his hotel room. On Tuesday, another complaint went public involving an African-American woman who claims O’Reilly would “grunt at her like a wild boar” and call her “hot chocolate,” in the words of attorney Lisa Bloom.

A third intersecting storyline involves the Murdoch clan, who control 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News. Rupert Murdoch, who founded the company, is 86, and is in the middle of transferring power to his sons, Lachlan and James. The elder Murdoch is said to be a defender of O’Reilly, but his sons pushed for O’Reilly’s removal.

This is the second time in a year that Fox News has been the center of a sexual harassment controversy. Last summer, Fox News founder Roger Ailes was pushed out over similar claims about his mistreatment of women at the company. Then, as now, Murdoch’s more image-conscious sons were reported to be a driving force behind the firing. In an internal letter to Fox News staff Wednesday, the three Murdochs wrote, “[W]e want to underscore our consistent commitment to fostering a work environment built on the values of trust and respect.”

The nail in the coffin for The O’Reilly Factor, though, seems to be the recent mass exodus of advertisers.

#Brands have become the common denominator in the culture wars

As everything unfolded in the media, O’Reilly was hemorrhaging advertisers.

Between April 1 and 10, the number of paid national ads dropped by half, data from the media consultancy firm Kantar shows. By now, more than 80 brands have pulled their advertising from the show, according to the watchdog group Media Matters, including Mercedes-Benz, Jenny Craig, and Geico. All these companies have been replaced by what Kantar calls “opportunistic purchasers of remnant inventory” — small brands advertising less glamorous stuff like arthritis cream and home health aids.

It’s hard to say how much of a blow this boycott has been — or how many brands would have returned had O’Reilly issued some kind of apology. But this has become a successful strategy in the new culture wars, where activists increasingly make their appeals to corporate America. A similar advertiser boycott took Fox News host Glenn Beck off the air in 2011, and in 2015 many companies threatened to stop doing business in states that enacted anti-gay religious freedom laws.

Most recently, the successful effort to repeal North Carolina’s HB2 (the so-called “bathroom bill” that targeted transgender people and removed discrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans) was pushed forward by the NCAA, which had pledged not to hold any championship college sports events in North Carolina until the law was lifted.

These tactics, to the extent that they are successful, reveal a truth about what really brings Americans together. As much as it feels that we’ve become a divided nation, fractured into different tribes and different cultural identities, we’re still bound up in the larger economy.

Democrats and Republicans might not live in the same places anymore or watch the same shows — but largely, they still buy the same kinds of cars, sign up for the same insurance plans, and participate in the same diet programs. Few big brands cater exclusively to conservatives. So in recent years, corporate America has been put in the uncomfortable position of a go-between, bridging two worlds that feel increasingly isolated from each other.

via Vox - All