#adam: he's a HOT evil alien coran

[discordiansamba]

this AU is also basically just Adam having incredibly conflicted feelings about the whole situation, because on one hand. His fiancee is now not only an active part of an evil space Empire, but he's also Galra. This is awful. There's no way he would have chosen this out of his free will. He's definitely been brainwashed.

But also. well. ahem. he cannot deny that this is just. maybe a little hot? Shiron looms over him and Adam discovers some new and interesting things about himself at the most awkward time possible. What else is a guy to do but get drunk with Coran later and vent about it.

[bugsinthebayou]

I remember trying to get into Voltron a while back. I didn't like it very much. Care to rant? - Dee :)

OH I FUCKING HATE IT. EXCEPT FOR LANCE. STAN LANCE OR YOUR ANKLES ARE BITTEN /J.

alright, let's tackle the worst things about it first. as an ex-klancer, in my opinion the fact the writer(s?) ended with Allurance instead of klance was a shit move.

why was it a shit move? well, keith and lance were rivals, but good friends. in the beginning all lance wanted to do was be better than keith. but you see, they got closer and even in season 8(7?) they sat in front of the sunset, and talked about how lance felt like he wasn't enough and keith encouraged him, saying something like "we're gonna do it, and we're gonna do it with the lance I know." yadda yadda they were in love or at least had crushes on each other.

they did not get together.

Allura the hot alien chick and lance did.

lance is a flirt, and what started out as flirting developed into a crush. allura showed no interest, zero, nothing at all until her hot alien boyfriend turned out to he evil. she then got interested in lance, which was a bad move from the writers. it made it seem like she was using him as a rebound(?).

hell, lance and allura got one single kiss before she fucking died. lance threw away everything to live on a farm and talk about how wonderful allura was. lance had dreams. he was the first one to drag his friends into space, he was the one most excited about saving the universe, he kisses a girl once and he throws it all away to live on a farm for the rest of his days???? unrealistic.

klance had more chemistry, and Allurance felt rushed.

now, the writing.

they killed of Shiro's boyfriend. I think they were engaged to.

it's been a few years since I last watched it, but I'm pretty sure they didnt write it too well. i think keith ended up in space???? and a lesbian couple either are dead or ruling an empire. anyway they're very cute and i love them.

oh, and when we found out about keith being half galra, allura was all, "oh, you're part galra, the species that killed my race. I hate you know. i used to like you and now i know you're galra so you're shit." like bitch he wasn't even alive when youre elf-lookin ass species died.

anyway stan lance hes great. oh and hunk, and pidge, and the blue lion. oh and matt!! and adam. and coran!!! space uncle pog.

[hi-i-love-u-bitch]

What is up hoes! Y’all ready for this shit?! Because it is part 3 of the epic gay disaster romance that is the Shiro/Kogane and McClain siblings!!!

Y’all know the drill, I ain’t gunna lube you up for this shit cuz y’all should be good and ready by now!

Okay, so by this time Adashi is getting their shit together and Veracxa know what they want but just want to take things slow and flirty. All that’s left is to help out their little brothers.

*evil older sibling laughs*

So of course they enlist the help of Pidge and Hunk because they’re their brothers’ best friend and the possibility of getting a lot of embarrassing juicy gossip about Klance that they can use as blackmail later.

Pidge: I got Keith’s secret love poem stash in a pen drive

Shiro: Nah, I have plenty of those from his middle school days.

Pidge: And fanfic of them living a domestic life together?

Shiro: ...I am intrigued.

Hunk: Lance once dragged me to an alien space bar where he got wasted on nunvil and proceeded to aggressively flirt with the coat rack he thought look like Keith.

Veronica: Please tell me you have that on video.

Hunk: What kind of heathen takes a video of their best friend at their lowest point in life? *pulls out several pen drives* I have five plus copies.

At some point Allura pops in and suggest that they trap them in the elevator again.

Veronica & Adam: Again?!

Allura: It was an accident the first time.

So they did, and it was this big complex shenanigan filled ordeal that was somehow able to get them into an elevator alone where Pidge then hacked into the system and shut it down for about an hour.

It was awkward to say the least...

Lance, trying to mask his internal panic with jokes while their friends “try” to get them out: Well, at least we’re not shirtless this time.

Keith, slightly disappointed: Yeah...

Nothing much happens except some awkward staring and chit chat so they move on to plan B.

Adam suggest sparing since it worked out well for Veronica and Acxa to which Veronica punches him for while Pidge, Hunk, Shiro, Allura, and Coran warn that it’s a bad idea.

Everyone is suspicious and asks why.

Pidge: They have so much sexual tension wrapped up inside them it’s like watching them have aggressive sex with their clothes on.

They still go through with it though and it is exactly as Pidge described which leaves everyone hot and flustered.

Keith, standing above Lance with his sword pointed at his neck, flushed and breathless: *chuckling* Did you get worse at this?

Lance, having an internal bisexual crisis: Y-you’re mullet got worse at this!

Finally, Hunk suggested that they get them tipsy, not drunk. If they’re drunk they’ll probably do something embarrassing that they won’t remember which will drive them further into denial. But if they’re tipsy they’ll be relaxed and loose enough to talk about things calmly and willingly.

Shrio, who knows Keith is an embarrassing giggly flirty drunk: And then maybe get them drunk after???

Adam, who knows Lance is a stupidly honest and sappy drunk: I second that!!!!

So they sneak out late one night to a near by bar in town where they proceed to shove multiple drinks in klance is face while also hyping them up.

Hunk: Look at Keith over there with his mullet.

Lance, slamming down another drink: Stupid mullet, it’s un-fucking-fair how well he’s able to pull it off!

Veronica: Mmh, what about those fingerless gloves tho?

Lance: You know, I thought he only had those for the “bad boy” biker aesthetic but it turns out HE IS A BAD BOY BIKER!

Adam: What about that face of his? You’ve always complained how he has a stupid face.

Lance, aggressively: A stupidly cute face!

Veronica, smirking: Seems like you should go kiss it. I mean, it is stupidly cute, it would be an insult not too.

Lance, dead serious: Yeah, you’re right, maybe I should!

Adam & Hunk: Do it! Do it! Do it!

Lance, slamming his fist on the table: I’m gunna smooch that stupid fucker’s face!

Meanwhile, over on Keith’s side...

Keith, slamming down his second drink and sobbing: Does he not think I’m gay enough?! Should I have worn my other Gogo boots!

Shiro, trying not to laugh as he places a comforting hand on his brother: That’s impossible, next to me you’re the gayest boy I know.

Keith: You’re such a good brother Shiro, I love you so much! But I love Lance too!

Acxa, slipping Keith another drink: Have you told him this revelation?

Keith: Why would I? He’s in love with Allura! And who could blame him? If I were Bi I would be in love with her too!

Pidge, sipping on a juice box: But how do you know he’s in love with Allura?

Keith: Uh, I thought I’ve already stated that it was plainly obvious!

Pidge, rolling her eyes: But you haven’t asked him have you?

Keith:...no.

Acxa: And aren’t Allura and Romelle a thing?

Keith: WHAT?!

Shiro, fake surprise: Oh, that’s right! Lance helped Allura get ready for that date a few months back.

Keith: I-I thought THEY were going on a date!

Shiro: No, no, Lance just invited her over for dinner with his family because he said, and I quote, “she’s my sister from another mister.”

Keith: How did I not know about this?!?!

Acxa, cooly as she sips her drink: Because you were too busy being gay.

Keith:...Mother fucker!!!! You mean I could of been trying to flirt with him this whole time?!?!?

Pidge: You mean, you haven’t already?

Keith, standing with pissed off determination: I’m gunna give that fucker a piece of my mind!

All cheering: Get some!

So they both stumble towards each other and meet half way before angrily confessing to each other.

Keith: I thought you were dating Allura!

Lance: Gross, no! She’s like my sister! Meanwhile, you’re sitting around here with you’re stupid gorgeous face!!!

Keith: You’re one to talk with you’re pretty eyes!!!

Lance: Well, look in the mirror buddy!!!

Keith: Dick!

Lance: Asshole!

Keith & Lance: *aggressively make out*

So after that whole fiasco both the McClains and Shiro/Koganes siblings are now a flirty, mushy, romantic mess. It is both the best and worst think to ever happen.

Maybe I’ll talk more about that later.......?

[kcwcommentary]

VLD1x06 – “The Fall of the Castle of Lions”

1x06 – “The Fall of the Castle of Lions”

Party in the Castle of Lions for the Arusians. Allura proclaims that Arus is the first planet in the Voltron Alliance. I don’t know precisely what the Arusians are adding that’s useful to the Alliance, but since they’ve been the location of the Castle, and thus Allura and Coran, for 10,000 years they do deserve to be able to call upon the protection and help of the Alliance.

“Vol—tron?” I’m with Keith: I’m not much for cheering.

Shiro’s concern about people coming and going foreshadows that someone will indeed be infiltrating the Castle soon enough. Shiro’s concern here also makes me think of Keith’s concern in the previous episode when Allura first made direct contact with the Arusians. For me, there’s something reassuring about their respective modes of caution.

Sendak is plotting. Haxus moves to clone a signature code of Pidge’s Rover so that he can send another drone into the Castle to cause problems. I like that the episode takes its time to set up the explosion, the trick in the Arusian village, and the trouble that the characters will be dealing with. The pacing allows for tension to build, instead of just dumping trouble on us.

Allura’s conversation with the mice is a much-needed moment to show us that she’s not as confident as she usually seems. It helps counterbalance what we’ve seen of her to this point. She feels under great pressure due to the situation she’s in. The scene quickly moves to her discussing other things with the mice, but that little bit is enough to make her a much more complicated, and thus interesting, character. It shows some of her emotional vulnerability, and that’s the sort of thing that endears me to characters.

Lance being homesick here is something that I feel gets lost too easily in later seasons of the show. I’m a rather rooted, homebody myself, so I totally sympathize with Lance missing his family and home environment.

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about how Allura reacts to learning Pidge is a girl. It’s an aspect of Pidge that is significant enough that I feel like it’s invasive and rude for Allura to try to push Pidge to reveal it, but I also know what it’s like to have something like that about oneself that one is hiding and know how useful and needed it can be to have people try to let you know that they’re available for you to tell. I feel Allura is trying to let Pidge know that talking to her can be a safe space, but it still comes with some awkwardness on how Allura goes about trying to convey that in this scene. But then, that awkwardness could really just be an element that makes the conversation feel like such a realistic conversation two people in this situation would have.

Pidge announces that she’s leaving Voltron since she’s got some information about her brother and father. While I totally understand Pidge placing priority on her family, her leaving now does carry an aspect of betrayal with it. She was just going to steal a craft from the Castle and go off on her own. It’s also another demonstration that Pidge sometimes just does not think things through. What does she know about the galaxy? So far, she’s been to only two non-Earth planets, both of which are peaceful ones. What resources would she have to call upon going off on her own? These are major obstacles to her plan here. Her assumption that her working in isolation will yield results is so naïve. She doesn’t even try to ask the others for help, which suggests she doesn’t trust anyone. Pidge behaving in such short-sighted ways just makes me feel uncomfortable.

I like that we get a bit of a quiet scene between Lance and Coran, as Lance’s being homesick continues. When you have ensemble stories, pairing different characters together to play off of one another is a structural way to reveal some of their respective characterization. It’s still early in this show, this being only the sixth episode, and this pairing of Lance and Coran is one I would expect to come later, not now. Because of that, it feels fresh and interesting having it happen now.

“You ever notice how far the planets are from each other, Coran?” Lance asks. This is a reality of space that a lot of space shows/films ignore either purposefully or out of lack of education – even this show has times in later episode where the reality of how big space is seems to be ignored by the writers. I think people in general just do not realize how absolutely huge space is, including the amount of space within a single solar system, and thus how exponentially larger space between stars, and then space between galaxies is. It is a challenge in writing space-based fiction to balance the need to maintain tension with the reality of the immensity of space. “Like Earth, I can’t even see it,” Lance says. Uh, yeah, a bit past Saturn’s orbit and that happens – that’s why we can’t see Uranus nor Neptune with the naked eye from here on Earth. Lance’s comment here makes it sound like he would expect to have a chance to see Earth from another star system, but that’s something that becomes impossible even within our own system.

“Oh, we had that on Altea, only it wasn’t water, more like rocks. Razor sharp and boiling hot. They could knock a hole right in your head,” Coran says. This makes such little sense. I get that the episode is trying to be all, other planets can be so different than Earth, but this just doesn’t work. Life as we know it needs a liquid compound to serve as a universal solvent. This doesn’t mean that it absolutely has to be water, but the way we know the biology of life to function, water is the most likely candidate for such a substance across the whole universe. So, Altean life would most likely need significant amounts of water, which would result in a water cycle, which would mean they should have actual rain. Also, rock can be either razor sharp or boiling hot, not both. Rock that is hot enough that it could boil, in other words, be liquid, is magma/lava. If Altea is such that its environment allows for the evaporation and condensation of rock, then Altea is a hellish planet. So yeah, this line of Coran’s just does not work.

“You can’t leave,” Keith says. “You can’t tell me what to do!” Pidge retorts. Allura could though. The pod that Pidge wants to take does not belong to Pidge, nor did she ask to use/have it. “I never signed up for a lifetime in space fighting aliens,” Hunk says. Maybe not a lifetime, but the idea that they were working as a group to be able to fight against he Galra isn’t a new, sudden development. For anyone, Hunk included, to act like they didn’t know what the group’s broad goals were is dissonant. Shiro is willing to let Pidge go. He is right that it’s not right to try to force someone to be there, to be part of Voltron if they don’t want to. Shiro tells Pidge to “think about what [she’s] doing,” and that’s so much of my problem with her behavior here: She’s not thinking this through in the slightest. And again, she has no right to take the pod from the team if she’s not going to be part of the team.

When the explosion happens, Lance tries to shield Coran. It’s a nice, heroic moment for his character. The lights shutting down, especially in the external shot of the Castle, feels visceral. The Castle is without power, which they need to launch the Lions and to get the medical facilities working to help Lance. As much as Pidge’s plan to steal a pod bothers me, I do really like the narrative resonance it has in making it available to use here in this emergency. Pidge installed a cloaking device on the pod, and she puts in a similar system on the Green Lion, but I still come back to every Lion could have used having a cloaking system.

Lance was hurt bad by the explosion. Moving him, especially by just slinging his body over one’s shoulder and carrying him, is not medically wise. But that’s what Shiro does.

Shiro and Sendak fight. I still think Sendak’s arm is ridiculous, but Shiro’s is much cooler. The animation of the fight is beautiful. The shot of the collision between their fists in silhouette with a full moon behind them is one of the best shots the show has produced so far. With Lance and now Shiro taken out, Pidge is the only Paladin left in the Castle. That the episode had established Pidge’s adamant desire to leave, putting her in the place of being the only one really able to act within the Castle is narratively fitting. Keith and Allura find out that the attack on the Arusian village was staged specifically to get them out of the Castle.

The Galra have their own crystal, assumedly salvaged from their crashed ship, and they hook it up to the Castle. The fact that their crystal makes the Castle’s big external lights and shielding glow purple – aside from being the show’s use of purple to mono-color evil – suggests their crystal is physically and functionally different than the ones the Castle normally uses. I don’t remember this ever being something that’s examined though.

Coran and Hunk arrive at the Balmera, where Coran explains that though looking like a planet, Balmera are actually animals. It’s kind of funny to me now knowing how much this show violates the basic visual definition of a planet – that reaching a certain size results in a protoplanet forming into a roughly spheroid shape because of its gravity – to see the not-a-planet Balmera here looking more like a planet than a lot of the so-called planets in this show. Unfortunately, the Galra have control of this Balmera. I love Coran’s attempt to verbally evade the Galra ship ordering him to surrender. Coran crashes the pod at the bottom of a mine, with the first shadowy glimpse of the Balmeran people.

Pidge’s efforts inside the Castle demonstrates her Green Paladin quality of being daring. I do like that as much as Pidge frustrates me earlier in the episode, it feels totally believable to me that she can do everything she’s doing here. Her bravery is inspiring. But it also reinforces how the idea of her going off by herself now was not a path to success for her. Though she has to directly act alone, she’s in contact with Allura. There is still an element of teamwork. The situation grows close to being out of their influence, so Pidge opts for something that could realistically kill her: stab the energy system with her bayard to shut it down. It works, but the Galra learn she’s in the Castle.

The episode ends unresolved, and I like that the show is giving this plotline time to breathe. Giving it time emphasizes the tension and magnitude of the situation the characters are dealing with.