#anyway there are so many fandoms in the same boat as Voltron where the fandom has largely disengaged with the source material bc it’s bad

[motokeith]

can we stop treating our participation in the voltron fandom as something horrific and shameful or is every single voltron post going to be prefaced with self-deprecation and disgust

[voltronfandomhag]

"Or we that we hate most of the male GoLion pilots because they were 20 something year-old men who spent about half the series ogling a teenage girl." Can you explain this?

In GoLion all the male pilots had a crush on Princess Fala (Allura) to varying degrees. I’m going to show you a few examples to get my point across. 

There’s a scene in “Introducing Beautiful Honerva” where Fala dashes straight to castle control from her bath, clad only in a bath towel, to answer Raible’s (Coran’s) summons. 

The male pilots all blatantly ogle her:

The rest of this is going behind a cut because of all the images. Also, there’s going to be some discourse and salt. So if you want to avoid that, consider yourself warned. 

There’s a scene in “Friday the 13th” where the team is swimming in the lake surrounding the castle. Fala wears a tiny pink bikini. 

Here is Kurogane and Seido’s (Lance and Hunk’s) reaction to the sight:

In “Altea’s Sister Planet” there’s a scene where Fala lets her pet mouse Platt climb into her flight suit to escape the cold.

Kurogane’s reaction: 

In “The Prince Imperial’s Dark Love” Raible and the male pilots are rowing a boat around the lake while Fala waves to her people gathered around the shore. Kurogane asks Raible why they’re doing this:

All the pilot pilots dive into the water and race to pick Fala flowers in hopes of receiving a kiss. 

All the male pilots also had crushes on Allura in Voltron. I also feel it’s important to note that in both shows these crushes largely fade into the background as the story progresses. However there are a few key differences between how this plays out in GoLion vs Voltron: 

1) While Kogane (Keith) is also attracted to Fala, nothing becomes of it, with Kogane becoming more akin to a mentor/big brother figure to Fala. In Voltron this attraction eventually develops into a budding romance between Keith and Allura.

2) Allura’s age is never stated in Voltron. The narrative, however, treats her as around the same age as the grown male pilots. Also, changes to the time-line in Voltron vs GoLion suggest she could very likely be a few years older than Fala. Most people in the fandom headcanoned her as being around 18 to early 20s. 

3)GoLion states Fala is 16 years-old. We’re never given ages for the male pilots but fans generally assume that they’re around 20-24 years-old, with the obvious exception of Suzuishi (Pidge).

Now, this is where we get to discussion of how some of the self-identified anti-fans who actually watched GoLion handled this and the double standards involved. Most of them did, to some degree, acknowledge that supposedly 20-something year-old dudes wanting to romance a 16 year-old was problematic. This stuff was one of the reasons many of them condemned Kallura, including VLD Kallura, as problematic trash. Never mind Keith and Allura are both teenagers in VLD; never mind they’re likely both adults in DoTU; never mind both of them are undeniably adults in Voltron Force and V3D. All versions of the pairing must be hated because of the GoLion dynamic.  

However, many antis really liked Kogane, Kurogane, and Seido! They liked those characters in other Voltron retellings too, especially VLD (until they turned on the show, anyway)! You could argue that since all these characters were teenagers in VLD, it wouldn’t make sense to hate them because of what happened in GoLion. But remember, according to them we’re supposed to hate Kallura because of the age difference in GoLion. Also, according to their logic regarding Lotor, we can’t separate a character from their past incarnations.

This refusal to apply the same logic and standards to all the characters led to this weird state of acknowledging GoLion’s problematic aspects while at the same time shifting blame or downplaying them when convenient. I once saw a post from anti-fan blaming Kurogane’s behavior towards Fala on the writers, for example. Like, I don’t know how to tell you this, but none of these characters have any agency of their own. Literally everything they do is because a writer had them do it. Then these fans would talk about how glad they were the guys (or the writers) “learned better.”

There were also a lot of post from these people calling the grown male GoLion pilots “space dads” and Fala their adopted daughter. Ugh, yeah, it’s very obvious they didn’t see Fala as a daughter figure.  Now, you could argue they eventually came to see her as a sister figure. Like I said, their crushes on her gradually faded away about halfway into the story. But why would people in their early 20s see a 16 year-old as a daughter to them?! lol 

But, of course, these types of fans are always going to find reasons why the characters and ships like are okay even when, by their logic, they should be condemned as problematic trash. Meanwhile, characters and ships they don’t like will somehow, always, because be garbage no one should ever touch. So naturally they’re not going to apply a consist logic to everything or else their arguments would fall apart. 

[stray-tori]

| 2017 Personal Rewind |

for two hours over here, actually. But it’s time for me to ramble about it! But I won’t make you scroll over it for an endless time, instead I’m offering you to read it by clicking keep reading ;)

FANDOMS

Okay, so fandom-wise, this year has been quite Cartoon-dominated. I think I watched like 10 cartoons, but only 2 anime. And that’s with someone who actually called cartoons out for how childish they can be and how they don’t fit my humour (I’m all about them anime-humour apparantly). So I myself was surprised when I noticed how many cartoons I watched this year:

Steven Universe I watched this one before 2017, and 2017 had the longest hiatus for SU ever, so uhhh yeah it wasn’t the best year but we had the Zoo and Abduction Arcs SOOOO yay? Like most, I have noticed a drop in excitement, but I still love this show for things it does so I can’t be too mad.

Star vs the forces of evil I am not sure if I watched season 1+2 this year or last (damn my memory), but I know I wasn’t too fond of this show. I didn’t think it was bad, it simply didn’t fascinate me the same way SU did. Even with battle for Mewni, I only liked the Eclipsa and Moon Parts and not much beyond that. In the new season I’ve grown to really like Tomstar for some reason, but I still think the episodes are too random at times and there is sometimes too little connection between them. But maybe I’m just too used to SU being slow-paced that I can’t handle how fast Star is jumping between events.

Voltron I'm not sure if S2 was this year or last year, but any way Voltron has been part of my 2017. I’ve had a phase where I really shipped Plance due to the Ouran High School Host Club Vibes it gave me back when I watched S1 and this year it decided to come back at me.  Else, the material has been great! I love the series, and how serious it is and how it doesn’t focus on romantic love AT ALL. I really like that, even if I started this Section with saying what I shipped. I’m so hyped Matt is back and the Keith almost-sacrifice scene really got me like I actually thought they were gonna do it. They never get me with almost-deaths. NEVER. 

Wakfu As Season 3 came closer so grew my expectations. When I finally watched it, I was blown away. I won’t sugar-coat that the Time-Paradox thing was 1000% Bullshit, but it won’t stop me from loving this season, even if it had it’s weak elements. But I just loved the rest too much and while I am picky with it, I can’t get myself to not enjoy it (which I’m really happy about because I hate it when some elements ruin something for me). If you wanna hear more of me rambling, go here for the post and here for the s3 tag.

Miraculous Oh I have a love-hate relationship with this show. I can see the potential and all, but it’s just too episodic for me, relies a bit too much on the cute love-square that changes progress every episode. The characters don’t always feel like what is established about them (for example, Adrien loved Ladybug, yet in the new season he KEEPS being overly nice to Marinette like dude sure you’re a bit oblivious but ughhh) and there are no conflicts present for more than one episode.  I really don’t like how they lured me in with the first episode being story-heavy and then keeping nothing happening for like 5 episodes. The only episodes I can even remember what actually really happened were “The Collector” bc of the obvious Gabriel-Adrien-Drama, the episode where her aunt (?) visits bc I heard she’s plot-relevant, but I don’t see how tbh; the episode with the Owl because it actually went out of the usual formular for an episode and Robustus because it had some story I guess in the last few seconds.  I really hope the season picks up soon, I’m like 10% invested haha.

Tangled The Series Holy fucking shit. Like I started watching it while doing other stuff and I started right before “Queen for a day” aired, so by the time I caught up, I could actually watch that episode and what can I say? The animation is beautiful, and you think it’d be a cute little series and suddenly there’s death and everyone’s hopeless and betraying and ??? WHAT HAPPENED. Varian and Cass are super enjoyable and I love the way the series is going! I’m super sad it’s going to end so soon! If you wanna know more of my thoughts, go here.

Teen Titans I BINGE-WATCHED THIS IN LIKE 1-2 WEEK/S. While I had to study so yas. Well I have to thank Tangled for the short hiatus I guess, because I was like “Man I need something else to watch then” and was like “I could just watch 1 or 2 episodes of Teen Titans each Saturday, I wanted to start that for a while!” and suddenly I was 10 episodes in. I love the characters, I love Raven, I love Star and I love Robstar as you probably noticed. I was surprised how much plot the show actually had (and how brutal Robin could be if he wanted) and I never really found episodes annoying except the ones that focussed extremely on other teams or superheroes, I’m just not invested enough in the DC Universe to care about these guys haha. I thought S3 and S5 were kinda weak and it also bothered my how Characters sometimes really shift in their characterstics SOMETIMES to further the plot. But it never got to the point that it annoyed me extremely.  Also it doesn’t even feel like “Stranded” happened at all in S5 cri hahahahaha. Also I don’t know where to place Trouble in Tokyo but I wasn’t too fond of the movie anyway so I guesssss it doesn’t matter. I liked it, I really did, but it felt a little too straight forward sometimes and depending on the placement to the seasons, it doesn’t fit a lot either. BUT that’s nitpicking.

So yeah, anime-wise, I don’t even know what I watched this year and what was last year. I just remember Akatsuki no Yona, which was fine I guess. Reverse-Harem for the win! Though it’s the first time I actually found the main love interest so unlikeable I ended up rooting for someone else completely even though I know who was going to be end-game. I’m honestly just sick of these man-ly, seducing men who play hard and are all like STRANGE honestly?? Like I wouldn’t want to be treated like he treats Yona. I ended up really liking her and the guy who looks like a girl (Yoon) together; I just loved how Yona influenced him and made him stand up for them on the boat and everything.

PERSONAL LIFE

 This year, especially the second half, has been quite hard on me. My family has been horrible the whole year and I finally feel like it gets to me. I’m just... tired. I’m just numb. I’m so good at pretending I’m happy --- even to myself. But it tired me out and I finally start to notice it. I’m selfish, I know that, but I couldn’t even get myself to be sad - and that’s... an excuse. I know that. I just don’t want to actually be sad. I wanna enjoy my life, I don’t wanna drag myself down, but where did get me?

Anyway, on a more friends-based level, I guess it went good? It was a good year. It was one where I found new friends, deepened some other friendships... and feel like I’ve lost another one... Maybe some of you noticed the time when I got together with a friend for a short amount of time because we both felt like it was where we wanted to go. It went good, really good - at least that’s what I thought. It was slow sure, but for the most part I realized that what I really want is someone close, not necessarily a romantic interest.

More or less out of the blue that ended per text message. And after that, I half fell apart and half felt like it was no problem. And then I really began to get socially paranoid. I was paranoid before, don’t get me wrong. But suddenly I felt like everyone (especially he) was avoiding me, like they pretended to like me. And always when I wanted to express it to him, it stopped. It was like he was playing with me, but I know it couldn’t have been that, because he couldn’t read my thoughts after all. It got better in like November/December too and I hope it stays that way, and maybe one year to do in 2018 is to actually address my feelings -- even if it may end up making everything even more awkward and maybe ruining how good we have gotten.

On the bright side, I’ve gotten closer to two other friends and have made like 3 new friends this year whom I hope to grow closer to in 2018. 

ALL IN ALL

I can’t say this has been the best year, especially the second half. There were too many self-doubts, too many crisis, too many thoughts I’d like to stop, too much school-stress and too much emotional garbage. But at the same time, there was many to balance it out. Most of that being friends, old and new ones.