#he has been my healthy obsession since 1998 OF COURSE I HAVE SEEN IT!

[coastielaceispunk]

[kingofthewilderwest]

I can't stop thinking about how beautiful Lotor and Allura's children would be if they ended up being together

Oh goodness. Lotor is unfairly pretty, as is Allura. That’s quite a lot of way-too-pretty genetics all in one place! XD

Now… I don’t like raining on anyone’s parade, and I know you just want to have a friendly squee, but I hope it’s okay to bring up how Lotor and Allura have been written throughout the Voltron franchise. I want to write this as a fair warning in case people don’t realize what the issue with Allotor is. Now, technically, if we were looking just at VLD, Lotor and Allura’s interactions have been fine, so I can see why people who lack context to the full franchise would jump into a ship with these two. But the ongoing history of Lotor and Allura hasn’t been so innocent. It’s consequently why I personally would be uncomfortable to hook them up. 

The longstanding tradition between Lotor and Allura has been… Lotor lusting after Allura, and trying to force her into a romance. 

It’s not been pretty.

Beast King Golion (1981-1982) is the main source material from which the Voltron franchise developed. It set the stage for many things, including how Lotor (Prince Sincline) interacted with Allura (Fala). Even one summarizing paragraph from the Voltron wiki gives us an extremely unpleasant situation:

Sincline’s obsession with Fala was revealed that she resembles his mother and that his obsession was rooted in an Oedipus complex. Sincline’s infatuation with Fala is a constant motivation behind most of his attempts to defeat Golion to which even his father warned him to stop. Because of that obsession, Sincline kidnapped Fala’s identical cousin, Princess Amue of Heracles, rapes her, and attempted to execute her after she foiled his plans.

I own the entire Beast King Golion series on DVD, and I can confirm that Sincline does indeed try to pursue Fala and take her against his will. These screencaps all come from just one episode:

Fala is unconscious, Sincline steps over her, declares he’s going to make her his wife, and then picks up her up to kiss her. Obviously this is as “not okay” as you can get between Lotor/Sincline and Allura/Fala.

Voltron: Defender of the Universe (1984-1985) takes the animation of BKG but edits out and tones down its most disturbing content - avoiding deaths, blood, etc. - but it still keeps the concept of Lotor constantly pursuing Allura. This is the corresponding DotU episode from the BKG screencaps I gave you. “Give Me Your Princess” is also about Lotor deciding he wants to take Allura as his bride - something she obviously doesn’t want. And this becomes a recurring conflict throughout the DotU series.

Voltron: The Third Dimension (1998-2000) is part of the franchise I haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s written essentially as a sequel to DotU. Though I haven’t watched T3D, I have seen a few clips, and in E3 “Building the Forces of Doom,” Haggar shows Lotor his dreams and his fears. The dream he desires is… you guessed it… Allura…

The history of Lotor chasing after Allura makes its way into the comics and graphic novels. The Devil’s Due Publishing omnibus (2008), which retells DotU with more depth, grit, and maturity, is perhaps my favorite telling of Voltron. I’ve had my suspicions since S4 that VLD has been influenced by material within DDP, given as it contains a story where Sven (aka Shiro) is rejected from his lion, seems to get brainwashed by Haggar, betrays Voltron, and teams up with Lotor. There’s a point where Voltron and Lotor make a temporary alliance to fight against Yurak/Sendak. There’s a fight for leadership and power within the Drule (Galra) Empire. And it’s the only material in the Voltron franchise that seems to write a strong psychic bond between the Voltron pilots, their lions, and each other. Sound familiar?

So, one other thing that DDP brings up is the idea of Zarkon and Alfor initially being at peace, but then Zarkon capturing the planet Arus/Altea when Lotor and Allura were children. In this telling of Voltron, Lotor and Allura knew each other during childhood.

This gets slightly closer to what we see in VLD, but it also perpetuates the impure nature of Allotor. When Lotor reunites with Allura, he grabs her and says, “Now I’ve returned. And by rights, the spoils of war are mine for the taking.” This proceeds into a fight where Lance tries to stop Lotor from doing anything.

(Apologies for the terrible picture I took with my phone).

So what’s repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly been the case in Voltron canon for thirty years, starting back in 1981 and going well into the 2000s, is Lotor pursuing Allura and attempting to take her without consent.

The creators of Voltron: Legendary Defender have consciously cut away many of the franchise’s historic problems regarding issues like gender representation and misogyny. They’ve done away with the trope of one female character existing in an otherwise all-male team; Pidge, originally, Darrell Stoker, has become Katie Holt. They’ve written Allura far more favorably, with much less emphasis on her being the “pretty one” who’s not as good fighting because she’s “just a woman” (yes, this was in BKG). Instead of giving Lotor a harem (yes, this was in BKG and DotU, too), VLD has Lotor working respectfully with women generals. The writers have also intentionally promoted racial diversity by giving Hunk a Samoan background, Shiro a Japanese background, Lance a Cuban background, and designing Allura with a darker skin tone.

And VLD - praise God - seems to have consciously cut away Lotor lusting after Allura, trying to capture her, and trying to force her to marry him.

Now here’s the reason why I don’t like the concept of Lotor and Allura hooking up in VLD. In the DreamWorks show itself, there’s nothing wrong with Lotor and Allura’s interactions. That’s totally fine. If we look at it in a vacuum, it’s fine. And I like that it no longer writes that poisonous material between them. However… how disrespectful would it be for VLD’s creators to take a relationship that’s been written for 30 years as desired rape… and turn it into a romance? By writing an Allotor romance, they’d be acknowledging all the material that’s come before… all the very, very, uncomfortably impure material that’s come before. However you write an Allotor romance in the present day, there’s no way to deny that the firmly-embedded history of Allotor is non-consensual. 

I don’t like the concept of taking something that’s been so thoroughly written as unhealthy, and which is well-known within old time Voltron fans as unhealthy, and making it into a new healthy ship. It’s not that it would “legitimize” the old, gross Allotor stuff. But it would… sweep aside all the problems behind it. It’s far more respectful and less controversial to simply delete Lotor’s romantic interests in Allura altogether.

I mean… if you think about it in terms of real life… if you were someone who had been sexually harassed by someone in the past, and then people wrote a novel about you based upon your real life where your harasser was now a nice prince charming… wouldn’t that feel… disturbing and disrespectful… to you?

So it means that I don’t want VLD to write Allotor. The way VLD has set up Allura and Lotor, yes, it would be alluring on its own. But the problem is that it’s not on its own. And it also means that I’m not going to hop onto any fandom ships for these two, either. I don’t enter ship wars. I don’t. I always want people to have fun shipping! I’m happy with people shipping whatever they want, just so long as they don’t hit any of the following three points: incest, pedophilia, and inherent abuse/lack of consent. Allotor rubs me wrong because of point number three. 

So like you’re seeing here, if I see people hit upon one of these points, then I like to kindly inform people why I think it’s not the best ship to ship.

If VLD is going to write in a reciprocated romance between Allura and another individual (and they might not), they have some good options that also have franchise precedent, or at least franchise basis. Allura kisses Lance’s cheek several times in DotU, making him blush. Allura and Keith get engaged in Voltron Force comics, there’s a long Kallura plot arc in the Devil’s Due Publishing Omnibus, and Allura professes Keith as the one she loves in other DotU comics, too. And of course VLD always has the option of going on a new romance that hasn’t been done before, as I’m sure Shallura shippers would be quick to pipe up.

Again, I’m sorry to rain on your parade, since you’re so happily imagining how good looking Allura x Lotor children would look like! I know how much fun it is to imagine these things with our ships.