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foeseekerwriter · 6 years

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VLD Cast, Sorting Hat Chats Style

So if you aren’t aware, the Sorting Hat Chats are an absolutely incredible method of character analysis (and it’s lots of fun for real people too!) and I use it all. The. Time. So, since I’m working on a VLD project, I decided to do a breakdown. Cliffnotes version of the SHC sorting method: everyone has a “primary” house - why you do something - and a “secondary” house” - how you do something. Here’s a really oversimplified breakdown of both sets.

Primaries Gryffindor - gut instinct, “this is the right thing to do” Ravenclaw - analysis, a morality system, “this is truth” Hufflepuff - community-oriented, loyal to groups, what is best for everyone Slytherin - loyal to their people, take care of them above all else

Secondaries Gryffindor - charge, take things head-on Ravenclaw - contingency plans, mix and match premade methods to adapt Hufflepuff - toil, steady work, often lean on other people to help get things done Slytherin - adaptability in the moment, a tendency to swap masks

All the houses, both primary and secondary, can be “burned”. In the case of a primary this means losing faith in your natural primary (e.g. a Gryffindor who no longer trusts their gut instinct). For a secondary, this means you’re just slogging through trying to get things done any way possible. Primaries and secondaries can also be modeled. Slytherin primaries, for example, often model other primaries in situations where what they’re dealing with doesn’t touch upon “their people”, but everyone can model to some degree for another (for both healthy and unhealthy reasons). A less strong version of modeling is performing, where someone takes on the appearance of another house but it doesn’t feel natural to them.

For a variety of reasons, unless otherwise indicated, I am only using material up through season 6, just so you’re aware.

Anyway, here goes.

MAIN CAST

Shiro—Gryffindor/Hufflepuff

This boi is an overwhelmingly Gryffindor primary. He is willing to throw himself into any and every situation, no matter how hopeless or deadly, if he thinks that is the right thing to do. Witness his determination to find Ulaz and the Blades despite Allura's outspoken protests and the fact that he was going off hazy memories and a gut feeling. It is worth noting, though, that if Allura had really put her foot down on that matter I do think Shiro would have obeyed—reluctantly, but he would have. And although he willingly allows other people, people he cares about, to go into danger—or even sends them there—if that's the right thing to do, whenever possible he does the dangerous thing himself or leads the others into the danger. He's not actively looking to get killed, contrary to all the "guess I'll die" Shiro jokes, but doing the right thing is definitely higher on his priority list than keeping himself safe.

Shiro is a Hufflepuff secondary. He is steady, dependable, works hard, makes people feel safe, is quietly caring, and chips steadily and persistently away at problems ranging from convincing his friends get some sleep to saving the universe. It is this trustworthy, community-focused secondary that gives his primary its great warmth. It also lends to his tendency to “feel” his way through things instead of “think” through them—not that he doesn’t think at all, but he is willing almost more than anyone else in the cast to make decisions off gut feeling instead of careful logic.

(Incidentally, this Gryffindor/Hufflepuff combo may be where the writer criticisms of “Shiro is boring” come from. Healthy, passionate Gryffindors, especially those with the warm and loving Hufflepuff secondary, have a totally undeserved reputation for being uninteresting because they tend to be uninclined to moral angst - which a lot of people seem to think is the only thing that makes characters interesting - and typically don’t spend huge amounts of time thinking through problems. What makes them interesting is not how much they beat themselves up or agonize over their decisions but the depth and passion of their convictions in the face of all odds, and their ability to inspire others toward something better. They are strongest in a group, and they often wind up the leader not from any desire for power but because they engender trust in others. Steve Rogers and Clark Kent, two other fantastic characters who are often unjustly labeled as boring or shallow, share this sorting, by the way. Steve’s sorting you can find on the Sorting Hat Chats. Clark is my own analysis, mostly based in the Young Justice cartoon.)

The overall resilience of this Gryffinpuff sorting can truly be astounding, especially considering that it tends to be a highly idealistic, optimistic combination—ideals and optimism that at best the world often laughs at and at worst spits on and crushes underfoot. In the short term this can be horribly debilitating, which we see most clearly in Shiro after Allura is captured near the end of S1. When he steps out of that escape pod to face the rest of the team is perhaps the lowest we see him in the entire show. But the paradoxical resilience of this combination also allows him to bounce back quite quickly, the strength and passion of his ingrained beliefs and convictions buoying him up in the longer term as he plunges back in to right the wrongs. This is likely how he survived Galra captivity without burning either his primary or his secondary. Most of the others would likely have burned at least one of these, emerging broken or angry and with a much grimmer outlook on the world. Shiro makes it through with his optimistic approach to life largely intact based on what we see of him pre-Kerberos—acknowledging that the world can be gritty and cruel and painful but determined to do everything he can to make it better, determined that it is possible for it to be better, and trying (without much effort) to see the best in every person and situation.

This is how Shiro leads, and this is how he best fights: with people he has brought together at his side to watch his back, to trust and to be trusted, to point the way and inspire others with his convictions and then to lead a motley but effective team toward a chosen goal with the noblest of desires and intentions at the fore. He is certainly willing to fight alone, but whenever he does his fights have a desperate, last-ditch feel—taking Matt’s place in the arena, defending Lance and the Castle against Sendak, facing Haggar on the Galra ship. He is much more comfortable—and much more effective—when he has a team around him on whom he relies and who rely on him. As the leader of Voltron, Shiro regularly leans on the improvisational secondaries of Keith and Lance to come at a problem, and on the foundational secondaries of Pidge and Hunk to figure out how to come at the problem in the first place. It is this natural tendency to encourage and foster teamwork, combined with Shiro’s determined Gryffindor moral compass, that makes team Voltron under Shiro so effective and unified.

Interestingly, it is this trustworthiness and tendency toward reliance on gut instinct that get everyone in trouble with Kuron. Because they’re used to Shiro’s “I can’t necessarily explain this but I have a feeling” MO, and because he’s simply a dependable person who engenders trust in those around him, the rest of the team doesn’t question (much) Kuron’s insistence that they support Lotor until it’s far too late.

Keith—Slytherin/Gryffindor

Keith's Achilles heel is his friends—first, last, and always. He is willing to throw aside the fate of the universe to save one person, and he wouldn't even bat an eye about it. He breaks into a Garrison facility to rescue Shiro, he jeopardizes their mission to the Blades' base because he hopes to find out more about his family, he fights Zarkon alone to save Shiro, his desperation to help his friends allows him to join with astral-Shiro to unlock the Black Lion’s teleporting ability... His friends and family are his whole world, Shiro more than anyone else.

He tries really hard to model Shiro’s Gryffindor primary, but the poor boy is so bad at it that it really is only a performance, and a half-baked one at that. Almost every single attempt to use this performance gets him into trouble, even with Shiro, whom he’s trying to emulate in the first place. A couple examples of this are when he proposes leaving Allura in Zarkon’s captivity and his kamikaze attack on the Galra cruiser. Neither of these choices feel natural to him; he is trying and failing to do what he thinks he is supposed to do, not what he feels is right or what he wants. He does pull it off successfully a couple times, most notably in the first episode when he advocates for staying on Arus instead of running away, but this is definitely the exception versus the rule and likely had some of his Slytherin primary loyalty behind it (“if these people knew what was happening they’d be counting on me, I can’t let them down”).

I think Keith is actually a burned Slytherin and has kicked himself out of his loyalty circle. He remains devoted to his friends, especially Shiro, but he shows little to no concern for himself. Shiro’s return loyalty and devotion helps keep this burning in check, at the very least by watching out for Keith when Keith won’t watch out for himself, but when Shiro disappears and Keith is forced into a leadership role the burning spirals out of control. It reaches its climax with his kamikaze attack in S4. This burned state gives a desperate edge to his Gryffindor secondary.

Keith’s Gryffindor secondary is loud and brash and is basically summarized by his go-to strategy in almost every circumstance, that being, “I run in and I stab it.” This makes him prone to open-mouth-insert-foot moments, as well as jumping into hot water and needing his friends to bail him out, but it can also make him highly effective when this charging tendency is properly applied. For example, when he and Lance were infiltrating the hangar on the balmera Lance got them there using his come-at-things-sideways Slytherin secondary, but once in the control room he kept looking for a complicated solution to getting the doors open. Keith saved them a lot of time and effort by just putting his hand on the handprint.

This overall Slytherdor combination is what makes leadership so difficult for Keith. Without a reliable primary model to fall back on when something doesn’t land within the bounds of his Slytherin primary, and not having developed a way to keep his charging tendencies in enough check to prevent him and his friends from getting killed, he is not prepared to have team Voltron dropped on his shoulders. He already doesn’t have much confidence in his own ability to handle things or his own instincts about what he should or shouldn’t do, a confidence that Shiro was only just able to keep afloat. Sans Shiro, Keith falls into further loss of self-loyalty and trust in his own ability to manage a given situation (greatly exacerbated by the epic failure of his first mission as Black’s pilot, where Lotor spent the better part of a day running circles around them). In an attempt to cling to something, anything, to give him a foundation as a leader, Keith winds up leaning heavily on a combination of Lance’s Ravenclaw/Slytherin personality and his own very contrived Gryffindor performance. This doesn’t work very well and is one of the reasons team Voltron under Keith feels a lot shakier than it does under Shiro.

In addition, when Kuron takes over Black and Keith leaves for the Blades, the team still feels unbalanced without Keith’s Slytherin primary to help them stay focused on nearest people and priorities first and his Gryffindor secondary to help them charge at the problems that can be charged at. Just because Keith has loose cannon tendencies on his own doesn’t mean he’s not an effective and necessary part of the team makeup. (And by the way, leaving for the Blades is about the only healthily selfish choice we see him make in the whole show, and even that was largely motivated by his Gryffindor performance of “this is the right thing to do so I should do it”; whatever idiot on the writing crew decided that the whole team would jump on his case for this decision needs to step on a Lego.)

In Keith’s (and Shiro’s) defense, given enough time to grow and mature his true primary; develop a healthy, workable Gryffindor (or really any) primary model; and get a bit more control over his Gryffindor secondary tendency to charge, Keith really does have the potential to be a downright incredible leader. A couple great examples of Slytherdor characters are Han Solo, who winds up an excellent and effective leader in the resistance by the end of Episode VI, and Zuko, whose leadership potential gets most fully explored in the truly epic and renowned fanfic Embers by Vathara in which he… well, it’s awesome. (The Sorting Hat Chats folks narrow Zuko down to either Hufflepuff or Slytherin primary. Based on Embers, I think he’s modeling burned Hufflepuff primary at first and eventually loses it in favor of his natural Slytherin primary.) This sorting combo in potential leaders means they tend to take a long time to get to the point where they can be reliably trusted with the lives of others, and even when they do get there they’re often fighting for the cause of “this affects my people so I need to do something”. That doesn’t make them any less effective at what they do, however, and Keith has the potential to reach this place given time, nurturing, and proper motivation. He’s just pushed into a leadership role way too early and not given the sort of support system that would actually allow him to grow and mature while in this position.

Krolia especially has the potential to really help him with this growth, because that woman is an amazing and unapologetic Slytherin primary and her entire life and work is built around it. This both baffles and awes Keith, who assumes Krolia left him and his father for “the mission”—a Gryffindor-esque reason that Keith thinks he should have and tries so hard to believe in, and fails. Krolia without a moment’s hesitation replies, “I did it to protect the person I love most in the world—you.” Given time and the chance to see her in action I think Keith could really grow and mature his own primary based on what he sees in his mother. Add in the return of Shiro to regain his basis and guide for a Gryffindor primary model, plus learning to rely on other people to get things done when he can’t, and down the road I do think Keith could be a leadership force to be reckoned with.

Lance—Ravenclaw/Slytherin

This guy was hard to pin down, as not only is the Ravenclaw primary typically the most adaptable primary (and has the potential to resemble any of the others) but also Lance starts out with the least mature primary of the whole cast, and he changes quite a bit over the story. He's definitely got a feel for right and wrong, which is assisted in its maturation by the confident and outspoken Gryffindor primaries of both Shiro and Allura, but more than either of them Lance approaches situations acknowledging his gut feeling and then asking "why". See 1x04 when he and Coran are leaving the bridge and Lance senses something’s wrong. Instead of immediately bolting he goes, “Wait, where’s Pidge?” and tries to figure out what’s going on.

Unlike some Ravenclaws he doesn't entirely dismiss his intuition, but he's much more laid-back about his approach to a situation then his Gryffindor leaders, interested in looking at all the angles of a problem before finding a middle ground that best fits the facts of the scenario. With said Gryffindor leaders he usually gets along fine, and he plays an important role as Shiro’s lancer by poking at the black paladin’s gut instincts to see the logic behind them, as well as by utilizing his spur-of-the-moment Slytherin secondary to get things done. He does tend to get frustrated with charge-in-half-cocked Keith, however, since an approach like that for Lance means risking the possibility of jumping to conclusions before an accurate picture has been obtained.

Lance's Slytherin secondary is what makes him the yin to Keith's yang, at least when it comes to combat, as this secondary’s highly adaptable strategic abilities makes him excellent at handling himself and other people in the heat of battle. The red and blue paladins work best together when Lance comes up with a plan and then lets Keith charge it headlong. It's worth noting that Lance is not involved in pre-combat strategy all that much. It is in the middle of combat where he shines, taking situational awareness to a whole new level and quickly formulating battle plans on the spot to adapt to changing circumstances and take advantage of unexpected opportunities.

This Ravenclaw/Slytherin combo makes Lance a quiet information gatherer—not the “knowledge for the sake of it” type like Pidge, or even actively seeking knowledge at all, but more someone who quietly files away facts and tidbits gathered through passive observation for when they might be useful. No one realizes he does this until he casually spits out a perfect conversion of minutes to doboshes or points out an alternate route nobody else noticed. This means he doesn’t always come across as intelligent, but when everything hits the fan he’s probably got a supremely practical collection of data that will be hugely useful in getting everyone out of whatever scrape they find themselves in this time.

When push comes to shove Lance has the potential to be an immovable rock—a Ravenclaw primary certain in his truth and a Slytherin secondary who knows where he stands. We haven’t really had the opportunity to see this in the show, however, both because Lance hasn’t been put into a situation where it’s called for and because he struggles with insecurity. Unlike Keith, whose insecurity comes from a belief that his instinctual priorities are screwed up and he can’t trust himself, Lance’s insecurity stems from the fact that, especially as a Slytherin secondary, he swaps masks moment to moment and so struggles with a two-fold problem of longing to “be real” and fear of being “found out”. He very rarely drops the masks to enter the Slytherin secondary “neutral state”, something that takes confidence and trust in the people around him; we really have only seen him do it for more than a few seconds when he’s talking to the mice in S5. (For an example of a confident Slytherin secondary who actually spend most of her time in the neutral state, look no further than Toph Bei Fong.) This exacerbates the insecurity problem because Lance is so desperately attached to his masks that he hasn’t looked beneath them much, so he struggles with self-understanding.

Lance has additionally been further crippled by the fact that Keith, as team leader, latched on to him as both a moral compass and strategist. The net result was that Lance effectively led the team by proxy, figuring out what they should do in a given situation and even if they should do it at all. It also locked Lance into the role of Keith’s right-hand man when Lance actually operates at his best shifting to fit whatever position is necessary at the time. He is most naturally a jack-of-all-trades (further exacerbating his feelings of isolation and uselessness, as he doesn’t have a “thing”), but being forced to act as Keith’s steering wheel and leash didn’t leave him much opportunity to do anything else. With Kuron as black paladin Lance still is stuck in this position to a degree, since he has to take over the role of charger that Keith left vacant (which leaves some of the adaptability to Allura, who is able to pull it off thanks to her Ravenclaw secondary but isn’t as natural as Lance when doing it). This situation, especially taking on the charger role, is threatening to burn Lance’s secondary. I get the impression that this has already started to occur, as our favorite blue boy is starting to seem more and more worn down as the story goes on.

What Lance needs is for someone to help him see that having masks isn’t a bad thing, and also that taking them off is okay. He actually could learn a lot from Shiro, who was quietly supporting him through S1 and 2, and from Keith, whose brash honesty about who he is (even if he doesn’t like it) is a great opportunity for Lance to gain some confidence. He needs to grasp firmly at truth so that truth can set him free, and then that freedom will give him the solid foundation to plant his feet when the need arises and tell the world, “No, you move.”

Pidge—Slytherin/Ravenclaw

At first gloss Pidge looks like a straight Ravenclaw, nerdy and obsessed with knowledge. And she definitely has a strong love of truth for truth’s sake and seeks out knowledge like a squirrel does acorns. However, once you start poking under the surface, this Ravenclaw primary-ness is in fact a very robust model bolstered by her Ravenclaw secondary. Her true primary is Slytherin, made evident by the fact that she is willing to throw everything out the window, go to any and all lengths, in order to help her family and friends. She even tells us this in 1x04 when she says to Allura, “My first priority is finding my family.”

This Slytherin primary is healthier and more mature than Keith’s, and it’s clearly been Pidge’s driving force her whole life. She’s got that healthy Slytherin self-interest, always pushing herself to be the best (at least when it comes to science, tech, and engineering). This drive is fueled by her honest love of knowledge, certainly, but also by her desire to be the best, not because she has any interest in rubbing it in people’s faces but because it’s something she wants. (What pride we do see in her usually stems from a job well done versus being smug about her intellectual superiority as such. One thing that’s fantastic about her journey as green paladin is her coming to realize and appreciate how much she doesn’t and can never know.)

She is fiercely devoted to her people above and beyond any semblance of logic. Witness her decision to leave team Voltron to go find Matt and Sam, despite the fact that (as the team and circumstances eventually convince her) she is best served in that endeavor by remaining with the team. When Zarkon uses Sam as a hostage to bargain for Lotor Pidge is beside herself at even the slightest suggestion that they won’t do everything possible to get her father back. Even Matt, who is definitely upset, doesn’t show nearly the same amount of wild desperation. And it is her devotion to her team that enables her to unlock the Green Lion’s vine cannon. She can and often does channel her Ravenclaw secondary when going about her commitment to her people—for example, creating an entire new identity for herself in order to infiltrate the Garrison and find her family, as well as building technology capable of scanning alien radio chatter. But that application of knowledge serves the larger purpose of finding and helping those she loves the most.

With her Ravenclaw secondary Pidge hoards knowledge of all kinds, though she tends to focus on science—specifically physics, engineering, and computers. She is all about contingency plans, tinkering with things to see what new stuff she can get it to do, breaking things into their component parts and mixing them up. She’s not an on-the-spot improviser like Lance; instead, she has a vast array of systems and methods that she switches between and sometimes smashes together in order to tackle a problem. On Olkarion she takes her understanding of binary and puts it into a new environment, enabling her to use their plant-based tech. She reverse engineers the maze walls to develop her own cloaking tech. Like her “Galra tracker” she puts the world through a filter of logic and data and breaks things apart to find patterns and methodologies. This gives her an impressive amount of adaptability within the wide limits of these operational methods, as she is able to take plans and processes and apply them or rearrange them to fit her purposes.

Hunk—Hufflepuff/Hufflepuff

I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that Hunk is a Hufflepuff primary. He loves people and community and has a deep, iron streak of justice that is terrifying when it comes out. A gentle soul, he still is willing to do whatever it takes to help the most in need, even if that means laying down on the wire or borderline bullying people into getting things done. This desire for justice overrides even his strong sense of self-preservation, which does tend to come across as cowardliness when contrasted with bold Gryffindor primaries like Shiro and Allura or everything-for-my-tribe Slytherin primaries like Pidge and Keith. Lance is the bridge between Hunk and these others, advocating for leaving to fight another day in the first episode. But both Lance and Hunk learn to think beyond themselves over time, and for Hunk the tipping point was the balmera.

Before going to the balmera, Hunk had agreed to participate in team Voltron but his heart wasn’t really in it. He was more doing it because it was expected, that’s what his friends were doing, and in all honesty he didn’t have much choice. Once he visited the balmera, however, and met its residents and saw what the Galra were doing to them, he committed entirely to the cause—and for him, it’s not “because it’s the right thing to do” (Shiro and Allura) or “my people are in danger” (Keith and Pidge). It’s because people, people and communities he cares about, are suffering, and they need someone to help them. That’s not to say he doesn’t still have moments of fear or nerves, but his devotion to this cause of helping the needy gives him the courage necessary to overcome his fear.

This dedication to community gives Hunk a commitment to justice that can be truly unnerving to see come out in someone so gentle. It happens only rarely, but when it does we see the full extent of Hunk’s quiet power and unyielding foundation. The best example is Rolo and Nyma when the bounty hunters hold up team Voltron on their way to the balmera. This incident happens largely because of Shiro and Allura’s idealistic Gryffindor primaries, and although Hunk doesn’t like the delay he hasn’t yet learned to push his point with his leaders (or to trust his instincts; Hunk is someone who has been a follower for most of his life, if only because he’s gentle and laid back enough to get pushed around by stronger personality types, and part of his growth is learning to stand up for himself and his beliefs). Once the bounty hunters’ true motives are revealed, the depth of Hunk’s fury is terrifying. Months later, when he encounters Rolo and Nyma again after the bounty hunters have joined up with the rebels, he is still angry—because they upset the scales of justice and injured the community and the overall good, and violating trust like that takes lots of time and lots of effort to overcome. It’s possible, but although he is willing to give new people the benefit of the doubt this Hufflepuff does not forgive serious grievances easily.

Hunk is a Hufflepuff secondary—the quiet, trustworthy, reliable guy who often gets overlooked until as a last resort he throws back the curtains to reveal a powerhouse surrounded by an unswervingly dedicated group of people - and often he doesn’t even throw back the curtains. People he didn’t even know were dedicated just show up to punch the lights out of whoever dared to mess with their precious cinnamon roll, often to Hunk’s surprise. He’s not an obviously inspirational community builder like Shiro, but he nevertheless quietly and unconsciously builds a loyal community that often takes him for granted because he blends in with the scenery most of the time. Even as they don’t notice he’s there, however, they pick up the bits of comfort and safety and quiet trust he offers them, making him a sort of glue in the woodwork—invisible, but holding everything together when the rubber meets the road. He lacks the Ravenclaw ability to adapt, but he still is a foundational secondary that the others lean upon in times of trouble.

He also has a wonderfully down-to-earth approach to things, pointing out that “we are in some kind of futuristic alien cat head right now” and, though he is certainly able to be impressed, he much prefers to see things as they truly are than as he would like them to be. As an extension of his sense of justice, he much prefers pure honesty to half-truths, and he really doesn’t seem to have a deceptive bone in his body. He pushes steadily through information until he uncovers the foundational truth of a matter.

To a degree he models a Ravenclaw secondary, gathering information about food and cultures and science (especially engineering and chemistry) and asking questions that often don’t even seem to occur to the others. But he lacks the adaptability of a true Ravenclaw secondary, instead using that secondary’s toolset only to the extent that it furthers the needs of his true Hufflepuff secondary.

Allura—Gryffindor/Ravenclaw

Allura’s strong Gryffindor primary is fed through her Ravenclaw secondary, making her a far more logical (and even coldly ruthless) Gryff than passionate, Hufflepuff secondary Shiro. This makes for an interesting paradox with their roles, as Shiro—the head—is deeply centered in feeling and instinct, while Allura—the heart—approaches things from a much more logic-based viewpoint. At the end of S1, when Allura is captured and Shiro is leading the team alone, he is undeterrable from his commitment to rescue Allura because he feels that’s the right thing to do, darn it, and to heck with all the reasons why it’s not. (There are actually some very solid strategic reasons for rescuing Allura, but Shiro is totally uninterested in them. This is simply the right thing to do; reason and cold logic is secondary.) Upon the team’s arrival Allura’s immediate reaction is “why the heck did you come here, that was so stupid.” Shiro’s role as the passionate head is guided by Allura operating as the rational heart.

Now, that’s not to say Allura is always actually truly rational about her choices and beliefs. Witness her “never trust a Galra” mentality of most of the first two seasons. Granted, she has some pretty good reasons for it—the Galra kind of massacred her entire people and destroyed her planet, after all—but when faced with a heap of evidence that there actually are trustworthy Galra it takes her a while to warm up to the idea. The fact that she does eventually come around is evidence of her willingness to actually listen to reason, not just the way she wants or believes things to be, but her difficulty in doing so is rooted in her Gryffindor passion and stubbornness.

She seems to be a Ravenclaw secondary, but stretched thin on time, resources, energy, and mental capacity, she focuses much more on practical knowledge, whether that be the ins and outs of the Castle systems, alchemy, or matters of state and diplomacy. She doesn’t have the luxury of delving into something just for the sake of learning about it, but she tends to know a bit about everything. And she does have a wide range of strategies and behavioral structures that often emulate the other secondaries—Gryffindor charging (probably learned from Alfor, and this is usually just in combat), Hufflepuff caring and toil (she’s taken on a task that can’t be solved in a day, after all), and even Slytherin manipulativeness (she never speaks untruth but she does lie by omission during S1, avoiding telling the paladins who the previous black paladin was until that lack of information puts all their lives in jeopardy).

This extensive and varied array of mechanisms at her disposal indicates a widely applicable and decently adaptive Ravenclaw secondary. However, the clear demonstration of traits of other secondaries, plus her “whatever is necessary to get things done” mindset, suggests that Allura is in danger of burning her secondary. There is a satisfaction when she completes a task that seems to indicate she hasn’t yet done so, but the risk is definitely there. She continues to take on more and more in order to further her goals, and although she is devoted to her team she’s not quite as capable as Shiro at fielding out tasks to those best suited to them. Granted, quite a bit of what she does can’t be fielded out—piloting the Castle, making wormholes, flying Blue, alchemy. But she’s stretching herself dangerously thin, and especially without Shiro there telling her to take a break when she’s pushing too far she is getting very close to tipping over the edge into exhausted slogging through tasks using whatever methods necessary.

Part of the problem, too, is she is not as well suited to Blue as Lance is. Blue is the middle ground Lion in pretty much every way—speed, armor, combat ability. It is a Lion meant to fill in the gaps between the others wherever and whenever necessary, which requires some degree of jack-of-all-trades functionality. Allura can do many things, but she doesn’t fit this description as well as Lance does, if only because there are other things she can do much better. Her Ravenclaw secondary means she is intellectually adaptable, but not necessarily situationally adaptable, at least to the same extent that Lance is. She’s able to make up the difference enough to get by, but the resulting adaptability isn’t as fluid as Lance’s and is hindered by her Gryffindor primary fixation on the end goal. This puts yet another bump in the cogs of team Voltron when Lance and Allura are in Red and Blue, and it gives Allura yet another ball to juggle, taxing her even more. She needs to get out of Blue and hand over to others those tasks that do not absolutely require her to do them, which will allow her to better and more fully do those things that do require her.

SECONDARY CAST and VILLAINS (Note: Most of these sortings tend more toward speculation, as we have often seen very little of these people on screen and so it is harder to make calls about some of them.)

Coran—Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw

Coran is hard to figure out because his whole life and person are channeled through his role as Allura’s servant, steward, and advisor. He’s definitely a constructionist house, but I ultimately peg him as a Ravenclaw primary because he doesn’t throw everything to the winds when Allura (the person he is devoted to above all else) is in danger the way you’d expect with a Slytherin primary. This doesn’t make him any less loyal to her, but threatened loyalties don’t have the same kind of earth-shattering power over him as they do over, say, Keith and Pidge.

He’s a situational secondary, but I have to go with Ravenclaw again here because he doesn’t have quite the Slytherin make-things-up-as-I-go tendency. And when everything hits the fan and he’s out of typical options he tends to panic instead of jumping on the duct tape and string and making something up on the fly. When we do see him improvise (e.g. that thing he did jumpstarting the Castle system with the bottle of alcohol at the end of S6) it’s with materials and data he’s noted and catalogued previously.

He definitely has a rather eclectic and not always useful mental hodgepodge of information, and he’s prone to get sidetracked on tangents about this or that interesting factoid. While not a scientist in the same sense that Pidge is, or dedicated to practicality like Allura, he still is curious and is happier the more he knows.

Krolia—Slytherin/Slytherin

This woman is a gorgeously unapologetic Slytherin primary and I love her for it. Her entire life is built around her deep motivation to protect those she loves most, especially Keith, and she demonstrates far more confidence and trust in the rightness of this drive and desire than he does. She may have a Gryffindor model for handling things outside of this primary—we don’t know what her reason for joining the Blades was, but although I can imagine several Slytherin motivations it could also have stemmed from a modeled Gryffindor idealism—but we haven’t had the chance to see much of anything except her Slytherin primary in canon.

I have to go with Slytherin secondary for Krolia, too. She seems to spend much of her time in her neutral state (and as such Lance may actually be able to learn a lot from her—I totally want to see her adopt our favorite blue boy and aggressively mother him to his wits’ end), which results in a beautiful bluntness that looks a lot like her son’s Gryffindor secondary. However, she sorts into the Slytherin secondary because she is a master of subtle manipulation and deception. Witness how effectively she’s able to integrate herself into not one but multiple high-profile Empire missions, manipulating the people around her into believing that she is entirely committed to the mission—and even getting them to self-destruct.

Romelle—Gryffindor/Gryffindor

Dedicated to doing the right thing come hell or high water, Romelle exemplifies the Gryffindor primary. She distrusted Lotor based first on nothing but a gut feeling, and maintained that stance despite her brother’s protests (and all evidence) to the contrary. Then, when her brother’s death validated her concerns, she grieved, but she was also furious and determined not to let such a thing happen ever again. So when an opportunity arose to take Lotor down—offered by another half-Galra and a full Galra, no less—this Gryffindor secondary carpe diemed so hard she broke Lotor. I am so on board for her and Krolia teaming up, the best of Gryffindor and Slytherin united as a force to be reckoned with.

Matt Holt—Gryffindor or Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw or Slytherin?

Sheesh, we just don’t have enough info for this guy. He doesn’t have quite the dedication to his people that you’d expect from a true Slytherin primary—see my analysis of Pidge—so not that. I kinda like the idea of him as a Gryffindor primary like his father, but I can also see him as a Hufflepuff or even maybe a Ravenclaw. As for his secondary… I’m leaning toward one of the improvisational ones, probably Ravenclaw, since he doesn’t really seem to have the role-switching and manipulativeness of a Slytherin. But he could be a Hufflepuff secondary with a Ravenclaw model… argh. We just don’t have enough canon info to sort him.

Sam Holt—Gryffindor/Ravenclaw

One of my few exceptions to sorting people based on material from S7, Sam’s got a commitment to doing the right thing that breaks through even the somewhat laid-back, nerdy professorial persona he usually demonstrates (not an act, it’s just the way he is when he hasn’t had that Gryffindor passion stirred). This persona feeds from his Ravenclaw secondary, and though he may model Ravenclaw primary when in a science setting his love of truth is motivated by a deep belief that truth aligns with the right thing to do. (Interestingly enough, in a family of scientists, with the possible but unlikely exception of Matt, none of the Holts are Ravenclaw primaries. At least two secondaries, but no primaries. Yay for bucking stereotypes.)

Colleen Holt—Slytherin/Gryffindor

Again an exception to my desire not to use any material past S6, this sorting is also based a bit on my own headcanons and plans for this character. Colleen is devoted to her family before anything and everything else, and she’s willing to tear apart institutions, governments, and other people if that’s what it takes to protect her loved ones. She’s got an Irish passion as befits her name, and that passion is focused entirely on her husband and children. She’s incredibly direct about this passion, too, cutting right to the heart of things instead of weaving around and greasing up the problem the way Krolia does, though she’s certainly willing and able to at least assist with subterfuge. She helped Katie get into the Garrison, after all.

Lotor—Ravenclaw/Slytherin

Lotor has constructed a belief system that is totally foreign to every other character in the show, comfortable in the dichotomies and contradictions of that belief system and convinced that everything he does is for some vague greater good—a good he, conveniently, gets to define. He has sought truth and information, certainly, as befits a Ravenclaw primary, but instead of trying to learn the way things truly are and shape his beliefs around the reality he uncovers he has created a system built upon his own desires about the way he wants the world to be. It is beautiful in a terrifying way—a man so thoroughly convinced that he is right that he’s willing to harvest the very life-force of others in order to further his ends, convinced that this is the right thing to do and that not doing so would be a failing on his part.

He exemplifies the ultimate levels of Slytherin manipulativeness and role-shifting, to the point where he seems to have deceived himself into believing in some of the masks he puts on (e.g. the noble hero who sacrifices the few for the sake of the many). When the masks are finally all stripped away at the end of S6, he hates what he sees so much that he can’t accept that what lies beneath is truly him. It is someone else’s fault, it is because someone else has denied what he wanted, and so he lashes out.

This guy is kind of evil Lance, which is a really frightening thought—and probably part of why Lance seemed to dislike him the most out of the whole team (aside from Lance’s crush on Allura). Lance was possibly able to see, at least subconsciously, through some of the scheming and persona, something like “if that were me I wouldn’t trust myself”. I wish we’d seen more of them going intellectually head to head. Having two sides of the same coin pushing at each other—one who’s had centuries to delve for truth and has chosen to use that time and knowledge to shape his beliefs the way he wants them to be, not as things are, the other who is not yet twenty but despite his facades and many broken wishes tries to take the world as it is and is willing to accept truths he doesn’t like—man, that would just be fantastic to watch. And a great chance for Lance to shine.

Zarkon—Gryffindor/Hufflepuff

This is largely speculation and mostly based on what we see in the flashback episode, but… Zarkon, at least in his younger years, had the gut instinct thing going as a leader, and he put his nose to the grindstone and plowed ahead with a course of action once it had his convictions behind it. Witness his very much felt dedication to Honerva and her cause—investigating the rift—despite any evidence to the contrary. Obviously he got his priorities screwed up, but the passion he put into his decisions really feels Gryffindor to me, coupled with the rooted stubbornness and the community building of the Hufflepuff secondary (note how readily the other original paladins respond to him as a commander).

I actually don’t think he’s burned his Gryffindor primary by the time we get to the show’s present day. Quite a few of his decisions—e.g. dragging off one of his generals based on very little evidence, as the guy actually made a decent strategic move all things considered—feel like they’re being made based on feeling versus logic (or anything else). Again, the guy’s obviously got his priorities and methods screwed up, but the Gryffindor primary MO is there. He looks like he may have shifted to Gryffindor secondary, or at least a model, but I think that’s more because he’s got a (not unfounded) high opinion of his own prowess in combat, so he charges right in ready to hack enemies to pieces. This actually only backfires on him once Shiro gets the black bayard back and Voltron is able to stab Zarkon with the flaming sword. (Haven’t watched the Zarkon vs. Lotor fight lately so I can’t call anything based on that.)

So all things considered I think Zarkon is an example of what happens when a Gryffinpuff (I’m convinced the Lions have types, by the way) falls—not burns, but falls. Goes bad. Uses his ability to inspire for evil purposes instead of good, and denies evidence that the course he’s set himself on is wrong. In all likelihood, considering this sorting’s penchant for gathering people close to them and relying on those people, I would imagine that bad influences contribute in a large degree to this fall—at the very least because the Gryffinpuff can’t bring himself to acknowledge that he’s been wrong about his beliefs, choices, and loyalties once problems start cropping up.

Honerva/Haggar—Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw

One of the very first things we hear Honerva say is a dismissive comment about any knowledge that doesn’t stem from science: “our ancestors thought lightning was shot from the bows of the gods until science proved otherwise”—in other words, if we haven’t studied it, tested it, poked at it, that knowledge is suspect at best. She is dedicated to her alchemical work beyond any bounds of reason, pursuing truth in such an obsessive, reckless way that she jeopardizes and ultimately brings about the destruction of her husband’s planet. She’s the sort of scientist who thinks that if we can do it we should do it—truth is to be pursued at all costs, and all possibilities must be explored. While in theory noble, this Ravenclaw primary drive needs to be tempered with reason to prevent injury and loss of life. Honerva refuses to listen to reason and so dooms herself and millions of others.

This primary is so overpowering that we don’t really get a good feel for her secondary, but she’s got a methodical approach to things that suggests Ravenclaw. We don’t actually see her much in situations where everything’s hit the fan and she has to pick up the pieces, but the one time this happens—at the end of S2, when Allura faces her down and destroys the quintessence-draining device—Haggar can’t improvise fast enough to prevent it from happening, and seems to short circuit when something unexpected happens. So she’s got plenty of knowledge and data, but if something falls outside any and all operational systems that she possesses, she can’t really make something up on the fly. I really don’t think she could be a Hufflepuff secondary, because despite her methodical way of functioning she doesn’t have the community-building qualities of a Puff. She really doesn’t seem interested in people at all, actually, having friends and family but willing to jeopardize those people and relationships for pursuit of knowledge. Definitely not a Hufflepuff.

Sendak—Gryffindor/Gryffindor, Slytherin, or Ravenclaw

Really not sure on this guy, though I do get a passionately evil Gryffindor primary vibe off him. Kinda Jayne Cobb from Firefly. And potentially any secondary except Hufflepuff. I think. Slytherin doesn’t seem all that likely either, though, so I’m going to guess at a straight Gryffindor.

Alfor—Slytherin/Gryffindor

Further evidence that the Lions have a type, Alfor shares the Slytherdor combo with Keith. He’s a lot more cheerful and optimistic about it than Keith, at least in his younger years, and he sometimes seems to charge more as a lark than a grim necessity, trusting his friends to bail him out if he gets in over his head. That’s not to say he’s irresponsible—he seems to be a highly competent and reasonable ruler and alchemist—but when he’s got loyal companions backing him up he’s much more willing to go, “Hey guys, bet I can’t do this!” and jump headlong into something crazy.

It is his Slytherin primary that gets him into trouble when Zarkon and Honerva start to slip. Loyal to a fault, Alfor is willing to give his trusted friends the benefit of the doubt, assuming that they know what they’re doing. He is devoted to those he holds dear and is optimistic enough that he doesn’t see their faults until it’s too late.

I do suspect that he burned at least his secondary, because the few glimpses we see of his last hours suggests a much more worn, damaged person than the enthusiastic young king we first met. He may have even burned his primary, at least to a degree, though he remained loyal to at least Allura.

Iverson—Gryffindor/Gryffindor or Hufflepuff

I can see much younger Iverson and Sam Holt bonding over their shared primary, gung-ho about the world and space and adventure with Sam providing the Ravenclaw brains and Iverson providing the inspirational enthusiasm. His secondary could go either way, I think—we don’t get to see him in action much, and the one time we do, when he stands up to defend the Holts against the admiral (again breaking my past S6 rule), it’s driven from his passionate Gryffindor primary. Though he’s a very direct sort of person, suggesting a Gryffindor secondary, I could also see him as a rough-around-the-edges Gryffinpuff in the same vein as Shiro. Their friendship is important to me.

Slav—Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw

This crazy genius is the most eccentric Ravenclaw of all time. In all his speculations about realities, pursuing truth in an unbelievably intellectual way, he’s become so disconnected from this reality that he just doesn’t seem to be functioning on ground level with everyone else. He is all about systems, methodologies, poking and testing and experimenting and running analyses on the statistical likelihood of X event happening in this reality. Brilliant, insane Ravenclaw all the way.

Anyway, that’s it. Hope you enjoyed!

#sortinghatchats #vld #shiro #allura #lance #keith #pidge #coran #krolia #season 6

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sage-nebula · 5 years

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@nerd-bastard replied to your post: “I’m going to make numerous posts about season two of The Dragon Prince...”

well said. i'm still a little raw after vld, and part of me is still upset that the writers deemed it necessary for them to die, but yeah, p much everything you already said. i'm willing to try and trust them based on how clearly important social justice is to their story.

First, I’m sorry this reply is so late! I laid down to rest pretty much immediately after I wrote that post last night and then slept for . . . a long time, haha. But I do want to reply to you, because I have seen a lot of comparisons to VLD ever since The Dragon Prince released, but I really, truly believe we don’t have anything to worry about here. I truly believe there is not even a sliver of a chance that The Dragon Prince will end up anything like VLD. And if I can pass a bit of that reassurance onto you, then I want to (or at least, I want to try).

(Note: This is very long, and also full of VLD negativity / salt / criticism.)

Before anything else, I just want to say that I completely understand being burned by VLD. I don’t know how much you know about my personal feelings on it given that you just started following me recently, but I actually dropped the show after season six because the way Lotor was treated in season six made me so upset that I had to miss work the next day because I was so physically ill from panic attacks. I’m a mixed-race child abuse survivor myself, and so to see Lotor treated the way that he was---to have JDS and LM confirm in a post-season interview that their intention really was to say, “unless you have a good parental figure in your life [like Keith had Shiro, was the example they used], you’ll end up evil and/or just like your abusive parents” was just too much for me. There were already a thousand reasons why I was upset with them for things they had done in VLD and in interviews (e.g. how they used the slur “half-breed” to refer to mixed-race characters, their treatment of female characters such as the generals, and so on), but that was the final straw. I know what happened in seasons seven and eight because it was impossible for me not to hear about it given how big the fandom is, so I know all about the queerbaiting with Adam and what their intentions were with him and Shiro’s sexuality, but I didn’t actually watch myself (outside of select bits of s8 because I couldn’t resist childhood flashbacks for Lotor), and I will not watch anything JDS or LM work on ever again. They have no respect or care for people like me, so I will not have any for them.

So I completely, completely understand still feeling hurt and upset over VLD. Believe me when I say that I am in the same boat, and I have nothing but empathy for you. But I also really, truly believe that we have nothing to fear when it comes to The Dragon Prince and its crew.

To begin with, just some base comparisons:

Voltron: Legendary Defender was produced by DreamWorks Animation, and though both LM and JDS have said that they were fans of the original 80s Voltron series, I think it’s far more believable that they accepted their roles of executive producers for VLD more because of the paycheck and the career boost it would give them than anything else. Surely, DreamWorks decided to create and air a new Voltron series because of the revenue it would bring them, given that it was already an established franchise in the past and it came ready-made with plenty of toy ideas. Likewise, being at the helm of a product that would already garner plenty of attention and exposure for them---and a massive boost to their careers if it was successful---would no doubt be attractive to LM and JDS. I don’t believe that VLD was ever a passion project for any of them. It was a job. It was a job that maybe had the potential to be fun, but it wasn’t something they came up with themselves because of a love for the story or the characters. And keep in mind, I’m not trying to bash them by saying this, I’m just stating what I think are the facts. Plenty of creators in television and even film sign onto projects they don’t necessarily love so that they can get the money and boost to their careers to make the things they do. That’s just how the business is sometimes, and I think that’s what happened here.

But that’s not the case with The Dragon Prince. The Dragon Prince is being created by Aaron Ehasz, Justin Richmond, and Giancarlo Volpe. Aaron and Justin founded WonderStorm in order to make this show (and the game that will tie in to the show). They had the ideas and passion for the story and characters first, before they made their studio. And that’s just it: Their studio of nineteen people exists solely to tell this story. Particularly since we know that Netflix doesn’t have an overhead for the content they air, this means that Aaron, Justin, Giancarlo, and everyone else can do whatever they want with this story. They don’t have executives twisting their arms behind their backs. But more importantly, they’re also telling this story because they want to be. Since they’re a small indie company, this was actually something of a risk for them; they’re not guaranteed more seasons, they’re not guaranteed financial success, and if The Dragon Prince failed, that could mean the end of their company. So they’re not doing this for critical acclaim or money (especially since they all could have gone to other projects being created by major companies like DreamWorks if they wanted more money or exposure). They’re doing it because they have a story they love, that they want to tell, that they want to share with others. All nineteen of them are here because they care, not because it’s “just a job” that they have to do in order to make money or get more exposure and fame.

And that might be all fine and dandy, but just because you’re doing something as a passion project doesn’t mean that you’re doing right by those you want to represent, right? I would agree with that, but I think we can already see massive differences between VLD and The Dragon Prince when it comes to representation.

VLD was originally acclaimed for its representation due to having characters with different racial backgrounds in the main cast. The fact that Shiro was disabled was also critically acclaimed as well, because he was a disabled main character who was still allowed to be a hero. The thing is, however, that VLD’s representation is by and large shallow. They don’t really care about actually representing anyone as much as they care about getting the accolades and praise for doing the bare minimum. As a few examples:

Shiro is disabled, but his disability might as well be a cosmetic difference than anything else. We see Shiro affected by his PTSD a grand total of once (when Sendak was mocking him in season one), and we never see him really impacted by his arm. Keep in mind that I am NOT saying that his character arc should have revolved around his disability. Writing disabled characters with their disability as their only personality trait is horrible writing, and would be even worse than what they actually did. But what I am saying is that while losing his arm and having it replaced with galra tech should have been something traumatizing for Shiro, we never actually see that. We never see him experience phantom pains from his missing limb (which he could do even with the galra arm, as we see with Edward Elric and his automail in the FMA manga). I can’t remember a time when the arm malfunctioned or broke down to the point where he only had one arm in a potentially dangerous situation, and had to cope. Instead, in all honesty, his arm just looked cool and gave him a ton of abilities he wouldn’t have without it. Whereas Edward Elric has phantom pains with his automail, has it break repeatedly, can’t go into very cold or very hot temperatures without risking serious injury and so much more, Shiro’s arm is pretty much there just to look cool and offer convenient solutions to galra problems. He’s disabled, yes, but he’s not shown actually having any of the experiences that disabled people with prosthetic limbs in real life have.

Similarly, we find out in season seven that he had a chronic illness . . . but we never actually see him experiencing that in the show itself. He had a chronic illness as we find out in flashbacks, but in seasons 1-6 he was never shown actually suffering from that chronic illness. The reason given is that Haggar had it removed while experimenting on him (which . . . makes his kidnapping a good thing because he would have died otherwise? What??), but the point still remains that while Shiro could have been excellent representation for people with chronic illness had we seen him have at least some effects of chronic illness on the show (needing medication at the least, or having some fatigue symptoms, or something), he wasn’t, because without being told that he had chronic illness in flashbacks in season seven, no one would have known. I’ve seen people say that he’s supposed to be representative of the chronically ill, but in my personal opinion invisible representation is not representation. It feels an awful lot more like JDS and LM just wanted to slap another representation label on him without doing any of the legwork and call it a day.

They included more female characters, but used them as plot devices or supports for male characters. I distinctly remember a pre-season three interview when LM was gushing about how excited she was for Lotor’s generals, because they were generals now instead of being a part of a harem as they apparently were in the 80s version (I didn’t watch the 80s version, so I couldn’t tell you). But at the end of the day, Acxa, Zethrid, Narti, and Ezor were glorified plot devices or supports for male characters, and other female characters on the show didn’t fare much better. A quick rundown:

Acxa was defined by her relationships to either Lotor or Keith. She was either Lotor’s most loyal general, wanting to carry through his vision or support him endlessly, or she was so moved by Keith’s sparse interactions with her that she wanted to do everything that he did. It briefly seemed as though Acxa did have her own motivations when she turned on Lotor in season four in order to protect Ezor and Zethrid, but in season six that was wiped away by showing that it was all a ploy and that she never lost her loyalty to Lotor in the first place. Don’t misunderstand, I love her relationships with Lotor and Keith as I write them in my works, but I also take care to give Acxa her own backstory and motivations that aren’t dependent on her relationships with those male characters. In canon, we didn’t get that. Not at all.

Narti was a disabled character who was both blind (unless linked with Kova) and mute. She was also abruptly killed off for no reason other than to give Lotor and the other generals a reason to separate. Narti was never given characterization, backstory, or a real purpose in the narrative. She was apparently trusted enough by Lotor to be given his beloved cat, but that ended the moment he struck her down. I used to think that perhaps this was foreshadowing for how he’d react when he found out about Shireplica, which would in turn set the rest of Team Voltron against him, but that wasn’t even it. Instead, it was just that Narti was seen as disposable by LM and JDS, possibly because since she was blind and mute, they didn’t consider her as worthwhile as the other generals. Disgusting.

Ezor and Zethrid were plot devices. In the beginning it seemed that they surely had motivations and character arcs of their own. Ezor was the most upset about Narti’s death, and was the first to call for mutiny, whereas Zethrid only agreed after the first attempt at the rift gateway failed. But as the seasons continued it became more than clear that they were only there to do as the plot commanded them to do. Zethrid suddenly wanted to conquer things in season five despite agreeing with Lotor’s vision before. Ezor was “glad to be on Lotor’s side again” in season six despite being the most upset over Narti and the first to call for mutiny in season four. I fully believe that the only reason why they were written as a couple in later seasons is because they were the only two remaining generals of Lotor’s who didn’t already have another potential love interest (as Acxa had Keith). I also believe they only miraculously survived in season eight due to backlash to their deaths in season seven. But whatever the case, it’s clear that Ezor and Zethrid were not given consideration as individuals. I can’t even list them individually here because that’s how little consideration JDS and LM gave them. It’s goddamn sad.

Krolia only exists to be Keith’s mom. That’s it! At first it might seem as though she did have her own motivations and goals when she was introduced in season five. It seemed highly likely that she left Keith behind because she believed in the cause and the mission to overthrow the Empire, something that she and her son would end up having in common (because Keith would likely make the same choice). But in season six, this was dashed. No, she was perfectly happy to abandon the mission and war to have a family, and only left because she wanted to protect Keith. Fuck the billions of people who were enslaved and dying that Krolia could have cared about---fuck her friends and found family in the Blade of Marmora that she could have cared about, fuck everything else she had going on in her life before she crash landed on Earth that she could have cared about---no, she only cared about Keith. And her role in the show from that point onward was just to be his mom, too. She did end up leading the galra alongside Kolivan later on in season eight, but everything she did was for Keith. She didn’t have any interests, any passions, any goals or opinions that weren’t tied to him in some way. She wasn’t created as her own character, she was created to be Keith’s Mom and that’s it. Disappointing. More important female characters were able to stand on their own for the most part, but even they were done dirty in similar ways. Pidge’s entire character arc revolved around wanting to find her father and brother, for the most part. She had little brief spots of wanting to connect with nature here or there, but for the most part it was all about her male relatives and how she wanted to find them. Her character was never explored more deeply than that. And Allura just wanted to follow in Alfor’s footsteps. All the choices she made with regards to wanting to be a paladin or an alchemist were all because her dad did it first. Rather than giving her an arc about wanting to carve out her own legacy, or realizing that she should want that because Alfor wasn’t the perfect paragon of goodness she believed he was, she instead just wanted to make him proud and that’s it. She was defined by how well she lived up to his legacy. (And that’s not even getting into the misogynoir of her ending, my god.) At the end of the day, LM and JDS wanted to get props for having Strong Female Characters™ without actually writing female characters in a strong way. It’s shallow representation at best.

And finally, the issue of queerbaiting and Bury Your Gays with Adam and Shiro. Prior to season seven, JDS and LM announced that Shiro was gay and had been in a relationship with another instructor at the garrison, Adam. Fans were promised that we would meet Adam and season seven. They generated as much buzz and fanfare as they could, got everyone excited . . . and then not only was it not evident without knowing beforehand that Shiro and Adam were romantically involved, but Adam died about five minutes after his introduction. What they essentially did was pull a JK Rowling: We only knew that Shiro was gay in season seven thanks to them telling us beforehand (similarly to Dumbledore’s “reveal”), and Adam died immediately so there would be no chance of a reconciliation. Shiro did later get to marry a man and have a kiss and all, which is at least something (though the fact that we didn’t get to see that relationship develop is highkey disappointing), but that doesn’t change what they did in season seven. To make matters worse, JDS admitted in his open letter that they knew they were doing the “Bury Your Gays” trope, but that they (paraphrased) “hoped that the reveal of Shiro’s orientation would overshadow it.” I.e., they just wanted the brownie points for saying, “Hey, Shiro’s gay!” instead of actually showing him in a loving relationship with another man and letting the story tell itself. They didn’t want to actually write a queer character or queer relationship; they just wanted the praise and positive buzz for saying they did.

And that’s the same pattern that almost all of VLD’s representation falls into. With the exception of the racial diversity on the show (and even that fails in some areas, such as the writing hinting that mixed-race galra are treated badly, but never delving further into it, though at least we did have skin color diversity among the human characters), VLD’s representation was shallow and only there for brownie points and accolades. The VLD staff did not actually care about representation; they just wanted the awards for having a diverse show. As far as I can recall, I believe that they only started talking about queer representation once people started pestering them about it on twitter. To that end, we could even surmise that it was never originally planned (which would explain why Shiro did not ask Keith about Adam after first waking up in season one, because even if they had broken up, Shiro had planned on marrying that man; you can’t tell me he wouldn’t have cared or been curious), but that they just slapped it on once they saw it would garner positive publicity after shows like Steven Universe aired. Everything LM and JDS ever did was for their own glory; it was never out of genuine care and consideration.

By contrast, The Dragon Prince has given us both representation and care. As another brief rundown:

General Amaya is a deaf character who speaks in ASL and who was created by the crew working with deaf and hard of hearing individuals to make sure she was portrayed authentically. The crew has said in numerous interviews that once they decided to make Amaya deaf, they worked with numerous deaf and hard of hearing people to make sure they were portraying her authentically. They had deaf and hard of hearing people doing ASL in the studio so that the animations were accurate and authentic, too. They didn’t just decide that Amaya was deaf and call it a day; they actually worked with people in that community to make sure that her portrayal would really speak to others in said community, that she wouldn’t be an offensive stereotype or a shallow presentation. And even more than that, we see how Amaya’s disability has informed her character and arc. While she can read lips (and the ability she has to do so is a bit realistic, but that’s been addressed by the creators saying they did a bit of leeway for the sake of the story flow), she still has an interpreter with her in her season one appearances, and we see that her soldiers have learned ASL as well. In fact, it’s because one of the soldiers knows ASL in season two that he is able to tip Amaya---and only Amaya---off to the fact that there are sunfire elves holding him hostage. Amaya being deaf doesn’t define her character, but we do see how it informs her character (and her relationship with her sister, when she and Sarai share a dirty joke that those who don’t know ASL don’t understand!), as well as how it informs and affects the plot.

The female characters are ALL well-rounded, and none of them are dependent on male characters for their arc. Honestly, I have so much to say about the lady characters in The Dragon Prince that I could be here all day if I tried to do a rundown like I did above for VLD, but the simple fact of the matter is that all of the lady characters---even ones we only get glimpses of, such as Sarai---show that they have thoughts, motivations, and character arcs that aren’t dependent on their relationships with male characters in the show. To try to keep it brief:

Rayla was raised and trained by Runaan to be an assassin, and she does want to get Azymondias back to the dragon queen, yes. But she’s also motivated by the sense of shame she has over her parents abandoning their duty as Dragon Guards to flee for their own lives instead. She’s motivated by a deep, internal sense of Right and Wrong that pushes her to hesitate to kill those who aren’t attacking her, and to defy Runaan’s orders once she learns that the egg wasn’t shattered after all. This same internal sense of Right or Wrong has her questioning her job as an assassin in season two, and pushes her to defend the defenseless dragon that Soren and Claudia want to chop to bits. She cares quite a lot about Callum and Ezran, given that it’s heavily implied that they’re the first friends she’s ever had her own age, but she’s not afraid to argue with (or even temporarily separate from) them in order to do what she feels is right. She’s her own character, and even if any of the male characters were removed, she’d have enough to stand on her own.

Claudia was taught dark magic by her father, Viren, and she cares a lot about her brother Soren, yes. However, she also has clear passion and love for dark magic; she considers it “fun” to turn chains into snakes, gets super excited when she has a new breakthrough, and is fascinated by magical ruins and artifacts. She studies magic not because she wants to be like her father or because she wants to make him proud, but because it genuinely fascinates her and she loves pushing her own potential. She’s also impatient and frustrated when her “shortcuts” don’t work out; she uses dark magic for convenience, as seen when she uses it to make pancakes, and she throws tantrums when things don’t go her way. She also has little regard for lives that aren’t human. She’s her own character, and even if any of the male characters were removed, she would still have enough character and motivation to stand on her own.

Sarai was Harrow’s wife, and mother of Callum and Ezran. Lesser shows would have just left her as that. But even though we’ve had hardly any time to get to know Sarai, we see that she was so much more than that. We see little details, like how she had a sweet tooth and felt that dreams that weren’t dirty were “boring.” We also see how she was Harrow’s closest adviser when she was alive, and how she “advised” him through sparring matches. We see how she was passionate that all life was sacred, how she argued against killing Xadians for the benefit of humans, even those humans in her own kingdom. We see how she was willing to stand by Harrow even when she disagreed with him, and that she didn’t let go of her disagreement, but still did what she felt was Right. And we also see that even when she disagreed, she could still see when the success of the mission was more important than anything else, as she gave her life to save Viren’s so that the people of Katolis and Duren would live. Sarai was her own character with her own motivations, and would have been strong even if she hadn’t been Queen of Katolis. These are just three brief examples, but the way that characters such as Amaya, Ellis, Lujanne, and Aanya were portrayed follows these same lines. The female characters in The Dragon Prince are written to be people rather than Strong Female Characters™. Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond never bragged about having strong female characters on their show, but they didn’t need to for us to see what a diverse and well-rounded cast of female characters they have.

Finally, the queer representation. In season one it was strongly hinted that Runaan and Tinker Elf from the credits were in a relationship, and I’m of the opinion that Aaron recently confirmed on twitter that Runaan is in fact queer (because when someone asked him if Runaan was the queer character who died, Aaron said “we all know Runaan isn’t dead :)” which would imply that while he’s not dead, he is queer). Unfortunately, they’re not happy together just yet, but I have hope that Runaan will be saved in the coming seasons, that we’ll get to meet Tinker, and that we’ll get to see them happy together. I hope so. Then there’s Aanya’s mothers. I already spoke about this in the post you replied to, so I won’t go on about it at length again, but I will point out that no one on the crew bragged about having queer representation this season (it was a Hypable reviewer who brought it up), nor was their relationship ambiguous in the show itself as Shiro’s and Adam’s was. Moreover, when Aaron addressed the fans, he agreed that fans had a right to be upset that they were, promised more representation in the future, and asked us to trust him. Rather than growing angry at the fans who were upset and liking petty salt posts defending him on twitter the way JDS did before admitting that all he wanted were brownie points, Aaron sympathized with the fans and promised to keep listening. And with the way they improved the animation after hearing fan feedback, I believe that they’ll take this to heart in the future. We already know that Ezran’s choice at the end of this season wasn’t originally planned, but that they went with it because they listened to his character. This tells us they aren’t married to their plot, and are instead writing to character. I believe that they’ll take all this into consideration moving forward.

No show is perfect, because no content creator is perfect. I’m not saying that The Dragon Prince hasn’t or will never make mistakes. But I am saying that we have already seen five billion times more care and consideration from the crew of The Dragon Prince than we ever saw from VLD. All the cards are in place for The Dragon Prince to truly do right by its story, characters, and fans, and that comes right down to the crew and what they’ve already shown us. Any depth and care that VLD had came from the fans rather than the creators or the show itself. With The Dragon Prince, we see depth and care within the first episode or two, and that has never lessened. I completely understand being burned by VLD, because I was, too, but The Dragon Prince is an entirely different project by an entirely different team from an entirely different studio and is on an entirely different (much higher) level. VLD’s sins have no place here, and I truly feel that we have nothing to worry about.

#nerd-bastard #//#///#////#/////#voltron salt #voltron negativity #representation

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