#subtle mentions of klance

[klanceficatalogue]

YES YALL ARE BACK!! gimme some recs to fall back head first into the klance fandom (ofmd and good omens have been giving me brainrot recently and i miss my boys) fluff, mutual pining, and under 15k appreciated! so happy y’all are back!!

WOO sure! - K

blind spots by adelfie (1/1 | 3,896 | Teen and Up)

Lance knows something’s wrong. Keith turns his gaze on him, dark eyes latching onto him like an anchor. Normally this is when Lance can think of something stupid to say to make Keith smile. Bonus points if he can get a laugh. Usually it isn’t hard — smiles come easy when it’s them. But something is wrong, and Lance knows that Keith’s smile will be the farthest thing from him if he says it. -- Lance gets hurt during a mission with Keith and the Blades.

//injuries

In a Cabin By the Sea by wittyy_name (1/1 | 11,397 | Teen and Up)

Time seems to stand still on Keith’s quiet little beach. Far from civilization, in an old cabin filled with memories, he often feels like he’s living in a bubble. A peaceful bubble, but a solitary one. While he can’t imagine living anywhere else— far too drawn to the magic of the ocean and the beauty in silence— he sometimes wishes that his home was a little less cold and a little less lonely. Those wishes come true the day he rescues an injured sea lion on the beach. It just takes him a while to figure it out.

better together by ShatterinSeconds (1/1 | 4,553 | Teen and Up)

“But you decided to get stuck with me for months on end.” Lance’s gaze shifts back to Keith. “Why?” “You’re the only one who can deal with my bullshit and call me out on it,” Keith continues to indulge Lance. “Not to mention your command and combat skills.” “All true. You are a bit of a handful.” Lance flushes a light shade of pink at the praise but it must not be as subtle as he thinks because he hears Keith whisper, “Now that’s cute.” (or, Lance pines for Keith in not so subtle ways)

(past allura/lance)

[shiranai-atsune]

VLD gKND (cuz’ I couldn’t think of an actual title)

I just had a burst of inspiration and it actually got me to write again after such a long time! I wrote this little piece of fanfiction based on another fandom and a bunch of other ideas I had in my storage. I hope you give it a chance to read it. Tell me how it is, be honest but go easy on me.

Write a scene based on the gKND trailer. Lance is Nigel while Lotor is Chad.

Set Post Season 7. Season 8 is disregarded.

Lance is part of the Alliance, one of the members of the Great Diamond Authority. Her outfit is a combination of armor and a dress, like Arturia Pendragon, but there is a cut on the chest revealing her Blue Diamond gemstone.

Red had agreed with Lana’s desire to retrieve Lotor She was glad he understood, they had actually begun to become quite close. Although she missed Blue, she and Red had something greater of a bond entirely, seeing as their time together excessed her time with Blue.

Lance took Red and teamed up with Honerva to gain access to the Quintessence field and retrieve Lotor. There, she double-crossed Honerva (guess she’s teaming up with the Paladins to stop Lance and the Alliance?), took the Altean colonials to Pink Diamond’s Human (now also Lance’s Altean) zoo, and turned Lotor into C.C. (putting him in that weird prison suit outfit and putting him inside a capsule dome which is thought to hold poison gas)

In a big but dark room, Lana stands, her finger hovering over a large red diamond-shaped button. It was the button that would activate the Alliance’s Diamond Starkiller base.

A bead of sweat rolls down her cheek as Lana takes a deep breath. She is nervous, pressured by her higher ups to make this decision. She is aware that after making this choice, there is no going back. She knew that she has to make sacrifices in order to reach her goal, even if that sacrifice involved the genocide of billions of lives.

She slowly lowered her finger, trying to stop herself trembling, and inwardly hoping that her observers are far away enough to not notice her nervousness, when she heard an all too familiar voice.

“NO! There are innocent people there! Your people! Your family! Your friends!”

It was Prince Lotor. After double crossing Haggar and shooting her off into space and to who knows where, she knocked him unconscious so he would not cause a disturbance during her trip back to one of the Alliance’s main base, the Kingdom of Lucis, where she and the rest of the Valvraves resided. She forgot to check the dose of sedate in the tranquilizer gun before shooting him. He surprised her, she panicked and in the heat of the moment, just picked it up and shot him.

He was once a prince. Great, powerful, and had plans to change the entire universe. She slightly turned her head to look at him, with his disheveled appearance; his beautiful long silky silvery white hair was now a tangled mess, his armor gone and now wears the orange jumpsuit for a regular prisoner. He is kneeled down to the grown, pulling back those plasma-charged chains linked to the floor and his handcuffs, restraining him from running towards her or to his escape.

“It’s riddled with the disease. Infested. Too far gone.” Lana coldly replied. Deep down inside of her, there was a part that was fighting, resisting, telling her not to go through with this.

“What about Team Voltron?” Lotor cried. “Coran, Allura, Shiro, Pidge, Hunk, and Keith!”

Of course, she never forgot about them. They were all-too familiar names she recited every night before going to bed. Hearing them out loud from another’s voice felt so foreign to her. Even though she never forgot about them and no matter how much time has passed, the last name had shot a pang through her heart and left her wondering about his, as well as the others’ well-beings.

“Keith would never let you do this…” He said in a condescending tone. She could tell her was pointing his finger at her and she doesn’t know why, exactly.

Lana had wanted to snap back, “How do you know that?! You don’t even know him!”. Lotor only knew Keith as an enemy from whatever intel he received from his spies. But even so, he was right and she knew it. That made her draw her finger back, her face twisting to one of conflict.

“There. Do we need more proof on where this one’s allegiance lies?” A screen showing the sigil of the Black Knights of Britannia.

Although the voice is distorted and disguised, she can tell whose voice that belongs to. Judging by the tone and accent, it’s safe to assume that it belonged to one of her (former?) comrades, now reduced to colleagues, and currently her greatest and most outspoken critic, Lelouch vi Britannia. He had never trusted her, and became even more suspicious of her once finding out that she worked with the enemy.

“Species… indicative.” Only two words were spoken but she can tell that belonged to either L-elf or A-Drei Karlstein of Dorssia. They may not have interacted much, but Lana can guess that he’s in neutral standing to her.

“This human not a Galactic Level operative, no?” That one, she could not tell, but he did not seem to be a high ranking observer as the screen only showed the symbol of the Alliance. She wondered who brought him, or her, here?

“There are no human Galactic Level operatives.” Again, an unfamiliar voice.

Another screen pops out showing older sister Veronica. Which made Lana wince as she could see her perfectly and clearly in all her royal Magius glory. “Ah actually that’s not true. There was- wait.” It was only then she had noticed that she was the only one being fully broadcasted with no filter.

“Oh I could never figure out these privacy features on these planetary conference calls.” Lana bit her lower lip to hold back her laughter. Her powerful older sister, a member of the one of the greatest beings in the universe, especially the royal family, royally screwing up and making herself looking like a goofball. Just like her.

“Gah! And now my video call filter isn’t working!” Veronica exclaimed. “Who was running the tech department while I was on Earth? Agent Moron?!” She threw her hands up in the air for extra dramatic effect.

“Who you calling moron?! You’ve been on Earth for so long you reek of the infection!” Ah, so it was Lelouch who was in charge while me and Veronica were… doing other things. Lana thought as Veronica just crossed her arms and glared at him all the while Lelouch yelled at her. Then he added, “Just like that one.” Lana knew that while she couldn’t see him, he was pointing at her accusingly, his face twisted to a scowl.

It was partially true. Lana and Veronica, who got into this whole Alliance business not more than 5 years (actually 2 for Lana since 3 years passed during the time she was in the Quintessence field in Season 6 Episode 6) ago after discovering their true heritage as members of the Royal Family of the Magius. But they were only two among the thousands of children their father, the king of the Magius, have.

It was then that the entire room was suddenly lighted up with multiple screens from multiple of the Alliance’s divisions and members and even more randomly lower ranked members. So many voices talking all at once, chattering on about gibberish nonsense that Lana could not catch on.

But they all fell silent once they heard that one voice… the distorted, but very much obviously White Diamond’s, authorative, and loud voice that made her sound so powerful, almighty… and big. All three of which she was.

“Please members of the Alliance…” she spoke in a soft tone. No visual screen, her voice boomed throughout the entire room, “The decision does not come lightly… the decision is…” she trailed off.

That last line sounded so… off to Lana. It was like White Diamond had snoozed off. She sounded so… like in a tone that made her seem far away.

She always struck Lana as somewhat of an anomaly. Odd, strange, Lana has no definite read on White. She was calm, soft-spoken, warm, and she almost seemed kind and motherly, but her mother Blue said she had quite a temper. Her Pearl reflected on what kind of “owner” White can be. Lana was glad she was not on White’s bad side. …yet?

“Don’t do it Lana! None of them deserve this! This isn’t what Voltron stood for!” Lana had almost forgotten about Lotor. He had been so quiet when Lelouch first came to interrupt them. She imagined he just sat there, in obedient silence as the Alliance just said what they said.

Voltron… it was where Lana had allied herself before siding herself to the Alliance, and by extension, to the Valvraves. Her thoughts drifted to her fellow Valvrave pilots and teammates, Ignis, Gladio, Prompto… Noctis… all the good times they shared… she had just like she had with Voltron… before White’s loud booming distorted voice interrupted her reminiscing.

“The decision… is Lana McClain’s…” White Diamond has slowly said. Her tone changed into one of warning. Mother Blue had told her that this means that White is slowly about to be set off. White was getting impatient. Lana knew she had to make a choice right now, and she had to pick the choice that would definitely please White.

A tear rolls down Lana’s cheek as she makes a determined stance, her decision now made and she now fully stands by it. There’s no going back… But Lana never planned on going back.

“For the Alliance!” she almost choked at her words, “Blitzendegen!”

With no further hesitation, she presses her finger down to the button.

As the screens around her shut off, and the large room is now suddenly dark again, Lana can only imagine hearing her beloved Keith’s voice…

“Lana McClain… what have you done?”

Haha! I somehow ended up imagining my own little Kingdom Hearts/Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover universe.

Another intro of the beginning, made by the talented lunadiane: http://shiranai-atsune.tumblr.com/post/179161320757/this-is-universekiddies-lunadiane-is-my-main

[blueskittlesart]

tell me more about voltron please

i considered putting this behind a readmore but i dont think i will actually. i think im going to subject you all to this. okay to begin with when i say voltron i am not talking about the 1984 anime voltron. i am talking about the american 2016 reboot of that anime, voltron legendary defender. it had eight seasons within 2 years and i was obsessed with it for the majority of my time in middle school. it did irreparable damage to my brain.

voltron was run by two people named lauren montgomery and joaquim dos santos. voltron voice actors and writers also had a kind of unprecedented amount of interaction with their fans, both in-person and online. the majority of those fans were adolescent lgbt people, as are fans of most netlfix cartoons. this did not end well. i'll get into it later.

the first two seasons of voltron came out to relative praise. it appeared, at the time, to be an interesting character-driven children's show, similarly to steven universe and other cartoons of its time. As I mentioned, a lot of fans were adolescent and/or young adult lgbt people. this obviously led to fandom, and, as a consequence, shipping culture. the problem was that the shipping culture in voltron was insane. there were two MAIN ships that people were into at the time. keith/lance (klance) and keith/shiro (sheith). for context, keith and lance were 17 & 18-year old classmates and established rivals who had several heart-to-heart/romantically-coded scenes in the first two seasons, causing fans to latch on HARD. shiro was keith's 26-year-old adopted brother.

the mid-stage voltron fandom literally coined the terms "anti" and "proship." "anti" originally meant "anti-sheith" that is the kind of fandom culture were talking about here. before voltron, these debates had obviously still been present in fandom, but voltron dialed everything up several notches. it was insane. I was put on blocklists for being anti-sheith, as a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD.

I mentioned earlier that the showrunners and voice actors had a kind of unprecedented amount of interaction with their fans, and i actually think this is what lead to the show's downfall. What happened was, basically, at the very beginning of the show's run, one of the showrunners teased that they would have lgbt rep in their show. everyone assumed that this rep would be either klance or sheith, and went insane about it. the staff of the show could not have a single event without some fan asking if shieth or klance was going to be canon. they would always dance around it, which i don't REALLY blame them for. the biggest problem was that they actively REFUSED to condemn sheith, an incestuous ship between a 26 year old and a 17 year old. some fans at the time suggested that they even encouraged the shipping culture within the fandom because they knew it brought them more engagement. however, encouraging this kind of thing and refusing to condemn sheith led to several unsavory situations with voice actors and fans, most notably pidge's voice actor bullying a 13-year-old off this site after they pointed out it was weird that the voice actor openly shipped sheith. there were also several incidents where FANS were in the wrong, most notably when a klance shipper took photos of unaired material during a tour of the studio where voltron was being made and then threatened to leak it if the showrunners didn't make klance canon. it was an insane couple of years to be in fandom spaces on the internet.

this is bad, obviously. all of this is really bad. but it also all came alongside the steady, obvious decline in quality of the show itself. what had once seemed like an interesting, well-paced, character-driven narrative was clearly devolving into a badly-paced serialized mess. subtle racism began to creep into the writing. the racism became less subtle as the show went on, obviously favoring white characters. Characters would have development teased and then never followed through on. filler episodes would be full of weirdly malicious digs at fan-favorite characters for seemingly no reason. the story became disjointed, the tone shifted to be much darker with little warning, and the plot became nearly impossible to follow. what came out later on, after the show had concluded, was that sometime after season 3 or so, the showrunners had THROWN OUT THE SHOW'S BIBLE. meaning past a certain point, there was ZERO PLANNING, zero written plot, zero ANYTHING. it was obvious in hindsight why the show started to go downhill so quickly. It was speculated that the bible was thrown out specifically to spite klance shippers, who the showrunners later openly admitted to hating and wanting to screw over.

six seasons came and went with no lgbt rep like they'd promised. the fans were getting incredibly impatient. the longer they went without the satisfaction of a klance or sheith payoff, the harder it became for them to overlook the writing problems in the show. something had to be done.

at sdcc 2018, the voltron team showed a clip of their new season.

this was an EVENT in the fandom. like. i remember exactly where i was at the time. i remember refreshing the blog of a mutual i had who was at the panel, liveblogging it, and praying that they would finally fix everything they'd fucked up over the last year. they showed a clip of shiro and another man, who was named adam. the clip itself was ambiguous, but when asked about it afterward the showrunners confirmed that adam was shiro's fiancee.

this literally sent voltron fans into a rabid state. we were going fucking INSANE for those 2 weeks between the panel and the season's release. as far as we knew, at the time, we had been given the lgbt rep we'd been promised, and they'd somehow managed to do it WITHOUT PISSING OFF EITHER SIDE OF THE SHIP WAR. it was a miracle.

two weeks later, the season aired. adam was in about 2 minutes of the episodes, total. EPISODES, PLURAL. there were 13 in the season. his presence on screen amounted to the ambiguous scene which was played at the con, where it's unclear what his relationship with shiro actually was, and a scene of him DYING IN A FIGHTER CRASH.

the fandom fucking imploded at this point, and i left it basically immediately afterwards because the lgbt rep was basically the only thing i'd been holding out for. i can't tell you exactly what happened after that but the rotten tomatoes score for voltron went from like 79% to 10% overnight, if that gives you any idea. voltron legendary defender is also currently cited as an example on the wikipedia page for queerbaiting. they lost about 90% of their fanbase that day, and the rest was lost a few months later when they killed their only black character and redeemed their genocidal villains in the final season.

voltron sucked ass and i have no idea what possessed me to sit through ONE season of it, let alone seven, when it was just so obviously never going to be what i wanted it to be. that being said, the fandom was a literal cultural reset for every lgbt person between the ages of 14 and 25 at the time. make of that what you will but for the love of god do not watch it for yourself. stay as far away from this fucking show as humanly possible

[fureliselost]

vld rewatch s2e8

- BOM dam let's go, I can't speed up the ep because my sister is using netflix and I have to use the netflix app, rip me

- the formula for the garrison trio's interactions so far is:

pidge: science science

Hunk: food

Lance: girls, and eventual smart observation that is dismissed

huh

- klance shots yay

- dam, chill keef

- keith is just, pretending shiro's request never happened, and i'm living for it -- we literally have an entire expression decicated to this in brasil

- keith: shiro, you know me, I promise you I didn't steal it | shiro: *remembering how keith stole his car within 30 secs of knowing him*

- *whispers* hot head

- did't antok die later?

- YES LANCE WASN'T BORN YESTER-QUINTANT

- dam, the animation is so good

- ok, what hologram shiro is saying is true tho -- by choosing to obsess over answers, keith isolated himself, not only now, but after shiro was captured by the galra, he chooses to be alone all the time -- which is why having lance as a second in command in s3 is so important to his character arc, because keith would always isolate himself and, in the end, shiro had to reach out, but in s3 he was the one who had to reach out.

- omg, this was so sad, he way he looked back and told his dad goodbye and THAT WAS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN

- this... this was basically the bird scene from victorious but with actual fighting

ep 9

- hunk is always the butt of the joke, I no likey

- Lance is so excitedddddddddd he's so presh

- Lance kinda deserved being kissed by the rat

- why is he shocked that keith made a joke, he's made jookes before

- friendly reminder that the paladin suits can withstand acid

- no klance shots i'm sad

ep 10

- lance is the sharpshooter

- man, lance is so hyper all the time, i love him, he doesn't deserve to be ignored

- the yupper

- i love slavvvvvvvvv

- awwwww no, lance, mi amor, no, stop, you're the sharpshooter, that's your thing, leave it at that

- i love shiro blowing up, like, he can keep his calm around a bunch of teenagers but all it takes is a super supersticious dude and that takes him out

- slav the scarf

- i like that slav doesn't berate lance or anything, he just goes "ok, i see what the confusion was for you" because it was a totally justified mistake

- YES SLAV

- sharpshooter!

ep 11

- that annoying robeast

- not, thace,t he chip

- C A L L L A N C E S H A R P S H O O T E R , P I D G E

- thace no

- i love i love slav

- man, red must be super pissed, like "ugh, the half-human keeps going into danger so i have to save him"

- finally, a k+lance interaction

- wow, subtle, allura

- btw, my cat (maahes) just said hi to y'all

- HUNK HAS A POINT LET HIM THINK OF CALZONES

[friendoftheelves]

It just occurred to me that Endgame did the same thing Voltron did to Klance with Stucky and I am so mad

People behind the scenes have been paying attention to social media, as evidenced in Voltron and Star Wars and Supernatural and so on. So I am willing to bet the people behind Endgame also knew about Stucky from some form of social media

And increasingly we have seen same sex ships being baited at and maybe broken up in some way in movies and TV shows: Destiel with Castile dying, Voltron with Lance and Keith rarely being on screen together and then Lance devoting himself to Allura for his entire life, Poe and Finn just being baited heavily in the last scene but never actually getting together

And Endgame basically did this before people were calling out it. Everyone was so mad that Captain America got sent back but nobody makes the comparison to other same sex couples

From a character perspective, it was an idiotic move but writers have been making these idiotic characters to keep same sex couples apart

Bucky and Steve looked into each others eyes and then got seperated for the rest of their lives. The story ensured they could never be together. But that's more than just character annihilation and robbing us of a good couple. It can also be read as queerbaiting

Like with Poe and Finn, they shared a significant look, like with Dean and Castile they got seperated by the plot itself, like with Keith and Lance there was a heteropairing which kept one of them apart and like with all of these same sex ships and many I have not mentioned there was enough in the plot and dialogue to make it very hard to portray their relationship as purely platonic

But all of this gets overlooked because most of the beats it utilises appeared after its release and the destruction of Steve and Peggy's character arcs to make the straight ship work was more obvious and completely unforgivable. Yet the subtle queerbaiting and annihilation of the possibility of stucky is also unforgivable. We need to consider how stucky was torn apart as much as we should consider the fact that it was torn apart

[heroesandmasterminds]

I just finished Voltron.

And I have to say, while I don't appear to have hated Season 8 (and the earlier seasons) quite as much as most of the fandom, there were definitely elements in that final season and the finale in particular I didn't agree with. There are definitely things I liked, though I won't talk about them here. I might write separate meta on some of that.

Keith and Lance's relationship

Firstly, of course, Klance. I am a MASSIVE Klance shipper and it made me furious that Klance, who had the entire series' worth of buildup from bickering almost-strangers to teammates to friends with so many romantic cues, were passed over for Allurance for no logical reason.

Even from a non-shipping standpoint, their friendship was almost entirely sidelined and it felt like that was in order to make room for Allurance interactions; I'll explain my problem with those below. Keith and Lance have always had a dynamic of bickering and teasing, pushing each other and sparking off each other, whether platonically or romantically. That's what drew me to them in the first place. For Keith especially, it was where he would lighten up a bit and act more playful, and for the whole team it would usually bring levity to tense situations. It really did feel like the show lost something by cutting down so much of their interactions.

More importantly, they would always support each other. Lance was Keith's biggest support when he first became the leader of Voltron, and just because Keith is more confident by the end doesn't mean that should stop. They are always there for each other in the lowest moments and hold each other up, keep each other going. There was hardly any of that in Season 8 and both instances I found were about Allura in some way. Keith and Lance came so far in the first three seasons, but after Keith's return it felt like they lost all their closeness. Casual support and banter were out of the window, there were only a few specific scenes. The thing is, the real signs of a strong relationship come from the moments which weren't put in as part of a scene, that are more subconscious - something I'll come back to in the Allurance section. Many of Klance's early moments were subtle parts of larger scenes, which was how you could tell they truly had chemistry. All those are gone this season.

Keith says 'We've come a long way' in episode 11, but I didn't feel that this season demonstrated the presence of any special friendship by this point at all. They didn't even hug - they just clasped hands, which is wonderful and a moment that makes me so happy, but shouldn't they have a relationship that merits more than just a single hand clasp?

Allurance

Allurance felt so sudden, on Allura's side at least since she showed no romantic attraction before the end of S7, and even Lance didn't appear to really love her beyond the original flirting (based on appearance) until S6 when Lotor entered the picture.

The ship felt forced in itself while they were together because their interactions didn't seem like them. I can't imagine Allura or Lance really acting that way towards each other and it felt like a waste of their development in the previous few seasons. The thing is, that development was all with a romance in mind and they needed to show Allura in the tolerance/friendship stage, but that was actually the best of Allura and Lance's relationship.

I think they would have made a wonderful sibling-like relationship (I live for Allura teasing Lance mercilessly about his crush on Keith) where they could support each other when needed and joke around. Lance reminding Allura she has them all as a family and she doesn't need to be the strong one all the time, Allura helping him realise he is great and such a wonderful person and being his wingman, Lance helping her recover from the emotional wounds Lotor left her with.

I mentioned the subtle signs within larger scenes. Most of the time, Allura and Lance don't act especially close outside scenes specifically written to be romantic. Relationships are in the little moments, but Allurance have almost no 'little moments'. This, more than anything, made it feel unnatural. Most of the romantic behaviour is from Lance, and it's sad because it is all so sweet and with the right person (cough, Keith, cough) it could have me melting. The moments between them when I actually thought 'Aww, cute' were the ones that weren't explicitly romantic and could be read as platonic if you didn't know they were dating. Because they would have been better off staying friends! If the development had remained at friendship that bond would have strengthened by this point to have those subtle signs of friendship within scenes.

Mixed Signals

Decide which ship it is, writers. It has always felt like they went all in for Klance before changing their tune abruptly at the very beginning of S6.

Klance has constant relationship development and strengthening of their bond from the very first episode, which grinds to a halt when Keith joins the Blade of Marmora and almost disappears when he returns.

Allurance is stagnant in a state of one-sidedness, although Lance never even seems that serious about it himself, for five seasons until suddenly Lance is declaring much deeper feelings for Allura, we're caught up in a love triangle and Allura emerges on the other side suddenly in love with Lance with barely any development showing how she got there.

We see Keith arguing with Lance, bonding with him, bickering and lightly teasing him, working together with him many times, joking and being playful with him, standing next to him constantly, getting stuck in an elevator with him, acting pretty friendly with undertones of flirty towards him, getting the same back, saving his life and being saved in return and have Lance support him when the Black Lion chooses him before they even open up to each other about anything. That's how much they go through to get to the point we leave them at. Allurance don't even have a fraction of this.

All the flirting and relationship development is between Keith and Lance early on, but a lot of interactions that can be read as romantic happen even after Keith returns. The first thing Lance says is that Keith looks older, cooler and grizzled. He is far ahead of the others, rushing to greet Keith. Keith sounds more panicked than Allura when Lance is failing to respond in S7 when they call for their lions to attack the Zaiforge cannons. They have a romantic moment on top of the Black Lion in S8 E1 which is more romantic than Allurance's actual date and is all but a love confession. Lance reacts suspiciously badly to Veronica suggesting she dates Keith. Sparks were flying in the 'We've come a long way' scene.

If they're going to keep hinting at Klance so much, what are you expecting us to ship?

The First Half of the Season

They seemed to be tripping aimlessly through space until the bit with the entity and then suddenly we dragged through Honerva's mind for two episodes and then had three episodes of fighting which got really old after about ten minutes, on top of which nobody seemed to be getting anywhere.

These episodes are what I would have expected from the first couple of seasons, when they were still training and the focus was more on building character dynamics and the conflict they found themselves in. It seemed like the writers/showrunners realised they didn't leave anything to do beyond 'Reveal Honerva's plan, find her, fight her, beat her' which couldn't fill over 260 minutes (over 4 hours) of runtime, so they fed us filler but couldn't even do that right.

I would have been on board with seeing relationships developed further in the first half of this season, in between tracking clues that got them steadily closer to Honerva and her plan, with a fight here or there, but really taking advantage of the close quarters of the Atlas to see how everyone mingled instead of sticking to old groups.

I wanted to see Keith and James Griffin resolve their issues, see more of the MFE pilots and their dynamics with the paladins, Acxa, Veronica! I loved the episode where Kinkade and Rizavi filmed a day on the Atlas (mostly). In fact, the less fun parts were when they tried to shoehorn the main plot back in. I loved seeing Keith and Pidge just trying to have breakfast but having to rush out and beat up a monster. I loved seeing Rizavi and Kinkade and getting to know them. Witnessing the dynamic between the MFE pilots was wonderful. And earlier on, when Veronica tried to get to know Acxa, who was just trying to fit in, I loved all that! Or when they talked about their pets in the training room! This could have made the season so much better, so they had truly strong bonds by the finale and you could see they wanted to fight for each other.

The Entity Arc

What was the point of that? Wasn't there an easier way to find out what Honerva was up to without a two-episode arc on it?

It was also bizarre. What exactly is the point of meeting the old paladins or whatever happened Zarkon? Why did the lions and Voltron have to keep appearing and disappearing in Honerva's mind? What happened at the end to free them? What was the point of any of it? If Allura had been corrupted and that was a major aspect of the finale I would have understood, but all that happened was they traipsed through Honerva's mind, she realised they were there and they escaped before... whatever happened. Allura was left unconscious for a while. You could cut out all but two minutes of those two episodes and everything would still make perfect sense.

Zarkon's spiel to Keith about Galra heritage and leadership also seemed useless because Keith has done all his growing as a leader. He knows who he is and how he leads, and he does it well. The speech added nothing to his arc, as did his shouting at Zarkon about how he betrayed his team. If that had been shown to link to Keith feeling guilty about leaving the team for the Blade of something, I'd have understood but it seemed pointless.

Imagine if the episodes were Allura reaching out to Honerva's mind from inside the Atlas, finding out about the plan and also what happened in the past, coming back and reporting it to the team. They get to work finding a way to stop Honerva, maybe Allura has to purify the original paladins' spirits and free them, enabling her to have a final conversation with Alfor where he tells her how proud he is of her and advises her to destroy the entity as soon as she's done or it'll fill her with darkness. Maybe that takes enough energy from her that she's unconscious for a while like in the show. Keith has a conversation with Lance about how he feels guilty for abandoning his team like Zarkon and Lance points out that he is not Zarkon and didn't betray them; he came back when they needed him most and always will because that's who he is. I say Lance partly because of my Klance heart but also because he seems the most logical person as he's Keith's biggest support. That would also give the 'We've come a long way' scene more substance.

The Finale

The final five episodes seemed like they had no idea how to have a tense, dramatic, exciting finale with high stakes and a believable conclusion. Instead they tried to make it much too epic and ended up with two weird episodes (see above) and three episodes in which actually, nothing much happened to contribute to the final conclusion. Then the actual finale is Voltron-Atlas being smacked around until there is only one reality left, at which point they are finally somehow able to retaliate (which is a cliche), then they end up in the source of all reality, turn Honerva to good with a speech, Allura says her goodbyes and then dies and that is it. The actual final sacrifice lasts about ten seconds and the longest part of that finale was her final words to all the paladins. The whole scene is less than five minutes.

Why couldn't they have tried to fight Honerva without damaging realities? Wouldn't that have made their task much harder and more interesting to watch? It feels like they made it too big and large-scale so the only solution was some magic ritual and all the fighting they trained to do was for nothing and a means to an end because at the end of the day it's all about magic.

One of my favourite things about Voltron was always how little it really relied on magic. Yeah, you needed a bit of it for wormholes and Voltron partially works with magic, but it was about the crazy technology and how the paladins learned to fight, with weapons and lions. That S1 E6 scene where Keith flies through the asteroid field in pursuit of the Blue Lion? Still one of my favourite scenes in the show. Voltron's sword fight with Lotor's Sincline? So good! When do you get giant robots fighting with swords? They always relied on Voltron's weaponry and their own ingenuity to win the day. It was Pidge's Galra finder, Coran's smart solution to get the castle powered again, the malfunctioning technology of Alfor's AI, knocked out comms, precise strikes, Shiro's arm, Lance's shooting and Keith's sword that made Voltron. There was a reason Voltron's deadliest weapon was their sword, but S8 stamped on that, ripped it up and threw it away. It was an insult to all the other paladins' skills, including Allura's talent with the whip.

I do not have the energy to go into the epilogue right now, not least because it's late at night and I need sleep, but I will talk about the good and the bad of that tomorrow (maybe).

I did like parts of the finale and the final season of Voltron. It wasn't all bad. And I will never stop loving everything the earlier seasons gave us. There were just a few key issues that soured the conclusion of this epic saga.

[catnippackets]

I’ve been typing and retyping this over and over again for the past few days mostly just for fun bc I like organizing things but a few ppl on twitter wanted to see it, so. Here’s my reasoning for who Lance’s endgame romance is with! I tried to make it as short as possible to hold ppl’s attention while still hitting the key points but it’s still kinda long oops. It’s pretty much just eliminating characters one by one until we’re left with the only possible option which I’m sure everybody knows before even looking under the cut but that’s just because it makes too much sense to be a mystery at this point lol

Also this probably goes without saying but this DOES contain spoilers for season 6 so if you haven’t watched it yet, proceed with caution.

Alright. Leggo.

Ok first off, there are 3 things we know for sure:

Lance is the only one with a confirmed endgame romance

Said romance is slowburn

He’s going to get what he needs rather than what he wants

Because we know it’s slowburn, aka SLOW and subtle and long to build up to, it has to be someone on the team since they’re the only reoccurring characters that he would have any time to build any kind of relationship with.

Shiro, Coran, and Pidge are automatically out cuz they’re not in the same age group which leaves Hunk, Allura, and Keith

Hunk has been in a “relationship” w Shay since season 1 and it’s been mentioned SO often by the writers/VAs, so it’s not him. Which leaves Allura or Keith as the only possible endgames for Lance. This makes sense, seeing as how they actually share quite a lot of similarities.

So let’s look at the Three Big Points for why it can’t possibly be Allura.

Allura/Lance is not slowburn. The literal first words Lance said to Allura were flirting words and his crush on her was always a big part of his character. The crew consistently drills in the fact that he has a crush on her at every given opportunity. This doesn’t fit with what a slowburn romance is. Slowburn means subtlety, and Allura/Lance is NOT subtle. It’s far too obvious.

Allura has never once shown interest in him and every time he flirts with her she’s dismissive, rolling her eyes, even once saying she felt ill. In season 6, the mice straight up told her that Lance liked her and when she found out her face fell and she said “oh…he said that…?” That is not the reaction of someone who’s happy about this news. This point isn’t saying “they won’t be endgame because she didn’t like him at first”, but rather stressing the fact that Allura has had 6 seasons to reciprocate Lance’s feelings and she hasn’t ONCE shown any hint of interest. An interesting scene to note is in episode one of season 6, where Lance takes a hit for her and literally dies for a second before Allura brings him back to life with her magic. They share a moment where they smile very tenderly at each other, and then later on it cuts to a split-screen view of them in their lions, where it shows Allura with an easy, casual smile on her face, and Lance blushing and hugging himself with a very dreamy look on his face. If they were going to be the endgame, THIS would have been the point where Allura would start to realize her feelings for him, but the writers made sure to show that while Lance was replaying the moment over and over again in his head and hugging himself thinking about it, Allura immediately put her game face back on and continued with her life. There is no doubt that she loves him as a friend, but she isn’t into him romantically. If they were to have them get together it would be a stale “boy flirts w girl even tho she doesn’t like him, girl eventually falls in love w him anyway” romance and the writers aren’t THAT shitty.

Allura is a princess of an alien world and a whole race of alien people. Her father and mother are both long dead, and she is the last surviving member of the royal family who could take the throne. In season 6, we find out that Allura & Coran are NOT the last surviving Alteans; there is a whole colony of Alteans out there without a leader, who need a queen. When the war is over Allura is going to step up and become the queen, and spend the rest of her life working to rebuild her planet and culture and help her people grow and survive. Lance, on the other hand, is obviously going to want to go back to earth when the war is all over; he’s shown on multiple occasions to be homesick to the point of crying about it (in fact he’s the ONLY paladin from earth who actually seems to miss it at all), and he misses his family SO much. No matter how much he loves Allura, he won’t choose her over his family, and Allura is definitely not going to give up on the last surviving members of her race to settle down on earth with Lance.

So in conclusion, it’s not Allura, which leaves Keith as the only available option which I know you saw coming but here are the high points anyway because there is literally TOO much evidence to bring up when it comes to klance:

Keith was introduced to us through Lance’s eyes in a very dramatic, significant way

Keith and Lance’s meeting parallel Keith’s parents meeting

they are SO alike and so equal with no kind of power imbalance between them at all

Lance & Keith’s rivalry has been continuously stressed by the crew and the VAs for ages; in fact, it’s arguably the relationship in the show that’s talked about the most

the flashbacks that showed Krolia and Keith’s father falling in love and settling down showed us that Krolia wanted to stay on earth, until she was forced to leave so she could protect her family. she and Keith found each other again, and when the war is over, there is no doubt in my mind that she and him will want to settle down together on earth to be a family again

every time there is a scene in the astral plane there are two very obvious stars that stick out in the background, that are different from the others; one of them is blue, and one of them is red. they don’t blend in naturally with the rest of the environment. they immediately stand out. there’s no reason for them to be there in the first place unless it were foreshadowing something very subtley

there was a scene in season 1 where they HELD HANDS AND SMILED SOFTLY AT EACH OTHER UNDER SOFT PURPLE LIGHTING, that same moment was brought up again in the next episode, and one of the writers has confirmed that Lance did in fact remember it, but that he wasn’t emotionally ready to acknowledge it yet. If you took out that moment, the entire show would have continued on like nothing had ever happened so WHAT WAS THE POINT OF PUTTING IN SUCH A BLATANTLY ROMANTIC SCENE AND THEN SAYING LANCE WASN’T EMOTIONALLY READY TO DEAL WITH IT if it’s not going to lead anywhere?

(the point is that klance is cannon king)

And if you want more proof and have a few hours to spare then you’re gonna wanna read my buddy Keith’s post which goes into much more intimate detail about why Keith is Lance’s love interest. It’s 50k words of nothing but the facts!

THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT

[braveleader]

*insert catchy klance meta title here*

IT’S FINALLY HERE. Some of you might have read my post earlier today when I said it was three pages long and how I hadn’t gathered all my screenshots nor explained them yet. Well… Now it’s 14 pages long and I rambled a lot. But here we are.

To contextualize this; I was brainstorming while re-reading various Klance Metas and theories a few days ago (because I’m unsurprisingly thirsty for Klance) and noticed what seems to me to be an important detail that people weirdly enough never focused on as far as I’ve seen. (Remember that it might be an enormous reach)

If you’ve watched New Girl, you’ll probably understand where I’ll be going with this along the line, but for those of you who haven’t, here is a quick summary. (Spoiler Alert, I guess.)

All the way back in 2011 during the first season of New Girl, an episode that Ness (Nick + Jess) fans probably still cherish to this day, came out. If you’re wondering where the fuck I’m going with this and what the hell this has to do with Klance, please don’t give up yet, you’ll see my point.

So, in 1x05, Jess’s best friend, Cece, talks about how if a someone is into you, their feet would point toward you. (“And did you see his feet? A guy’s feet point at what they want. His feet were pointing right at you.”).

Later in the episode, Jess can’t help but look at Nick’s feet, and his feet keeps following her every time she turns around him. Funnily enough, Nick and Jess ends up being the endgame couple of the show. Foreshadowing? Hell yeah baby.

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking “yeah, whatever, it’s probably not true.” Because, that’s exactly what I did think. But with my recent brainstorming, I went looking for answers.

And answers I was given.

Judy Dotton (American Author, graduated from Harvard and all that) did some scientific research about sexual behavior and all the science behind flirting and according to her: “Feet typically point in the direction they want to go, so if someone’s feet are pointed toward you, that’s good. If they’re pointing away from you, that’s bad. If someone’s feet are pointed in toward each other, it’s a good sign, since it’s a subconscious attempt to shrink in size and appear harmless, approachable…which may very well mean someone likes you, a lot.”

And you’re probably there: “CELINE WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING WITH THIS DAMNIT.”

Well, patience yields focus my little paladudes.

So another source, to go with:

According to Psychology Major Hanan Parvez: “What a person’s foot does can be the most accurate clue of their emotional state. The more distant a body part is from the brain, the less aware we are of its movements and hence the less we are able to manipulate it. So our feet often give away our true feelings […] it is interesting to note that even before the person orient [their] body in the direction [they] want to go, [they] orient [their] foot. That is to say, foot pointing precedes body orientation. Body orientation, prolonged gaze and foot pointing are sure signs that a person is interested in you. They’re literally asking to be approached. […] two people totally interested in each other […] each of them points their one foot forward towards the other person. If only one of them is interested in the other one, you’ll only see one foot stepping forward. Of course, the person who is interested will be the one who assumes this foot forward position.”

Another one for the road, because I’m nothing if not generous:

“The feet serve as a direct reflection of a person’s attitude. The key is recognizing where a person’s feet are pointed. When the feet are pointed directly toward another person, this is a sign of attraction, or at the very least genuine interest. If, on the other hand, the feet are pointed away, or toward the exit, that is a sign that attraction probably is not there.”

Okay, now we’re going to the juicy part.

There’s probably a lot more scenes that could work for my demonstration, but these ones are “big moments” in the relationships and/or personal stories of the characters, so here I am my dudes. I decided to work only with screenshots starting from season 3 up to season 7 (mostly because it’s the only episodes I had on my laptop for reference). You might also want to take into account that fluidity in cartoons and anime is harder, since there’s ultimately less frames, therefore, details such as those can really be more observed in important scenes, where, well every detail is important. But it’s definitely still here. (That’s why I really worked with one on one emotionally charged scenes, or ones with a third intervener.)

Not to jump the boat or anything but Lotura had more one-on-one scenes in the span of two eps than A//urance did in the whole of the show.

Let’s go chronologically until the juiciest of them all, shall we?

Can’t believe I’m saying that, but I’m going to talk about A//urance a lot, in order to, hopefully, shut it down.

Starting with the scene in 3x02 (Red Paladin) where Lance gave the blue bayard to Allura (a scene, that was ultimately cut short by Keith’s actions lzkajea)

Looking away from blue, Lance notices Allura who just entered the hangar in her new paladin outfit. Where we could have been given Lance’s point of view, like in a lot of scenes having to do with Keith, which would have given, you know, that kind of romantic atmosphere, we’re actually a few steps closer to her and a little on the right. If we look at Allura’s feet, she’s clearly posing in her outfit, but her left foot is pointing at ‘us’, not Lance. Which might be explained by the mentioned fact of her posing. But also, by maybe in fact that she isn’t, at this point in time, attracted in any way to Lance. But moving on to our blue boy:

it’s clearly another story. We’re looking over Allura’s shoulder this time, and we know that Lance used to face blue, but he didn’t just turn from the waist up to look at Allura, he turned his whole body, and his foot is pointing at her, not us. We all know Lance has/had feelings for Allura, and genuine ones. This position confirms it.

As early as the beginning of season 5 it takes another turn. Allura is about to get feelings for Lotor in the upcoming future (as season 5 is the first part of the seasons 5+6 arc). We know it now, didn’t know then. But that’s beside the point. When Lance unlocks the Altean Blade, Allura joins him in the training deck. If Lance’s feet aren’t pointing to Allura, it’s only because he’s still assuming a “fighting” position. Allura is not. And her feet are definitely not pointing to Lance.  

Indeed, as she gets closer to him, her feet are still forming an angle, definitely not pointing to Lance. If you take the time to look at the angle, even if her feet are apart, the overall angle is still mostly narrowed. Now, a few seconds later, she brings her feet closer to each other, and like the following screenshot shows, this movement, made the angle even wider. If we’re going the metaphorical road, we can see this wider angle as somehow a wider gap between them. Maybe the foreshadow of a certain distance, a separation? Moving on?

Now. We get to the fun part (nope, sorry, still A//urance, but I promise the Klance talk is coming) as we’re getting closer to the “present” timeline.

The end of season 6, after the revelation of Lotor’s actions when Allura throw him across the room led to well. That hug. (And my boy Keith interrupting the moment like the amazing beautiful boy he is… anyway.)

If after reading the last 1400 words without quitting, and you remember one of the quote I mentioned earlier (“If only one of them is interested in the other one, you’ll only see one foot stepping forward”) this is exactly what seems to be happening here. Lance’s feet aren’t pointing straight to Allura, they’re more like pointing around her (if that makes sense) while Allura’s feet are pointing straight at Lance, and not only that but she also has one foot forward, as if she’s about to walk even more into Lance.

And finally, the one scene that really, really made me tilt:

Many of you out there proved throughout Lance’s general body language and the Macross theory that it’s more the end of A//urance than its beginning. (And for that, I want to thank you all for your amazing-ness). But I’m here to add to the mess.

Not. A. Single. Time. Does Lance turn his feet, or his full body, toward Allura. It could have easily been done to prove their endgame. But it wasn’t. On the contrary, Allura is the one completely facing him, both her feet pointing to Lance, and adding to that, the infamous step forward.

My boy Lance is clearly moving on, his feet are like a 90° angle away from her, only his head is turn toward her. It’s literally the proof that when he’s moving on, she really starts liking him (as in, liking him as more than a friend).

And now, you’re telling me, how the fuck is talking about A//urance for ten years a Klance meta?!

WELL.

Now, I’m telling you, screw chronology.

Time to dig deeper. The following screenshots are of the scene following the A//urance hug, when Keith is being is awesome badass self, saving my Klance heart. These four screenshots are only a few frames apart, and I really want you to observe Lance’s positions throughout all of them.

It’s really subtle, and if you don’t like digging, you wouldn’t notice it: but Lance moves his feet before his whole body… Once again, if you didn’t go crazy with all the information yet and remember the quotes, one specifically say that your feet will move before your body. Not only that, but foot pointing will happen before you’re facing the person with your body. One of Lance’s foot is clearly pointing to Keith on the hologram/screen thingy.

If you catch my drift, Lance is attracted to Keith, he barely appeared that Lance had already turned to face him. For reference, if you scroll up and now look at Allura, you’ll realize that she takes a few frames to turn to Keith, and her body turns before her feet or at least, a somehow exact time (i.e. she’s not attracted to Keith). Those exact feet used to point to Lance for the first three screenshots it’s only once Lance if fully turned toward Keith, only his heels needs to be touching the ground for him to assume his final position (aka alike in the fourth screenshot.)

… I should probably stop there, you know, not overwhelm anyone with information…

Nah.

My dudes, look at this. In the first screenshot, since they know it’s Keith, we can definitely see that Lance’s feet are pointing to Keith. Not only that, but he has a foot one step forward from the other, he’s not slightly turn on the side, which would play on perspective, no, he’s full on facing where Keith is going to get out, and his foot is definitely one step forward.

In the second screenshot, Lance approached Keith with the infamous “bigger”, “cooler” and grizzled” words following each other to form some A+ flirting. Now, you’re understanding the concept. And you clearly see that once Lance stopped walking, he didn’t just stop, simply, no he still has a foot moved one step forward toward Keith. Both of his feet are clearly pointing to Keith.

To end this fourteen page long ramble on feet (I swear I don’t have a foot kink lkeazjaez), I want to introduce you once again my fellow paladudes, after all this patience, to the scene, the scene of them all, the embodiment of kick out of the bonding moment.

The following four screenshots.

Keith’s feet are not only pointing to Lance: they are following every single one of his movements, alike the amazing Nick Miller did before him following the movements of Jessica Day, here is Keith, in all his beautiful gayness. And the object of his attention, one Loverboy Lance, his feet pointing right back at him. Do I need to say more?

Do I need to display even more the kick energy flying out of this scene? Do I really?

Or I could be reaching.... A lot. (If you want any link of the original quotes, ask me, I’m too lazy to embed them.)

[blayzez]

So I recently rewatched Voltron s1e01 - The Rise of Voltron to compile screenshots of my favorite Lances of that episode, as I believe that episode animated him BEAUTIFULLY while the rest of the series tends to make him more off-model than any other character (don't deny it, you know it in your heart it's true).

Anyway, while doing that, I made a few... observations. As per the usual with pilot episodes, a lot was packed into this episode. Some of it probably seemed pretty throw-away, early season stuff that won't really make reappearances in the future. However, I am seeing some stuff that actually DID reappear -- sometimes late in the series. I am referring to these as planted seeds; these seeds were planted in the very first episode, but some of them are just late bloomers.

So I have decided to make a meta about this. I want to point out the different seeds that were planted in this episode and when they actually bloom later in the series. Keep in mind that some of these are very obvious and stuff that everyone knows, but I feel they should be here for reasons I'll explain later (and just to have these seeds in a nice compilation).

DISCLAIMER:

I have nothing against ANY ship. While I don't ship many things myself in this show, I'm not against the ships people have for this show, regardless of what those ships are. That said, my confidence in the endgame ship is Klance, and as such, other Lance- and Keith-related ships may not be shown in the best light in this post as one of the points I make in this meta is WHY I believe Klance will be endgame. I will not use the full ship names other than Klance so that this post will stay out of the tags of those ships. THAT said, know that I do not find the ships I'm trying to disprove unhealthy, wrong, or bad in any way, I just don't believe they'll be endgame. Please go into this with an open mind.

All that said, let's get this show on the road!

I am starting with the most obvious and well-known seed:

Okay, we all know about this one. Pidge being iffy about the Kerberos mission, eventually revealing to Shiro that the two people who accompanied him on the Kerberos mission were her father and brother, showing us that she desires ro find them in space. We all know this, the show has beaten us over the head with her arc repeatedly. Still, this seed was planted in this first episode and so it warrants mentioning. It's also noteworthy that this seed did not fully bloom until season 7 -- one season away from the finale season. This is important, but I will get to it later.

Onto the next one!

Another obvious seed. Allura's insecurities as well as her expectations of herself and the Voltron crew to carry her father's legacy. This seed is still growing and got a lot of focus in seasons 5 and 6, where it bloomed the most. This is a seed that I don't think CAN blossom until the series is complete, though, as bringing peace to the universe is how Allura and Voltron can fulfill her father's legacy. Not much to say here, just posting it for prosperity's sake and to show that, like most of the seeds on this list, this seed did not/will not fully blossom until the very end as well as the fact that it's something we see throughout the show and does not get ignored.

As for this next one:

I hesitated to add this one because it is a bit of a reach. After deliberating, I decided it was worth adding in.

So Allura was integral in Pidge's season 1 arc regarding Pidge's identity. I've noticed that Pidge seems to be reciprocating come season 7 -- Allura helped Pidge by trying to get her to admit to her true self but also keeping it a secret and letting Pidge be to one to reveal it, and now Pidge is Allura's MVP in getting back the castleship.

Allura is impressed by Pidge in this scene. This is actually Allura's first impression of Pidge, as Pidge didn't say much before now. And her first impression of her is that Pidge is extremely intelligent and has a mind that can be relied on. I think it's possible this is a seed that is sprouting now in season 7, when Allura is relying on the intellect of Pidge and Pidge's family get back a piece of Alfor's legacy -- the Castle of Lions. Allura even eluded to this in The Feud, when she chose Pidge to leave the game show and said it was because Pidge and her family have the best chance of finishing what Alfor started. And that started right here in this scene, I think.

So, next seed:

This is a small seed, and an unexpected one. I've always viewed Iverson as a jerk and thought this scene no different. Fresh off the heels of season 7, I rewatch this scene and realize how... honestly concerned Iverson sounds. He doesn't sound angry or too business-like or gruff, he sounds concerned and confused and seems to actually have Shiro's well-being in mind when he requests they put Shiro under. His voice, especially when compared to how he spoke to the Garrison Trio, is softer and hints that he really isn't as bad a guy as we've all pegged him to be. Come season 7 and we see how right that actually is. He ISN'T a bad guy; he's a strict guy, yes, but he has everyone's best interests at heart and honestly feels gutted when that entire crew is wiped out.

I know that was a small seed, but it still counts. Next seed, ahoy:

This explains a lot regarding Allura's connections to the lions, but we don't really see the fruits of this until season 6. In season 6, Allura was able to use her powers from Oriande to take Shiro's soul from the Black Lion's consciousness and place it into Clone Shiro's body. Yes, she has powers from Oriande -- that's how she was able to mess with Shiro's soul like that -- but it was her connection to the lions that allowed her to connect to Black Lion's consciousness in the first place. Oriande didn't do that -- Alfor did, and this scene proves it.

This next seed is... wow:

This one caught me by surprise because holy crap how did I miss this???

Okay, so I made a post talking about that Lauren Montgomery art and how it's playing into the show in unexpected ways. Please go read that to understand this to the fullest extent.

This scene? This scene foreshadows Lance's inclusion in Shiro's arc. Shiro offers a hand -- his Galra hand -- to Lance for shaking (Lance being the only person in the room aside from Keith whose name he knew). Lance looks at the arm trepidatiously for a split second before smiling and reciprocating the handshake.

This moment is focused on for a reason and I can't believe I missed it. Because isn't it interesting that Shiro offers his GALRA arm despite it being a symbol of his trauma and not something he'd be eager to flaunt? Isn't it interesting that the episode puts so much focus on his handshake with LANCE, but his handshake with Pidge is barely given any thought?

It IS interesting, and here's why.

Lance was much more important to Shiro's arc than we thought. While Keith brought Clone Shiro to an end, and Allura brought the real Shiro back to life, Lance was the support he needed. Clone Shiro wasn't doing so well. I mean, he's a Galra-created clone being controled by Haggar, of course he's not doing well. The ones who suffered the most from this were Allura and Lance. Allura stood up for herself and refused to be pushed around and sometimes managed to get her way. Lance, however, respected Shiro too much to do more than try and keep the peace. He didn't stand up for himself, didn't call Shiro out on his bullcrap, just tried to keep him calm and keep the peace among the team. It's no wonder that Lance is the one Clone Shiro goes to about how he's actually feeling. And what does Lance do? He supports him. Comforts him. Promises him they'll figure it out together. He's worried at first, much like how he showed worry before accepting Shiro's hand in s1e01, but he ultimately puts that aside and accepts Shiro.

This scene was the planted seed. It was subtle, so subtle I completely missed it, but here it is. And it took a while to bloom, BOY did it take a while! Took until season 5 before we got to see it blossom. But it did and Lance was the support Clone Shiro needed to stay sane until Keith could come in and fix the situation.

Speaking of Lance:

This seed came to fruition in season 3 -- it was definitely foreshadowing. Most of the other paladins get are shown alone when shown their lions. There are two exceptions to that (one of which I will get to later).

This seed is the first exception. Lance and Keith are both shown with the Red Lion here, rather than Keith alone. Come season 3, Lance becomes the Red Lion's new pilot.

With this next seed:

This was planted in this first episode and didn't really see the light for day for AGES. We were told from the very beginning that Hunk is the one who is meant to help keep the team together, but we don't actually see that happen.

Until season 7.

Hunk's arc in season 7 seems like it came out of nowhere (his family arc kinda did), but it was foreshadowed from the very beginning. There was always going to come a time when the team seemed like it was falling apart and it'd be up to Hunk to keep them together. And in season 7, that's EXACTLY what happened. This seed actually sprouted in season 6, when Hunk got their Galra allies to stop arguing during a crucial moment. It stagnated then, until season 7 came along and this seed finally bloomed in full.

I love this next seed:

This seed is one of my favorites, because the principle of its existence helps prove a point I will make later in this post.

It's Leifsdotter! This is a seed that didn't begin blooming until season 7. I know, the showrunners could have just needed a design for an mfe pilot and pulled hers out of the episode, but there are two things that make me disagree with that notion:

1. Her design is so much more... detailed and not standard-background-character-ish than the rest of the students in that scene. She's not the focus of the scene and doesn't even speak, yet her design makes her stand out. The showrunners WANT us to see her.

2. Hers is the only mfe pilot design pulled from that episode. That group had multiple different character designs and all of them could have easily suited the mfe pilots. But the showrunners didn't do that, which makes me think this was very deliberate and planned out.

I will be getting to these points soon.

Now for the seeds that have been growing throughout the series but have not reached full bloom. First off, we have...

Okay, this one is super subtle. Shiro actually has had a hand in Lance's romance arc since this first episode. We have a very tiny hint of Shiro's sexuality with this shot:

Color theory is often used in media to portray subtle clues to the audience about something happening in the background or as foreshadowing. This scene is the latter; it foreshadows Shiro's arc by using a rainbow in the background, right above his head, and the lemur-sloth-thing that's guiding them blocks the rainbow off from extending to Pidge as well, keeping the rainbow strictly to Shiro. So we had a subtle hint in this very first episode about Shiro's sexuality.

And I think that alludes to the expectation we all have of Shiro helping Lance with a sexuality arc. It makes sense, and it's interesting seeing that Shiro has kinda of been involved in Lance's romantic arc this whole time! Right from the first episode!

We see it continue throughout the series; the people that are most annoyed with Lance's flirtations are Shiro, Keith (who isn't really verbal about it but almost always looks disgruntled), and Allura (who is often on the receiving end of said flirtations). Shiro interrupts flirtations on multiple occasions and has shown a lot of annoyance with it.

This... kind of continues in season 7 with the reveal of Shiro being gay. He doesn't have much interaction with Lance, but I think his sexuality being revealed here (however... too subtle it may have been) is paving the way for the climax of Lance's romance arc in season 8.

The next seed is not nearly as subtle:

Black Paladin Lance! This is the second exception to the paladins + their lions scene I mentioned earlier.

I know a lot of people lost hope in this, but not me. There has been way too much set up for this, and as I will talk about soon, almost everything that has been set up has come to fruition.

So let’s look at this scene.

The Green and Yellow Lions have scenes with their paladins alone -- no other paladin is in the shot. For the Red Lion, both Keith and Lance are in the shot, which foreshadowed Lance eventually taking over the Red Lion -- which happened in season 3. Then we have the Black Lion. Three people are in that shot -- Shiro, Keith, and Lance. Shiro is, of course, the original Black Paladin. Keith took the helm in season 3 and then again in season 6 - present. So this shot foreshadows that. This leaves Lance.

I want to point out how this shot is set up. Shiro is the largest, which makes sense as he was the Black Paladin for the longest -- seasons 1, 2, 4, 5, and half of 6. Keith is the second largest. Again, this makes sense as he's been the Black Lion's pilot for seasons 3, half of 6, and all of 7. So he has been the pilot for the second longest. Lance being the smallest makes sense if he's only to be the Black Lion's pilot for a short while. So theory time!

I believe something will happen to Keith in season 8 -- he'll be captured or perhaps Honerva mind-controls him. The Black Lion then enlists Lance to be its pilot long enough to get Keith back, who will then take over as the Black Lion's pilot and Lance goes back to Red.

And it makes sense, considering how this shot is set up, for it to have taken this long for Lance to be the Black Lion's pilot. He's the smallest in the shot, smaller than Keith, and Keith had only just gotten back to piloting the Black Lion. With the way the series is set up, it wouldn't have made sense for Lance to pilot the Black Lion sooner; seasons 4 and 5 (keeping in mind that seasons 3 and 4 and seasons 5 and 6 were meant to be single seasons each and were split up last minute), while not featuring Lance -- although Lance has always been developing in the background, it's just slowly done and not at the forefront -- do show the changes he goes through in losing Keith to the Blade of Marmora. We see him become isolated, ignored, and any confidence he had built up being Keith's right-hand was shot. Season 6 was about resolving the overall problem of which Lance's issues were a side effect. Season 7, meanwhile, allows us to see Keith coming back into action with a clearer mind while also showing us how much he relies on Lance despite being a much better leader. You can see the difference in Lance's actions in the show between seasons 4 and 5 and seasons 6 and 7; in season 7 especially, he's much more in-action, plays a much bigger part, and shows how necessary he really is. This was all needed for Lance's arc -- getting rid of this flow (even if season 4 was not the best by any stretch of the means) would have weakened Lance's arc and made him less able to be the Black Lion's pilot.

Another point I want to bring up is the "following in his [Keith's] footsteps" thing. This is something that has also been a constant in the show -- not the phrase, but the action. Because Lance is ALWAYS following in Keith's footsteps. ALWAYS. He literally followed Keith's footsteps in this episode to save Shiro. The series shows how often he follows Keith -- they're constantly next to each other, Lance often wants Keith's glory, and in more serious points, he takes over Keith's lion, takes Keith's role as right-hand man to Shiro, gets a sword like Keith gets.

Quick diversion, on the subject of the sword, Lance has yet to use it despite having it for three seasons. In my opinion, this was to show us how alike he is to Keith and serves little purpose beyond that (perhaps will have a plot point sometime in season 8).

Back to the point, Lance has always followed Keith. "Don't follow in his footsteps," was something that was a focal point of the scene it was said in. It was that scene's finale line, a line that we were supposed to pay attention to and remember, and then the episode shows Lance disobeying that repeatedly and constantly following Keith's footsteps. This seed was planted -- a whole scene gave us focus of it being planted -- and it has slowly grown and blossomed over the course of the series. It hasn't fully bloomed yet, but season 7 did not ignore it like some might think. There was a bump in the road, but we saw him really slide into the role of right-hand man to Keith, showing himself reliable and actually being better as a right-hand than Keith was. He's followed in Keith's footsteps and, in some ways, has surpassed him. We also saw his relationship with the Red Lion and how similar it is to the relationship the Red Lion had with Keith. He's been following Keith's footsteps throughout the show and that hasn't stopped -- season 7 made sure to showcase that.

One last point I want to make is Lance's progression. His main issue in leading the team in this episode was his ego. Season 7 is such a huge jump because Keith leaves the team in Lance's hands and we see how responsible and logical Lance is in doing so, making keeping the team safe his number one priority and not even caring about the glory. When Keith put his, Pidge's, and Kosmo's lives in Lance's sniping hands, Lance had a chance to brag to his sister and the mfe sniper that was with them. He didn't. He explained what his gun does in a no-nonsense manner and left it at that. There was no ego, not talk of the glory he'd get for his skills, no showboating. He stayed on the task and his only concern was getting his job done right and keeping his teammates alive and safe. That seed was planted in the first episode -- that was his starting point, and much like his leadership seed, he has grown and bloomed into something much bigger and better than what he started out as.

And there's my point here: His leadership skills have grown. This seed is the seed of his leadership, and it has slowly grown as the show has gone on. It sprouted in season 3 and now season 7 is showing how beautifully it's blossoming. A seed planted in this episode didn't really start to blossom until the second-to-last season! As mentioned before, yes I will come back to that particular point soon (we're almost to the culmination of these "soons" and "laters", I promise).

I swear this next seed is important please bear with me:

I know the A//urance in season 7 scared a lot of people off, but PLEASE bear with me, I swear I have a point. Also, I promised Klance would be a big part of this meta and I was not lying so just... be patient. This is important.

Lance's arc has always been romance and that became the most obvious here. I want to say that out of all the un-bloomed seeds on this list, this is the one that is nearest to completion because his arc with Allura will conclude -- I predict -- early on in season 8.

Allura is important to Lance's arc, we can't deny that. His crush on her is superficial at first. This is proven later in the season; when Allura sacrifices herself so Shiro can escape the Galra ship, Lance is no more worried about her than the other paladins. Honestly, Coran and Shiro are more worried about Allura than Lance is. And that's saying something considering how much he worries about her later in the series.

The A//urance seed -- which I believe is mostly platonic and only dips into romance a little bit but will go right back to platonic -- was planted in this episode. It doesn't really grow much until season 5. That's not to say Lance's thing for Allura is not mentioned or focused on until then. No, what I mean is it is not DEVELOPED until season 5.

In the first two seasons, it's basically a running gag, there's not real seriousness behind it. Season 3, after Lance supports Keith's leadership, shows a turn in their relationship from running gag to actual friendship. However, season 3 doesn't show us much of this -- we only get focus on it in episode 2. After that, their relationship is sidelined for Lance and Keith's development.

We got a scene or two in season 4 of their friendship, but relationships aside from Pidge's and Matt's are not really explored or focused on in this season.

That's where season 5 comes in, because that's when we see them have serious scenes together that are akin to their scenes in s3e02. It's also where we see that Lance's crush on her is no longer a gag. In fact, until season 6, it's practically non-existent. Season 5 instead focuses on their friendship. Season 6 focuses on his one-sided crush.

And season 7...

Here's the thing: Season 7 isn't as A//urance-friendly as is believed. Sure, they get two nice scenes together, one including mutual blushing, and both including teasing from Lance's sister. However, there's something much, much different about their interactions here than in the previous seasons, and that is Lance's attitude.

Because Lance doesn't seem that terribly happy that Allura might be reciprocating his crush. He smiles, yes, but he only really blushes because of his sister's teasing, and he denies that Allura could possibly have any feelings for him. While, yes, that could be due to his insecurities, but if season 7 showed us anything about Lance, it's that his insecurities are finally lifting and he's finally gaining confidence in himself and his abilities.

If season 7 showed us anything about their relationship, it's that Allura initiated both of their scenes. Aside from that? Lance... actually kinda of ignored Allura for most of the season. His attention was more focused on his family and, well, Keith.

And that's something I've noticed has been consistent throughout the series since season 3.

In season 3, once Lance became Keith's right-hand man, his flirtations stopped COMPLETELY. He not only stopped flirting with girls in general, he even stopped flirting with ALLURA. And this stuck throughout the rest of season 3.

Season 4 had Keith leaving the team, yet Lance's flirting didn't pick back up. I believe this was because he really missed Keith and wasn't quite ready to fall back into his old habits. Season 5 is much the same.

Now his sudden flirtations with Allura (he only flirts with her on two occasions, I must point out) in season 6 seem out of nowhere. However, there was some build-up to it, what with his development with her in the previous season and the fact that he was jealous of Lotor's closeness with Allura. Not a lot of build-up and was still kind of sudden, but there was some.

However, I want to point something out: He started flirting again in the same season that has Keith's return. I believe this was deliberate and will play an important role later on.

Season 6 is also when we find out the depth of Lance's feelings -- it's not love, but it's a much deeper crush than he used to have.

This seed was planted in the first episode and was focused on quite a lot throughout its introductory episode and the episodes through the rest of the season. It took a while to grow, but it finally is and it is nearing it's blossoming. Like I said, I believe this seed will reach its full bloom early in season 8.

The last seed, however, will not reach its own full bloom until the end of season 8.

And the very last seed is-- oh come on, you know exactly what it is.

Yes, it's Klance. Of course it is.

Okay, so Lance's and Keith's relationship was one of the focal points of the episode. The seed that is their relationship was planted here and it's been growing this entire series. We've watched it grow and bloom, its growth being a focal point of the series, and season 7 did not ignore this. Actually, season 7 showcased their growth. It showed how much their relationship, which was once built on jabs and competition, is now built completely on mutual trust and respect and devotion. For God's sake, Lance called Keith the future! Compare that to how he interacted with Keith in the first episode and you see how much their seed has bloomed and how much season 7 did not only NOT ignore this growth, but actually made it one of the season's main themes.

I want to bring up these screenshots:

This might be a reach, but I find it interesting that Lance is standing in between Allura and Keith in this shot. Like, right smack dab in between them. Meanwhile, he isn't even looking at them. He's looking at Coran's pod, his face being in neutral territory. To me, this screams a subtle hint of Lance and his two love interests.

His front is facing Allura, his back to Keith. This seems like a visual to Lauren Montgomery's "He knows what he wants but not what he needs" thing. He wants Allura, is facing her, and he has his back to what he actually needs because what he wants and what he needs to not align. His face is in looking in neutral grounds, showing that while he prefers one side to the other, both sides are options.

It's also interesting to note that Allura is above him because of the pod. Later in the series, we find out he believes that Allura is above him, that he is beneath her, inferior to her.

Keith is below him but is stepping up to reach Lance's spot. He stays on the steps for a bit, but...

He obviously makes those final steps and a few minutes into the scene, he is standing beside Lance (something that happens a lot throughout the series). This is interesting because while Lance always secretly viewed Keith as being above him (i.e. better than him), him and Keith have always been on level ground with neither of them being superior to the other -- they just have different strengths and weaknesses and it takes Lance time to realize that just because he and Keith don't have the same strengths doesn't mean Keith is better than him because there are things that Lance is better at Keith in (shooting, being stealthy, strategies, etc.). They were always on level ground. Lance and Keith, neck-and-neck.

We have this shot:

In this one, everyone is looking at Shiro, and everyone's faces has the expression of excitement (and trepidation for Hunk because he's concerned about the bodysuit's size in proportion to him). Everyone is looking at Shi- no wait, Lance is definitely looking at Keith.

See? His line of sight is pointed directly at Keith. Someone pointed out that he supposed to be looking at Shiro, that his line of sight, if continued, points to Shiro. This is what I had to say to that:

"See I thought that, too, which is why I didn’t catch it until now. Lance’s line of sight COULD be leading to Shiro, but instead of looking at his face like everyone else, he’d be looking at Shiro’s man-titties. And while they are very nice, I doubt Lance was actually looking at them. If he was supposed to be looking at Shiro like the rest of the team, his irises would have to be right in between the top and bottom lines of his eye outlines. That’s how everyone elses shes are animated – even Keith’s irises are positioned upward to properly look at Shiro. Hunks irises are more down, yes, but that’s because hes taller than Shiro. But Shiro is slightly taller than Lance, so the position of Lance’s irises if hes looking at Shiro doesnt make sense as his irises would have to right in between the top and bottom lines of his eye outlines. Instead, they’re pointed down, at Keith."

Here's a quick edit I did to show where Lance's irises would have to be to be pointing to Shiro:

NOW he's looking directly at Shiro. But that's not the official animation we got. No, what we got was this:

While this could boil down to Lance having small irises, making it difficult to animate exactly where they need to be, I don't buy that. Hunk's irises are small in this shot and were animated fine, and s1e01 has some of the best animation the series has seen (I'd say only The Black Paladins tops it). The animators knew what they were doing. This was deliberate.

Then there's this screenshot:

I just think this one is pretty.

I also want to show just how often Lance and Keith end up standing next to each other. Here's a link to a compilation someone made of all the times Lance and Keith stood next to each other in just the first episode.

This? All deliberate. There is no way this was done accidentally, considering how often it happened in just this one episode and how often it happens in the series henceforth. One post would not be enough to showcase all the times they stood next to each other throughout the series. They're next to each other more often than any other character -- they always gravitate to each other, are constantly and consistently animated next to each other, even in season 7.

A lot of people assumed that A//urance and Ka/cxa was now set up for the endgame ships, but I think those people are jumping to conclusions waaaaaay too quickly.

You see, here's the thing about endgame ships.

They happen at the end.

Any ships being set up in season 7 are going to be rushed because they are not endgame. Josh Keaton keeps repeating that this is being written as a slow burn -- he wants us to remember that, so he's constantly saying it. Only Klance fits that term.

I want to bring in the Legend of Korra for just a second to prove my point.

LoK did not start off with Korrasami. One of the creators (Bryan, I think) really liked the idea of Korra and Asami being together, but they were operating under the assumption that they only had one season and Makorra was considered the easier relationship to develop. So Korra and Asami started out somewhat as rivals -- what with both girls liking the same guy, and Korra being suspicious of Asami's father and allies. Then they got greenlit for more seasons. What's the first thing they do? Season 2 dismantles Makorra and the season finale makes sure we know that these two are NOT getting back together and will not be endgame. Seasons 3 and 4 then go on to develop Korra's and Asami's relationship, but it was done subtly, to the point where there were many fans that thought the romance in their relationship came out of nowhere. They were wrong -- the friendship between these two was probably the most developed one of the series. Asami ended up back with Mako in season 2 after he and Korra broke up, but their relationship was shown to have ended season 2-3, where Asami began developing with Korra more. Both Asami and Korra had romantic relationships before ending up as each others endgame, and their relationship didn't take its real dramatic turn until season 4 -- the series' finale season.

Keith and Lance's relationship share a LOT of similarities -- which makes sense considering how many of Voltron's showrunners worked on Avatar and LoK. Klance is practically genderbended Korrasami IN S P A C E. A lot of what I mentioned up above about Korrasami fits Klance a lot -- both relationships started out rocky, turned into a friendship of mutual trust and respect, and are the most developed relationships of their respective series. The difference is that Voltron's showrunners knew how much time they had and didn't have to divert the relationship's endgame like LoK had to do with Makorra/Asamako/Korrasami. Klance's relationship development ended up much slower but much smoother because of it.

I actually regret judging season 7 as harshly as I had, because there was a lot of goodness in there and it really didn't kill Klance (a conclusion everyone, myself included, jumped to). A//urance and Ka/cxa? Yeah, it's there. But they're so tacked on that they're practically afterthoughts. The relationship that actually got focus this season? Klance. We saw the inherent trust Keith has in Lance in almost every episode, and we saw the high opinion Lance has of Keith as well as how much Keith leaving hurt Lance more than anybody else. Their relationship was a focus in season 7, one that I feel a lot of people overlooked because of a few tacked-on scenes featuring the other aforementioned ships. Honestly? I'd say that while this season isn't as Klance-centric as season 3, it probably fits in the number two spot. Don't believe me? Go watch it again, like, REALLY watch it and see how much Klance meat is in this season. Because there's a LOT.

Their relationship has always been a focal point of the series, and while some seasons didn't focus on it as much as others (compare seasons 1, 3, and 7 with 2, 4, 5, and 6 -- keeping in mind that seasons 4 and 5 hardly had Keith in it and seasons 2, 4, and 6 still had some noteworthy Klance moments), it has still been the most focused-on and developed relationship.

And that started with the very first episode.

The very first episode planted their seed and that seed's growth has not been ignored, contrary to popular belief. And that's where the "laters" and "soons" come in.

Because see the finished seeds list? All of those seeds were planted in the very first episode. And how long did it take for them to blossom? A LONG TIME. The earliest one we got was the Lance and Shiro seed, and that took until SEASON 3 to bloom. Another took until SEASON 5 to even SPROUT. The rest? Took until season 7. SEASON 7. That, to me, is proof that the showrunners have not thrown out the seeds they've planted in the beginning; it's just taking a long while for them to sprout and blossom. The fact that most of them took until the second-to-last season to fully come to fruition is absolute proof that early-planted seeds are not suddenly being ignored. We just need to be patient. Just because these seeds aren't blooming fast enough for our liking doesn't mean they're not blooming at all. It's not over until it's over. We still have another season for those seeds to blossom, so let's look to the future with hope and confidence!

[ao3feed-klance]

me and my broken heart

read it on AO3 at http://bit.ly/2JVvbvM

by glitteringconstellations

“Your heart is compromised by a severe amount of scar tissue, and the damage is extensive. Scarred tissue doesn’t receive electrical stimuli as well as healthy tissue does. Its performance suffers even more so when placed under extreme duress, such as the many battles you have faced with Voltron.”

The doctor highlighted a dark spot on his scan and pointed at it.

“You run the risk of your heart suffering spontaneous failure, should the stimuli become blocked by such scarred tissue.”

Lance blanched. “You’re saying I’m at risk of a heart attack.”

Words: 10242, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 9 of Bad Things Happen Bingo

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Coran & Lance (Voltron), Lance & Lance's Mother (Voltron), Hunk & Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Chronic Pain, Heart Attacks, cardiac arrest - Freeform, mentions of drug abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Langst, deathbed confessions, The klance is super subtle, but I couldn't resist, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hiding Medical Issues, Lance doesn't die don't worry, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, we don't talk about s8 in this house, Getting Together

read it on AO3 at http://bit.ly/2JVvbvM

[farbeyondtheuniversethings-blog]

The Only Date Where You Can Make Money

AHHH I Wrote a thing!!! Okay quick story quick story: So I was sitting in the library working on homework and my dear friend starts laughing. Apparently they’ve been looking through a list of cute date ideas to get some inspo for a fic they’re gonna write (not VLD related... someday i will convert them) and apparently number 113 or something like that on this list of 130+ is “Panning for Gold: it’s the only date where you can make money” and we’re dying because lol it’s 1) a great date idea and 2) super stupid and silly also. BUT they challenged me to write it into a Klance fic and me, having wanted to write a Keith birthday fic but not having an idea for a cute date for them to go on and also having missed his birthday had jsut let the idea go, was all for it. AND SO HERE WE GO:

“Keith… Keeeeiiiith,” Lance hissed.

Keith turned over and glanced at the time. He hadn’t even been sleeping for three hours so he ignored his boyfriend and pulled the covers up to keep the light out of his eyes.

“Keeeeiiiith I know you’re awake,” Lance leaned into him and started tickling.

“Ugh, Lance,” Keith sleepily pushed his boyfriend away. Normally he liked having Lance’s face close to his but at five in the morning it wasn’t really the view he wanted. He’d much rather be looking at the back of his eyelids and dead asleep.

“Happy birthday, Keith. Wake up!”

“Lance, my birthday… Did you actually forget?” This wakes him up because Lance forgetting his birthday is so out of character. His boyfriend remembered pretty much every little detail especially when it came to sentimental things like birthdays.

“Of course not, silly, I just wanted to be the first to celebrate it with you.”

“So… we’re celebrating a day early?” And now Keith is sitting up.

Lance’s smile is as wide and as bright as the moon. “Everyone wanted to surprise you and show up in your room at midnight tomorrow—pretend you’re still surprised, please—with gifts and such but I really wanted to gift you an experience—and no, I know that look, I’m not talking about birthday sex—and I wanted to give it to you before anyone else could give you anything.”

Keith blinked. And blinked again. He wasn’t sure if it was endearing what Lance was doing or not, but, hell, it was definitely cute. “So, no birthday sex?”

Lance punched him in the shoulder gently, “Of course there will be birthday sex but I figure we’d save that until after cake tomorrow. Besides! We need to get going now if we’re going to make it in time.”

“In time?” But Keith let Lance pull him out of bed.

“Get dressed and meet me in the hanger.” Lance scurried out and then ducked his head back in through the door, “And be stealthy about it, my plan is to be back before anyone misses us.”

…

Lance ushered Keith into one of the smaller ships they kept for recon. It fit two people snugly and Lance had apparently padded the insides with blankets and pillows. It was incredibly comfortable and Keith lowered himself into a particularly plush corner, yawning. He might actually fall asleep on the ship…

“How long have you been awake?”

Lance looked up from the dashboard where he was plugging their coordinates in. “Hmmm. To be honest? I haven’t actually gone to sleep yet.”

“Ugh,” Keith gurgled. He’d never been one for all-nighters. “But doesn’t it seem so much better to come over here and nap?” He held his arms out for Lance to climb into.

Lance chuckled, finished what he was doing, and let the ship boot up auto pilot and begin their journey. “I’m too excited to sleep,” but he crawled into Keith’s warmth anyways. “Besides, we’re not going far at all.”

Keith pulled Lance close to his chest, arms around his waist. Lance’s hands were cold and he slipped them under the back of Keith’s shirt. Neither of them moved, content to just sit and cuddle, and Keith felt himself drifting off to the sound of his boyfriend’s heartbeat.

And then Lance was waking him up again, shaking Keith gently by the shoulders.

“Wha—what time is it?” Keith wasn’t really ready to let Lance go yet but he was extricating himself from the cuddle-sphere.

“It hasn’t even been half an hour. Now, come on, we’re here. Come on, babe,” Lance was helping Keith to his feet. “I promise, when we get back after your gift we can cuddle all day if you want. This is basically your birthday 0.5 so the day is all for you.”

“If it was all for me we wouldn’t be awake at this hour.”

“I love you too, now, come on,” Lance opened the door and pulled Keith out.

The sun was rising at that very moment and Keith was blinded. He covered his eyes with his free hand—Lance was happily holding his other—and when he finally lowered them he saw that they appeared to be at the base of some mountains. Desert stretched off into one direction, though the sand was much lighter than earth sand; on the other end the mountain range rose up, peaked with what appeared to be snow. And weaving down the mountain, running right past them, was a rushing stream.

Except instead of clear blue like water tended to be, this was a dazzling silver, which was perhaps by Keith had been so blinded upon entering the alien planet.

They weren’t in their paladin armor so the air was clearly safe to breath and it was fresh. In fact, it felt a lot like breathing in earth air. Besides the subtle difference in the sand and the silver water the planet was one of the closest to earth in appearance that they had been to.

“Do you like it?” Lance asked carefully, judging his boyfriend’s reaction with caution.

Keith smiled and squeezed Lance’s hand, pulling them closer together. “It’s beautiful.”

And really, it was such a comfort to be here. It reminded him of living in the desert, which, while it had been a lonely time, had also been incredibly peaceful. He’d never felt comfortable around a lot of people, and while he didn’t miss earth the way that Lance and Hunk did, there was something innately comfortable about his home planet.

“Alright time for your present!” Lance ducked back into the ship quickly and came out again with two green pans about the size of frisbees.

“I thought this planet was my gift?”

“I told you I wanted to gift you an experience. And while this planet is absolutely gorgeous, and I was hoping you would really like it, Allura mentioned that in this river there’s a special type of mineral that, apparently, can be found the same way that people pan for gold.”

Keith laughed, “Wait, you’re serious? There’s gold in this river?”

“Not gold; it’s called Heleorite. And it’s actually pretty cool. Apparently it lights up and glows under certain circumstances.” Lance handed Keith one of the pans.

“Okay, I’ll be honest, I’ve never panned for gold in my life,” Keith admitted.

“It’s pretty easy; there’s this amusement park near where my brother lives and sometimes I take my niece and nephew. It’s wild west themed so one of the attractions is panning for gold.”

Keith knelt next to Lance by the river. Where the water hit the sides of the bank it splashed up and chilled his skin. But as the sun continued to rise he assumed it would get pretty warm. Which, speaking of, the sun was rising fairly quickly.

Lance seemed to read his mind: “The days here are really short and it can get pretty dangerous at night, so I wanted to maximize our time. We have about a varga and a half before we need to go.”

Keith was a fast learner and Lance was a surprisingly good teacher. Fill your pan with gravel and sand and bedrock from the bottom of the stream. Keep the pan slightly under the water and shake vigorously and carefully so that nothing is washed out. Now shake in a gentle circular motion so that the water slips in and out, taking the lighter pieces with it and causing the gravel and such to swirl in the light current—Keith had to practice this a few times before getting the hang of it. Now, back to shaking, but this time with the addition of pulling out the larger rocks. Then, after a few doboshes of patience, carefully letting the water pout over the sides, leaving the debris behind.

“That’s Heleorite!” Lance said, pulling out a miniscule piece of rock. It was silver like the water but when he put it into Keith’s hand it started to glow as if from the inside. It was a warm light washing out from it and Keith smiled.

“Bet I could find more than you,” Lance challenged and dived into the stream, standing knee deep in it and getting splashed so much by the water that he was quickly soaked.

“Not on my birthday!” Keith followed him into the river.

The Heleorite panning quickly devolved into the two of them splashing each other and getting into a water fight, the pans lost as they floated down the stream. A small pile of the Heleorite they found had been formed on the bank; it was maybe enough to fill two thimbles.

But in the water Keith had finally pinned Lance against the bottom of one of the shallower areas. He wasn’t worried about his boyfriend accidentally drowning but it was deep enough to go over his shoulders and leak onto his chest. Keith’s arms were pinning Lance’s down and their bodies were pressed flush together, legs tangled up in each other. The water continued around them, a Zen rustling that blanketed them.

Keith leaned down, closing the distance between their mouths, and kissed Lance deeply. Lance kissed back and Keith smiled into the other boy’s mouth.

“Happy birthday, Keith,” Lance said, voice heavy with desire, when they broke for air for a moment.

After kissing for a bit more they both realized it was getting close to time for them to leave. They climbed out of the stream soaked through and smiling and definitely more than a little horny. Lance stooped down to pick up the Heleorite they had collected. Inside the ship Lance pointed to the towels and then started tinkering with something in his hands.

Keith rubbed one of the towels through his hair and did his best to dry his body off while keeping his clothes on—it wouldn’t do to get an impromptu video call from the Castle Ship while they were both naked.

As the ship took off and Keith was tucking himself back amongst the blankets—they would dry eventually they were just blankets—he asked what Lance was doing.

Lance sat next to him on the blankets and showed him; it was a little bottle on a leather cord and inside the bottle, filling it up about three-fourths of the way, was the Heleorite. Lance handed it to Keith and as soon as it touched Keith’s hands it lit up like his own, personal, little sunset. It had all the colors of a desert sunset and he couldn’t help but pull the necklace up to his eye.

“Do you like it?” Lance repeated his question from earlier.

“I love it,” Keith breathed, looping it over his head and pulling it against his heart. He kissed Lance again, as a thank you. “What makes it glow like that? You said it was only in certain circumstances.”

“Well, it’s actually pretty cool. First, it has to be given to a person by someone they love,” and Lance smiled widely at this, “and, second, any time after that exchange, when the owner is near that person, the Heleorite will glow to let them know.”

Keith pulled him in again for another deep kiss. Lance tried to pull away—damn breathing—and Keith hooked his fingers into the wet shirt, keeping them together.

Eventually, because it was already a dizzying kiss and they didn’t need one of them fainting, they did pull apart.

“Happy birthday, Keith.”

“I love you Lance.”

They piled into their cuddle position again.

“Can we go to sleep now?” Keith asked, carding his fingers through Lance’s hair.

“Anything for you, birthday boy.”

And so they did.

[ao3feed-safeklance]

me and my broken heart

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2JVvbvM

by glitteringconstellations

“Your heart is compromised by a severe amount of scar tissue, and the damage is extensive. Scarred tissue doesn’t receive electrical stimuli as well as healthy tissue does. Its performance suffers even more so when placed under extreme duress, such as the many battles you have faced with Voltron.”

The doctor highlighted a dark spot on his scan and pointed at it.

“You run the risk of your heart suffering spontaneous failure, should the stimuli become blocked by such scarred tissue.”

Lance blanched. “You’re saying I’m at risk of a heart attack.”

Words: 10242, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 9 of Bad Things Happen Bingo

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Coran & Lance (Voltron), Lance & Lance's Mother (Voltron), Hunk & Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Chronic Pain, Heart Attacks, cardiac arrest - Freeform, mentions of drug abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Langst, deathbed confessions, The klance is super subtle, but I couldn't resist, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hiding Medical Issues, Lance doesn't die don't worry, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, we don't talk about s8 in this house, Getting Together

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2JVvbvM

[sapphicssukii]

I just finished watching Season 8 and I. Am Livid. This show and its creators had so many opportunities to create something wonderful and it turned all of them down. All of them. They started off with such potential and such hope and they killed it right in front of us. They knew what this show meant to its fans, and they still gave us a shit show. They knew what is meant to us lgbt+ folks. They can scream “representation” all they want but I’m not convinced. I’m just angry and tired.

I’ve got a lot of feelings with this. It honestly makes so much more sense now looking back at the show after hearing what voltron twitter had to say last night. (i don’t know how accurate everything is, but everything makes a lot more sense.) Every other creator makes things that their audience likes and enjoys and that’s part of marketing, but jds and lm just decided to throw that out the window this time. They did so much out of spite and everything but the first three seasons was a whole mess. I was talking to a friend and he pointed out that’s its 2018 and there are still immature people out here choosing not to do something because that what teens who enjoy the content want. 

There was so much potential in this show. I like what voltron could have been beause it could have been groundbreaking a positive, really stepped in the right direction for what representation could and should be, but instead they threw it all out the window including the original bible, the premise for the show. Representation is not just having a character. It is writing the characters to be deliberate and intentionally relatable to the group that it represents. It is more than claiming that they are something off-stage. In fact the whole Shiro being a homosexual male is such a bullshit excuse for them not to make klance happen. (While I do ship klance, I have to say it’s because of their dynamic earlier on and how much they could have done with it.) Shiro was supposed to die in multiple points of the script. However, the kept him alive and then decided to pass on “lgbt rep” on him. For the show writers, they then had a scapegoat, something they could point to and say “hey we gave you what you wanted.” Shiro by all means is gay and I am not disregarding this fact or am I saying he isn’t but he was never coded the same way that Keith was. However, Shiro is Asian and dealing with PTSD among other things. He was their tortured character and they got to pass it onto him. (Keith was always supposed to be a lead character, so it meant more to them that he couldn’t be the LGBT rep and that we be baited by his ethnicity as well. Canonically he is white.)  It’s never mentioned that he is gay on the show and they pass this off as “being gay doesn’t define him :)” which is fair and a good point but you don’t realize that media in 2018 has not reached this point yet. We need to provide examples for young LGBT children and remind them that it is okay. We need to reassure and accept them and by telling everyone it was a subtle part of his identity, they never had to truly accept that he was gay. (It’s cowardice.) Having a bi character on this show would have been so good and progressive as well. Biphobia is real and definitely overlooked most of the time even by people within the LGBT community as a stepping stone to being “fully” gay or people being greedy and Voltron feeds into this binary of you can only like boys or you can only like girls.

I’m sorry I might have tired you out with this post, but those were things I thought needed to be said. I hope you think about things other than this show soon babe. Have a lovely day and I’m sending you all the virtual hugs that you need.  

[ao3feed-voltronlegendarydefender]

me and my broken heart

read it on the AO3 at me and my broken heart

by glitteringconstellations

“Your heart is compromised by a severe amount of scar tissue, and the damage is extensive. Scarred tissue doesn’t receive electrical stimuli as well as healthy tissue does. Its performance suffers even more so when placed under extreme duress, such as the many battles you have faced with Voltron.”

The doctor highlighted a dark spot on his scan and pointed at it.

“You run the risk of your heart suffering spontaneous failure, should the stimuli become blocked by such scarred tissue.”

Lance blanched. “You’re saying I’m at risk of a heart attack.”

Words: 10242, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 9 of Bad Things Happen Bingo

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Coran & Lance (Voltron), Lance & Lance's Mother (Voltron), Hunk & Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Chronic Pain, Heart Attacks, cardiac arrest - Freeform, mentions of drug abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Langst, deathbed confessions, The klance is super subtle, but I couldn't resist, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hiding Medical Issues, Lance doesn't die don't worry, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, we don't talk about s8 in this house

read it on the AO3 at me and my broken heart

[lemonadeandmuffins]

why the “bonding moment” is so important

as many of you know, the bonding moment between the characters lance and keith from Voltron: Legendary Defender is used as evidence for the ship of klance to be canon in the future. sure, it wasn’t blatantly romantic to just anyone watching. my mom didn’t see anything inherently romantic in that scene. yes, there are parallels of this moment to canon romantic pairings, but i don’t think that is even necessary to argue why this moment is important to those hoping for canon klance.

in many stories, writers will use visuals and dialogue to foreshadow certain events. in many films, it could be as simple as focusing on an object for a bit longer than normal or mentioning a topic in dialogue that seems unrelated to what is going on in the story at the moment. the writer wants the audience to remember these things and pulls attention towards it so that, when the point of that foreshadowing is revealed, it all clicks into place.

in regards to the bonding moment, the writers make it blatantly clear that they want us to remember it. why do i think this? because they don’t only bring it up once, but three times in the episode following it.

first, we see keith, seemingly hurt that lance forgot the bonding moment they shared.

secondly, we see nyma “cradling” lance in her arms. although visual cues aren’t always the most objective, i don’t think this was coincidental.

right after this screenshot, nyma mentions keith:

this is a pretty interesting choice. she could’ve mentioned literally any other male paladin. how could she have known that lance and keith just had a moment that was a touchy subject for lance? this was intentional on the writers’ part. additionally, they could have made the characters appear in any position in the lion, yet they decided to allude to keith and lance’s previous bonding moment.

finally, we are left with this towards the end of the episode. the writers decided that the bonding moment needed to be brought up again. interesting. not to mention the rainbow in the shot.

they mentioned this moment three times in the episode right after the bonding moment occurred, and yet it hasn’t been mentioned again and we are already through season 6. the writers were planning something. to have such obvious foreshadowing of the bonding moment being paralleled/mentioned again in future seasons just be overlooked when finishing the completed story would only be attributed to poor writing. the writers on voltron, although are not always the best, sure as hell know what they are doing. when you look at keith’s galra reveal, for example, they placed very subtle foreshadowing to indicate that he was somehow connected to the galra, far less, i would argue, than all of the foreshadowing regarding his and lance’s relationship.

am i saying klance is 100% canon? no. i am just pointing out that the show has something planned between the two; why else would the writers choose to emphasize just a few seconds of “bonding” between keith and lance?

with that being said, as the show comes to a close we will get more answers. until then, we will wait for what the writers have in store.

[idio-cies]

Going in depth with “The Depths”

Title is exactly what I'm going to be talking about, "The Depths" from season 2, episode 2.

For anybody who supports the theory that Lance is Bisexual, or if you want some enlightenment as to why people think that, this could potentially help... If not, and if you don't ship Klance/Laith, then I recommend not reading this as you'll just get annoyed at me, probably...

So I don't know why people just completely dismiss this episode? In my experience, people know of this episode but don't see it as anything more? That might only be me, but hey ho. I've discovered some things that helps you understand Lance's character more, aside from what people already know.

Everybody should know the basis of the episode; Lance and Hunk are stranded on a planet and there are scandalous happenings with what some of the planets people think is the Queen, turns out not to be. Lance is seen to be the saviour (alongside Hunk, but complications) yada yada...

I would first like to say that it has been said Lance's character arc is subtle, and oh boy is it! The thing most people picked up with this episode was when Lance didn't see himself as the savoir which is the opposite of what he comes across as, due to his facade. There is more than just that in this episode. So, lets get in to it shall we?

Let's look at the colours... I was blown away by this. Despite them being underwater, meaning the majority is covered with blue (as it is Lance's one and only episode), we still have loads of other colours. Most interestingly are the Bi flag colours, which I'm sure people are familiar with the concepts of the meanings of colour and colour schemes in film and media?

I will now show you were they are:

First the Bi Flags colours:

And the scenes:

At the back there in that cave area, flooding into dining place

On the right there, next to Lance. That's actually a part of the Baku which has the Bi colours incorporated into it, along with greens and corals pinks.

You can see the whole of the Baku Garden here.

Then this is the Baku at the end of the episode, after the serpent thing is defeated. It still radiates a pinky-purple glow with the same sort of blue like we find in the whole "Taking Flight" episode.

I know that the Serpent creature and the Baku is a "bad" thing, but I will get onto that later...

When Lance is un-mind-swished, he then freaks out as he was tied up and, you know, kidnapped, so attempts to run away. Along the way there are plants that have the Bi colours:

And then also there were objects that had accents of the Bi colours which stand out:

Talk about skeletons in the closet...

Those colours in that order being used as accents does not make sense, but it fits in so well with the picture, because of the other colours- it goes practically unnoticed.

Then we see him come across Octopuses, I will come back to this scene again later on, but here is a gradient of the Bi colours:

He then ends up being cornered, and that gradient above stays throughout:

Notice how that gradient of like a magenta to indigo is then added by the blue accents of Lance himself, the Mermaids and some of the Octopuses. It isn't a blatant as the colours of the Bi flag as it feels like it's missing the pink, but I think that it's important because of the colours that are used and how close they are, along with everything else...

Then he literally sits on a stool where the colours are the same. The blue on his suit accenting it.

So that's the majority of the colours that crop up. I just think that it's strange these colours mostly come up around Lance, the fact that it's Lance's one and only episode it just makes you go "hummmmm" that they include it all... The majority of the episode is full of them too.

The reason why I say that it's Lance's one and only episode is because it is... It isn't aside to another plot, other than this one plot, unlike the episode prior where it was had 3 plots going on, which then aligned themselves (mostly Pidge and Allura's are the ones that made sense being in the same ep; Keith and Shiro's on the other hand could have been one episode, like "The Depths" or something). I know that Hunk is also in this, trust me, I know. Lance is the focus though. And I know that Lance has also had his moments in other episodes, but that's aside with, well, bigger plots.

Right moving on to the dining/entertainment scene that had had me hung up over it for ages, but I think I've finally cracked it!

Welcome to the Octopus scene. This is very subtle (like everything with Lance), but is super cool meta wise.

This scene...

Lance is entranced....

He shooketh

*cracks knuckles* Right, lets get into this.

So they're all having dinner, Lance is being Extra™ flirty, and the Queen points out the entertainment, which we see a figure in the spotlight behind a curtain. What we and Lance assume to be just another female mermaid and you know, Lance is all made up and intrigued (he even had a little blush going on there), but after the curtains open, it's revealed to be an Octopus which isn't what we all were expecting.

Lance is the only one that's shocked out of his skin whereas everyone else is indifferent. In that last screenshot there, Hunk is turning his head to casually carry on a conversation with the Queen while Lance just looks.... ashamed. He still has some kind of flush on his face. Granted, the quality isn't perfect, but you can see it a little when he's shocked. It's kinda purple and it's still there when he looks down and ashamed, it's actually even more prominent (look at his left cheek).

So let me tell you a little something about curtains in media, and this curtain in particular...

In my experience with curtains in shows that I've watched, the character in question was hiding their feelings and it was a huge "reveal" waiting to happen. It's was also linked to time and not being able to hold in those emotions/feelings anymore. I'll give you an example of another time this is used.

Are people familiar with the Wizard of Oz? In the film, the "wizard" was controlling everything behind the curtain (This is the same sort of thing here, except Lance is controlling everything; keeping everything "under wraps"- quite literally). The "wizard" was also a fraud and couldn't actually send Dorothy home. In fact, she could do that herself, she could do it all along. As it was a dream, after all.Again, it's the same sort of thing here. Lance just needs to accept things, and also let people in, not necessarily animals. Especially ones that snitch (looking at you Altean mice).

Anyway. This may also be nothing, but I think it's still important to note; the curtain is red. If you look at that first screenshot of this scene, that curtain looks so out of place. Also it's the only red we see like that in the entire episode. Other reds used in the episode are a pastel, or a nearer to orange. The fact that it's red can straight out suggest romance, passion or anger etc, or it can just straight out connect to the one and only; Keith. Okay right, I will probably need to explain myself. I know that red is the typical theatre curtain colour, but the colour of this curtain could be anything else, anything that would have been in-keeping with this colour scheme, but this didn't- it stood out waaaayyyyy too much. Also, any colour used is important. So there's that. It is then revealed to be an Octopus. I'll get onto octopuses later...It is not what is expected; that is the most resonating thing to take away from this. EVERYTHING WITH LANCE IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS. I cannot stress this enough.

So the other funny thing is that the Octopus is purple, pale pink and light blue. It also has a little cute Octopus on it's head... it reminds me of that skeleton that I mentioned earlier.

Do you see the cute little fossilised Octopus above those bi coloured lines on the skeleton? Ahehehe.Anyway, the colours for that are also intentional, even if they aren't exactly the same pigment as the bi flag colours.

So the most important thing about the Octopus scene is probably Lance's reaction. He's shocked and then he becomes ashamed. I can't see his expression him depicting anything other than shame in that last screenshot. This is the bit that links everything so nicely.People have theorised about why Lance is the way he is, if he is Bisexual, why doesn't he own it? Well, other than Lance being a walking contradiction, I think what people are theorising about him internalising it all, like internalised biphobia, may be correct. Lance is going to struggle accepting that this is who he is, and gosh are we in for a hell of a ride. Nothing else can explain why Lance is the way he is to Keith (in my opinion) and he is actually ashamed with who he is (Bi or not, he doesn't have much self-confidence).Lance's entire arc is about his confidence; he has a bravado that keeps him protected, though we know he struggles to see his self-worth and also with the fact that he isn't self-aware- everything is triggered by what people say about him because he simply cares too deeply about what people think of him.You know what makes this even better? Lance says more than once about the manoeuvrability of Blue in this episode, you could say it was like he was a duck to water (*I hate myself*). Lance also understood the physics of the water; not in detail, granted, but he still understood that things move slower in water, they have a mind of their own and that's what helps him be successful in a way. He was confident, that's what I'm trying to say. We briefly saw him not believe that he was their savoir, but he lived up to that in the end. This confidence came up after the reveal of the Baku Garden actually being a serpent, and that that was the thing causing the mind-swishing. It is after a reveal that Lance gains this confidence. So this to me says that once Lance reveals and accepts who he is (and that he's Bi) that is truly when he will gain his well-needed confidence.

So why do he see it as a bad thing? You ask. Well, we don't actually know for sure, but there are indications that he is scared of this fact about himself. The Baku means "Nightmares" in Japanese mythology. At every turn when Lance attempted to get away, he came across something sharp and was scared, each having some sort of Bi colour incorporation in the scenes, then in the scenes where they explain that something else is going on and they need a savoir, Lance doesn't see it and looks super stressed. And then finally; the Octopus scene where you see him shocked and ashamed. Lance doesn't seem to want to accept who he is, so that is probably why he puts all the effort into his affection for girls. Don't get me wrong though, his crush on Allura is genuine, but it's unrequited love. They do have a unique bond, but Allura will never love him in that way and to be honest, to me; their arcs wouldn't benefit in many different ways if they ended up together. There is someone else out there.

I also can’t help but think “It’s not the queen, it was the Baku” idea is very similar to what has been said about the line Keith says in 0205 with “It’s not you Allura, it’s me” on how Zarkon was tracking them and that little bow stint with Lance. It’s interesting because, he admires the Queen and Lance puts faith in her upon first meeting, she is then posed as being bad, but actually isn’t, then it’s discovered to be something that was being hinted at (think of Florona) and was a plot twist for it to be the baku and it being a live being. So replace the Queen with Allura (not that Allura is bad), the Lance’s feelings with the “bad” and maybe you can see where this goes... Lance admires Allura, he believes he has feelings for her, but these are unrequited, but there’s a lot of emphasis on them. then add what I’ve said prior about him being scared and accepting that he is Bi, his feelings for Keith- it’s been hinted, but would still be a plot twist. “It’s not you princess Allura, It’s me” “So the Queen’s not the one whose been mind-controlling everyone, it’s the Baku”. You have to remember that Lance views this as bad, it’s scary, but he needs to accept and face it so he can grow to being the best person he can possibly be.

I would like to talk about the Octopuses some more. Lance after that scene is quite literally then surrounded by Octopuses. From the mermaids who wear them on their heads, the Octopuses floating about that he was first fascinated by and then got scared by. Sheesh, he even ended up with one on his head!!

What I find funny is that his hands are tied at his back. His "hands are tied"- this idiom is about not having the power to act freely over a situation. I just find it amusing because it's like how he views himself almost, not accepting that he can't control everything.

He is actually fascinated by the Octopuses, but they then end up scaring him. I think this is something to think about after the Octopus scene from earlier, because, again it's like his emotions towards Keith. Is scared by him, admires him, but Keith scares him because he hasn't accepted who he is and man that shit must be terrifying if you're concerned of how everyone will view you, and if it is true that he may have internalised biphobia or something. This is why he wasn't ready for the bonding moment; because he got scared. The fact that he ends up with one on his head, with the mermaids saying 'not to fight the stinging' is also interesting; it’s like they’re saying that he may get hurt, but he has to get through it- accept it.. That whole scene is actually pretty damn sad to me because well... I'll go through it, It helps explain Lance's arc and him not seeing his self worth.

Oh look, some more of those bi coloured plants

Anyway, so they're measuring his head and explaining why they aren't mind controlled is because they have Octopuses on their heads, although we know that that's got to be a healthy thing...

This is what I found sad. Blumfumf is explaining how it's like they have "no brains whatsoever" it then cuts to this^ and he continues to say "You can't control what doesn't exist" to which Lance replies, rather sarcastically, "Right, of course" . It then goes back to Blumfumf and he gets close and his eyes do the crazy thing and says "Our brains are completely empty". It goes back to Lance and he says "yeah, I get it" but it's just... such a dejected tone...This is what I find sad, because the set up of this is just suggesting that Lance "doesn't have a brain" or that "Lance doesn't think he has a brain". But then we also have the "you can't control what doesn't exist" which is funny, because well Lance does have a brain, and I can't help but automatically go to the faux rivalry with the control part. Keith barely knew of Lance and Lance immediately decides to put up this rivalry that doesn't exist. If anything, Lance himself was conditioned to think this way because of Iverson. It all connects! Do you see what I'm saying? It's another reason for why Lance shouldn't have feelings towards guys... Keith especially, because it's all in his head.

It then continues to say about the Queen having controlled everything; that she froze over the surface, brought them "into the depths" and was killing mermaids, which was what was happening, only one slight little detail; it wasn't the Queen (<-Lance’s facade/controlling of the situation he put himself in). Also there's a nice short foreshadow of Lance's sonar ray, prior to this scene when they are trying to explain it all to Lance.

So when it gets to Lance having his Octopus placed on his head, there are many side effects that are said, like brain damage (practically), hearing loss, swelling, yada yada and like Lance is just like so impatient like "don't talk me out of this more". We know that they probably didn't need them on their heads, but I also love the theories scene, because it's like a dig to the viewers. THEY KNEW WE WOULD THEORISE. It reminds me of "The Voltron show!" that was a huuuugggeee dig to the cast, crew and viewers. Also like "The Voltron show!"- despite it being a filler episode- it is actually really meta, it linked so many things together. You could argue that "The Depths" was potentially the first episode that we saw the real Lance, in seeing his self-doubt.

Something a friend of mine, @lizzyisageek added on to all of this about the merpeople: "Also if you think about it the squids and how they were used as masks to hide the person (merperson?) underneath and then at the end plaxum kissing Lance's cheek could be a symbol of his reluctance to see someone as they really are and then once he does there is possibility of change in the relationship?" And yeah, basically. Except I would say that Lance is the one that is masking himself, everybody else doesn't use masks, not what we have seen anyway. Lance is scared of seeing someone as he really is, but like I have said before; he's a contradiction- he wants to have that relationship, he wants to be that close to someone, but ultimately he's too scared for that to happen; he isn't emotionally ready."

Anyway, right, the Octopuses. I would like to briefly revisit that Octopus scene, where the Hypnosis takes place.

Does anybody else see the Spectrum? I certainly do, if you look mostly on the spirals to the right side you see it, whereas to me, on the left has more blues and purples. I just thought that this was interesting. As in this dining scene, near the Queen you could see the Spectrum again.

Now I would like to talk about the Symbolism of Octopuses. This blew my mind:

"Octopus as a symbol in different cultures. Octopus is a diverse and very impressive animal. Their symbolism was highly influenced by its appearance and therefore octopus symbolizes flexibility, creativity, intelligence, expansion and unpredictability."

This! I just can't believe it. It relates to Water with flexibility etc, but what got me was unpredictability. I can't believe it! This is literally Lance.

No, Lance isn't statistically intelligent, but he is emotionally intelligent.

Creative... well, I guess so with his advances, but expansion, flexibility and unpredictability is just wow.

Flexibility is because of water, and Lance most certainly is that; whatever role he is given, he fulfils it well, he is always what is needed. As my friend reminded me is this: "That all makes a bundle of sense. Like the octopus in the water is a great symbol of change and the fact that lance was in that ep and that (as confirmed by Jeremy shada) lance has a love of the water then that helps connect the two besides the fact of lance at that time being the water paladin of sorts."

Expansion, because he needs to grow. And what did I say about Lance being a contradiction; that he is not what is expected of him- that he's unpredictable. EEEEHHHHH.

Also, to add to this, there was this under the "dream" section, which is typically the same things media conveys with symbolism of certain elements and animals etc.

"As symbols in a dream, they have a negative and positive meaning. If you had a dream about an octopus, then this dream symbolises enemies you have in your life. These people want to see you fail in your attempts and take away your success. Be careful around those who are suspicious to you if you don't want them to succeed in their plans."

Does't that sound exactly like how Lance viewed the faux rivalry?? That Keith was just going to get in his way and "one-up" him. Yet Keith has never wanted that, in fact, quite the opposite. Why else would he have stepped aside for Lance after the bedroom talk in 0306?

"Be careful around those who are suspicious to you"? I wonder whether Lance got confused and couldn't get a thorough read on Keith when they first met at the Garrison, therefore Lance became wary and put up the front of the faux rivalry.

Then there's this:

"When an octopus in your dream is swimming in water, then this dream is a symbol of changes. Something is going to happen in your life that is going to shift your life completely. This change doesn't have to be something bad, but is definitely going to make you look at life from a different perspective."

And doesn't this just say everything about how Lance needs a change of perspective on himself? *whispers* Keith will help him** Who said that?

But seriously, Keith will help with this, technically he already has with how the bedroom scene ended. That and also just everybody else on the team just accepting him. Lance is such an idiot, but he really needs to be true to himself about everything and anything and not rely on animals that can listen, but not speak back. He has only ever gone to Keith. Actually, the only other time he opened up was to Coran in episode 4 (technically to Allura as well, but she didn't take it all in I don't think, that was in 0302). Coran noticed Lance get upset and I suppose tried to help, but it didn't work as the scene ended stupidly as it was like Lance wasn't actually listening or just being sarcastic. Also, it was obviously too early for Lance to have a growth arc.

But yeah....

Oh and the best thing??? Not only is this episode under water, but it is frozen over and deep underwater, having it's title literally be "The Depths". This says everything about Lance's bravado, his own wall and how he keeps everything buried deep within himself. Then if you link that to the "revelations" in this episode (the Baku and the Octopus scene) it shows that Lance won't be able to hide it all for very long- his skeletons in the closet will be discovered. May I also remind you that the quote that was drilled into everybody's heads was "Safe and warm"- I like to think of this being how Lance views himself with his walls/bravado. Just like Keith had his walls put up and pushed people away; it was to protect himself. Lance is similar in this way of putting up a front so he doesn't get hurt. Though these walls are what hurt(s) them more...

So lets just take a look at water symbolism:

(Took this from a sight that I thought sums up things pretty well) "For many reasons, water meaning deals with intuition, psychic perception and dreams. What happens under the surface of water is a mystery to the unaided eye. It’s much the same with human emotions. Water reminds us to dive beneath the surface of our feelings and use intuition for better understanding." *cough* what did I just say?*cough*

"One of the most beautiful lessons water can teach us his how to be flexible and embrace change. Consider: Water always takes on the form in which it is held. It can also carve out mountains to make its way forward. Water reminds us to go with the flow no matter what the situation."

So in conclusion:

Lance is Bisexual, he has a lot of inner demons he needs to face. He needs to confide in someone. Things won't be kept in long as his growth is catching up with him, things won't be able to hold themselves together until the floodgates are opened. Most importantly; he needs to accept and (properly) love himself, and have confidence in himself.

Maybe this helped, maybe this didn't. Maybe people regained some hope if they lost it? If people who have read this lost hope/sight in Lance being Bi, or in Klance, please remember that loads of things in the show have happened and that romance was/is not the key part in all of this.

Hope you enjoyed and that this makes sense. Please let me know if you have anything else to add or any questions.

Later Paladudes ;)