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blackdevilwhitedemon · 1 year

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Old Voltron YouTuber AU Thingy

I’m purging old WIPs that never went anywhere rn. This one is old, like 2017-2018 I would guess. I ported it over from my phone notes to Google Docs in like 2019.

Anyway, this one was not bad so I wasn’t fully sure if I should delete it so I thought I'd just dump it here. I couldn't bring myself to finish this/write more for it. VLD is an IP that the fandom ruined for me. :(

It’s not like anyone will read it and if someone does, if you want to use the AU for smth; go ahead. Just credit me somewhere and send me a link!

(There’s also some fandom lore and in-jokes in here that reminds me of the old days. I miss those days in the VLD fandom when it wasn’t a toxic cesspool,,,)

Youtuber AU So, I see youtube AUs of Voltron on Tumblr quite a lot. And I wanted to make a youtube AU fic for a while now, but never got around to doing it. Therefore I'm just going for it now, also I'm basing this on this post. http://lipsticklounge.tumblr.com/post/156847673083/youtube-au-where-keith-has-an-insanely-popular#notes And part of a different post I don’t think I can find which has Pidge guest star in Keith's videos and what Pidge does. But first here are my ideas for the youtube thing. I want to write them down first and then make a chapter. So this is basically this is an infor thing. Alright, here we go. -Shiro has a channel called SpaceDad (originally just Shiro, but he changed it after his viewers dubbed him Space Dad since he made quite a few space-inspired makeup tutorials and he loves talking about space) He mainly does fittest videos and make-up tutorials. And generally about health (mental health too). His channel got more popular as he started to post story time videos as well. He has some interesting stories to tell considering... -Keith's channel is called CryptidHunting. -Lance is a vlogging channel and his username is Sir Lancelot. However he calls himself Lancey-Lance. He has the most subscribers out of everyone. (This is referring to the fact Lance is the most popular character in the fandom.) -Katie has a tech channel where she reviews programs and technology. She also does tech support for her viewers so her fans are loyal. Her channel is called Pidge Gunderson. Because you know...why not put a fake name as her username? Her fans call her Pidge as they don't know her real name. And she had told them before that Pidge Gunderson is not her real name. There was this point in time where there was confusion on what pronouns Pidge went by. ((This is a parallel on what happened in the fandom.)) At first it was mostly he or them bc everyone in her vids used 'he' pronouns. But after she made a vid with her saying she's a girl everybody in her vid just used her name. (Pidge.) So her fans started using more they/them/it and some started to use she. Recently her friends have been using she pronouns for her and as such her viewers shifted accordingly. -Keith does theory videos and talks about conspiracies. Katie is a guest star in quite a few of them. This boy loves mothman. His fans have this inside joke to draw art of him and mothman. (You know, because this fandom loves Keith x Mothman and that fact was just too funny not to put into this fanfiction.) And at first he was really confused, but eventually he owned it and made jokes about it a lot. Hell, one video was even him pretending to be dating Mothman. It got 134k views within a month and that actually scared him. (Of course, Lance was the one who was in the Mothman costume. He was paid in garlic knots.) -Hunk has a cooking channel and does techy videos. He also has a bunch of shit-posting videos with Lance. He likes making parodies and funny videos with him as well. And they will post one part of the video on his channel, the other on Lance's. So, collabs basically. -You bet your ass Lance had a bunch of makeup and skin-care videos. He probably has quite a few videos where sponsors send him products for whatever and he gives people his honest opinion. Sewing tutorials. Lance has sewing tutorials and you can't tell me otherwise, he's going to be knitting as well. -Keith has a Calico cat named Red. Lance has a Russian Blue named Blue. Hunk has a All of the cats are female. Sorry, we've been led to believe that for such a long time, I can't look at them otherwise. It makes me uncomfortable for some reason??? So yeah, all girls in here. -Allura's dad and his friends (the other OG paladin besides Zarkon) owned the cats, they all died in something I guess. So...Allura gave them away to the gang??? Her mice are still her pet mice. -The two alien caterpillars Pidge kept are...well...I don't know yet...but the family dog is still in this fic as well... Wow, that means Pidge has like...4 pets in total. -Allura has her channel and so does Coran (albeit he doesn't post very often). But we'll get to that in the story. ----I'm basing off who has more subscribers based on how popular they are in the fandom, so... Lance Shiro Keith - Allura (she almost has as much as he does, she just has a little less) Pidge Hunk Coran (don't worry Coran, you're still my favorite character) Allura and Lance are together in this fic. I've been shipping it since season 2 (very low-key shipped in back in season 1, but my love didn't really grow for it until around season 3) and I've never written a fic with that ship yet so...yeah. (However, earlier I did plan to write a bunch of Voltron dabble ship-fics and Allurance is one of them, but I haven't gotten around to writing that one yet.) And yeah. Alright bye, see you guys in chapter 1. ((Before we get in, may I just say that I literally wrote the entire beginning and more of this chapter. I didn't like it. I hated it, it was too choppy, too stiff in my opinion. I hated it and felt I made Shiro and Keith too out of character. As such I deleted all of it but the video title and stats. And rewrote it in Lance's POV at a different place, time, setting. I basically just scrapped the whole thing and redid it. I'm much happier with this version. :) )) SpaceDad posted a new video! Boyfriend Does My Makeup! Posted 49 minutes ago Views 14k Like 2.6k Dislike 223 Comment 789 'HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DATING THE CONSPIRACY THEORY GUY WTF' Lance couldn't help but chuckle at the all caps comment. It was funny. He liked funny. Who didn't? He would say Keith, but he knew for a fact that guy actually had a sense of humor. It just was usually buried, but he knew he had it. Otherwise he wouldn't have asked him to dress up as mothman in one of his videos. Keith has some weirdass inside jokes with his fans. Anyway that wasn't the point. The point is, is that Shiro's newest video was well...shocking to a lot of his viewers. That man had the funniest freak out comments under his video right now. Of course, Lance had to scroll through quite a few homophobic comments and gay-slurs, but it was generally funny. People just didn't see this one coming. Then again they never announced they were dating to the world. People just knew they were friends, they co-represented each other last year. And now people knew they were a couple. Finally. Lance was getting real tempted to say something to his viewers. "What are you looking at?" Hunk's unmistakable voice cut through the lanky boy's thoughts. Oh. He hasn't said anything to his friends yet, hasn't he? A smile fell in place in lieu of an answer as he turned off his phone and set it down on the table. He picked up his latte and took a sip. Cold. Just how he liked it. "Nothing much. Just reading through Shiro's comment section of his latest video." His ocean blue eyes wandered over to the Japanese man himself. Shiro gave him a nonchalant look back, a flavor water bottle in one hand, and the other arm around Keith. "Oh, do you mean the one with Keith doing his makeup?" Hunk's eyes widened and he turned towards Keith. "No offense dude, but like, I cried. You have no idea what you're doing." Keith raised an eyebrow at Hunk's comment. "What, and you would have?" He kept his arms crossed, not bothering to touch his tea. Shiro laughs at something Allura said, but Keith's not really paying attention to him right now. Hunk rolls his eyes and jerks a thumb in Lance's direction. "Keith, I'm best friends with this guy. Do you need any more prompting?" There's a 'hey!' coming from Lance. It is ignored as the two boys carry on their conversation. Keith shrugs off Shiro's arm to lean closer to Hunk. Shiro just readjust himself and sets down his bottle, folding his hands and placing them on top of the table. "No, fair point." Keith grunts. "But, why the hell would I know anything about that? I don't even put on my own eyeliner. Shiro does it for me. I don't really care for it." His face scrunched up in thought. "I mean, it looks nice but..." Keith gets back a hum from Hunk. He does get where Keith is coming from, but that doesn't excuse him. Allura, Lance, and Shiro are all kinda like beauty gurus. In their own ways, that is. Allura would probably be the closest fit to the internet's definition of a beauty guru. Regardless, he should still have a shred of knowledge about makeup. Then again, why is he judging him on this? It's kinda frivolous. "Alright." He settled the conversation. Lance turned to look at the youngest person on the table, Pidge. Or Katie as her real name is. However that was information only they should know, her fans only knew her as Pidge. Though they were aware that that wasn't her real name.

At the moment she was sleeping, using her arms and Lance's jacket as a pillow. Her already finished cup of coffee rested in its finally resting place. The trash.

She's been asleep for a while, tired as always, because that's how she is. Over time both Shiro and Keith draped their jackets on her as blankets, and just to add to the contributes of clothing on her, Allura added her scarf as another pillow. Nobody bothered to wake her up. LetPidgeSleep was a hashtag going around with her viewers, so they might as well follow along with the trend. Also he was pretty sure if they were to disturb her, she would kill them. "Honestly, have you guys checked the comment section of that video yet? They're shook." Lance grins at his friends, and finally Allura and Shiro pay attention to his part of the table. In fact, he has the attention of everybody at the table. Except Pidge, she's still sleeping. Pretty good tho, 4 out of 5. "I can't believe this is how you two revealed your relationship to the world. That was anticlimactic." "What do you mean 'aniticmaxic'?" Keith seemed to glare at him from his seat, his posture was sloppy. His glare had no true malice towards him, just irritation. "What I mean is that, guys could of been more, I don't know." Lance gestures with his hands across one end to the other. "Been more flashy with the way you did it, especially considering the fact that you guys kept this information from them for soooooo freaking long." Shiro leans back more into his seat, crossing his arms comfortably. He had this grin on his face people tend to have before they say dumb shit. "That's the point. We talked about how we wanted to tell the world about our relationship." He uses a hand to gesture to signal back and front between him and Keith. "We settled for a nonchalant approach and 'my-whatever-does my makeup' videos are trending now. So we thought, why not do that?"

Lance rolled the reason around in his head for a bit. Yeah, he a point. Being nonchalant about it would look much more humble rather than other ways. But it could've been done via an introduction video. “Nah,” he concluded, “can't say that I agree with you-” Keith groaned, “but I can see where ya coming from.”

“That's fine.” He shrugged, checked the time, and tapped () shoulder to ask her/him to wake up Katie.

I just edited little mistakes, the last sentence was the messiest. Seemed like Keith was gonna tell everyone it was time to leave and have someone else to wake up Pidge. But past me didn’t decide who that was gonna be, clearly. Lol

Idk why, but that makes me laugh for some reason.

#vld #voltron #Voltron legendary defender #voltron au #youtuber au #Allurance #sheith #textpost

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leakinghate · 6 years

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The Depths to which We Sink

Disclaimer: This theory and analysis contradicts some points made in my previous metas, but what’s the fun of speculation if we limit ourselves to having it all gel together?

Nothing in animation is wasted: every action and expression seen on screen is something someone had to draw and something someone had to pay for. Everything is deliberate, from changes in expression to major plot events, and things which do not contribute to the overarching vision of the show will rarely, if ever, be included. Voltron Legendary Defender in particular moves so fast that they don’t have the space to include anything extraneous even when they want to. The showrunners have said in interviews that they’ve had to cut several of their comedy ideas for lack of space.

The exception to this that has always stood out to me as not fitting into the meta narrative is s2e2 'The Depths'. It's mostly plot irrelevant on the whole, with it being notable only for introducing the Blue Lion’s sonic canon. Sure it has some nice character moments for Lance, and the animation is beautiful, but it’s basically filler. It’s almost completely forgotten by the story, only brought up again once, when Lance references the mermaids in s3e2, ‘Red Paladin’.

In preparation for the fast approaching season 7 on August 10th I was attempting to re-watch the entire show up to the end of s6. Most re-watches I do I skip less plot relevant episodes like ‘The Depths’, but I wanted to go through the whole show this time.

But as I was watching this particular episode, post season six. I was struck by an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. So what do you do when you think you’ve stumbled upon some heretofore unnoticed foreshadowing? Why, bring it to the Lotura Discord of course! We put our heads together and came up with some fascinating observations, as well as some intriguing possibilities for where the plot might be headed in the future.

On re-watching it again, post season six, 'The Depths’ contains an uncanny amount of foreshadowing to the entire colony plot.

Two of our protagonists unexpectedly stumble upon a completely isolated and hidden settlement after traveling through a strange space anomaly. They are initially greeted by a single member of a race they previously believed did not exist (anymore).

The mermaid civilization is beneath a thick layer of ice, and the Altean colony is inside a dome.

Information received from an erstwhile ally reveals an apparently sinister truth about the actions and motivations of someone in power who had previously acted as a friend. To wit: the authority figure has deceived their loyal subjects for the purpose of killing them.

The ally that provides this information readily admits that they do not know all the facts and that their conclusion is only a theory based on the facts that they do have.

Dialogue from The Depths:

Lance: But what’s the point? Why mind-control the mermaids? Blumfump: To kill them! Lance: Really? Blumfump: Well, we don’t know that for sure, but hundreds of mermaids have disappeared and never come back.

Dialogue from The Colony:

Romelle: My brother was dead. I knew the truth, or at least part of it, but I also knew that no one would believe me without proof. When Keith and Krolia arrived they were my last chance at finding it. I told them what had happened to my brother, and as it turned out, so many Alteans that had been taken before him. As they explained their mission to me, we knew there must have been a connection between the missing Alteans and the pure strain of quintessence.

One of our protagonists is compromised by an antagonist’s mind control and is used to attack and subdue his fellows. The shadows on Hunk’s face when he is under mind control even look like Shiro’s scar.

The physical appearances of several characters are also intriguing. The one character we see fall victim to the Baku, Florona, is the only red-headed mermaid in the episode. A shade of red very similar to Bandor’s hair color.

Plaxum, the most prominent of the ‘cave dwellers’ and the one who eventually directly confronts the queen, has two ponytail-like projections on her head very reminiscent of Romelle’s hairstyle. They also share very similar body language. And Plaxum’s eyes while wearing her jellyfish are the same color as Romelle’s.

In fact, both of these pairs of characters share very similar color schemes; Plaxum and Romelle are teal, pink, and yellow, while Florona and Bandor are red, golden-yellow, and green.

These are all things which have already happened; there is no speculation here, only observation.

Hilariously, this means Bandor has been metaphorically represented by a red fish.

In other words, a Red Herring.

From Wikipedia:

"A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion."

This is exactly what we've been saying since season 6 aired. Specifically referring to Bandor’s line after his ship crashed through the dome. The one thing he manages to tell Romelle is: “Lotor... the other colony... It’s all a lie.” Which tells us exactly nothing, but is the evidence that convinces Romelle she is correct to distrust Lotor, and what sets off the chain of events that ultimately led to the s6 finale. It’s also the strongest evidence we as the audience have that Lotor has done something truly monstrous. The scene with Bandor irrefutably connects Lotor to the emaciated Alteans, even if we don’t know precisely what that connection is. It’s easy to assume the worst both in and out of universe.

In cinema characters with red hair are often made to be the red herrings. A red herring may be intentionally used by the writer to plant a false clue that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. Bandor led Romelle to a false conclusion.

Both in and out of the show. Romelle concluded wrong. The paladins concluded wrong. The AUDIENCE concluded wrong.

What’s next? Well, the plot of ‘The Depths’ isn’t a 1-to-1 relation to the Altean Colony storyline, so it’s difficult to say exactly what aspects of the episode’s climactic fight and conclusion will turn out to be relevant. But, we can be fairly certain that the overall narrative is the same.

The apparent villain was actually being manipulated into taking the actions they took by a greater, silent threat. The few rebels our protagonists met were wrong about who was the real enemy. They were right about the issue, but wrong about the ‘why.’ The leader was not at fault because the leader had fallen prey to the creature first and was subsequently rendered powerless to stop it.

Perhaps even, and here we get into more speculation...

The real threat was something that loomed large in the background the whole time, assumed to be providing safety. Fallen from space.

The Baku is referred to as ‘the giver of life’.

That phrase is disconcertingly ominous, considering the only other time we've heard a similar phrase was in reference to Oriande. The Sages, or ‘Life Givers’, specifically.

And what is quintessence, but ‘life itself’.

JDS has previously compared Lotor to Magus from Chrono Trigger, a game I have no personal experience with, but @blackmoonbabe provides the relevant info here.

What if there's some kind of cosmic horror that Lotor's been fending off with Altean quintessence? Possibly, the only kind strong enough - apart from the rift sourced variety. Extracting it and storing the people in the hopes of eventually restoring them. Only, now that he's gone. There's nothing stopping whatever this thing is. Who knows. It might even be related to the rift creatures.

We still don't know what the Baku was or where it came from, just that it 'fell from space.' The new trailer for season 7 features a similar looking and very toothy one-eyed beastie.

When Lotor is pleading with Allura he says:

"Allura, you must understand I’ve given everything I have to plumb the depth of King Alfor’s knowledge, to unlock the mysteries of Oriande."

It might be that he found something bad while trying to unlock those mysteries.

All of this really makes you wonder why exactly Alfor kept Oriande's existence a secret.

Post season 1, there was an interview where the showrunners said that they had to kill off Alfor's AI because he knew spoilers. Which, okay, that’s fair.

Except... what exactly have we come to know now that only Alfor’s AI could have told us ahead of time?

Everything we eventually learn about Zarkon we find out through Allura and Coran. And everything surrounding Lotor and Haggar are things that Alfor’s AI wouldn’t have known about because they happened after Alfor’s death. The only outstanding piece of information that Alfor could have know was the location of and the information about Oriande. But, Allura doesn't even think to look for Oriande until mere moments before she and Lotor unlock the map to it. Certainly, the AI could have provided information of the proper way to get past the trials, but that was resolved easily enough in-episode and it was never truly portrayed as a risk that Allura and Lotor wouldn’t return before the castle ran out of oxygen.

If it was true that Alfor knew spoilers... there is something BIG concerning Altean Alchemy that we don't yet know. Not something little. Something potentially game changing.

Even knowing there was a good chance he was going to his death, and Coran and Allura would be on their own, Alfor never told Coran about Oriande. Coran and Alfor have been shown to have a particularly close, lifelong friendship - strong enough that Coran keeps at least two portraits of Alfor in his room above his bed. Alfor trusted Coran to the extent that he entrusted his beloved daughter, the Black Lion, and the future of the universe into Coran’s hands.

And yet.

Alfor didn’t tell Coran about Oriande. The one place Allura might go to strengthen her alchemic abilities and reach her potential. Alfor was faced with the possibility of letting the knowledge of Oriande and Altean Alchemy die, and he chose to risk it.

There had to be a damn good reason he didn't tell Coran about it. He might have known about something bad. It seems like he wanted Oriande forgotten; for Allura to never go there. Or at least, not until she was ready to make some tough decisions. Decisions he would rather spare her.

I’ve been feeling since around season 3 that VLD’s ultimate conclusion will be to show us that there is no true good and evil, that neither violence or pacifism is always the answer, that the world - the universe - is all shades of grey. Allura is our vehicle for that. It’s through her assumed prejudices that the show is shifting our viewpoints. She began the series believing that the Galra were all evil, the Alteans good. As time has gone on she’s improved impressively on her initial bias against the Galra, but has steadfastly refused to acknowledge her own people as capable of similar actions - her response to the alternate reality Alteans was to declare them not true Alteans instead of accepting that they’d become akin to the Galra Empire from her own reality.

It’s clear that Allura will have to face Honerva eventually, and will be forced to confront what the former greatest Altean Alchemist has become. But it’s too easy to dismiss Honerva’s corruption into Haggar as a side effect of the rift - not the willing actions of someone more concerned with knowledge than morality.

For six seasons we’ve seen Alfor as a paragon of good. His one fatal flaw being perhaps too good, too trusting, that he believed his friend’s words over his own judgement. Ultimately damning the universe to ten thousand years of being ground under the heel of a brutal dictator.

Alfor paid for that mistake with his life, with the destruction of his planet and the near extinction of his people. And so, he remains what all good in VLD is measured against, both in our - the audience’s - minds, and in Allura’s.

But just as our ultimate evil, Zarkon, was revealed to be more than just a monster, so too will our ultimate good be made more complex. In season 3 we were introduced to the younger Zarkon. A loyal friend and comrade. Awkward around an attractive woman, afraid of cats, and a dedicated and concerned ruler of his people. He was humanized, for lack of a better word, but we still see in him the man who he’d eventually become.

What better way to finally break through Allura’s idealized view of Alteans than by tainting Alfor’s image in some way? To finally see our Big Good do something morally grey? We’ve already seen it foreshadowed by the corruption of the AI, and the Alteans in the alternate reality.

The first time we’ve heard someone level legitimate criticisms against Alfor was at the end of season 6. Just after Lotor begins his breakdown he says:

"What about your father? He may have been a master engineer, but Alfor was too weak to defend his home world. I’m the one who had to step up and save our entire race. Who are you to question my tactics in bringing peace and prosperity to the universe?"

No one else criticizes Alfor for his choices. Even when they acknowledge he failed, he's always portrayed as having taken the best choice. But, what if Lotor's right? It certainly looks like he is.

If Lotor hadn’t stepped in and saved those few survivors of Altea’s destruction they would eventually have been discovered by the empire and executed. Zarkon had made it his personal mission to drive the Alteans to extinction. Alfor was weak. He surrendered to his fear of what would happen if Voltron fell into Zarkon’s hands and failed to utilize all his resources to defend Altea, his people, and his allies.

This won’t be the only fault we find out he had, mark my words.

There is something dark and unsavory lurking in the truth of Altean Alchemy.

Considering Lotor readily admits that Alteans perished in the process of his quintessence experiments, it may very well be that whatever required such vast amounts of concentrated quintessence is also something Alfor had to contend with in the past. Canonically, as stated in s3e7 ‘The Legend Begins’, quintessence was only first discovered in the course of studying the rift on Daibazaal. Alfor could not have been utilizing quintessence directly, because he didn't know it existed.

So if, whatever Lotor has been having to do with the colony, Alfor may have been having to do something similar...

He was simply sacrificing people.

It’s a lot easier to hide a handful of people going missing when you have an entire planet’s population to work with.

What if this is a thing that had always been happening, and that's why Alfor never told Coran about Oriande?

The thing is, Lotor can't know that now. Or he would have told Allura. To justify his actions, if it was something that Alfor would have dealt with as well.

Lotor didn't have Voltron. If there is some kind of Cosmic Horror beastie out there he might not have been able to fight it, let alone kill it. So he was building Sincline. Hence the urgency to get it completed even after Zarkon was gone. We know he was out of concentrated quintessence as of s4e5 ‘Begin the Blitz’. He was either going to have to access the rift imminently or harvest more people.

The powers that be keep talking about things not being black and white in this show.

Alteans can do bad things. Honerva became Haggar. Allura herself has made some morally questionable choices. Like what she did to Lotor for example.

Allura will need to realize that. The truth will rise from the depths and confront her in a way she can no longer ignore.

Alfor failed. It was up to Lotor to save the Altean people. He did what he felt he had to do, and in many respects, it will turn out he was right.

Lotura Discord™ Meta! The only brand of Voltron Meta you can trust to cover all the bases. No reach is too far! We’ll make it. *

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#vld #The Depths #Allura #Lotor #Alfor #Romelle #Bandor #Plaxum #Florona #voltron legendary defender #s2e2 #Hate tries to Meta #Lotura Discord Meta #red herring #vld season 7 predictions #vld conspiracy theory #altean alchemy

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saltwife · 5 years

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Idk what's more worse, s8's bs or the staff's bs

I’m reluctant to call out anyone in particular because there’s just not enough information, but something sure stinks

#vld conspiracy theory #voltron #discourse #salt #asks #answered #bakugouthefalloutboy

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lesbianklance · 3 years

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okay but consider this: keith thought lance's name was taylor in the garrison, like the hc, however he never realises they're the same person

so when they get back to earth he asks the garrison officers about taylor, scared he died during the war, and they tell him there was never a taylor

so keith starts an entire conspiracy theory on the disappearance of taylor

maybe he was an altean hidden with the humans guarding the blue lion until they found it and then he finally went back to space

maybe taylor WAS the blue lion and that's why keith was so drawn to him

maybe taylor was an alien trying to steal the blue lion and followed them out in space

maybe taylor found out about the aliens first and the government hid him of experimented on him

so many possibilities...

meanwhile shiro is sitting there hearing keith going on about this knowing fully well that taylor is lance trying to not laugh his ass off and expose himself

#klance #vld keith #keith kogane #vld lance #lance mcclain #idek how tf i thought of this but its lowkey hilarious #because keith would so go into alien conspiracy theories instead of just get the logical explanation that he got his name wrong skdhskdhsk

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 4 years

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Hey Lightning, I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on something. One take that seems to keep returning every once in a while is the "Allura fell for Lotor only after he revealed his Altean heritage," but I know u and others have disproven this many times, which does reassure me. While I love Allura, I definitely think one of her weaknesses was her devotion to Altea and singing Alfor's praises, which sometimes became too much. At the same time, it bothers me when I see some ppl (1/?)

Continuing anon message: “ say that she thought Alteans were superior to all other races, and that when the colony plot twist happened, she became repulsed by Lotor's Galra side, which is why she rejected him. For them, that's why she forced violent memories onto an uncorrupted Zarkon, but somehow "saw the good/redeemed" Honerva, the Altean. I can kind of understand where they're coming from, but for me, it just didn't make sense that Allura suddenly had a change of heart considering for most of s8, she was angry and dead set on going after Honerva. Even with that, I think to a lot of her fans, s8 made Allura so ooc that she became unrecognizable, which hurt to watch. I guess for me it's hard seeing antis and people who don't like her claim that that's just how she is and has always been. Haha sorry for rambling, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, since your arguments ease my mind on a lot of things when it comes to Allura :)”

Hi, anon. Wow, thanks for your extended note! I don’t know anywhere in canon that Allura champions Alteans as a superior race. The definition of racial supremacy is a belief that inherent genetic differences between races determine cultural or individual achievement, with social/governmental policies championing intolerance of other races. To get Allura to fit into such a label:

1. A viewer has to ignore or undermine all the evidence available about who the main-universe Alteans really were before main-universe Zarkon’s massacre of them.

2. A viewer has to ignore or undermine how Allura actually responds to a variety of different races in the show, including her own.

So let’s start with issue one. To support an “Allura was a racial supremacist” opinion, a lot of antis (and even non-militant, average viewers) are favorable to the opinion that Alteans as a group, including Alfor, were actually evil and violent colonizer elitists before Galrans killed them off. In other words, they question Altean victimhood, and this allows the militant antis to poison and undermine scenes of a woman mourning her home and her beloved family. And it just gets to be a really unsettling conversation, to listen to someone actually try to justify genocide. They’ll also have suspicions that all of our foundational backstory in the s3 finale was just “cleansed” propaganda from Coran. So if antis can undermine Allura’s entire race and family as corrupt, then they can intentionally undermine any of her canonical statements about or efforts toward peace. Which is hilarious, because this racist tactic applied to Allura is actually what a lot of antis accuse Allura of doing with Lotor.

For the record, I don’t think the show production team actually intended the subliminal messaging/cognitive dissonance that I’m about to discuss. The people who designed and developed this show are fans of robot kitties and aren’t PhDs in social issues. But I think there is a very serious issue about the portrayal of genocide victims that feeds into some very real problems in our world, especially regarding the concept of racial supremacy and conspiracy theories about genocide victims.

VLD tried to play with both genocide politics for edge™ points while ALSO playing with shatterglass theory (shatterglass meaning an AU where the heroes are villains and villains are heroes). Combining these two concepts into the same universe creates some incredibly disturbing subliminal messaging about Alteans that very closely mimics ongoing neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews. Nazis and other anti-Semitists justify their hatred of Jews by equating them as terrible villains out for world domination via some underhanded shadow control of the mass populace. It’s an incredibly malicious form of propaganda, because it works so terribly well. And what do you know, VLD plays right into this kind of propaganda. In the season 3 episode, Hole in the Sky, we’re faced with team Voltron confronting an Altean Empire that was actually evil and out for multiverse domination. And oh by the way, they’re using malicious shadow tech to control a mass populace.

It’s like someone on the production team read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then just copied/pasted that incredibly damaging and widely accepted conspiracy theory right onto Alteans for s3 funsies because edge content.

This is incredibly punishing, for the narrative to wave the carrot stick in front of genocide survivors that maybe some others survived—and then to suggest that Alteans were the evil ones all along. A shatterglass twist worked very well in Captain Marvel (2019) for a lot of reasons, for example, but it just doesn’t work well in the VLD universe given that the show explicitly portrays the genocide victims as evil and validates this concept. And this episode unfortunately feeds ongoing cognitive dissonance in antis that if AU Alteans could be so evil…how certain are you that they aren’t in the main universe too? On the reverse side, the main-universe goes out of its way to portray that not all Galrans are evil, and even that Galrans were the primary resistance (BOM). But in this singular episode, we see a united Altean empire. And the only Altean who moves to stand against it once the shine wears off…is Allura. There is no AU Altean actually shown in the Guns of Gamara. So Allura stands alone as an Altean against her own people.

For this reason, this episode doesn’t function very well as a shatterglass AU either, because the moral “flip” isn’t a mirror balance to main universe. The Alteans of the AU world appear as fully united in their evil plans. And then, no doubt, anti-alluras point out other quirky things about main-universe Alteans throughout the show—the violent language-learning system that scares Pidge, and the ancient Altean terraforming technology that Haggar activates, and the fact that Oriande is a hidden place that keeps out the less magical with a violent guardian. These details, when removed from main-universe world building, create a cognitive dissonance about whether main-universe Allura and Alteans were actually genuine in how they depicted respectful “peace and diplomacy.” So anti alluras who believe Allura was a racial supremacist really rely on this s3 episode and these details to uphold their conspiracy theory.

So let’s focus on Allura in this episode, because it says a lot about who she ultimately is as a person, and people have forgotten how she actually responded in this episode. Allura is unquestionably hopeful at the thought that her and Coran might not be the last Alteans alive. Pretty understandable. If I were the last human, I’d be darn excited to find out there’s more of me left, lol. So her experience as a genocide victim initially blinds her to the evilness of these Alteans. You can even see the ache on her face, of how badly she wants to believe their narrative of peace.

So Allura is initially star-struck that she and Coran are not the last Alteans, yes, and that somehow they’ve achieved a “peace.” She is also not afraid to admit that they would be valuable allies in the war:

And she’s not wrong there, considering that they have what appears to be extensive military resources and a robot force of their own. But she makes a critical mistake in assuming that “these are my people” means that they share main-universe cultural sentiments. The instant Allura hears Slav (so not someone of her own race) call these Alteans out as actually evil colonizers turning people into slaves, she begins to question the narrative she’s received.

In this instance, she actually affords the Alteans the same courtesy she afforded Lotor—the opportunity to deny the accusations.

But in the AU Altean’s case, they try to turn blame back on other parties. Allura listens to Keith when he grows increasingly fearful of what the Alteans might do to the others, and she tries to plead for actual peace:

And actually, this is a pretty interesting moment for Allura. She tries to salvage an alliance…until she realizes that their differences are irreconcilable, and that their definition of peace is inherently different from her own. This probably sets the stage for why Allura was so triggered by Lotor talking about peace while also killing people—because she’s seen people misappropriate that term before. And also probably informs why she trusts the information of both Keith and Krolia (both of whom have Galran blood, btw).

Ultimately, Allura turns against her own people. Violently:

When they get angry about her wanting actual peace, Allura draws a weapon against them and rejects them from her people. This mimics how she spends several seasons fighting an Altean Haggar/Honerva for her crimes, and how she turns against Lotor too.

So case in point here, Allura loves her people, obviously—but she also is holding them to moral standards regarding their behavior, which is something that a genuine racist doesn’t do. As a matter of fact, Lotor is the only person of Altean blood that Allura genuinely bonds with ever again in the series. She’s distant with Romelle, she’s distant with the s8 Alteans… In s8, Allura even says this about Luca, which refers back to her own mistakes she made with initially being star-struck by the s3 AU Alteans who came in “peace”:

Allura herself had been manipulated in s3, wanting so desperately to not be the last Altean alive that it initially blinded her to how Commander Hira was manipulating her. The plight of the s8 Alteans who are deceived by Honerva is inherently frustrating to her, because she can see herself in them.

Absolutely none of this correlates with Allura seeing or perpetuating Alteans as a superior race. At every turn, her own people continue to disappoint her, and she increasingly and progressively separates herself from them in hopelessness, because they’re so brainwashed that they can’t see they’re just cannon fodder for someone else’s military agendas. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a superior race, lol.

So let’s think about anti accusations here. Allura is a racial supremacist…but she’s arguing against her people who believe unquestionably in Honerva, another full Altean like herself? Nothing about that accusation makes sense with her actions.

The fact is, consistently from season 3 and onward, Allura is faced with her own people morally disappointing her.

The good news for the s8 Alteans like Tavo is that Allura is able to remove the dark entity Honerva is using to control him. Which allows other Alteans to “wake up” from being manipulated and try to make amends.

Regardless, Allura makes a very clear line that simply being Altean doesn’t make someone “right.” She sees herself fully at odds with her own people who are drawn in by Honerva’s lies. And she experienced well back in s2 (revealing Haggar as Honerva) and s3 (evil AU Alteans) that any given race, including her own, can house people who do bad things.

The fact is, she’s consistently and willingly drawn weapons against even her own people when they didn’t meet her moral expectations. So her response to Lotor isn’t particularly out of line there. She’s repulsed by a moral flaw.

And actually, Lotor himself wouldn’t have known this, but he very oddly echoed the AU Alteans by getting angry that Allura was angry over the means through which he was trying to get peace:

So Lotor actually reverts to the same logic of the AU Alteans—peace at any cost, just look at the results—

And keep in mind that the AU Alteans also manipulated Allura’s excitement about them, to get her to make the transreality comet usable so they could go into other realities. So Allura has felt betrayed and used before, by her own people.

So when she says this:

Yes, it’s a reference back to how Zarkon manipulated his friends in order to get access to the quintessence field, at the explicit cost of potentially killing his own people. But it’s not without understanding that yes, Alteans can be just as manipulative and betraying as Zarkon. Because she’s experienced it, again and again.

As a matter of fact, six out of the eight seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender feature villainous Alteans/Alteans on the wrong side of the war, and we continuously see Allura punished again and again for wishing that Alteans still lived.

No wonder she wanted to die.

This is something that I find uncomfortable about the narrative of the show. Previous iterations of Voltron did in fact have a “blood on everyone’s hands” perspective, such as within the ages 16+ Dynamic Comics. However, Arusians/Alteans in those old Voltron narratives were not victims of genocide. VLD turns Alteans into victims of the worst racial crime possible and then also consistently portrays them as inherently antagonistic to genuine peace efforts in some way, instead of focusing on the evil of the oppressors.

And this is such a double whammy for Lotor’s characters as well, given that he was abused by his parents and threatened with slavery via his Galran culture, and that he was half-Altean too trying to connect to his lost culture.

As a matter of fact, the larger show’s narrative interest in “victims as antagonists” makes it such that when we see victims try to enact actual justice, it feels almost jarring. Let’s look at that s8 Zarkon moment you brought up as an example, where Allura destroys his innocent perspective by showing him his evil deeds.

The s8 Zarkon is a weird topic because 1) This Zarkon actually doesn’t exist outside of Honerva’s mind, so how he has any kind of actual free-will is beyond me, unless someone wants to argue that Honerva actually cursed his true soul just as she cursed the other paladins. It’s hilarious too, because Honerva-mind-Zarkon also calls Honerva a psychopath, so I guess now Honerva is psychoanalyzing herself using her dead husband as the vehicle, while also discreetly helping the paladins to stop herself—

ANYWAY, using this Zarkon as a “proof” of Allura’s “racism” is also cherry picking in the weirdest of ways. Is she angry about his horrific and incalculable crimes, including even how he betrayed the OG paladins and ruined his own planet? Absolutely. Does she want him to be aware of his crimes instead of having to pretend like nothing’s wrong? Yes.

But notice here, this Zarkon actually shows remorse. He is actually crying over those memories and recognizing that he had done something wrong. And Allura can work with that. In fact, out of everyone standing around and doing nothing, it’s Allura who gives him a second chance and offers an alliance with Zarkon in order to stop a crazy Altean:

Keep in mind too, Honerva didn’t have memory loss at the end of s8. She knew exactly what she’d done and had given up and had to actually be convinced to do anything halfway constructive. That’s a very different circumstance than mind-Zarkon had, who jumped at the chance to do something to fix what all had happened, and gets even morally righteous about it, calling his own wife a psychopath, lol.

So generally, antis who believe Allura was a racial supremacist haven’t watched the show holistically. We see her hold the same standards to her own people as she expects out of others. This show would look incredibly different if Allura were a true racial supremacist.

Ah, you ask. Okay, so we’ve refuted the big pieces of “evidence” used to incriminate Allura. But what about all of those weird details about ancient Altean history? The violent language-learning program that scared Pidge? The violent terraforming tech that almost kills Voltron? The concept that Alfor tried to play “police” over the Galra and actually blew up their planet? The Alteans’ ongoing discussions of “peace and diplomacy” and spreading it throughout the universe while they happen to sit on a massive load of ancient power?

The s3 finale and other facts throughout the series very heavily smash the claim that our canon, in-universe Alteans were evil colonizers like the AU Alteans. The biggest piece of evidence to the contrary is that the Altea we know was one (1) planet. You counted right. One planet. Not an empire, but a singular planet. The s3 finale corroborates this, showing Altea as being largely isolationist from a military perspective while Daibazaal and Nalquod warred "for generations," right in front of their salad.

So some viewers would have you believe that Alteans were these big bad, intergalactic police state colonizers. But for all of its great power and knowledge, the singular planet of Altea didn't even canonically interfere in the wars of its own galaxy for actual millennia? And looking at the screenshots upon the stabilization of the alliance, Alfor is revealed to not have had experience with a neighboring culture. His face while exploring Gyrgan’s homeworld is an indication that it’s all rather new for him too. So again, we have evidence showing that Alteans were not colonizing or even functioning as a police state.

Note here that in the s3 flashbacks, the show confirms that it actually wasn’t just Alfor who suggested an alliance. All five leaders had common interests in protecting their galaxy from even worse threats, so all five came together at the same time. This is actually the first piece of evidence we have of Altea entering into some kind of intergalactic military agreement to stave off said worse threats.

And all of this is on top of a history where in s6, the Galran Archivist confirms that the Galran Empire had existed before Zarkon for 3,000 years, with times of “expansion.” It’s very easy to see that Blaytz’s people were actively fighting off Galran occupation of their homeworld within this past.

And that’s actually what I think makes Alfor and the OG paladins some pretty interesting characters. Here, we had colonizing Galran empire setting down its sword and accepting the value and space of its neighbors. Here, we had master alchemist Alfor giving up military power within their group by acknowledging Zarkon as the superior strategist. Here, we had Blaytz who had previously been battling Galran occupation…fully accepting the Galra?

So the OG Paladin backstory represents a pretty incredible alliance that removed a lot of intergalactic toxicity and helped heal broken bonds. But it required all five leaders to agree to that. Alfor did not throw his weight or power around within this. There were several checks and balances here.

But this backstory also helps to explain some of the quirky details about Alteans. Their planet existed within an active war zone, and it’s very likely that they’d had to fight off Galran occupation just as Blaytz’s people did. So the violent robot trainers and fear-based language learning systems start to make sense. Alteans weren’t just simpering people playing harps all day and eating grapes. They were actively prepared to defend their planet and their culture.

So when Allura says in season 1 that Alteans were “spreading diplomacy” across the universe, the only pieces of evidence we have of that is the OG paladins themselves, in which Alfor was a big part in creating that alliance—and then possibly the Alteans with the Balmerans, given their deep collective rituals with that planet while the Galra literally just came in and ripped the planet nearly to death. Allura tries to mimic what it means to accept and interact with a culture without changing it well in season 1, when she stumbles through trying to respect Arusian culture and its demands on its people. Also, there is a big fact that antis like to overlook:

The fact is, despite the untold numbers of civilizations we interact with across 76 episodes, no outside race remembers Alteans as evil colonizers. If they were really so big and bad, we would have heard it, like, “Man, yeah the Galrans are bad. Just as bad as those Alteans, back in the day.” Or something. But nope, nothing.

So I heavily question the history of Altea as an ancient colonizing race. If they were, then Altea wouldn't have just been a single planet with limited resources to fight wars in even its own galaxy. All of this supports the idea of Altean children being raised to fight--because they were preparing to defend themselves when/if diplomacy fails.... But the fact that the Balmerans see Alteans fondly and that literally every other race we run into is explicitly suspicious of Galrans and not at all of Alteans says something.

I think the only piece of evidence there might be for a genuinely colonizing ancient Altea is the use of terraforming technology, as mentioned in s4. Haggar discovers it and activates it to try and kill Voltron--and she nearly succeeds, because said tech destroys the entire crust of the planet to reform it. But you have to step back for a second and wonder--if ancient Alteans were so powerful, why was Alfor struggling so hard to even hold his own planet together in the midst of all these other cultures warring and larger threats? If they had this technology--and they did know about it because Allura recognized it right away as ancient technology--why the heck wouldn't they use it? Or were they using it, and it was to reform uninhabited planets to help sustain displaced peoples? Why is it, if Alteans were so terribly bad, we have no record across ANY of the many alien races being cautious of them? Even Galran Lieutenant Lahn snapped at Allura only because he was jealous of the general security she had back on, you guessed it, explicitly Altea. There's a lot of potential explanations for a positive use of terraforming technology, and the evidence against colonization and Altea committing omnicide against other races is incredibly more aligned with the other details in the canon.

And even Alfor’s creation of Voltron and the blowing up of Daibazaal—that’s something that antis like to position as evidence of his police-state ways to underhandedly control other cultures.

So let’s tackle those too while we’re at it.

Honestly, I know people like to hate on Alfor, and I do think his character picks up some misogynism just from the writers....But I don't think he was as much of a controller as people think he was. He was already in an alliance with four other leaders to try and stop bad things from happening in their galaxy. That meant they were expending incredible amounts of time and resources to accomplish that end—resources that were not renewable and may have been straining various planets. We know that he started building Voltron with Zarkon and everyone else's blessing because he called them "clean ships," but it's only after the rift creatures attack that suddenly Alfor's perception of Voltron moves from "clean energy" to "omg we need a more powerful weapon against this unknown enemy.”

So these are his intentions BEFORE he discovers rift creatures are a threat to the universe. While Zarkon states that these new ships are to be endlessly powerful for the Galra Empire, Alfor shames him by offering what his desire is for them:

After the rift creatures nearly destroy Daibazaal, intentions change.

So here, we see the game change in a BIG way. Voltron is not just about offering a more renewable way of sustaining peace-keeping efforts. Alfor is now adjusting and finishing these ships with the explicit knowledge that if they are not powerful enough, then Daibazaal and the Galran people will die. Alfor’s got a LOT of pressure on him now to deliver a mighty and powerful weapon to stop this new threat. So even his creation of Voltron as a superweapon involved using it to protect people from imminent death—not to police them.

And about Alfor blowing up Daibazaal—once again, it’s Alfor trying to clean up Honerva and Zarkon’s mess. Honerva had convinced Zarkon that the rift needed to be wider, and so Zarkon deceived the paladins into widening it.

So keep in mind here, at this point in time—the rift was destabilizing and eating an entire planet. The entire universe was now at stake. Alfor had to choose between a bad fix and an even worse option of allowing everyone to die, but he very clearly evacuated people before destroying Daibazaal, as part of his promise to keep Galrans safe. So that no one would have to die.

And as a matter of fact—about that terraforming technology. How sure are you that Alfor didn’t intend to use it to build Galrans a new home? It’s entirely within the realm of acceptable conjecture that he allowed for the existence of that technology because it could restore what had been lost.

And here’s where the story gets really screwy and feeds into some anti hate. Because when Zarkon wakes up as a zombie, he desires more quintessence as zombies do.

So he’s pissed that Alfor just cut off his gateway, and he manipulates his people:

And it’s here where we get the idea that Alfor was an evil controller. The idea came from Zarkon, who—we can look around pretty easily and see that he was not a man of honor, ultimately. Even if you chose to not believe the s3 finale flashbacks as being objective, there’s something wrong with Zarkon. (It’s clear that the show thought using Coran was a smart way to shell off massive amounts of info, because clearly if this were truly in Coran’s perspective, we would NOT have had intimate looks into Zarkon and Honerva’s bedroom as Zarkon is tending to her, like omg.) Numerous sources, histories, and cultures outside of Coran confirm that Zarkon hit a point of no return on the evil scale, and that he projected his own blame for Daibazaal’s destabilization onto Alfor in order to raise up his new regime in the name of Quintessence™.

So at the end of the day, even Alfor was a victim. But yet somehow, various antis choose to believe Zarkon’s victim-punishing narrative because said antis can’t or else refuse to connect one scene to another since it undermines their justifications for why they can hate on Allura. And that’s not so much an issue with the story itself as it is just poor critical analysis or malicious weaponization of content against other fans.

Now, at this point, we’ve talked about Allura and we’ve talked about Altean history. I have numerous other posts about Allura’s interactions with other races and Galrans and overcoming trauma to give the entire universe a second chance. So if there is anything in this show that suggests Alteans were in any way a superior race, then it’s probably within the show’s own worldbuilding. The show contradicts its own definitions of what quintessence even is by suggesting Alteans have “bluer/purer quintessence” in order to justify why Lotor would even be trying to sacrifice them for anything. The show-championed concept that Alteans have a bluer, purer life force above all other people, and that only Altean energy could interface with the fabric of space-time. Now, this is a problem in the later seasons’ world building itself. And you know who wrote that in? The production team. So once again, we do have racial issues in this show, in ways that shows like Star Wars desperately try avoid by showing racial diversity in who has Midi-chlorians.

That said, I’m not a perfectly woke storyteller either. I think every story and show is going to have something problematic™, but with VLD it’s very clear that its disrespectful handling of genocide politics and shatterglass conspiracy theories, on top of its weird master race angle created the perfect storm. These mishandled and quirky details have created a cognitive dissonance with the provided narrative, resulting in some people in the anti fandoms to champion what aligns very closely to actual neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews, who according to them are not victims but instead the true perpetrators of all bad things. For the sake of the antis, I’m pretty sure they’re not intentionally looking at VLD this way and are probably just looking for any easily graspable reason to hate on Allura for interfering with their ship or something.

But this kind of subliminal propaganda that undermines victims, and the effect it has had on fandom morality politics, is deeply concerning to me. I really wish that we’d had an opportunity to respectfully and critically discuss this with the production team of the show, because a Y7-FV show about “strength in unity” should NOT result in us needing to have a conversation about people walking away with neo-Nazi-ish propaganda sentiments against genocide survivors. Like. Clearly, VLD is fictional, but it’s feeding into a real-life beast that it does NOT need to feed. And it’s keeping alive ongoing conspiracy narratives against some of our most vulnerable populations on the planet.

So, we need better stories. We need a production team that, if they’re going to get paid to do something involving portrayals of genocide and politics, that they need to do their research on those topics. Nobody is going to be perfect with a creation, but VLD validated some very damaging things—and it ALL is something that could have been fixable. I think it would have been incredibly validating to hear the production talk about and accept that these were issues that cropped up unintentionally, and to hear them confirm that these issues are not the sorts of things that VLD was supposed to champion.

The greatest tragedy of all of this is the potential that this show had to really champion some great and validating messages, and the potential that we as a fandom had to come together and do something that fandom was meant to do—which was celebrate the things we love. Because that’s why we’re all here. That’s why this crazy tumblr of mine even exists. It was supposed to celebrate things.

For that reason, I’m going to end this here. I’ve written several responses now as to my thoughts on the inappropriate narrative lens of the show, its contradictory and damaging worldbuilding about the purest race, and how it champions demonizing or punishing genocide survivors again and again. Within all of that, I’ve talked at length about Allura’s character and behavior over 8 seasons and how she built even empathetic connections with militant Galrans like Commander Lahn. In fact even her own homesickness is how she emotionally connects with Lahn, because she understands that desire to call something one’s own. To have a home. A family.

I now really would like to get back to writing stories that I find meaningful to me using these characters and these worlds—and trying to find the hope in all of this darkness, haha. And maybe with any luck, I can hope to do VLD some justice, knowing that I am still on a learning journey as well.

But I appreciate your note, and I hope this very extensive response helps to settle your questions and concerns once and for all regarding VLD Allura. If you should have any remaining questions, please feel free to reach out via a private message to discuss. Thank you!

#Volron #VLD #Allura #VLD Critical #Alfor #Zarkon #Honerva #Lotor #I hope this helps explain my perspective #I think this might have to be my last refutation to the Allura as racist/racist supremacist conspiracy theory #at a certain point #people either watch the show holistically or they don't #you can't convince an anti #so this meta will probably not help an anti #but if you're sitting on the fence and felt drawn in by anti propaganda #then I hope that maybe this post provides an alternate perspective #and one that tries to be more holistically fair to all 8 seasons of the show #and to the intentions and general oversights that can occur during production #Ultimately it doesn't matter if someone likes or dislikes Allura as a fictional character #we need better entertainment that can handle these hard topics and handle them well #And we also need a fandom who's willing to look at all of the information and not weaponize it to specifically demonize and silence others #Maybe a family TV show shouldn't be appropriating conspiracy theories from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion #real-world fans are incredibly vulnerable to such conspiracy theories #and it creates a lot of real-world strife as a result

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revasnaslan · 4 years

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me, at 12 AM: I FOUND ANOTHER STRING

my friends, at 12 AM: go the fuck to sleep

#rev's rambling again #honestly i think half the fun of this hiatus has been yelling in dms about my conspiracy theory #cause i keep finding strings like i'm an actual detective #look either i'm right or i'm wrong #i never did this with vld but GOD is it fun

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shiroganetakashi · 4 years

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Ok y'know what the fact that they gave Keith of all people the big floofy dog will never fail to irritate me bc 1) Keith is so clearly a lizard person and 2) Shiro radiates such powerful dog person energies like I look at him and immediately my mind conjures an image of him taking a selfie in the mirror and holding some huge fluffy dog and captioning it "I work out so I can be strong enough to hold every breed of dog" like how!!! could you give KEITH the dog!!!

#ALSO Shiro with a service dog like!!!! why would you deny us this content!!!!!!!#this isnt REALLY salt but if anyone wants me to tag it as such i will #just. thinkin about stuff as we approach the 1 yr post vld mark #alyssa shut ur quiznak #also by 'lizard person' i meant like.... he owns an iguana not yknow the antisemetic conspiracy theory thing #pls let that be clear

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raayllum · 2 years

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Oh my god, I too was in the VLD fandom for two years. The show was a massive disappointment, you brought up extremely valid points in your reply. I wanted so much more for Shiro and Allura, didn't even watch the last season once I discovered the ending. Remembered how the show had many of their writers and artists leave to pursue other projects and such, it's how you knew everything was crumbling. The fact they were inspired by the Winter Soldier is another thing considering how Marvel treats their characters. The only good thing about Voltron was ending it all in the first place.

Oh yeah I never looked too much into production stories bc I veer away from anything that gets too conspiracy theory esque for my takes but like - almost half the crew walked away halfway through the project? I’ve never seen a writers’ room be so obviously on fire / at war with itself in a way that impacted the show so heavily like - I knew even before I did any digging. I’ve never seen Winter Soldier but it does seem like one of the more solid Marvel outings overall and like listen. one day I will take all the best concepts from my like 150k+ voltron fix it fic I never completed and repurpose it into an actual thing bc my worldbuilding and OC construction is genuinely some of my best work and I’ll stand by that

#thanks for asking #anonymous #vld #it haunts me still

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preposterous-pidgeon · 5 years

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My friend made me mothman for my birthday and it’s the most beautiful thing I own now

#mothman #voltron #klance #vld #sewing #conspiracy #conspiracy theory

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uh-oh-its-bird · 5 years

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THE VOLTRON SHERA COVER UP

The first thing we think of when we see the gorgeous Coran, is of course, his signature mustache. And that mustache is about to help us crack this case, wiiiiide open.

In the original show She-Ra: Princess of Power, many have noticed Bow’s signature look . . . his orange mustache

But with the new reboot, Bow has been given a complete makeover, and I’ll now reveal why . . .

OBVIOUSLY, THIS NEW DESIGN IS TO HELP COVER UP THE FACT THAT BOW IS CORAN’S LONG LOST BROTHER!! Look at that mustache, it’s an undeniable truth! The companies that made these shows might have tried to hide the truth, but we won’t let them bury the past!

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spiderdreamer-blog · 5 years

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On Voltron: Legendary Defender, Debunking Conspiracy Theories, and Expectations

Voltron: Legendary Defender took its final bow last December with a season that had, at best, a mixed reception, and at worst, downright controversial. And it’s not hard to see why from certain points of view: endings are difficult even under the best of circumstances for a planned-out animated television show, and the series had already made decisions that left many fans unhappy. It then proceeded to make a few more, and the reactions fly wide and sundry to this day. While I’ll offer my own opinion on it shortly, my overall goal here is to discuss some of the, well, I’ll just say it outright, conspiracy theories that have dogged the creators of the series since even before the final season. Misinformation is rife on the Internet, and I am compelled to correct it based on my knowledge base of televised animation production, which I would say is fairly strong after many years of study.

FIRST, OPINIONS

To begin with, after all’s said and done....I quite like the final season! Now, is it perfect? Of course not, neither is the rest of the show because that’s how this works. There are choices I ultimately don’t agree with but are arguably still executed well, and many of its episodes stand up to the best of what the series can do. “Shadows” is an illuminating, often heartbreaking set of flashbacks that fills in the gaps of our understanding about Honerva. “Battle Scars” makes touchingly sad use of a clever sci-fi conceit. “The Grudge” gives a character study to someone who sorely needed one (Acxa). “Day Forty Seven” marries a tricky visual strategy with a nice showcase on the supporting cast, and both it and “Clear Day” have a ton of classic VLD gags (Keith being terrified of a broken-down carny ride in the latter had me rolling), while “Knights of Light” goes all-in on phantasmagoric visuals and kickass action. And throughout, it remains a gorgeous, beautifully acted series with absolutely wonderful characters. Given all that and some personal connections it helped me with (we’ll get to that shortly), I cannot, in good conscience, say it ever outright became a bad or unworthy series.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND WHY THEY’RE DUMB

The trouble of the Internet is that it’s very easy to misquote/take quotes out of context to serve an agenda, and that’s especially true of people who give lots of interviews/public statements. Producers/showrunners Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos, artists I have admired for a long time via their collective work on shows like Justice League Unlimited, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Legend of Korra, and many other projects, frequently gave interviews whilst promoting the show during its release and shortly afterwards. Naturally, this led to the above phenomenon of sort of....reading the tea leaves to try and predict where the show would go/whether things like ships would be fulfilled (this also rampantly occurred with the voice cast, which always creeps me out, tbh). Admittedly, I’m guilty of this too, but there’s some, I would argue, who take it too far. Because of this and other factors, I wish to attempt debunk three conspiracy theories that have arisen either out of things they have said or what I believe to be misinformation about how TV animation works (yes, Netflix “counts” as TV, don’t be silly). I hope these can be both entertaining and illuminating and not come off like I’m a pompous windbag.

Conspiracy Theory #1. Lauren and Joaquim hated Shiro as a character and resented not being able to kill him off via executive meddling, hence why he was “sidelined” afterwards.

It’s a well known fact that Voltron is a long-running franchise largely designed to sell toys and merchandise. As with much of children’s television in this vein, there are often people higher up than the artists making decisions based on those factors that can then be integrated into a series. This was no exception: despite original plans to stay true to previous versions and off Shiro, the higher-ups said “no dice, we’re making a toy of him. He lives, period.”

This fact has been mentioned several times across various interviews and that it changed much of the scope of their plans for the series. However, this sentiment has always been expressed, to my mind, in fairly neutral terms of “this is how working on a show like this goes, and we make the best of it”. Nor do I agree that Shiro was sidelined at all: his clone played a significant role in the series’ larger plot and got one of the best fights in the entire series against Keith, said relationship continued to be heavily emphasized, and he was granted captainship of the IGF Atlas, arguably the coolest non-Voltron vehicle ever. To me, these are not things you decide to write if you “hate” a character and want to sideline him, nor is giving him an ultimately happy ending. Most creators are not that spiteful at all to any character, even ones they give unhappy ends (such as Lotor; it is clear they put every ounce of conceivable effort possible into making him a tragic hero here).

Conspiracy Theory #2: Ezor was given a reprieve/inserted back into the series after her presumed death as a result of the backlash to Shiro/Adam.

“The Grudge” features a vengeful Zethrid on the warpath trying to kill Keith and the other paladins to spite Acxa, her former friend, and it’s ultimately revealed that she’s doing this out of grief because Ezor left her, believing that her girlfriend’s rage at the universe was going to consume and kill them both. Given that the last time we saw these two, they were being exploded, it’s not an unreasonable jump to make, though the end of the episode features all three reconciling in a touching moment.

I myself was a little thrown by how this played out: the episode seems to be building up to the fact that Zethrid believes Ezor to be genuinely dead/that’s why she’s targeting Keith in particular since he was partially responsible for the aforementioned ‘splodiness, but then Acxa reveals that this is not the case. What I assumed had happened was that presumed death was the original intent, but mid-writing the episode, they decided to soften things even as the episode is still clearly structured to end with reconciliation. However, some began airing theories that they changed the episode last-minute after the backlash to the arguable “bury your gays” moment with Shiro and his ex-boyfriend, Adam.

Now, it’s not impossible for animated shows to be changed after the fact. Lines and roles can be redubbed, though often this depends on budget, and there is a built-in process called “retakes” where bad/janky shots or scenes will be redone. However, what doesn’t quite work out here is production timelines. Usually, when an animated series has come to its end, cancelled or otherwise, post-production takes place long after everyone else has moved onto other projects, and usually without the involvement of the full production team (Greg Weisman has said that he helped post-production on season 2 of Young Justice essentially for free because of this). I don’t know if that was the case here, but either way, it’s incredibly unlikely that they heavily reanimated, redubbed, and rewrote an episode in less than the five months’ time between seasons 7 and 8 (especially since Ezor is briefly present already in the next episode and in the epilogue). That doesn’t make good business sense, for one, and the possible fate of both of them also did not nearly receive the same level of attention as Shiro’s storyline did. Now, I will say animated FILMS can be changed dramatically up to the release date, but those are structured far differently in terms of production timelines and resources. TV is more locked in, as it were.

Conspiracy Theory #3: Lauren and Joaquim are homophobic/didn’t listen to advice from other creators about how to handle representation/tried to shift blame to the higher-ups.

This one comes partially from a news site called GeekDad, which published a purported expose about how the showrunners allegedly ignored advice from sensitivity readers about how to handle these things and did not seek out guidance from gay crew members/creators on other DreamWorks shows. This article was, in my opinion, a complete crock, and I will not be sharing it here because we do not honor bad faith arguments with more hits. No quotes are given for these claims, and the rest is filled with more misinformation about how animation production works (”last minute”, as noted, usually means something quite different here, and given how contracts work, one cannot precisely use ideas from people working on other projects without opening up some serious legal issues), as well as heavy conjecture on Lauren and Joaquim’s motives and beliefs (and, how interesting, I will note, that a woman and a mixed-race Latinx man are getting the brunt of the blame here).

Here’s the thing: ultimately, I can’t tell other people how to feel about representation or what they feel is a lack thereof. That’s ultimately up to each individual viewer. Personally, Shiro’s story overall meant a lot to me as a queer viewer, and he’s one of my favorite characters in the series. I was thrilled that he was able to walk off into the sunset, clearly loved. Are there better ways this could have been handled? Sure. But I think Occam’s Razor applies here: given some comments made by both the showrunners and the cast (and particularly given the support of Bex Taylor-Klaus, the voice of Pidge, who came out as nonbinary and bisexual during the show’s run), there were definitely roadblocks involved in queer representation on the show and for Shiro. I believe that to be a far more likely explanation than this idea that they deliberately set out to hurt people, because I don’t believe they did based on apologies they have made since then. Hurt still may have been caused, but content creators are very rarely that spiteful towards their audience (it’s not IMPOSSIBLE, mind gestures at Steven Moffat). I don’t know either of them personally/can’t read their minds, of course, but I do believe all of this came from an ultimately sincere place.

(Now, you might wonder, “what about She-Ra? That doesn’t seem to be having problems being real gay.” Well, I think She-Ra has a different set of expectations given that it’s a “girl’s show” and Voltron was a “boy’s show”, and DreamWorks is not necessarily an outright hivemind on these matters. Additionally, the language around the gayness in the show is very careful and vague outside of confirming things like “dads”; nobody is saying in-universe that Adora has “a crush” on Catra or vice-versa. Much of the queerness is communicated visually. It is also potentially not in Noelle Stevenson’s best interest to speak out more openly on these matters given her relative age and experience; Montgomery and Dos Santos have been more open, certainly, but there is a sense of care and not wanting to burn bridges in their words).

And on that note, I think it’s time to speak on our final subject:

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

Credit to @radioactivesupersonic, a dear friend and colleague who I met through the series, for inspiring this part of my post. We’ve discussed our personal journey with the show and how we both approached things differently: I had always seen it as a show that was often wonderful, but made by flawed human beings and thus under no expectation to be perfect. He initially saw it as The Wonder Show that could never step wrong and if it did, well, they’d take it back eventually, right? It’s a feeling, I imagine, many struggle with, and I can’t say I haven’t in the past.

But art, especially ones made under corporate directives, is hard. It’s messy. And it is made by people who are going to mess up, be imperfect, etc. Ergo, I think it is generally careful and prudent to...well, you can certainly be excited and enthusiastic. That’s the fun of being a fan. However, I would caution many, especially younger fans, to not get too attached to an idea of where you think the series should go and build one in your mind that is the perfect ideal. That will inevitably lead to disappointment since the creators are not you and are arguably not obligated to think like you.

Are there things I wanted in the series that I didn’t get? Of course there are, but that’s true of anything. For example, I was never sold on Allurance/always preferred Kallura as a pairing, so to see the series go for the former was a resounding “meh”, though I never precisely hated it (look, I had to live through Makorra, you try telling me this is anywhere NEAR that level of “fuck off”). I would’ve liked more time with some of the supporting cast since they were so richly developed, even the most minor of characters. But the different directions the show often went in could nevertheless still thrill and delight me because I concentrated on what they tried to do, not what I necessarily wanted (that’s what fanfic is for).

I hope this has been informative and entertaining, and despite possible calls to go to hell, I would appreciate a lack of angry messages or blowing up my notes with harassment. This is just one fan’s opinion, in the end. Be kind to each other.

#vld #voltron #voltron legendary defender #conspiracy theories #misinformation #I'm A Tired Old And I'm Gonna Learn You A Thing #this got LONG

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