#vld wants to be nuanced so bad but it fails to be at every turn

[njararna]

whoever thought the ‘what if the species that was genocided were actually the bad guys in an alternate reality and committed lobotomies on entire species’ episode was a good idea needs to be handled. i know they were in the writers’ room rubbing their hands together gleefully like they thought they cooked something Profound…💀 any ‘what if the oppressed were the oppressor’ storyline is absolute dogshit and i really wish ppl would stop using it

[phoenixyfriend]

On Lotor, Dayak, and Mishandled Approaches

It’s been over a month, and I’ve finally managed to gather myself enough to actually write a post about why I disagree with how Lotor was handled.

So here we go, and it starts with a request:

Forget your opinions on Lotor as a character.

I’m serious. Whether you love him or hate him or something else, just put that aside for a moment. Just think “Okay, this is the character, this is what he did, and this is how it was presented,” because your own opinions are only tangentially relevant right now.

The target audience for Voltron is not you. If you are on this site, then the target audience is not you.

Voltron: Legendary Defender is rated TV-Y7. It’s meant for a target audience of children aged 7-11.

My critical thinking skills weren’t the best at that age, up to and including literary analysis. I didn’t stop to parse stories down to subtle messages and meanings, I just took them as they came, because I was seven years old and hadn’t had time to practice those skills yet. Last I checked, most kids that age were and are the same way.

And that’s where the problem with Lotor comes up, because a lot of those kids in the audience that the story is targeted towards are in abusive homes. Just statistically speaking, some of that target audience is kids who are going through the mental, emotional, and physical abuse that we see attached to Lotor’s childhood on-screen, whether it’s show or just implied.

So let’s dig into that under the cut.

I’ll be honest here: I'd have handled the twists a LOT better if it weren't for the fact that some of what they did is actively dangerous for their target audience, and emotionally damaging to the older watchers.

I think the production team meant well. I think they wanted to tell an interesting, nuanced story. I think they wanted a cool, layered villain.

I also genuinely don't think the team realized the full scope of implications when they included the abuse backstory for a character that had this kind of arc.

It's not something that's healthy for kids to see. A certain portion of the audience is current or former abuse victims. With an audience this size, it's unavoidable. When actively marketing to children, they're marketing towards impressionable minds. Some of those kids are currently in abusive households, and some of those abusive households have the physical, mental, and emotional abuse that Lotor underwent at Zarkon, Haggar, and Dayak's hands.

It’s not an uncommon type of abuse. I’ve seen posts that address it as being culturally similar to Caribbean households, or to tiger moms, and so on. Galra culture has similarities to a lot of cultures on Earth, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is abuse.

The messages those kids are getting are that being hit by your caretaker is a cause for humor, not concern, and that if you try to grow past your toxic roots, you will fail.

What they’re seeing and absorbing isn’t a nuanced villain, not when it’s presented like that. They’re seven. They’re not appreciating a Shakespearean tragedy of an arc. They’re seeing “Oh, he was hit by his nanny, and it was supposed to be funny! I guess when I get hit, it’s not that bad!” The slightly older ones are seeing “Oh, he tried to be better than his parents, but everyone thinks he’s just as bad as they were. I guess... I can’t be better than my parents, then.”

Again, please put aside your own love or hate for Lotor, and focus on the mentality of actual children who are watching. You are not the target audience.

I'm still furious about S6E1. There are kids who might have been considering telling a teacher about their parents' treatment of them who might now be holding off because the show told them that it's okay, that it's funny.

There are kids who still don't know that it's abuse and that it's wrong for them to be hit, and who are having that belief reinforced by this episode.

The episode is actively dangerous for literal children who are already in toxic, unstable, or dangerous situations.

And yes, for the older audience, for those of us who are old enough to mess around on sites like this, it's emotionally damaging in similar ways, even if it's not the same kind of dangerous.

They also completely defanged the abuse by having it lensed through Hunk.

In S6E1, Dayak’s abusive behaviors are all being aimed at a soldier who volunteered for the experience, who is either an adult or very near to it, who is wearing armor, who is already considered a comedic character.

And there's a lot to go into about it being Hunk, specifically, who got chosen for this role and how the production team treats him. We could definitely spend time touching on why the fat comedic relief was chosen as the target for this.

But imagine how much harder it would be to dismiss Lotor's background as a factor of his personality if what we'd gotten was... a flashback, to Dayak doing all of that to him while he was still clearly a child, rather than turning abuse into a comedic subplot.

A person I was talking to said the following:

What he really deserved was to have his complex situation and the grey area effect on his morality recognized. Like, yes, he was draining the life force of Alteans. But consider the environment he grew up. Hold his actions up against those of his parents. He had every reason to genuinely believe that his actions were not that bad by comparison, especially in the grand scheme of things. His death count was a drop in the bucket compared to Zarkon. The Alteans he used did not appear to be suffering or even aware of what was happening to them, and the ones left behind were a race being preserved from prosecution and extinction. He was also actively searching for a way to provide the Empire's needs without causing any more widespread death and destruction. He was trying to be better than his parents, and in his reference frame, his actions were better than theirs.

Which, hell, probably does come across as apologism. It’s a fucked-up situation, and one that I question seeing in a show aimed at kids. It was a delicate thing to handle, and I’d have been a lot more interested if I’d seen it in, say, Agents of SHIELD, rather than VLD.

Similar arguments apply to the overall arc. Kids who are in toxic situations are getting the message that they can’t grow out of it. “I want to be a better person and have no one to show me how, but I’m going to try anyway” is being met with “You will fail, and everyone will say it’s your own fault.”

I think they were TRYING but that they genuinely didn't realize the minefield they were entering by giving him the backstory they did. It would have been a suitable plotline if it had been in an adult show, if it had gotten more perspectives, or if there had been a different character with a background that was explicitly as abusive as his that overcame it despite the same hurdles, and no, Keith doesn’t count.

There are... a lot of abuse victims in this fandom. There are a lot of victims, both children and adults, who identified with Lotor because he showed the symptoms that people don’t like to sympathize with as easily. And that’s a lot of children who are getting negative messages, and a lot of adults who are feeling betrayed by the storyline.

Just... remember that. Please.

You aren’t the target audience, and the actual target audience is eating up messages that make them more likely to remain in abusive situations.

(And if your reaction is in any way to blame the children for not recognizing what they’re going through as abuse, regardless of media, I need you to take a long moment to reflect on the fact that you are effectively victim-blaming people that aren’t even in the double digits yet.)

(Also, I know a lot of people try to argue a lot of things as “think of the children!” It’s up to you how you approach the concept. I draw my line at portraying child abuse as comedy in media that is targeted at children, which I feel is inherently different from people who try to say “think of the children!” about things like queer representation.)

[autisticsheith]

“slav has been greatly and painfully misunderstood by this fandom” - a manifesto, by me

Okay, this started in a fandom saltiness discussion on — in which I literally said, “I AM ALWAYS UP TO BE SALTY ABOUT SLAV.… More specifically, about how fandom treats Slav” — so that’s where it’s coming from, and I have done very little to clean it up after copy-pasting.

TL;DR: The VLD fandom tends to treat Slav as either hilarious or completely above reproach (sometimes both), which annoys me — because he actually is a fascinating character (at least, he is to me), and I dislike the way he is boiled down to either a joke about, “LMAO SPACE OCD!!!” or turned into a “~pure precious cinnamon roll uwu~” who only resembles his canon counterpart kinda vaguely, if you tilt your head a bit to the left and squint

As a character, I think Slav can be fascinating because, if you actually examine his actions? He is a fucking dick

He’s a reclusive genius who has the intelligence and skill and talent to get away with being a fucking asshole, and yes, he clearly has SOME kind of issue (whether it’s ““space OCD,”” literally seeing all of the possibilities in alternate realities, or some cracked out combination of both)…… But he also isn’t an ~uwu precious cinnamon roll~ and his legitimate issues are not an excuse for the ways that he treats other people (which are largely abysmal)

Like, let’s get this out of the way: Slav is not completely ignorant of how the fuck social cues and nuances work, the way that I’ve seen some people try to say of him in fandom. He picks up on them pretty well, actually, and he figures out exactly why Lance mistook Laika for Slav when Lance had spent however long with her, only hearing her go, “YUP!!” and didn’t put two and two together

So, it stands to reason that Slav KNOWS what he is doing and KNOWS how to act in ways that DON’T make everyone get pissed off at him — but he CHOOSES NOT TO ACT LIKE THAT. Instead, he CHOOSES to act like a big bag of dicks and make everyone else do things his way, even when his way is obstructive as Hell and slows everything down

And let’s be real: Shiro had to all but bodily drag him out of Beta Traz, even going, “Hey man, we’re working with the Blade of Marmora to take down Zarkon, we need you” didn’t get him up and at’em at first, and Slav fought Shiro about everything, every step of the way.

Consider this: Slav fought to stay somewhere that he was constantly tortured and pumped for information that would be used against and used to oppress the people of the entire known universe because he was so completely certain (despite acknowledging, when it’s convenient for him, that there are infinite possibilities and things could always go in so many different ways) that fighting Zarkon was a lost cause and didn’t want to be bothered. He is so certain that he is going to die that he doesn’t even want to TRY (“Oh noooo, even worse. In 98-and-three-one-hundredths of a percent of realities with a prison break, I DIE.”)

When Shiro shows up to break him out, he tries appealing to Slav as a potential rescuer (”I’m here to rescue you, I’m a paladin of Voltron”).

That fails, so he tries appealing to Slav out of some belief that Slav might care about the life and freedom of the peoples of the known universe (“What? We’re finally going to stop Zarkon. We have the Olkari and the Blade of Marmora on our side. But without you, we can’t do it.”)

Slav only finally relents because the Blue Lion can emit a frequency that falls within his lucky range of terahertz — and even then, he fights Shiro every step of the way, about absolutely everything

While Shiro is, y’know, putting himself on the line and risking death to save this asshole who he just met and doesn’t even know for sure can help (—which, yeah. Ulaz is trustworthy and Shiro cares about him, and Kolivan clearly backs up his recommendation if saving Slav is so necessary to the plan. But Shiro is still going on hearsay rather than direct evidence, and he doesn’t really have a choice on that, but still. He is risking his life for an asshole who might not even be all he’s cracked up to be, because Shiro believes that Slav is necessary to take down Zarkon)

And then Slav gets going with the, “YOUR ROBOT ARM IS FANTASTIC DON’T YOU WANT TWO OF THEM” shit

Just. Oh my god. I get it, he doesn’t know how Shiro came to have that arm, but COME ON. It’s understandable that Shiro might not appreciate that shit, and Slav is so flippant about it because thinking about other people’s perspectives or experiences is not a thing that he cares about doing

AND THIS! IS!! AN INTERESTING!!! CHARACTER!!! (to me)

Slav is interesting because he’s an asshole. He’s someone you would only put up with if you needed him, because he uses his intelligence to make himself totally necessary and uses his legitimate problems to generate enough fucking sympathy that people feel bad about trying to argue with him

It isn’t even entirely the fandom’s fault when we mischaracterize him, because Show treats all of this as funny — and okay, yes, I laughed at some of it as much as anyone else did because Josh and Iqbal Theba sold it with their voice acting — but if you take a closer look at what Slav does and how it affects the people around him, literally none of this is fucking funny

And he clearly has the potential to NOT BE THIS GUY, because Mirror!Slav is a badass. Yeah, he still talks out his ass about alternate realities — and apparently he does it enough for Sven to be Exasperated by it, but Mirror!Slav puts himself on the line to save other people (both when he tries to help the Paladins and in general, as a member of the Guns of Gamara)

Mirror!Slav LISTENS to people — like, yeah, he’s all, “None of you have ever rescued me from any goddamn place” but in that particular scene, he isn’t exactly acting in a way I’d call unreasonable. He and Sven just wandered into five armed, unknown combatants who started babbling about Sven being some dude called Shiro AND one of them is Altean, when the Mirror!Alteans are an evil empire (and she’s the spitting image of their evil empress from 10,000 years ago)

But then, when push shoves, he listens to what they’re saying and makes the same, “OH GOSH YOU’RE FROM AN ALTERNATE REALITY” conclusion as Pidge, and HE CHOOSES TO TRUST THEM. Sven is the one going, “dude are you sure about this, it’s dangerous” while Mirror!Slav is all, “If they’re really my friends from an alternate reality, they are probably cool people and we can probably trust them, now let’s go fuck shit up for the cause of galactic freedom”

Mirror!Slav tells the paladins to get the Hell out of dodge while he patches Sven up when Slav Prime is That Asshole who, after the big fight with Zarkon when they have no idea if Shiro and Allura are going to be okay, is all, “IT’S COOL GUYS, I’M OKAY” (“Oh great, Slav made it” — Lance, being 5,000% Done and rightfully so).

Slav Prime is also the one who refuses to let Shiro step on a crack because of some infinitesimally small chance that it MIGHT break his mother’s back IN SOME FUCKING REALITY — NOT EVEN THE PRIME REALITY SPECIFICALLY, BUT IN SOME REALITY. And the one who refuses to go on one of Shiro’s alternate escape routes because you can hear the water running — it isn’t even running into the escape hatch, there is no direct risk of drowning, but OH MAN you can HEAR the water running!!! and Slav is afraid of drowning

Thing is? I get it. Triggers suck. I have triggers of my own. I have dealt with panic attacks, OCD, intrusive thoughts, and so many other things that the fandom likes to attribute to Slav (whether there’s a good case for that in canon or not) — but when it comes to triggers? Sometimes, they are unavoidable and you have to deal with them, and yes, it fucking sucks, but you CAN do it.

An example of a moment when enduring the triggering material and dealing with it would be helpful? When the fate of the entire known universe is on the line and you are obstructing the fight for freedom and peace by being a difficult, egocentric asshole who expects everyone else to cater to you

This is basically where my characterization of Slav in the latest chapter of my fic came from. In my AU, he’s…… well. A difficult, egocentric asshole who gets annoyed when people don’t give him what he wants because Fuck You He Is A Genius, Y’all Just Can’t Keep Up, and he wants Shiro to be his friend because he actually acknowledges that Shiro is kind of a genius in his own right, but Slav just…… Doesn’t Understand

(Read: CHOOSES NOT TO UNDERSTAND)

[this is where @dratiniquest chimed in to say that my take on Slav is kind of like the fusion of Rick Sanchez and Sheldon Cooper]

He doesn’t/chooses not to understand why Shiro doesn’t agree with a life philosophy that basically boils down to, “I am a genius, therefore I should get what the fuck I want, when I want it, and everyone should just agree with me unless I acknowledge their genius, everyone else is too small-minded to keep up”

He also doesn’t get why Shiro…… has no desire for “greatness,” like?? You are a genius, Takashi. It is so rare that Slav acknowledges this for other people, so you are pretty amazing. Why don’t you want to do great things

Shiro: “……Because I already tried doing that out of loyalty to the grandfather I was named after, and it made me miserable and eventually suicidal (whether actively or not), helped me develop an eating disorder, kept me in an abusive relationship that almost killed me more than once, and landed me in rehab for alcohol and opiates at twenty-three. Greatness is overrated”

Shiro: “I just want to make my music, stay sober, keep not hurting myself, maintain the relationships I care about, and someday, wake up next to the guy I love and be able to genuinely mean it when I tell him, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is’”

Slav: “……………freaking weirdo”

Also belatedly: yes, Slav kind of is a fusion of Sheldon and Rick, like. He’s a Fluorite level fusion. Sheldon, Rick, Slav Prime from canon, a little bit of Mirror!Slav, and my conspiracy theorist father.

[and then the conversation kinda turned to yelling about how Sven is fine because he got to the space hospital and anyway, the point is that Slav is really interesting in canon, but oh my god, the majority of fanon!Slav is nothing like how Slav acts in canon]