#And they didn't communicate with the team at all. they got fucking blindsided

[pumpkinrootbeer]

I loved the vibe mikko brought specifically bc he's such a good player but the first thing people always mention about him is that he's nice. he's a hard worker, he's talented, but above all, he's friendly. He's kind. in the rise of mikko rantanen video Keefer talks about how Mikko is a star player but more than that his personality is great, he's fun. The journalists that work with the team gave him a homemade aware for putting up with them, and he immediately smiled and said, "No bitching, eh?" the videos where he gives that little kid a puck and then when she comes back to another game he gives her a stick... and the one where he trades a stick for finish candy and the more recent one where he signs a stick for a kid saying his new year resolution was to get a stick from mikko (spelled mico I love kids omg 😭😭 so cute) And I might have hallucinated this one but I swear there was a video where Cale got asked to describe Mikko in one word and his first answer was "nice". Almost every avs beat reporter and commentator made a post explaining how great of a guy he was, and how said they were to see him go. Even Cmac when explaining why they willingly gave up on him and traded him away stressed that Mikko was a wonderful person. Former teammates have come out to talk about how amazing he is, EJ reached out to people at the Canes to talk about how phenomenal he is as a player and a teammate. like. he's a huge sweetheart. i love him. Literally a once in a lifetime kind of player.

[sedicisantidote]

A Delusionally Optimistic Take On Why Next Year Will Actually Be Our Year Unlike The Previous "Our Years"

Ferrari is the machine who has been sitting in the dark for too long and now they've rusted and some cogs have stopped working, some need to be replaced, they need oil and basically suffer from all sorts of problems. But sufficient time has passed and they've slowly but surely started getting their shit together, starting with the PU this year.

They didn't expect to be in the title fight this year, they were a little blindsided by it and they've never been good under pressure anyways. Nobody expected the red bulls to dnf in the first race, nobody expected that merc would fuck that badly with the w13 and nobody expected ferrari to actually come out on top given their previous track records.

:readmore:

2020 was their worst year in the last few decades and the step up from being that power deficit to having the most powerful pu this year is already huge. Minus the outliers (like mexico) we're very near to matching red bull on pure pace, our issue is the tyre degradation. AND this is when the engine is turned down, when they find the solution for reliability, they'll not only be able to maximise the engines to the full potential but they might also be able to give it a boost as if a little upgrade comes as a consequence of the reliability solution, it's valid.

Next year, same powerful engine, new aero regs (and maranello genuinely has one of the best teams in aero development), new car and new set up, it bodes well for the issues.

Strategy is ofcourse a concern but they haven't had a strategy fuck up since hungary which is a new record and goes to show that they might not be completely terrible at it and that they're genuinely putting in efforts to improve and are benefitting from those efforts. They are also learning to start giving charles' input more value while making a decision and even though it should not be his responsibility, it's a good sign in regards to the future. Plus it's clear that they started doing that at charles' behest so as their leader, it's good that they value what he wants them to do. Communication between them also needs a lot of work but i will be delusional and hope that their efforts yield results.

The most important reason I have hope though, is Charles. He's not like the previous drivers they've had because he hasn't won yet and that's why he's the hungriest for it. He knows what he wants, he knows what he wants them to do, he knows what he needs to do, he isn't afraid of putting in the long hours or the hard work and he is talented as fuck. he's got all the ingredients of a multiple world champion and especially that winning mentality that mattia said ferrari as a whole has forgotten. he's never going to settle for anything less and he isn't going to let them settle for anything less either.

Charles is exactly the sort of leader they need, he is patient, he is kind while being firm, he leads by example, always strives for improvement, he is passionate and he gets their passion going too, which is going to make them give their 110% too. He is sure of his place within ferrari and his team clearly adore him for it.

There may not be public number ones or twos but privately there certainly is and going by every single thing Mattia, Laurent, John, etc have had to say about it, it's clear who is who. They know that Charles is their next champion and they know he can win without them too. He doesn't need reassurances over that, he knows his worth. Any other team would kill to have him which is no secret.

Charles' patience isn't going to last forever though and his love for ferrari may be in his blood at this point, but he is a racing driver before he is ferrari's driver. Ferrari are running out of time with him and he's going to need results soon to make him stay. He's no longer at the stage where they can appease him by just being ferrari, they have to return his efforts too.

At the end of the day, charles wants to win with them and they want to win, their goals are the same and if during the course of this year they haven't realised that they can't win wcc without prioritising charles & wdc, then well....but they can't be that stupid. they need to prove to charles that they want him to stay because if he leaves, there is no back up for them, they want to come back to the top asap, they want to not repeat their mistakes and basically every single thing points to them giving value to the wdc instead of just the team and leaving him to fend for himself.

charles is also stubborn as fuck, he will make them remember their winning mentality if that's the last thing he does and like , they don't even need to bend over backwards for him like other teams do, as long as they provide him the basic support a driver fighting for the wdc needs which is not fucking up his races and giving him a car he is comfortable in without compromise, he will win.

With 2022, they've got no excuses anymore. To go back to who they were, they must have identified their problems and are working on rebuilding the inner parts and along with charles, they basically have everything they need to become a well oiled machine once again.

(also this is kind of a different tangent but i love how he hasn't jumped in directly to renew his contract and is taking his time and weighing his future. idk who but a journalist (derogatory, it was probably ralf) said that he doesnt have a wdc under his belt to demand prioritisation (not that he needs to), and while he may not be able to do that, he has definitely earned the right to, and stating his goals before contract negotiations will begin for 2024 is such a good way to speed up the process of realisation)

[catcatb0y]

They constantly hinted at the ship between Keith and Lance, actually- the rivals to lovers, which was very prominent in the first couple of seasons, think the very prominent "We had a bonding moment! I cradled you in my arms!" ("Nope, don't remember. Didn't happen.")

While also baiting the fans with the promise of LGBT rep in the future. The sign, actually, wasn't the only thing they did. The cast and crew had quite a few different interviews and such where they would hint at future LGBT rep, the voice actors were very open about shipping and ship talk- especially Lance's voice actor, Jeremy Shada, who was supposedly a big fan of Klance (Keith and Lance).

Adam- Shiro's ex boyfriend AND THE ONLY ONE IN THE SERIES WHO CALLS HIM BY HIS FIRST NAME!! ADAM IS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS USED 'TAKASHI' BEFO-

Regardless, most fans (and even non fans) assumed that Keith and Lance were going to be the LGBT representation that the creators promised... actually, Shiro being gay was something that completely blindsided the fans, because it really did come out of nowhere... (even the people who shipped Shiro with Keith (the main target of the community's an/tis) weren't expecting Shiro to be the confirmed gay characters, because he literally never showed any interest in romance at all- most people who were shipping to be canon thought he was going to end up with Allura because they were vaguely set up as the "space parents")

After blindsiding the fans with this sudden declaration, they did give Shiro a boyfriend, Adam, and basically used him to show a bit of what Shiro's life was like before he got kidnapped by the galra. Adam was shown to be worried about Shiro's health, and he wanted Shiro to retire from the Garrison because it was too much. He laid down an ultimatum where if Shiro went into space one more time, they were over. (Which, of course, we knew that Shiro had gone into space and he got kidnapped by the galra, so they were over).

But

Apparently that wasn't enough, so instead of having Adam die of old age or maybe even just not show up, they decided to put him in a ship defending the earth from a galra invasion... and he died... within minutes of being formally introduced... even them Shiro was given a half assed scene at Adam's grave and that was supposedly the end of that!

I never watched the eighth season because I just... I couldn't... they fucked over everything from season three to season seven it was almost all awful. The art style improved amazingly, but none of the character development held up from episode to episode, they constantly used the characters as comedy gags, and everything was just a fight to have the most interesting turn rather than using the set up foreshadowing...

***Major spoilers ahead***

Also! The thing with Lance and Allura gets worse!! First things first, Allura spent the entire series denying Lance's advances, but you know they could have given her a /wait, I have realized just how much you mean to me/ moment of turnaround

And technically they did?

But only after Allura fell in love with their former enemy, Lotor- son of Zarkon and leader of the current Galra Empire. He had a flip flop where it was revealed that he didn't want to be the same kind of ruler as his father was, and he wanted to side with Voltron. (And they all but threw out Keith's development, because he didn't believe Lotor, but everyone else did)

They also threw out Lotor's BADASS ALL FEMALE TEAM OF GENERALS. They created the COOLEST fucking female team and they were all half bloods and they were all badass and they were so, so fucking cool.

My favorite, Narti, was killed because Lotor thought that his mother (Zarkon's right hand, Haggard) was spying on their team using Narti- who is blind, mind you- but she was actually using Narti's seeing cat, Kova.

Which I never forgave.

Anyway, Lotor ended up weaseling his way into the Voltorn crew like the slimey rat he was, and Allura fell in love with him (which is interesting and quite frankly annoying because it kept with the narrative that Allura was racist)

Deadass she was racist.

Like we had a whole episode where they went to a parallel universe where the Alteans were essentially doing what the Galra were in the current universe, but they were taking away the free will of the people they enslaved.

And instead of learning anything from this, Allura proceeded to push away Keith for being half galra and she repeatedly showed distrust in the Blade of Marmora (a galran-led rebel team, set to take Zarkon's forced out from the inside).

Once she learned of Lotor's Altean heritage, suddenly he could do no wrong, and she ended up falling in love with him.

Lance was forced to watch all of this while Keith was out on missions with the Blade of Marmora.

Flash forward, Lotor actually saved some of the Alteans! Before Zarkon's rule killed them! Even going so far as to hunt down the ones who were hiding within different cultures in order to bring them all together! Uhhh but he was running a slave farm and he drained them of their life force in order for him to have fancy ships.

So it turned out that Keith was right and Lotor was bad all along, but, of course, Allura didn't believe him... until he showed off Romelle, the Altean that he had brought back from Lotor's prison camp.

So, after Allura's falling out with Lotor, she realized that she loved Lance all along... and that's how it went canon in season eight- with Lance accepting her sudden advances, despite the fact that he witnessed her about to kiss Lotor before he inevitably betrayed them all.

So not only was it a disservice to the fans who had been all but promised a Klance ending from both the source material and the cast. It was a disservice to Allura who just ended up sucking ass as a character, turning out to be not only racist and never learning from her anti-galra bias, but also fickle jumping from one relationship to the next. It was a disservice to Lance, who despite canonically dealing with low self esteem (whenever the writers wanted to make him more than just a haha funny man or a flirtatious sharpshooter), ended up as Allura's rebound before she died.

(Everything below is secondhand knowledge, because I haven't seen season eight)

Yeah, they killed her off in the final season.

In addition to making Loner Keith live out his life just as he would have before the series ever began, exploring the galaxy with the Blade of Marmora and forgetting all about his friends who to be fair also prettt much forgot about him from season three onward. Shiro ended up marrying a completely new character. As well as 'Space Explorer, Galaxy Enthusiast' Lance ended up living out the rest of his life on an unassuming farm, despite all of his excitement and wonder for the galaxy and how much he loved exploring new worlds and meeting new peoples.

Yeah, Voltron fucked over all of their characters repeatedly and brutally. Even before the final season. Some people liked season three, but I say that's where it started going downhill, namely because they ended up throwing away all of Keith's character development by making him into a "runaway emo" and it's where they started to sacrifice character development for comedic gags?

The whole thing with Lotor was interesting, (for context, Voltron defended Zarkon in season two, but season three we were introduced to Lotor as the next big, bad thing), but ultimately it led them on a spiral of finding "the next big twist" from Lotor is good to he's evil to he's good to he's evil to the real bad guy was Haggard all along!! To wait no, Lotor is actually kind of evil.

The cupcake thing apparently didn’t happen but in general I think the fandom and the cast/crew did have some troubling interactions

Ok I’m so relieved to hear that the cupcake thing probably didn’t happen 😭😭 that sounds absolutely AWFUL and horrifying

That being said, the cast and crew do not deserve to be treated like shit by fans at all. A little side track, but this reminded me of people getting mad at the VAs of the characters for what their character did. As if they are the character and have control over the characters actions

Fandom culture is just,,, toxic. But not bc it’s inherently toxic, no, it’s bc there are those few individuals who take things too far