#VLD Critical

[blanceyblance]

Lance is such an interesting character to me in part because of how the narrative wants to portray him to the point it becomes contradictory.

His "arc" is supposed to be "cocky and immature teenager grows from his need for glory into a reliable team member"

And he does! He becomes Keith's right hand man, taking charge in battle, covering the team's backs and becoming an emotional support for other members when the time was needed.

But he is also a Comedic Relief™

Other characters have comedic relief moments too, like Hunk's love for food, Pidge's excitement about tech, Keith being socially awkward, etc.

And as aggravating as Hunk's fat jokes can be they don't contradict the fact that he is a brilliant engineer and became a brave paladin. Keith's social awkwardness doesn't contradict the fact that he became a capable leader.

But then you have Pidge and Hunk, making fun of Lance being "naturally dumb", and then a space deity calling him "the dumb one"one moment then following Lance's orders in battle and having him give emotional speeches to others the other.

The writers want us to take him seriously and see he is growing only to make fun of him when its needed for a laugh.

I feel the episode The Grudge is a good example of this:

Lance finds a way to find where they left their Lions.

Hunk and Allura seem impressed but Pidge dismisses it.

That would be the end of it until later when Veronica is talking with "Keith" (actually a hacker pretending to be him) and the says "Lance has it figured out", Veronica then in a sarcastic way says "Lance, the navigation genius".

Keith agrees and that's what clues them about something being wrong.

Is it a joke about Keith being openly nice to Lance? A joke about Lance's navigation skills?

Either way, the joke is at his expense, even when early in the episode we see him actually suggesting a way to correctly navigate.

In the end what I'm trying to say is, that the writers want to have their cake and eat it too. Showing Lance growing and being capable but also making fun of him and not really having that much respect for his character.

[szmaciarz-pospolity]

Voltron the legendary defender would have been a better show if instead of that lame intro it had either a slick Ben 10 classic opening or a goofy cartoon opening rap with quick introduction of each paladin. Think TMNT 2012 or One Piece For Kids dub.

Ngl the second would be preffered beacuse holy shit the idea of paladin rap oppening fucks sooooo hard just imagine the goofy introductions like KEITH! He's a loner type! His red lion is idk I can't fucking rhyme

[soniccrystal]

Lance shouldve been a peace maker instead of a farmer

The first episode shows how well Lance can avoid conflict by shutting Pidge up with his hand before Iverson did something, then in a few seasons manages to get Keith to let himself be leader for the good of the team and when they have to switch lions Allura herself says that he values the team more then he does glory.

Lance's development shouldve been about instead of pretending and trying to be this awesome space hero for fame, fortune ,for a cool adventure and for the feeling of actually being important for once ,he starts seeing how political or regular work can help people and apreciating that and becomes this smart political people person advisor type of guy that has to talk to difficult royalty or governers in order to help make the paladins alliance easier, help the poor or war victims while seeing value in himself. He becomes a hero that while not famous has helped voltron and other people.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

the way watching "The Dragon Prince" is like the exact opposite of how it feels to watch "Voltron: Legendary Defender". Like oh that plot point from season one? Yeah it's going to be continually expanded upon and recontextualized till you have a completely different understanding of it, no it's not going to be dropped.

All those multiple queer characters? Yeah they're going to be saved by the narrative and live happy fulfilling lives. Disabled characters? A variety and all are treated with respect and care and loved by someone.

Yeah the show builds natural but radical character arcs that take interesting emotional directions, and every character is going to evolve at least a little every season with no dropped arcs. Yeah the lore is expanded upon but never broken.

Yeah the show's aware of when a character is supposed to be an unreliable narrative or contradictory because of their cognitive dissonances, yeah they lean into it, it's on purpose.

Themes of identity and found family and leaving abusive dynamics? Yeah they're just developed further and consistently and respecting various perspectives

anyway, watch The Dragon Prince

[imminent-danger-came]

Hello! I wish to submit you to psychological torture. I see you have Voltron: Legendary Defender in your tags? Tell me, I know that the show is a trashfire from production and execution point, even the fandom, but what do you think the show could have been, if it weren't mishandled so badly? The themes, the characters, their relationships, etc. If you were to view its possibilites in the same way as LMK, what would your thoughts be? Just curious.

Drink water and eat vegetables regularly. Have a gentle month come to you.

Well, it could have been a lot of things, but it comes down to the fact that there was no ending, no goal we were working towards.

VLD is a special kind of bad, in the sense that they didn't have plans, and yet they forwent the obvious writing choices. We didn't have arcs or plot to fill our time with, but we still didn't write the Lion's as characters. No one in the main cast beside Shiro had an arc with their Lion.

That's crazy, isn't it? 8 seasons and we only focus on the Black Lion in s2. We never answer simple questions like, why clone Shiro? Why experiment on him? What was special about him/what were the Druid's plans? We have lore breaks like the paladins of Voltron going back only one generation.

Like, Voltron didn't need to be a masterpiece. It just needed to be fun, and it couldn't even do that.

It's so sad because s1 is good. Hunk's s1 arc about becoming a paladin of Voltron, and being given a reason to fight the Galra is one of the best in the show. We have themes of giving yourself up to a greater cause, of family, of hope. Like, we peak in s1 and go down from there. It's wild. By the end no one has unique dynamics or jokes. Why doesn't Allura become the black paladin. Why can't we do simple set-up and payoff. I don't know

I guess to go back to the original question: Voltron could have been anything. It could have been a simple story about war and colonization and hope. It could have even been good. Instead it was a story about how to not write a story, in a lot of ways

[shallurallels]

You know what I think about a lot.

The writers could’ve easily avoided the lion swap and Kuron as a whole by simply making it as if Shiro had been teleported to the Galra during those those last few seconds in the fight of 2x13.

To me that storyline would have been 10x more interesting.

Imagine Shiro being recaptured and having to figure out how to escape but we actually see his escape this time. Imagine the overarching issue for the Paladins being they can’t form Voltron in season 3 because they’re down a lion and Black doesn’t allow Keith to pilot it. They’re then forced to forge a better bond with their lions, unlocking new abilities and a greater understanding of the lions individually.

That way we still would’ve gotten the origin story of Voltron (with some major tweaking cuz I didn’t care much for the actual origin story) but it raises the stakes.

No Bp Keith. No Allura assuming a lion. None of that bs. They could’ve done so much with these storylines. Then either at the end of season 3, Shiro somehow reunites with the team, or that’ll be top of season 4. Seeing true emotions of fear, anger, sadness driving the paladins throughout the season would’ve added so much depth to each of their characters, especially Keith’s.

Lotor would still the be big bad of season 3 since Zarkon is down for the count, along with Haggar and the generals by his side. Ooouuu what if we actually got a scene where Haggar is explaining to Shiro why he could’ve been their greatest weapon.

On that note, I would’ve really liked to see more on Shiro’s ptsd. That could’ve been highlighted with him being back in the hands of the Galra. Perhaps Black was trying to teleport him to safety but Zarkon was interfering up til the very last moment? Just as Keith has suggested.

Idk I just feel like season 2 really set up season 3 to be the downfall of the show—the Lion swap specifically.

[devilsofficialfanfic]

Am I the only one who thinks that the whole lore with Voltron is so incredibly underwhelming? Its basically mechanical space lions that everyone keeps saying its all powerful and special but it’s literally just like all of the other ships and robots we’ve seen except it has plot armor 💀💀 and Voltron doesn’t even feel powerful either. The creators say that each lion has a special ability but we’ve only seen that with the blue, black, maybeeee red lions? Voltron as a ship/bot just felt so underwhelming which is a shame because they could’ve done so much more with it other than Alfor building it and everyone saying how mighty and special it is. The writers really don’t know what show don’t tell means 💀💀

You are not alone!!!

Don’t even get me started!!!

Other things the writers did not explain:

-what’s up with the Druids? Are they like…a Galra religious sect? A cult? Really dedicated phd students? If they are Galra (heavily implied), why is an Altean zombie leading them?

-are Haggar and Zarkon undead? Are they still themselves, or are they possessed by rift creatures? What are rift creatures? Do they even exist?

-the blade of Marmora? What’s their deal? Another religious sect? Does it predate Zarkon? Or is it a rebellion created after? Do they have special powers? Or is it just Keith? What makes Keith so special?

-why are Alteans so racist? Is it a superiority complex?

Also Voltron is so ugly, and giving it bigger and bigger wings does not make it cooler. Just makes me think one of the writers was an edgy 15 y/o

[uncaught-coolfish]

when voltron first started did any of you guys have “a character would be introduced who was clearly somewhat of a zuko-stand in, who was a victim of child abuse, but then went insane, got told by one of our mains that he was “just like his abusive father”, and 2 seasons later we get that same child abuse victim’s mangled horrible corpse shown to us on screen from behind” on your bingo card because I sure as hell didnt

[dietcokecryptid]

YK WHAT IM MAD ABOUT TODAY

the way vld takes 21st century science fiction and absolutely RAGS ON IT.

(read more for a very longwinded and messy critique/rant about klance, modern science fiction, and my takes on vld's ability to represent queerness)

from what i know and understand and see science fiction as, i'm just sad to know that the vld team had all the resources, popularity, and drive to really embrace the values of new age science fiction with their characters in particular, and failed horribly.

one thing in particular i wanna demonstrate is with klance. yk. queerbaiting. not space operas in particular, but modern science fiction has really become a place for queer/gender non conforming/neurodivergent people to express their worldviews and experiences through a speculative lens. lgbtq+ people have found sanctuary in science fictional spaces for good reason, as it can function to elaborate on experiences from marginalized groups.

anyway, the kind of salvage-esque, 80's futurism vibe we have going on with vld, there's a lot of opportunity for characters to go against the grain in meaningful ways (we had pidge do this, keith's whole character tries this [which is why he should've been gay]).

sf in our age has a very very lucky advantage, we see the legacy of racism, colonialism, toxic masculinity, and sexism in that media, and we have found ways to move the genre out of the hypermasculine fields and into a more diverse and, by all means, productive space.

this is all my personal opinion of course, but i just think that voltron burying some gays, queerbaiting for 8 seasons, and having a cast of cis straight characters is so disappointing to see, knowing how powerful and subversive science fiction can be to represent queer stories. i stand by that if me at age 18 wrote for voltron everything would've been ok.

but, then again, it is my take that if klance had been canon it'd have been really poorly executed (like shiro's arc duh) because they couldn't have written queer characters well if they tried. (them being a group of, i'm assuming, cis straight unskilled writers).

every time i try to be critical about voltron my neck loses all strength and my head lolls to the side because ITS A KIDS SHOW RAYE OH MY GOD BE SO FR but like??? i feel like Basic media literacy tells us that every piece of media says something. it takes a stance. university radicalized me, ok, but everything IS political. but honestly i've gotten to a place in my love for this show where i can understand that, almost every way you look at it, vld is a bad show. if you're not sitting there with daisies dancing over your cerebrum the entire time it's a hard watch past season 2. of course, VA work, art, and most of seasons 1/2 are excused from this, but it's just the WRITING!! it tears everything down with it and it's a really unfortunate fate for this show.

imo it should've ended with a conclusive season 2. maybe a side series where you see what shiro's up to. idk! i remain pissed about the direction the writing took post lion swap, the damage they did to lovable characters like hunk, and lance's whole season 8 fiasco. it's miserable to be a ride or die fan of this show but hey KICK!

[timetravellingkitty]

I know japanese!keith is basically fanon (and I love it too dgmw it's real to me) but the showrunners did treat him as a white character in canon. the showrunners handled him as they would a white character and you can tell with him being the only character with no confirmed ethnicity or surname, purposefully disengaging/avoiding with questions about his race and shafting the non white characters in favour of giving him more screentime. don't even get me started on the racism plotline in s2 that is peak whiteness

[angstandhappiness]

Still terrible anyway

ive never watched an episode of voltron in my life but i jus read an article about how joaquim dos santos and lauren montgomery explicitly lied to press about their involvement in the failure of voltron and that they were singlehandedly responsible for the homophobic writing and ending and went out of their way to ignore the comments of both their hired sensitivity consultants and lgbt employees and im SCREAMING

[devilsofficialfanfic]

Am I the only one who finds it weird how none of the paladins are given a choice if they even want to pilot Voltron? Like.. episode 1 felt a bit rushed to me because Allura just wakes up, realizes that Altea is gone and basically hands everyone their lion. The mission thing was cool and all but it’s just weird how none of them (even Hunk) protests or anything considering all of them (except Shiro) are underage teens who can’t legally drink, own firearms, take drugs, gamble, rent cars, etc. Yet they’re being thrusted into this space war that has nothing to do with them? And how is Shiro, the adult in this situation not even going like “is this safe? These are children” or anything like that. Especially since:

Shiro is the only one above 21 but has a shit ton of PTSD and trauma from the Galra.

Keith is 18 so technically a legal adult but again, he still can’t buy/drink alcohol, rent cars, buy/take drugs, etc.

Lance and Hunk are 17 so.. minors. And again, they still can’t do anything legal yet.

Pidge is the worst since she’s 14-15 so she’s basically a child.

I feel like it would be better if the paladins was given a choice because at least we know that okay, they chose to be involved in this war but they weren’t even given that. Allura just says “okay you’ll pilot this lion! You’ll lion that lion!” and they just accept it with no protest or concerns.

I knew Vld was going to be a wild ride when the Good Guys ™️ committed actual war crimes in the first episode

(Also I think it was briefly mentioned that they couldn’t get back to earth for some reason? So I guess they didn’t really have a choice. But come on…the right 5 people you need to pilot your mystical ugly ass machine just happen to show up and they all happen to be (mostly) human? What are the odds…)

[uncaught-coolfish]

i used to be wickedly into voltron, i mean, i never interacted with the fandom barely except for maybe catnippackets' art but anyway i kept watching for a while, ever since it came out but when they killed allura i stopped watching because what the fuck was that for

NO LITERALLY EXACTLY 100%

I thankfully dodged apollo’s nuke because I watched the first season before literally AHYONE got into it but then. never finished the show until it was over and by then the fandom had died down. but YEAH ABT ALLURA

AND THE THING IS??? THEY COUKD HAVE EASILY SACRIFICED THE LIONS INSTEAD OF HER I FEEL. LIKE THEY SAVED THE UNIVERSE OR WHATEVER SO WHAT IS FHE NEED FOR THEM ANYMORE???? LIKE. I STILL DONT GET WHY THEY DENIED ALLURA OF ALL CHARACTERS A HAPPY ENDING AFTER ALL THAT. season 8 just fucking sucked and don’t even get me started on the epilogue 😶

[timetravellingkitty]

I don't like how the narrative focuses on Keith's mom as having left a bigger impact on him than his dad. Like, his dad raised him for the first few years of his life and then died in a fire would he not feel anything for him + just completely goes against the whole "found family, blood isn't everything" theme by making her come back in the first place

[angstandhappiness]

DUDE

character arcs are questions

Back in 2010, a kdrama historical-fusion hit called Sungkyunkwan Scandal asked a very simple question: can an intelligent, ambitious, self-educated woman have a place in a male-dominated Neo-Confucianist society? 

While the story is a common trope – a girl dresses as a boy to attend a male-only school – that larger question drives the story. Bit by bit, the stakes get higher, her secret gets harder to keep, and the danger gets greater. The other three in the quartet have similar, echoing questions. Twenty episodes later, the series answered the question. 

And the answer was: no. 

You cannot love learning, use your brilliant mind, and be female. There isn’t a place for an educated woman in the public sphere of a Neo-Confucian society – except by continuing to pretend you’re a man.

Yuuri on Ice was another with a question-based arc: can a talented athlete overcome his severe anxiety and find the inner strength to finally win gold? Twelve episodes later, Yuuri’s arc gets its conclusion to his driving question.

The answer was: no. 

You can give it the old college try, but it won’t be enough. All the blood, sweat, and tears will only get you second place. There will be no triumph, here. 

Both of these, if it’s not clear, were supremely dissatisfying. 

I’m not saying you can’t answer a character arc with a no. We call that a tragedy, and done right, it can be as cathartic as a yes. In a tragedy, the character’s progression is such that when the end arrives – the final no – it feels inevitable. In a story of triumph, a character rises despite every setback, such that the final yes should also feel inevitable. That’s ‘earning’ the victory (or defeat). That sense of inevitability lies in how the conclusion reached fits the character’s actions. 

And that brings me to Voltron: Legendary Defender, and its questions. Of the various characters – and keeping in mind this is not a tragedy, at least on the face of it, so far – five characters have pretty sharp questions. 

Pidge’s asks: can a genius hacker cross the universe to find/rescue her missing family. Allura’s asks: can a princess lead a ragtag five-person team to defeat the universe’s greatest tyrant. Pidge has been given her answer. Allura is on the way to getting hers. Keith’s question was something like whether his loyalties were still valid, as a mixed-race orphan; after some waffling, he seems on-track for a yes, as well. Hunk and Lance don’t really have questions. 

And then there’s Shiro’s question.

VLD took 41 episodes to get there, but S7 finally brought this arc to a close, and answered the question. 

And the answer was no.

[kindaorangey]

in my heacanon where keith becomes some kind of desert gym rat after getting kicked out of the garrison