#VLD Critical

[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

[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

[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

[the-kittens-of-vol-tron]

Me: yeah I'm rewatching vld :/

My friends: thats such a good show!

Me: ...did yall finish it?

My friends: no! Just up to season four :)

Me: yeah good place to stop

[savethisnewwriter]

Season 6 of Voltron: Legendary Defender done. Thanks guys for telling me in advance what a disappointment it was gonna be. I hate it. It's as if Lotor underwent trauma- descent into madness- killer arc all in one episode and boom! Conveniently dead as well. Thank you writers. I hate it now.

I think I'm happy writing My Shotor fics in ao3. Don't need no canon to ruin me mental health more🥹

(They did to Lotor what GOT apparently also did to Dany)

[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

[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

[kindaorangey]

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

[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.

[peachi-blossom]

Non-Hazbin Hotel characters that are better than Charlie Morningstar (Princess Edition)

Regardless of their screen time, development, importance, they are 100x better than Charlie Morningstar. Or should I say, Charlotte Morningstar.

Next, I will find characters that are better than Angel Dust.

[vee-is-a-clown]

Ok you know what makes me angry? Why is Allura so mature and humble? She's a daddy's girl only child princess who was set to inherit a flourishing kingdom. Sure, she's well educated and probably elegant and graceful and tactful because that's how she was raised to act for diplomatic reasons but she was also probably spoiled throughout her adolescence. She probably got whatever she wanted whenever she wanted because her family had the resources to give it to her. Who's to say she isn't a spoiled brat who can otherwise act kind and approachable? Even if she isn't a brat, she was still handed her life on a silver platter. She has to learn how to operate and be self sufficient.

When she gets out of that pod, she should be scared. She should be angry. And she deserves to be so. Her father that she relied on for just about everything shoved her into a sleeping pod and suddenly she's awoken by someone who isn't him. Logically, that means he lost. She should be kicking and screaming. She should be having the worst panic attack ever. She should be mourning everyone and everything she's ever known. She should be mourning the status quo that will never again be maintained. She should be mourning the future that can never come to fruition.

She has to figure out life without any system or technology that she's ever relied on. Coran doesn't know how to fix and maintain everything. She's like one of those people that wake up from 10+ year comas and don't understand modern technology. She is my dad who has had the same flip phone since forever and now must figure out how to use a phone with a touch screen.

Every luxury she had as a princess is gone. The castle chef who knew exactly how she liked her food. Her mother's ladies in waiting who told her the castle gossip. Her own ladies in waiting who'd sneak out to festivals and other trivial things with her. The cleaners that arranged her room exactly as she liked it. HER MOM. I don't care if she was a daddy's girl, she still has got to miss her mom.

I feel like she should've had more outbursts. Seeing Keith in the red paladin armor should've made her cry. In fact, all of them should have. The new paladins in their armor is a symbol of a new era- an era without the people she loves. She deserves to scream at the top of her lungs and lock herself in her room and trash something. She should be yelling that life isn't fair. She should be angry. She should be so angry.

I don't care if she's trying to hold it together for the paladins in the show. She's holding together too well. She needs more moments of instability. She needs to grieve. She needs to be tired. She needs to be imperfect.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Revival Round 1 Poll 9

The top two characters will continue onwards in the Revival Round. Check out the other polls in this round here.