#again: i still like black paladin keith and the lion swap as a narrative concept

[burr-ell]

on the writing of bp keith, from a lion swap fan

i support black paladin keith and the lion swap full stop. as a narrative, it’s wonderful to me. the lions’ bonds with their paladins being a vessel for them to grow? prime content. BUT i 1000% believe it could’ve been written better.

as i’ve said before, shiro as a character never especially interested me because he seemed to be a character that a lot of things happened to rather than someone who actually existed as a person. i never felt a personal growth arc from him whatsoever like i did with keith, lance, and allura, one where shiro had to overcome a real personal flaw, which is why i love the lion swap and think that overall it was best for the story. so on an emotional level, i don’t really care that shiro doesn’t get to fly black anymore. he never had to fight for it in a way that mattered to me, in terms of having to be imperfect by his own doing and then grow into it (which is why i like bp keith so much). he just had to prove that he got what being a paladin was about, which, i’m sorry, when you’re stacked up against zarkon, the undead emperor of an imperialist state that slaughters anyone who gets in his way, being able to say the exact same thing you were told like 17 episodes ago and mean it isn’t all that special when we never saw you struggling with it in the first place.

however, the fact remains that he did have a very strong bond with black. whether i care about it as a viewer doesn’t matter—he had it and it was clearly established in the story, and for it to be severed requires a narrative explanation. i totally understand why people aren’t satisfied with shiro and keith’s scene in the astral plane as representative of shiro passing the torch to him. not only can you read that as just a necessary means since keith was the only one of them who had a physical body to pilot black with in the first place, but keith’s spent several episodes apart from black and the team entirely. the only connections that were really focused on while keith was off with the blades were with krolia and shiro, not with the rest of the team, which does some serious narrative damage to the idea that keith is fit for black—if black is supposed to be the head of voltron, and the leader that all the team follows without hesitation, surely that must mean time actually spent bonding with the team and his lion. that i think is the bulk of why people don’t really feel keith as team leader, because he’s spent so much time only ever focusing on shiro for the sake of the plot that his bonds with everyone else aren’t addressed in a way where the viewer feels the chemistry.

of course i understand the issue with steven yeun’s availability. but i question whether they couldn’t have done some more episodes like ‘reunion’ spotlighting a specific character where keith doesn’t get any dialogue but is clearly there, or an ep where he’s off flying black on a separate mission of his own, rather than him running off with the blades. because once he did that, all we got was a couple of episodes with keith in the blade of marmora, which was hardly an organization that was going to allow for a narrative about team leadership. we could have gotten a story about keith growing as a leader because of his journey with krolia, but that was reduced to a montage covering two years that we...really didn’t see all that much of, to be honest. (another thing that could have lent credence to keith’s attachment to the team—have some flashbacks in the quantum abyss like the one that showed krolia what happened to keith’s dad, but instead it’s scenes showing all the things keith’s done with the paladins and his interactions with them and how much he loves them. saves animation time, anyway.) as it is, the viewer has to fill in those gaps themselves, which for an arc this central to the narrative and to the person clearly being billed as male lead really isn’t the best way to handle it.

so when keith finally comes back to the team, he flies black because somebody has to, not because he already has a genuine bond with black that he’s reawakening. and then he does bond with black because of his love for his friends and his desire to protect them, but then it’s just sort of assumed that there aren’t any other questions, and the matter of who will pilot black once shiro gets a new arm is never discussed. shiro actually saying something to the effect that ‘you are black’s paladin now, not because you were perfect at it the first time but because you’ve grown into it’ and having a Whole Moment where he passed the torch...to me, that still wouldn’t have made everybody happy because people still wanted shiro in black, but it would have at least addressed the issue instead of just shrugging off shiro’s old role.

to be honest, i feel like people who really and truly believed that shiro would always be black’s ‘one true paladin’ were setting themselves up for disappointment. vld’s status as a reboot of a preexisting ip puts the lie to that; there is not a doubt in my mind that they were gonna stick to the lore. you cannot forget the context in which this show exists. and i do think that the people who insist that they should have gone back to the OG lineup and that allura being commander of a castleship or something again would still be fulfilling for her were being kind of hypocritical by immediately declaring that shiro was being ‘benched’, the assumption being that shiro was more deserving of a lion than the person whose father literally created them and who has the most personal stake in this war bar none. i have always been critical of #onetru3blackpaladin theory and i still am. but it’s not hard to see why they have problems with it. something just kind of ‘happening’ in the narrative isn’t going to sit well with the audience if they don’t feel it, and with the way that plot was prioritized over characters, it’s not surprising to me that they don’t.

[ganymedesclock]

What are your thoughts about the writers admitting in an interview that Shiro was meant to be a conduit for Keith to take on the Black Lion. Even though they said/joked about never getting rid of him do worry hat they'll find some sort of loophole (like a clone) or technicality (turning evil against his will "counts" as becoming unworthy) to get Shiro out of Black just so they can get what they want? It's almost like writing Shiro has become a chore for them.

I think that isn’t what they meant at all!

My takeaway from that interview is the thing they were discussing was very early in the development of VLD. That is to say, not “before the paint was dry on season 1″- this was when VLD as a project was still doing the project equivalent of crawling around chewing on furniture. Nowhere near the actual casting and scripting and such.

Because what they’re talking about is how the character of Shiro- or rather Sven- was treated in every prior continuity of Voltron.

Because in most prior continuities? Sven is not a hero. Sven is the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Keith’s Luke Skywalker. He’s a mentor and he’s a mentor who does as mentors do very early on. He’s the original pilot of the blue lion who leaves the team, becomes forgotten, goes out in one noble sacrifice to save Lance.

Sven is treated more as a secondary supporting character rather than one of the Core Five.

So when I saw that interview, my two cents was the writers were talking about how very, very early on, they made that decision to break Shiro away from the mold of Sven as the idealized, shallow mentor figure who doesn’t really have his own opinions and depth because he’s not really here for the long run. He’s there to prop up Keith.

And VLD broke from that hard from the very beginning of season 1. I think this was one of their early scrapped ideas like post-apocalyptic Earth (being taken from GoLion).

Because the work they’ve done now, narratively... Keith really can’t fill Shiro’s shoes meaningfully plot wise.

If they were planning that, any of the various times Shiro and Shiro alone succeeded at something, they would have had Keith there, at least part of it if not pushing beyond and succeeding where Shiro failed.

But having the strongest bond with his Lion right out of the gate, defeating Zarkon in the astral plane, awakening Black’s power and retrieving their bayard- these are things Shiro did alone. And what’s been happening since, with Kuron, is further legitimizing Shiro, not discrediting him.

We now have compelling evidence that Black’s rejection of Shiro in s3e6 was actually not a failing of Shiro’s virtues or his connection, but foul play by Haggar’s power, because as of s5e3, months later, Shiro is shown to have a suspiciously shaky connection with Black and panics, calling to Lance for help about it.

In s5, as it becomes clear something has gone wrong with Shiro, the narrative is very much advancing in a direction that Lance is working with Shiro, talking to him, connecting with him, and Shiro of his own accord is opening up to Lance and giving him important information- telling us that Shiro is lining up to be a very active player in his own rescue here.

In s3 and s4, they had many opportunities to frame Keith coming to the Black Lion as rising to his rightful destiny, as finding somewhere he belongs, connecting in a way he never expected to. After all, in every prior continuity, this is rightfully his Lion. The expectation of nostalgia would be to frame it like a glorious homecoming- the Black Paladin arrives where he’s destined to be.

Instead it’s emphasized that Keith is miserable. That this doesn’t fit. That this is wrong, uncomfortable, practically hurts. That he makes bad decisions, that this pressure is killing him, that he’s unhappy and stressed here and his moments of triumph are when he plays back to those aforementioned Red Paladin virtues of instinct, loyalty, superb flying skills.

Instead we keep that exact same opening video that we’ve seen the entire time that shows Shiro in Black, Keith in Red, Lance in Blue. Instead they keep their armor colors the same, when this show overwhelmingly uses color to signal allegiance and ownership- and it’s the red armor lying unoccupied, waiting for Keith to come back to the castle.

It’s not that Keith doesn’t have a heroic destiny. But it’s very clear his heroic destiny is not with the Black Lion. Black is not home for him, it’s not the core of who he is. VLD Keith was built from the ground up as a fire person, just like Lance was built from the ground up as water, just as Shiro was built for the sky.

They were designed and tailored to their initial starting roles that are repeatedly, repeatedly hammered home as where they really belong, what’s really home to them. Lance telling Blue that he wanted to stay by her side forever. Allura so clearly struggling to get into Blue’s mindset because it’s unlike her. Lance’s partnership with Red being a direct mirror of how at the beginning of the show he had inherited Keith’s position in the fighter class and was actively shown to be unhappy and seeking something else to fill the void.

I’ve written so many metas about the Lion Swap, and gotten so many notes and replies of “wow, I can’t believe the writers threw away all of this good setup about how Lance belongs with Blue!” and not seeming to think that... maybe that’s the point? Maybe that’s why there’s multiple big obvious flags going “ah, yes, this is Lance, who is blue, this is Lance who when he unlocks a new bayard form the red bayard glows with blue light because the essential character and essence of Lance is blue, we are definitely suggesting something about Lance and the blue lion”?

Because frankly...

If the writers’ intention is to set Keith up as black paladin and get rid of Shiro? They’ve already personally ruined their chances. If anything, they have yet to do something narratively that I think really actually feels like an expression of intent in that regard. Which, again, makes me really sure- especially if they’re talking about the concept openly in interviews- that this was something they scrapped ages ago that has no bearing on present and future canon in VLD.

Keith is a great character who has the power and will to stand on his own, which is why it makes really no sense for the writers to make Shiro do every single piece of hard work related to helping Black break away from Zarkon- when that narrative is significant to him, a former prisoner, and not to Keith whose demons are much more about loneliness and isolation- and then for Keith to passively inherit the spoils.

Because so far Keith’s done nothing to earn that crown. He’s been a little busy advancing his own character arc, that might cross paths with the Black Lion, but sure as hell doesn’t entwine with them.

[ironinkpen]

The Secret of the White Lion

Alternatively Titled: Local Girl Ignores Responsibilities in Favor of Overanalyzing Children’s TV Show

Alright so ever since we were shown this mural, which depicts Voltron fully assembled and a lion off to the side, some people have started discussing the possibility of there being a sixth lion. And since I have nothing better to do with my time (besides my midterms next week whaaaat), I thought I’d try to answer the question: if there is a White Lion, who would pilot it?

Now I don’t want to get too into the whole idea of “how likely is it that this is going to happen” because like? That’s hard to tell. But, I’d say that it at least makes narrative sense for there to be a sixth lion.

What Alfor faces throughout Zarkon’s fall is the very real possibility that the leader of their magic robot lion fighting team could easily end up crossing some sort of line and going too far. Alfor begins to doubt Zarkon’s leadership, and has several arguments with him about his judgment and his and Honerva’s hunger for power. It’s not that big a stretch for Alfor to go from “this dude could try to use Voltron for evil / go rogue / etc.” to “I need to have a back up in case he pulls some shit.”

And a hypothetical sixth lion could logically be that back up. If Alfor built one, the idea was probably for the lion to either be an alternative head for Voltron or just an alternative lion in general, in case any of the other lions were unavailable, so that they could still create Voltron even if someone went missing / ran off / turned evil. 

And there’s a pre-existing precedent for a physical white lion, too:

In one of the Voltron spinoffs / AUs / whatever (I’ll be real, I only know as much as the wiki page tells me lmao), there’s a White Lion, whose location is only known by Alfor. Alfor leads some guy named Rick Hunter to the lion and he becomes its pilot. 

And of course, in OG Voltron, there’s an episode titled “Secret of the White Lion” where Haggar makes a mirage of an actual white lion (ie not a robotic lion like the voltron lions), and sends it to Allura, who thinks it’s a reincarnation of her dad, to try and kill her or whatever. 

So the idea of a White Lion in our Voltron wouldn’t be completely out of the blue, and would solve the problem that Lance expresses in season 3: there’s six pilots and five lions, so who should be on the bench?

With a White Lion, the answer would be “no one.” But then the question becomes: who would be its pilot? And as far as I can tell, the answer is either Shiro, Allura, or Lance.

Alright, so I maintain that the Shiro that’s with the team right now is actually a clone, but, let’s say that he’s real. Or, rather, let’s say that when real Shiro comes back, Black still chooses Keith or someone else as the Black Paladin. Shiro could, in that case, fit the role of the White Lion’s paladin.

In OG Voltron (or, at least, the English dub, which combined Shiro with his twin brother), Shiro left Team Voltron and worked with the resistance, coming back in a final whammy against Lotor. While I do think that Resistance!Shiro is a completely interesting concept on its own, having Shiro be in the White Lion would allow him to not only be a fighting force for the resistance, but also be able to go back and forth between it and the team more easily, so we wouldn’t have to lose Shiro from the team dynamic. 

Having Shiro be in a lion separate from the main team would also allow more room to explore his lost memories and what happened to him during his year in captivity– he would have more mobility, and still be able to hold his own in battle, making it actually possible for him to run off on solo “let’s discover my past” adventures. And, given the original Voltron’s precedent for having Shiro outside of the main cinco, this would make sense.

Allura is another possibility for the White Lion’s paladin. One of the most compelling pieces of support in her favor is that the white lion story in OG Voltron was all about her. Her discovering the White Lion, her father’s final legacy, would be an interesting plot line. And I dunno, there's this sense that Allura has this unique place in the group that's almost separate or above Voltron itself-- giving her the White Lion would allow her to act independently but also continue to be a paladin (which is a role I love her in ahhh). She could lead without being in Black in that case, and I honestly think the mobility of being able to operate outside the main group suits her? One of my favorite scenes in season 2 was when the castle shorted out and she and the Blade ran off to fight Haggar.

On another note, having her in White and Alfor being its creator is in tune with something the cast said about why they “killed off” of the Alfor AI: he basically knew too much. What did he know? Well, maybe the existence and location of a White Lion, which his daughter would be the perfect fit for?

There’s also another neat theory that the castle could be the white lion. And think about it: only Allura can pilot it to its full potential, it’s linked to her quintessence, and is shown to have a mind of its own to an extent (seen when it actively tries to kill Lance and Keith during the Crystal Venom episode, showing an ability to reason to some extent). And, speaking of the Crystal Venom episode, it seems to mirror the events of the original “Secret of the White Lion” episode, where Allura is tricked by something she thinks is her father (in this case an AI) and almost gets killed.

Also, when Allura moves to Blue, she complains about how Blue’s controls are different from the castle’s in a similar way to how Lance complains about Red’s being different from Blue’s. The castle seems to operate pretty similarly to the lions. Coran mentioned that his grandpa built the castle but I don’t recall ever getting the exact timeline of when he finished. I don’t know, maybe Alfor could have jumped in and asked to add some aspects of the comet to it? It’s probably not all that likely lmao, but wouldn’t it be super fucking cool if the castle suddenly transformed into a magic fighting robot?

Anywhom, last possible pilot:

Lance has expressed on multiple occasions a sense of being a “seventh wheel,” or kind of separate from the team. In this scene, when talking to Keith about the whole five lions, six paladins situation, he puts up six fingers and, when he’s done, singles himself out as the one separate from the five others. And, interestingly:

The hypothetical White Lion is pictured as separate from the others as well. 

Lance seems to view Allura as Blue’s true paladin and Keith as Red’s, so he sees himself as not having a real place with the current lions. But, maybe that’s because he hasn’t found his real lion yet? 

(On that note (and this is sort of a tangent but still neat): look at the team’s color coding! Everyone else is color coded to their lions (Pidge wears a green shirt, Hunk wears a yellow shirt, Keith wears a red jacket and a black shirt, Allura’s outfit is Blue, and Shiro’s is Black) but Lance is color coded white)

Plus, if I’m right about the White Lion being an alternate head of Voltron / alternate lion in general, placing Lance in that position makes sense. The crew of the show has said before that Lance’s thing is filling spots that need filling. And, since he and Keith (if Keith is still Black Paladin after Shiro’s return) are something of a dynamic duo, having them being able to swap places would be a really interesting dynamic (and fucking hilarious).

Also, Rick Hunter, the pilot of the White Lion in the comic I mentioned earlier, seems to be a pretty similar character to Lance? Wiki says: “As a young man, Rick was good-natured, although he could be disrespectful at times… Throughout the course of the First Robotech War he went from being a relative pacifist into a full-fledged soldier, becoming a deadly ace who even the Zentraedi feared.” Good-natured, sometimes disrespectful, deadly ace… It’s food for thought.

I’d also say there’s something of a chance that Keith could be the White Paladin? I don’t have too much support for the theory yet, but his whole view of himself as the “loner” and the hanging plot line of his mother and his mysterious past would make him well-suited for the White Lion’s mobility.

Anyway, as with all of my metas this is Getting Too Long and doesn’t make sense lmao (sorry I just wanted to scribble this down before s4), so I’ll cut it off here. My point is that while I have no idea how likely it is that a White Lion exists (though again, I think it’s narratively possible and maybe even narratively probable), you could squeeze an interesting arc out of any of these possible pilots. Plus, having the White Lion (if it is an alternate lion) around would allow for a lot of mobility and give everyone possibilities for cool solo adventures that I think would be fun.