#do you think the person is gonna be like yeah i'm actually a violent bigot on purpose i've just been tricking you into thinking i'm normal

[yisanged]

seeing people get anonymous accusatory asks from presumably their own mutuals/followers is so scary...... i can't imagine any of my friends that are all haiiiiii ^_^ with me suddenly turning around and going uhhh why would you reblog this post with a little detail in it that could be taken strangely clearly just because you didn't realize there was something up with it? 🤨📸 irredeemable scumbag. like hi? hey

[ganymedesclock]

i'm trying to understand where the idea that lotor is self-serving and only cares about himself and what he wants came from? we still don't even know his real plan, and his motive over going to voltron is to like... live, probably.

This is actually an interesting question, so, I wanna break this down a little and talk about Lotor, and reads on him, and what I think they’re playing off of.

1. History

I’m not sure how strong an influence this is, but the idea of Lotor as a pampered, materialistic, vain asshole is actually completely founded in other continuities. Quite a few of them- GoLion, DotU, and DDP in particular, depict Lotor literally keeping harems of beautiful women who waited on him, massaged him, poured him wine- and he drank a lot of wine.

Voltron Force broke away from the harem thing, but he was still shown drinking that’s-probably-an-alcoholic-beverage-but-they-won’t-say-so-because-cartoon in the bath while allegedly important things were going on. Admittedly with Force Lotor, this is moderately more understandable since he was undead and needed repeat exposures to a specific substance in order to keep the “un” part in there- and chose the sauna option over injection or radiation because he was sick of the alternatives.

It still comes back to, frankly, prior incarnations of Lotor absolutely deserved to be identified as spoiled, or at least used to the good life. While I’ve yet to find a single incarnation of Lotor that has a good relationship with Zarkon, in most other continuities, Lotor had ample resources separate from him (in a few, such as Force, Lotor is in charge as Zarkon is long dead) and was very inclined to indulge in them- and, as the very nature of a slave harem necessitates- often directly at others’ expense.

Of course that’s only as logical an explanation as making assumptions about VLD Lotor based on other incarnations of the character, when Lotor, like every other character in VLD, is a very different creature from his prior selves. Never in VLD’s canon have we witnessed Lotor doing anything that looks like partying or relaxing- or even not immediately related to his ambition. This continuity sets him up as a counterpart to Shiro, after all, and Shiro is a rather dedicated workaholic.

The only pleasant company Lotor entertains is the generals, and that’s about the furthest thing from a “harem” as you can get- the generals are autonomous, ambitious people, and, like Lotor, they spend their onscreen time working. Their relationship is businesslike in nature, and while Lotor clearly considers them friends and is more personal with them than mere coworkers, we have no evidence their relationship ever moved out of the territory of allies and conspirators. And Lotor hasn’t shown romantic or sexual interest in anyone else, much less acting on it.

It’s a facelift very similar to Zarkon, when prior incarnations of his character were also inclined to extravagant opulence. However, while in VLD Zarkon’s case, his spartan inclinations still come with their own flavor of ostentation, and it’s simply that he has nothing to prove as he’s already considered something approaching a god- in Lotor’s case the specific lack of pampered settings is used as one word in a different ongoing message- that Lotor’s ambition and calculation in this continuity is rooted not in entitlement, but a deep, abiding bitterness.

Other incarnations of Lotor were selfish people, and their unhappiness rooted in Zarkon’s abuse drove some of their selfish grabs, but even then, their behavior was neither understandable, nor sympathetic. (GoLion’s Sincline, for example, lusted after Allura out of misplaced grief over the traumatic loss of his mother, but he was still trying to abduct and forcibly wed an unrelated teenager who happened to look like his mom)

And that leads into my second point…

2. Self-serving versus selfish

Talking purely VLD here, Lotor is established as a manipulator, and someone who’s not afraid to lie through his teeth to other people. Given that this is the same context in which his more noble, political reform ambitions also come to light, I think many people have come away with the assumption that Lotor is inherently selfish- that his manipulation and behind-the-scenes discarding and mockery of Throk is evidence that Lotor is ultimately a cruel person.

And this very flavor of guile, on prior incarnations, did have the take-home that Lotor was ultimately a nasty guy only in it for himself.

However, again, in VLD, Lotor is a good deal more desperate, and more vulnerable, than his prior selves.

There is no Altea left. It’s dead and gone. And Lotor is not only biologically half-Altean, but frankly, from a cultural perspective, even down to his accent- he’s basically an Altean with a thin coating of just purple and pointy enough to be palatable to the average galra. This puts a very different spin on his relationship with the empire, and with his father, especially given the latter very actively and deliberately is trying to complete his earlier genocide of the Altean people.

Prior incarnations of Lotor didn’t have this problem- even Sincline, who was half-Altean, still felt safe enough that he acted as a conqueror in furthering Zarkon’s empire, and actually, before he started to struggle against Voltron, entertained a fairly cozy position.

VLD Lotor, however, is a vulnerable minority neck deep in the heartland of the empire and he has basically no illusions whatsoever that his title won’t save him. He’s not scheming against Zarkon because “boy, it sure would be neat to have more power here, too bad my smelly old dad is immortal, is there any way I can help the natural process along here” nearly as much as “it’s inevitably going to be me or him, and if I don’t shoot first, he will.”

Lotor’s a survivalist. And in that sense, he is self-serving, but not in the way of someone who’s gonna use your tears to salt his martini, so to speak. We see this a lot in, say, his interactions with Puig, or in s4e5 when he bails on the generals.

Lotor does, in fact, make decisions that serve himself. Sometimes this is at others’ expense. His attitude, virtually always, is “I don’t particularly want to be doing this. I can tell you’re hurting, and I don’t really want you to be. But… if I don’t take this, I’m going to die, and I also don’t want that. Well, then. take care of yourself.”

The only people Lotor’s consistently shown to have no sympathy for is Zarkon, Haggar, and people like Throk who are gleefully and unabashedly part of their empire. And that’s not really surprising, and it’s certainly not a villainous trait. Our heroes are the same way- they really don’t have much empathy for the commanders and generals that are happy under Zarkon.

The specific way Throk frames his criticism of Lotor in s3e1 boils down to Throk perceives Lotor’s more merciful approach as a threat to the empire. Compassion and empathy are hazards to Throk, who is, in short, an aristocrat who bought his way to the top with other people’s blood and tears. He brings this up repeatedly when fighting Lotor- that he has hurt others, that he is proud of his violence and cruelty onto others.

And Throk? Throk is the guy Lotor genuinely throws under the bus, chews him out and spits him out coldly, and I’m willing to bet there is more than a little bitterness and vengefulness in there. But pulling this back to our original topic:

Guile, manipulation, scheming, are in short, not stereotypically heroic traits. Seeing Lotor lie to Throk, from a viewer’s perspective, awakens a reflexive discomfort in us, because seeing people lie to each other and undermine them behind the scenes is stereotypically villainous behavior. The audience becomes suspicious and on edge towards Lotor, and this causes them to read the rest of Lotor’s behavior in a very cynical light- any compassion or empathy we see out of him going forwards has to be a lie, has to be a trick.

The thing this read misses is that Throk again, defined himself by his cruelty and vindictiveness. He isn’t a guy we should be weeping for all that hard. Our heroes would have messed him up just as much had they gotten their hands on him first. That’s why Throk is given so much time to speak for himself, and establish that yeah, he’s a violent bigot and proud of it, and how heavily, thematically, Lotor’s manipulation of Throk is framed as a counterattack.

Because both practically in the duel and in the larger situation, Lotor hangs back and lets Throk pound on him, only focusing on blocking and protecting himself. He doesn’t even come out of it unscathed- there’s a notable moment of Throk clipping Lotor’s hair, which Lotor doesn’t once acknowledge.

The entire time Throk and his friend are speaking of Lotor, we see Lotor in the ring, set upon by his larger opponent- dodging, evading, weaving around. This is a very direct visual allegory- Lotor is an underdog. If there’s anyone who picked this fight first, it’s the thousand injuries of the galra empire Lotor’s endured first.

So what this all comes back to, I think, is that there’s a failure to distinguish prior continuities’ selfish, arrogant Lotor, who had plenty and wanted more, from VLD’s Lotor, who’s more of a starving wolf on the prowl. Both are dangerous- both will take what they want and if need be hurt you to get it. 

But one of them wants without any real need behind it- wants, in the way that someone sitting in a comfortable room surrounded by beautiful people sees someone that doesn’t belong to them and salivates. And that’s unsympathetic, even if it’s rooted in genuine tragedy- because GoLion’s Sincline made the choice to fill his void by trapping other people inside of it.

VLD Lotor is not a selfish person. He’s aggressive, he’s ambitious, he’s calculating, the same way prior incarnations of his character were. But need and want are really the same for Lotor- there’s nothing he doesn’t try to hold onto that he doesn’t need, and those needs are unfulfilled.

It’s actually really kind of a fascinating contrast to look at DotU Lotor who has so many people waiting on him hand and foot that he throws them away and basically ignores them (I don’t think we ever learn any of his attendants’ names, nor are they treated as full characters who have lives outside of him, with the exception of other people he tries to kidnap, such as Romelle) and compare that to Lotor where the only four people whose company he genuinely seems to enjoy, all named and full characters, all left him one way or another, partially through his own actions, but with an overwhelming sense of helplessness from him the entire time. 

People have compared the generals’ betrayal of Lotor to the fall of Azula, when one of the meaningful differences is that Azula was completely outraged and shocked to lose Mai and Ty Lee.

Lotor, once he gets over the initial surprise of being shot? Just kind of takes it as a given.

It comes down to the difference between a glutton and someone who’s been living on the street without reliable food for years. Both of them are going to be preoccupied with their next meal, but in very different contexts- one goes “ho hum, what shall I eat today,” and the other one is going “will I be able to eat today?”

And to me, I think sympathy entirely aside, that’s something that makes VLD Lotor a lot more dangerous than his DotU self. Because DotU Lotor could be counted on to indulge (the oft-quoted birthday party episode) and this was something his enemies could exploit- he’d lower his guard to have a good time.

VLD Lotor is a terrified, embittered person who takes almost nothing for granted and even if he’s far more ethical than his older incarnations, Narti’s fate alone is a magnificent case study in how far Lotor will go doing things he doesn’t want to because he lives his entire life with his back to a wall knowing if he doesn’t personally carve a way out here through whatever might be in his way, he’s not leaving.