#if real militaries worked this way there would be no more war bc we’d all be dead

[imidori-ya]

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is literal hot garbage and I will die on this hill.

[dwellordream]

“...Today, most – though by no means all – free countries (along with a number of rather unfree ones) have shifted from mass conscription based militaries to professional, all-volunteer militaries. The United States, of course, made that shift in 1973 (along lines proposed by the 1969 Gates Commission). The shift to a professional military has always been understood to have involved risks – the classic(al) example of those risks being the Roman one: the creation of a semi-professional Roman army misaligned the interests of the volunteer soldiers with the voting citizens, resulting in the end (though a complicated process) in the collapse of the Republic and the formation of the Empire in what might well be termed a shift to ‘military rule’ as the chief commander of the republic (first Julius Caesar, then Octavian) seized power from the apparatus of civilian government (the senate and citizen assemblies).

It is in that context that ‘warrior’ – despite its recent, frustrating use by the United States Army – is an unfortunate way for soldiers (regardless of branch or country) to think of themselves. Encouraging soldiers to see themselves as ‘warriors’ means encouraging them to see their role as combatants as the foundational core of their identity. A Mongol warrior was a warrior because as an adult male Mongol, being a warrior was central to his gender-identity and place in society (the Mongols being a society, as common with Steppe nomads, where all adult males were warriors); such a Mongol remained a warrior for his whole adult life.

Likewise, a medieval knight – who I’d class as a warrior (remember, the distinction is on identity more than unit fighting) – had warrior as a core part of their identity. It is striking that, apart from taking religious orders to become a monk (and thus shift to an equally totalizing vocation), knights – especially as we progress through the High Middle Ages as the knighthood becomes a more rigid and recognized institution – do not generally seem to retire. They do not lay down their arms and become civilians (and just one look at the attitude of knightly writers towards civilians quickly answers the question as to why). Being a warrior was the foundation of their identity and so could not be disposed of. We could do the same exercise with any number of ‘warrior classes’ within various societies. Those individuals were, in effect born warriors and they would die warriors. In societies with meaningful degrees of labor specialization, to be a warrior was to be, permanently, a class apart.

Creating such a class apart (especially one with lots of weapons) presents a tremendous danger to civilian government and consequently to a free society (though it is also a danger to civilian government in an unfree society). As the interests of this ‘warrior class’ diverge from the interests of the rest of society, even with the best of intentions the tendency is going to be for the warriors to seek to preserve their interests and status with the tools they have, which is to say all of the weapons (what in technical terms we’d call a ‘failure of civil-military relations,’ civ-mil being the term for the relationship between civil society and its military).

The end result of that process is generally the replacement of civilian self-government with ‘warrior rule.’ In pre-modern societies, such ‘warrior rule’ took the form of governments composed of military aristocrats (often with the chiefest military aristocrat, the king, at the pinnacle of the system); the modern variant, rule by officer corps (often with a general as the king-in-all-but-name) is of course quite common. Because of that concern, it is generally well understood that keeping the cultural gap between the civilian and military worlds as small as possible is important to a free society.

Instead, what a modern free society wants are effectively civilians, who put on the soldier’s uniform for a few years, acquire the soldier’s skills and arts, and then when their time is done take that uniform off and rejoin civil society as seamlessly as possible (the phrase ‘citizen-soldier’ is often used represent this ideal). It is clear that, at least for the United States, the current realization of this is less than ideal. The endless pressure to ‘re-up‘ (or for folks to be stop-lossed) hardly help.

But encouraging soldiers (or people in everyday civilian life; we’ll come back to that in the last post in this series) to identify as warriors – individual, self-motivated combatants whose entire identity is bound up in the practice of war – does real harm to the actual goal of keeping the cultural divide between soldiers and civilians as small as possible. Observers both within the military and without have been shouting the alarm on this point for some time now, but the heroic allure of the warrior remains strong.

...But as I noted above, we’ve discussed on this blog already a lot of different military social structures (mounted aristocrats in France and Arabia, the theme and fyrd systems, the Spartans themselves, and so on). And they are very different and produce armies – because societies cannot help but replicate their own peacetime social order on the battlefield – that are organized differently, value different things and as a consequence fight differently. But focusing on (fictitious) ‘universal warriors’ also obscures another complex set of relationships to war and warfare: all of the civilians.

When we talk about the impact of war on civilians, the mind quite naturally turns to the civilian victims of war – sacked cities, enslaved captives, murdered non-combatants – and of course their experience is part of war too. But even in a war somehow fought entirely in an empty field between two communities (which, to be clear, no actual war even slightly resembles this ‘Platonic’ ideal war; there is a tendency to romanticize certain periods of military history, particularly European military history, this way, but it wasn’t so), it would still shape the lives of all of the non-combatants in that society (this is the key insight of the ‘war and society’ school of military history).

To take just my own specialty, warfare in the Middle Roman Republic wasn’t simply a matter for the soldiery, even when the wars were fought outside of Italy (which they weren’t always kept outside!). The demand for conscripts to fill the legions bent and molded Roman family patterns, influencing marriage and child-bearing patterns for both men and women. With so many of the males of society processed through the military, the values of the army became the values of society not only for the men but also for women as well. Women in these societies did not consider themselves uninterested bystanders in these conflicts: by and large they had a side and were on that side, supporting the war effort by whatever means.

And even in late-third and early-second century (BC) Rome, with its absolutely vast military deployments, the majority of men (and all of the women) were still on the ‘homefront’ at any given time, farming the food, paying the taxes, making the armor and weapons and generally doing the tasks that allowed the war machine to function, often in situations of considerable hardship. And in the end – though the exact mechanisms remain the subject of debate – it is clear that the results of Rome’s victory induced significant economic instability, which was also a part of the experience of war.

In short, warriors were not the only people who mattered in war. The wartime social role of a warrior was not only different from that of a soldier, it was different than that of the working peasant forced to pay heavy taxes, or to provide Corvée labor to the army. It was different from the woman whose husband went off to war, or whose son did, or who had to keep up her farm and pay the taxes while they did so. It was different for the aristocrat than for the peasant, for the artisan than for the farmer. Different for the child than for the adult.

And yet for a complex society (one with significant specialization of labor) to wage war efficiently, all of these roles were necessary. To focus on only the warrior (or the soldier) as the sole interesting relationship in warfare is to erase the indispensable contributions made by all of these folks, without which the combatant could not combat.

It would be worse yet, of course, to suggest that the role of the warrior is somehow morally superior to these other roles (something Pressfield does explicitly, I might add, comparing ‘decadent’ modern society to supposedly superior ‘warrior societies’ in his opening videos). To do so with reference to our modern professional militaries is to invite disastrous civil-military failure. To suggest, more deeply, that everyone ought to be in some sense a ‘warrior’ in their own occupation sounds better, but – as we’ll see in the last essay of this series – leads to equally dark places.

A modern, free society has no need for warriors; the warrior is almost wholly inimical to a free society if that society has a significant degree of labor specialization (and thus full-time civilian specialists). It needs citizens, some of whom must be, at any time, soldiers but who must never stop being citizens both when in uniform and afterwards.”

- Bret Devereaux, “The Universal Warrior, Part I: Soldiers, Warriors, and…”

[peirates]

‘Did the Romans and ancient Greeks ... ?’

Google autocomplete is a gem and a curse. Inspired by @todayintokyo’s post on questions about Japan, I thought I’d have a look at what people are asking about Rome and classical Greece and, wow...

Christmas holidays leave a lot of time for milling around, so I’ll answer them in case anyone’s interested. (Please forgive me if any of this is incorrect/incoherent, it’s nearly 11pm as I’m writing this lol)

Did the Romans speak Latin?

Yes, Latin was Rome’s (and the Roman Empire’s) official language! Of course, many Romans or foreigners in Rome spoke other languages for the sake of communication, trade and education - Greek was particularly popular among the nobility - but Latin was what they all had in common.

Did the Romans invade Scotland?

Long story short, no. They tried, failed, and built Hadrian’s Wall to keep the ‘barbarian’ Gaels out - southern Britain was already too cold and muddy for the temperate Romans, not much point in losing more lives over more mud. 

(Hadrian’s Wall was what inspired Game of Thrones’ The Wall, as confirmed by G.R.R. Martin himself, but Hadrian’s was nowhere near as high, thick or long.)

Did the Romans have glass?

Absolutely! In fact, their skill with it was much more artistic and masterful than the average glassmaker today, just search ‘roman glassware’ here on Tumblr or on Google images to see what I mean.

Did the Romans invent concrete?

Yep! It’s famed for its durability, which is due to its contents of volcanic ash (Pompeii flashbacks), lime and seawater. The seawater reacted with the ash over time to give it its strength and anti-cracking nature.

In fact, the Roman method was so effective that it lasts for far longer than modern concrete (modernity/Westernisation =/= progression, it seems) and scientists today are trying to find ways to revitalise it.

Did the Romans eat pizza? / Did the Romans eat pasta?

Sadly not, only later Italians did. Their empire deserved to crumble for not inventing either smh.

Did the Romans invade Britain? / Did the Romans invade England?

They did indeed in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, and they only began to withdraw in the late 300s when the city of Rome was being threatened by a Germanic tribe called the Visigoths.

Did the Romans invade Ireland?

No. Even now, archaeologists have no idea to what extent they communicated or even knew of each other.

Did the Romans celebrate Christmas?

Emperor Constantine only began converting the empire to Christianity from AD 313 (they had been pagan previously), and the earliest evidence we have of Romans celebrating Christmas was in 336 AD, very late in Roman history. Throughout most of Roman history, therefore, no they did not celebrate Christmas.

(They did have a festival which was similarly important and similarly timed (mid-December) called the Saturnalia. It also involved communal partying, gift exchanges and a general spirit of liberty (e.g. slaves could order around and punish their masters) - it was one of the most anticipated festivals of the Roman calendar. However, the purpose was very different: it was to worship the pagan god Saturn, the father of god-king Jupiter and the previous ruler of the world before its occupation by humanity. Namely, the festival marked a return to the ancient ‘Golden Age’ in which nature was dominant, peaceful and uncorrupted.)

Did ancient Greece have emperors? / Did ancient Greece have kings?

No emperors, traditionally Greece was comprised of city-states ruled by kings (or theoretically by the dēmos, the people, if you were Athens). Under Roman occupation it did answer to Rome’s leaders (consuls, then later emperors), but the idea of emperors was much more late-Roman than Greek.

Did ancient Greece celebrate Christmas?

Nope. It was originally pagan and did not celebrate any Christian holidays until a) it was conquered by Rome b) Rome later converted to Christianity, thus enforcing it on the rest of the empire. However, this conversion point was so long after the ‘heroic’ and ‘classical’ periods of Greece that by the time it did become mostly Christian, it was no longer ‘ancient Greece’ in the same sense.

Did ancient Greece have electricity?

Y’all are asking the real questions out here, that’s for sure lmao. 

Nope, electricity wasn’t used anywhere as a power source until Thomas Edison’s studies about two thousand years later.

God though, a good ol’ GPS would have saved Odysseus a lot of trouble.

Did ancient Greece and Rome overlap?

Oh, nelly...

Greece predated Rome by at nearly a thousand years, but Greece’s and Rome’s histories together lasted for centuries, even before the latter conquered the former. It’s why they are studied together as one field of academia. Many Italian settlements were in fact Greek colonies. Classical Greek helped shape Latin. Much of Roman religion was inspired by that of the Greeks. Many Greeks could speak Latin and many Romans could speak Greek. Roman art, philosophy and architecture was particularly fascinated by that which was Greek - to put it in meme format, the crab is Roman culture and the crocodile is Greek culture. And these are just the absolute basics, entire tomes have been written on Greece’s and Rome’s somewhat symbiotic relationship.

TLDR hell yes they did.

Did ancient Greece have a flag? / Did ancient Greece have a constitution?

Nah. Although history often refers to Greece as one country, one culture, it was more a collection of independent city-states with their own identities and constitutions. 

They all had three things in common: religion (+ the moral/social codes which came along with it), language, and (in most cases) enemies from abroad -  therefore in later centuries, as well as their city-based nationalities, they did all call themselves the Hellenes. If you were a fellow Hellenic, you’d be able to work and live in other Greek cities with less trouble than if you were to try, say, in a ‘barbarian’ land such as Persia. Greeks were civilised; everyone else was an uncultured brute. Hence, their sense of unity was more from fear of the outside, from xenophobia, than from internal harmony.

Because of this, there was never an altogether complete sense of assimilation. Different cities had distinct dialects, favoured different gods/cults within the wider Pantheon, often warred against each other (especially Athens and Sparta, whew), fed their own specific cultures and law-sets and reputations. Nationality and citizenship in that age were not really about country or region, the world was just too small for that. You wouldn’t say ‘Hi I’m Phoebe and I’m Greek’, you’d say ‘Hi I’m Phoebe and I’m from the city of Halicarnassus.’ The closest analogy I can really think of is the cities in the dystopian series, Mortal Engines.

So no, they didn’t have a single flag or constitution. There was just not enough unity between them all.

Did ancient Greece trade?

Initially I was going to wave this off as a silly question because ‘hurr durr everyone trades’ but ACTUALLY. 

Along with the rest of the eastern Mediterranean, Greece had its own Dark Ages between the fall of its early society (aka Mycenaean Greece) and the rise of Homeric-style poetry and culture, i.e. between the 1100s and 700s BC. Communication in general was absolutely awful: there were no great armies, no great cultural progressions, and yes, no substantial trade. The fact that Greece was then feeling down in the dumps also discouraged foreign trade. 

It took the bard Homer’s influence to get people to start thinking, creating, travelling and thus mass-trading again - this sudden surge in activity eventually led to Greece’s Classical Period, i.e. 4th century BC, you’ll probably imagine gleaming Athenian pillars. Increased thinking and culture led to increased politics/nationalism, increased p/n led to increased warring and military action, increased warring improved transport and communication, and WHOOSH suddenly trade took off.

So basically, Mycenaean Greek trade was good (as far as we can tell), Dark Ages Greek trade was shocking, Classical Greek trade was quite literally revolutionary.

Did ancient Greece have lions?

Yep! However, they weren’t like the sub-Saharan lions you’re probably imagining right now - those are Panthera leo, but the Eurasian lions that would have been in Greece were Panthera spelaea.

Nevertheless there were indeed lions and they played a huge role in Greek mythology and literature. The Nemean Lion was the first of Hercules’ Twelve Labours; Homer, the trendsetting legendary lad that he was, created a trope of comparing something innocent and vulnerable to something vicious and savage and desperate by using the analogy of a lamb and a hungry lion.

Did ancient Greece have a democracy?

Nope, only one city named Athens did. Don’t get me wrong, it was at the time and still is a big deal considering it hadn’t been done before, BUT there are three important things to note:

It was ONLY Athens which had a democracy - every other Greek city kept their kingships.

The Athenian democracy wasn’t what we’d call democracy. Only free, Athenian-on-both-sides men could vote and participate in local politics - this left out all slaves, all women (even if they were Athenian), and all foreigners or residents of foreign descent (no longer how long you and your family had lived in and worked in and contributed to the city and community).

It wasn’t foolproof considering it eventually got overthrown by power-seeking tyrants.

i.e. a part of ancient Greece had a democracy.

[15001700tt]

So that meta about cap 3 civil war, I am going to hash it out here on my phone Bc I don’t have the mental capacity to type on my laptop (I just finished episode 6 of wandavision, I am not oka)

So the Sokovia Accords are a bunch of rules and restrictions for enhanced humans to follow. The gist is that whenever enhanced humans (basically superhero’s) want to do anything they have to abide by the accords and get the okay sign from all the countries that signed. While it’s alright to set guidelines and rules this isn’t about whether the countries are right to even sign the accords it’s about what kind of rules are in the accords in the first place. This is a fictional piece in a fictional world so I doubt I can actually find the complete accords to go through it. So I can only go off what others have mentioned and what the movie shows me.

The beginning of the movie starts with cap and Tony in opposite head spaces. Tony just lost pepper after his last mistake (IRONMAN 3) and cap is exactly where we left him in 2014, still trying to find Bucky. Caps headspace didn’t change.

Tony is very vulnerable because of the recent circumstances so of course when the lady at the college accuses him of killing her son, he will feel guilt. Coupled with his history of panic attacks and self doubt, and many many mistakes (see his own movies and age of ultron for reference)

he would of course agree that they need ‘supervision’ because he doesn’t trust himself enough to be able to do the right thing without other people to influence him. Tony isn’t weak minded, he just has a history of always choosing the wrong decisions and so when now he wants to be better and make the right decisions and Ross (that bitch) is like ‘try dangerous’ he completely feels like he has no ground to say no. 

While cap is still the same old cap. He may be captain America but he might as well be the archnemisis of the government. He doesn’t trust governments or in this case countries with making decisions like these. You can clearly see this by his skepticism and going through the accords and reading them. He didn’t get to the ocean rift prison part but he recognized the signs of oppression. I think that came from the 1940s. If we’re being real here, cap got the serum and then was told to be a stage monkey for months bc the government (or military but same thing) decided that they didn’t want one superhuman soldier they wanted an army. That was a wrong decision, he went against it when he went to save the 107th. He makes a point to Tony, when Tony says that they need to be held accountable for their actions. 

"We are if we're not taking responsibility for our actions. This document just shifts the blame." 

 "No, but it's run by people with agendas and agendas change." —‘If we sign this, we surrender our right to choose.’

He says this with the experience (let’s say from both cap 1 and 2 to keep it simple) the army made the decision based on profit. And once they found out that he can actually get shit done they changed their mind and allowed the howling commandos to operate. Same with shield and hydra in WS. Hydra was growing with shield and no one even knew and even fury was willing to go with whatever pierce had set UNTIL cap challenged the idea. Cap also makes a point when he’s talking with fury.

Nick Fury: “Shield takes the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be.”

Captain America/Steve Rogers: “This isn't freedom. This is fear!”

Which honestly gives you a very precise and to the point idea of how cap thinks. The government can’t be trusted because governments change.

Cap 3 wasn’t about who was right and who was wrong. Tony and cap are both right. It’s almost like the two sides of the same coin.

Tony no longer trusts himself and needs someone else to make the big boy decisions and cap can only trust himself because he only knows what his intentions are and has been betrayed by people and the government enough times that he can’t put that much power into their hands anymore. Cap even says he wishes he can turn off the part in his brain that keeps fighting against it. But he can’t. Bc he stands for freedom and justice (America’s ass ;))

The subplots of cap 3 literally enforce these ideas. Tony is trying to do the right thing by doing what he’s asked, cap just wanted to keep things as they were. Tony is susceptible to change but cap isn’t. It’s literally his character arc being frozen for 70 years (I am ignoring his stunt in endgame vc that was so OOC)

Cap believes in the people around him when he knows them, he knew Wanda and he knew Bucky on levels the audience and maybe even Tony doesn’t understand. He may not be trusting if people but he believes there’s good in everyone. Tony believes that there’s only wickedness so people need to be held accountable. Which isn’t wrong but it has a Dutch tilt. That’s not how that works because no matter what people say, sometimes they have other intentions. It completely checks out that Tony would lock Wanda in the compound because he doesn’t trust her (because he didn’t trust himself) and it’s not because he doesn’t love her, he was doing this as a way to protect her! While with Bucky he didn’t seem in anyway interested in what happened in Winter Soldier so I can’t really define his thoughts towards him until Tony finds out that Bucky killed his parents. There is the point that he was willing to bring in Bucky to the CIA after the bombing in Vienna but tbh there’s a lot of plot holes when it comes to that so I can’t tackle that either.

Cap is stubborn and Tony learned to weaponize his fear and so when that backfired he was left vulnerable bc he had no strong values or trust in himself. It makes his character so much more intriguing. You have this almost narcissistic philanthropist playboy doubting his own decisions because of a few that went wrong when he was trying to go straight. Coupled with his trauma and it almost too realistic (but somehow still idealistic) the way he reacts to authority.

So when he finds out that Bucky is innocent and Zemo is out there about to release the winter soldiers (we know that this was a pseudo goal but they don’t know that) he realizes that cap was right and that he needed to stop Zemo. And when Ross (that bitch) tells him that he can’t, Tony immediately ignores him. Coupled with the fact that Ross (that bitch) put his friends and teammates in prison cells and fucking collars, which is clearly not only in the accords it’s something that was withheld from them (no wonder Wanda is so fuckin pissed off in endgame) Tony really was against the accords by the pseudo climax (again this was the fake climax bc the winter soldiers were never a threat, Zemo was never going to activate them) but when he finds out about his parents he’s pissed at cap. And Bucky which is understandable he killed his mom.

He’s mad at cap for being a little bit of a hypocrite. Remember —"No, but it's run by people with agendas and agendas change."? That’s what made Tony go feral in my opinion. Cap withholding this information from Tony was caps way to get Tony to help cap find Bucky which is from all the cap movies is the goal —> hence ‘caps agenda’.

So cap 3 ends with Tony back at the compound and Steve sends him an old ass flip phone. My theory is the cap 3 was never about the accords really, it was about the broken trust between Tony and Steve. Steve kept information from Tony that put Bucky in a bad light. This exchange between them was gut wrenching;

Captain America: I'm sorry Tony.... I wouldn't do this if I had any other choice... but he's my friend.

Tony Stark/Iron Man: So was I.

[severalbakuras]

guess who watched a little more voltron. apologies to mobile users if readmores don’t work. spoilers for episodes 5-8 of voltron. (as always please don’t send me spoilers for later on. even if i’m wrong)(oh and mild night in the woods+utena spoilers, i guess)

episode 5: they’re all such dipshit brats goddamn. hunk is #relatable but ngl keith swooping in like that felt a lil ooc unless he’s still feeling annoyed at lance from the earlier freakout about the blue lion. then he’s #relatable too i know the feeling of professional Salt.

allura’s got a great spike spiegel/space dandy sense of improvisation when it comes to piloting.

pidge is now the most #relatable bc holy shit fuck the slipperies.

oh my god hunk you just solved my stealth voltron/night in the woods au idea - v. kind and stress bakes = angus for sure. (now who is gregg i mean i know who i ship with hunk (keith and shay (and ot3, hunk has two hands)) but they’re both a little too mellow to be gregg in his up mood swings. like lance probably fits the bill best but then i have no one to be mae. keith might make a good bea? hrmmmmm.)

(i’m kinda leaning towards shiro as selmers ngl, even if she isn’t a ‘main’ character. she explicitly states that she’s seeking therapy and it’s working out for her and it’d be nice if shiro could get the same at some point. plus i think shiro would write poems like

My heart is A dankness But when I see you I feel a thankness When I feel A blueness All I need Is a youness

bc he’s a cheesy dorky guy. maybe some night he will catch that bus out to the west coast.)

(zarkon is either that asshole steve scriggins or eide because he’s not competent enough to be anyone else of consequence)

(allura is either the nice pastor or lori m. pastor bc she has to project the image of a strong leader at all times even if she’s questioning herself/her faith, lori m because she’s kinda haunted by death and i can sorta see her being the local quiet weirdo with a ton to say if you just talk to her)

(holy shit that’s a lot of words for an au for a series that hasn’t even finished yet so sorry)

so uh anyway this is the episode that launched keith/lance right? right. who the fuck builds an elevator without a service/evacuation ladder. im reporting that thing to osha and the elevator repair aliens union.

THAT’S HAGGARS VOICE. SHE’S TEACHING PIDGE ALTEAN. MY CIVIL WAR THEORY...

i mean i know they probably just recycled her va but

wow zarkon’s actually slightly competent for once. probably haggar’s doing.

that storm looks fucking badass.

aww allura ;A; then again they’ve only just started doing this tracking thing with this much intensity this season so like that can’t be the case. unless zarkon only just now realized he had allura’s dna/life essence on record (C.I.V.I.L W.A.R) and he could use them to track her down with. which i can totally believe. 

honestly the fact that the galmorans galrans. tf ulaz you’re screwing me up from the grave. even have a functioning space ship at all is probably despite zarkon, not because of.

she’s real sad she doesn’t get to kill allura. almost as if her death is to haggar as obtaining the black lion is to zarkon. hmm.

coran really embodies the nihilist millennial spirit. we’re probably gonna die anyway so why not.

episode 6: !!! i was wondering if we’d get someone like jim cummings show up. weird i thought he was more disney than dreamworks. also i love the organic/inorganic mix those are some cool aliens goddamn.

who’s this fucking loser on a hoverboard. he hasn’t even got a fraction of eyebrow guy’s charisma or charm.

it’s that dagger keith has huh. calling it now. he was way too flustered to be lying about it having something to do with him and since when does he hide like. anything. from shiro.

red lion is watching you TOTALLY GET CALLED. christ i’m nailing a lot of stuff about keith it’s making me v. positive about my civil war theory.

you self sacrificing dorks.

aww keith. i mean allura def. has a very strong point but aww.

morvok makes zarkon look intimidating and that is no mean feat.

oh yeah there’s some evangelion style pilot/robot synergy going on with how much effort hunk has to put into lifting things. like linked life energies. here’s hoping we don’t have an asuka vs the eva series moment that would be nastyyy.

honestly i was not expecting anything like allura and keith’s chat to appear in an action cartoon like it’s pure character interaction and dialogue about a legit difficult subject with two people who clearly care about and respect each other but both have justified differing opinions.

AAHH PIDGE THAT WAS THE WORST POSSIBLE BOOST

THIS IS A NIGHTMARE SCENARIO AAAAAAA

so the hub is the cushy spot for high ranking generals or something. sounds like the military police in aot.

that 360 tracking shot on lance was siiiiiick.

ugh you are not funny enough for those sound effects commander.

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT CORAN

red lion i love you

OH SHIT NEW HUNK POWER

this dude is suffering the same ‘destroy the lions!!’ thing as a lot of the galrans seem to have. like. don’t you lot want voltron? doesn’t zarkon want the black lion? dissolving them in acid is literally the worst possible way to fulfilling those orders.

lance have you been thinking about if keith and allura hooked up the whole time? can’t tell if salty or thirsty.

someone please throw that commander dude overboard. i feel infinitely worse for all the galran mooks now.

don’t tease me show don’t give me a blast that big

tell me that wasn’t his escape pod. ughghhghghghghhghghghhgh

more lol hunk food jokes. ughhhghg.

‘tracking through the black lion’ can’t fool me with that red herring m8. if he had that connection with the black lion he could’ve found shiro on that scavenger’s planet before keith could. 

episode 7: space spirates is the coolest fucking concept give me space piratES GIVE ME. SPAC. E PIRAT. ES

coren don’t be space racist towards oonaloos.

sparkly allura YES ALLURA GETS TO CHILL TODAY YESSS.

shame about shiro tho black lion’s like nah bitch we’re having a bonding exercise.

the space mall is the space dandy-est thing i’ve seen in this show. i want a crossover i want them to witness Viva All

it would be the dumbest shit

oh god they’re dressed like rpg characters which makes me think of a skyrim au which makes me think of my yugioh skyrim au which makes me wonder if i can combine the two. 

coran’s sasuke shirt is Uncomfortable.

i love this galran mall dude. varkon mall cop.

the civil war theory isn’t dead the lions could’ve been built afterwards or just not activated prior to reaching ‘home’. or black lion believes in home being where the heart is and not your place of birth.

more food jokes for hunk hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

they nailed the informercial salesguy voice on this guy.

keith would be naive enough to give a shady sales dude a treasure knife huh.

ok keith winning a knife fight like that DOES give me gregg vibes. a little. i guess we’ve never seen keith in a manic ‘up’ phase, just a progressively worse or better ‘down’ phase.

OH FUCK HE REALLY IS VARKON MALL COP. THE MEMES HAVE ASCENDED.

civil war theory... isn’t dead... hhh

ok ok ok so like maybe a mutation caused by direct contact with quintessence wasn’t controversial for a while. like you’re manipulating the planet’s essence of course you’ll look a little funky as a result and there’s not much difference between harvesting a little life essence and harvesting a crop.

the split comes from zarkon wanting to use the black lion/voltron and quintessence for war while king allura’s dad does not. zarkon takes his loyal team and superjacks them with quintessence essentially reshaping their bodies entirely, along with any alteans who are like ‘yeah no maybe war is what we need’. and this mutation is passed down genetically creating the galran race as we know it. and there’s probably some cloning going on too idk this is a semi-sci-fi show there’s gonna be clones at some point.

ok?

ok.

pidge. u nerd.

more of the oonaloo girl pls i love her.

ok i can get behind master chef hunk jokes

god everyone else is having a nice time and as usual shiro is trapped in a nightmare and also as usual he’s probably not going to breath one word about it to his crew (late edit: I WAS RIGHT).

galran cook man is cool with me can he join the crew.

i swear to god the black lion and shiro and zarkon confrontation is basically the same as the plot of utena???? shiro is utena. zarkon is akio. black lion is anthy.

otoh that doesn’t bode well for shiro so uh.

moving on

pidge and lance don’t get to hang out enough.

he take sthe cow. lance. laaaaance

this episode is ridiculous i love it. so space dandy.

varkon i love you.

allura your hair is so cute.

pidge and lance are officially NERDS

episode eight: ok so in like the first ten seconds and the first shot of the whole team and i’m getting alarm bells. keith is far away from everyone. there’s a pillar directly between him and everyone else.

keith.

keith my boy what’s gonna happen.

hhh hunk has definitely gotten a downgrade this sea-LANCE YOU RUDE LITTLE FUCK. like no offense if you like lance but i kinda. don’t. like he’s not nearly as endearing as lars from SU is even if their characters are pretty similar and i love lars.

hopefully he gets some nice moments soon bc i haven’t warmed up to him anywhere near as much as i thought i would. his best moments have been him hanging out with pidge tbh.

keith that is Incriminating anger there

HAGGAR’S VOICE AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU - wait no this definitely HAS to be recycling or else she’s covertly controlling the balmora. unless they had like a vocaloid system in altean times and didn’t realize they were using haggar’s voice and by the time they did it was too awkward to change.

shiro don’t make hints like that it makes me think you’re gonna die and I’d Rather You Did Not.

“if you’re going to be a leader you’ve got to repress the shit out of your ptsd” shiro. plz.

who decided to make the red lion look like it was hacking up a hairball to drop them off. good choice

oh shit haggar.

interesting they DON’T want the paladins around.

shiro’s face ahhhhh

so. keith might not be a galran who forgot he was a galran. i imagine the blade of malmora would keep close tabs on who has a knife and who lost them and they’d know if one of their own was lost on earth relatively recently surely.

holy shit this animation upgrade a++++++++

i mean shit considering he’s a teenage boy who’s up against assassins who’ve been fighting and training for millenia keith still does a damn good job defending himself.

otoh considering they’re assassins who’ve been fighting and training for millennia they must be wearing some major kid gloves. or they genuinely do want him to succeed, but want him to earn it first.

oh shit haggar wants a word with traitor dude this won’t end well

YAS KEITH

NO KEITH

KEITH ;A;

so keith’s dad is human, at least. oh jesus his voice cracking at ‘of course i do’

so his mother is galran, making him half-galran, which he has to have known all along bc otherwise the suit wouldn’t project it right? i am distressed that this actually

increases

the chances of haggar being his mother. agghg. AGHGHGHHGHG I WAS... JOKING... BEFORE................

KEITH ;___________________;

thace is going to dead-ass lie to haggar i love this guy.

RED LION GIVES NO FUCKS WOULD DEVOUR PLANETS TO SAVE HER HUMAN THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE A BAD THING

Moral Choice Knife says to stay in drugs and don’t do school. i bet Moral Choice Knife would be friends with my shadow priest’s baeblade.

yknow if it had a consciousness.

ah fuck allura’s not going to like this when/if she finds out. could be a season 3 plot?

there’s like 13 episodes total in this season right? seems like we’re ramping up for the final arc so i’ll stop here ♥

edit: fuck me tumblr squished everything together at the end there.