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mustlovelance · 6 years ago

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Allurance will always be adorable to me and and I really hope if the next reboot series in the frnachise takes anything from VLD, it will be Allurance. (if they include romance. I'd be perfectly happy with a completely platonic relationship oriented team). They've always felt so compatible to me.

(this is very long-winded and negative and probably not what you were looking for but it’s my birthday so i'm giving myself a pass lol.)

tbh, i think this is the first and last time we’ll see canon a/l. people already associate the ship with vld’s failures, even though that had nothing to do with it, and even though it was the most well-developed romance that the franchise has ever had. some people speculate that k/l will be canon in the next one because it was so popular, but given the LGBT “rep” that we got from shiro, i doubt it.

what’s far more likely to happen is that they’ll revert back to the status quo of canon k/a. that ship is safe and simple to execute and “classic”, so why would they risk doing anything else? the problem is, all the reasons why it’s the easiest option are also why it would be frustrating.

as an overview of past canon k/a depictions:

80′s voltron/DOTU: it was only included in the US-only commissioned season and had no build-up. i’ve spoken to quite a few older fans who saw the second airing of the series (in which the US-only episodes weren’t included) and had assumed that a/l was canon because, y’know, allura kissed lance five times whereas keith literally said no thanks when she offered to kiss him.

end result: k/a happened out of nowhere but at least they got a few cute scenes together towards the end.

voltron: third dimension (V3D): the series was canceled well before they went through with their romance. it had potential though and i thought it was genuinely cute. there was an episode in which AU!keith and AU!allura were dating, to which v3d!allura reacted in a way that implied that she had a crush on v3d!keith.

end-result: k/a was ambiguously assumed to happen eventually.

devil’s due publishing comics (DDP): it was actually horrific. if you swapped the genders, people would have rightfully called it out as a genuinely problematic romance. but hey, don’t believe me–believe the writers themselves, who wrote keith and allura apologizing to each other for being assholes and agreeing to be friends instead during the epilogue.

end-result: k/a had an amicable break-up following a really fucked up “romance” that reminded me of “blurred lines” but was clearly supposed to be some “sexy warrior princess can’t resist you and won’t take no for an answer” fanboy fantasy.

voltron force (VF): it came out of absolutely nowhere, with even less build-up than DOTU k/a had. there was one (1) scene that hinted at it, in which the rest of the team was visibly bewildered by what just happened. a few episodes later, keith and allura went through a ship together, keith discovered that he was part-arusian, and allura decided he should be king of arus. from what we saw in the remaining episodes, keith hadn’t adjusted well to the new role.

end-result: k/a was awkwardly canon and they didn’t seem to know how to interact around each other without lance being around because they were both closer to lance than they were to each other.

when i first heard about k/a, it was spoken about as if it was akin to clark kent/lois lane, a whirlwind romance on the battlefield. i had shipped k/l at the time, but i was excited to see what k/a had to offer in past series and what i could look forward to. what i actually saw in DOTU was so different that i kept questioning whether they would actually get together at the end. their romance has never been well-developed in any installment of the series, yet people insist that it’s some amazing classic. (one of the biggest k/a fansites back in the 90′s needed to resort to making edits of the two of them interacting, because there was barely any material to work with! i think that speaks for itself.)

in vld, a/l had so much development that i could easily write over 7k words about their relationship in my ship manifesto, and over 33k words overall about them, before season 8. if i were to only analyze direct interactions/romantic mentions in any individual k/a canon-verse, i’d struggle to hit 2k words.

in fact, i’m guessing k/a has had less romantic screentime in all the other series combined than a/l had in vld alone–and that’s not even including their development in DOTU (which was convincing enough that many kids assumed they were dating) or VF (which was played up by the writers specifically to create a “love triangle” in which lance actually interacted more with allura and keith than they did with each other).

i’m not saying k/a is a bad ship that lacks any potential. what i’m saying is that no one can reasonably argue that it’s some classic sweeping well-developed romance that needs to be recreated in every installment. i’d love to see it done properly, but that’s never happened before, which means that it shouldn’t be the only option for future romance arcs in the franchise. a/l had stronger development and much more build-up, whether it was to someone’s liking or not.

of course, vld!a/l wasn’t a perfectly-written romance by any means. in particular, i would have included more explicit development in s2, and reworked the lot/ura plotline. however, in comparison to most romances on similar action-focused series, they got a tremendous amount of focus and development, and i loved it. unfortunately, it seems that most people absolutely hated it.

i have seen so many posts from s/a and k/a and l/a and k/l shippers that specifically blame canon a/l for allura’s death and vld’s failure. given the existence of curtis and the epilogue, we know that the execs are trying to “listen” to the fandom now, and the fandom has made their opinion clear–they hate canon a/l.

allura and lance’s dynamic was so refreshing and fun and exciting (particularly with the cool gender dynamic subversions). this was probably the one and only chance to stray from canon k/a, and although it did happen, it had such a horrible ending that i can’t even fully enjoy it.

TLDR: a/l had a ton of development and a dynamic that personally appealed to me but was hated by most of the fandom. k/l is basically impossible despite its popularity, given what happened with shiro. k/a has never had much development in any of the past installments of the franchise, but people still refer to it as a classic whirlwind romance, and it’s an incredibly safe option for future showrunners to choose. of the three options, i’m betting on yet another round of unsatisfying, under-developed canon k/a in the next installment. alternatively, no romance at all, which would be totally fine by me! (i’m aro, so i’m all about those platonic bonds and found family arcs!)

i would absolutely love to be wrong about canon a/l’s future prospects, i really would. i think that lance and allura are deeply compatible and adorable. DOTU a/l established a great base dynamic. it was about lance believing in allura’s capabilities when no one else would, treating her like an equal, having a silly crush on her that could easily develop into something more, and being the one to save her when the situation called for it. it was about allura believing in herself because of lance, seeking him out for training specifically because he saw her as an equal, kissing him 5 times for increasingly ridiculous reasons as the series went on, and just enjoying being around him.

vld changed quite a few things with their dynamic (mostly that lance needed to develop more before he sorted things out), but the resemblances are strong. their relationship is about mutual support and love and respect and believing in each other and cuteness and throwing gender stereotypes out the window in favor of a sincere connection between two people. it’s a romance that has amazing potential. i just wish it had a fair chance.

#Anonymous #negativity //#discourse //

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