#tbh I don't think it's really Lotor who missed this

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

The Search for the “Bluest Quintessence” and S6 - The Most Unnecessary Conspiracy In VLD?

Can somebody riddle me this? I’m rewatching Voltron: Legendary Defender, and I just…hm. Am confusion.

I’ve been thinking about the types of quintessence throughout the show, and how the show’s plots always revolve around energy harvesting. According to season 1, totally raw quintessence mined from worlds is yellow, and Haggar’s druids are the ones who filter it into its purple state: 

(Screenshots from Season 1, Episode 10: Collection and Extraction)

I feel safe in assuming that the filtering of raw, mined quintessence into its purple form is what turns it into a usable source of energy. But it also seems that this purple quintessence was still never “as good” as the enriched, concentrated blue quintessence that Alfor and Honerva originally discovered with the comet. Because if the purple version were so perfect, then no one would be desperately trying to get a better grade of quintessence, right?

Which sets the stage for Lotor’s whole arc:

(Screenshot from season 3, episode 7: The Legend Begins)

So here’s where I get confused: How does the need for specifically concentrated quintessence in any way result in the plot twist we got in s6 with the Altean colony? 

Please help me out here. So s6 was about Lotor having this totally secret and horrifying operation to harvest concentrated quintessence from “a few” Alteans, in order to specifically break into the rift. In season 4, Lotor himself even confirms Pidge’s s3 suspicions regarding the purpose of his agenda, that it’s all about getting to the rift using this special quintessence:

(Screenshots from season 4, episode 5: Begin the Blitz)

Lotor also admits to the goals he wants to achieve by piercing the barrier:

(Screenshots from season 5, episode 5: Bloodlines)

And throughout these endeavors, the purest, most concentrated quintessence always and specifically appears as blue:

(Screenshot from season 6, episode 2: Razor’s Edge)

In season 6, we see the show building up to this wild connection between Lotor and where he’s getting this secret, concentrated quintessence. Krolia and Keith confirm they’ve been trying to track it down in different ways:

(Screenshots from season 6, episode 2: Razor’s Edge)

And in this episode, Krolia builds this blue, enriched quintessence as being very scarce and from a totally unknown source:

But in rewatching earlier seasons, I get really confused as to why literally anyone was

so amazed

by this blue quintessence as a mystery energy source. Because...it seems to me like the show itself...didn’t even need an all-new secret source via the Alteans? It already had multiple potential sources? Like, everywhere?

So I guess, let’s talk Komar because it heavily affects the potential plot of the show.

Season 4 details Keith and Kolivan’s initial discovery of enriched quintessence. And the enriched quintessence they found wasn’t scarce or from a mysterious ship like Krolia’s experience in season 6. Instead, the Blades found massive vats of it in a major, well-known, and old but active Galra stronghold—with several Galran soldiers still guarding it and even moving the supply around:

(Screenshots from season 4, episode 1: Code of Honor)

Canon tries to excuse Komar tech from being the answer to the existence of this enriched quintessence, given that Voltron destroyed Haggar’s Komar Experiment in season 2. And it has to explain this away, because Komar tech is very, very good at harvesting vast amounts of that precious blue stuff, and we just can’t have a simple answer, can we:

(Screenshots from season 1, episode 6 – Take Flight)

But whether Komar had been destroyed or not, its very existence...never actually goes away in the larger show’s story. For example, Coran describes the Komar in a way that hauntingly reflects exactly what Lotor’s tech in the Altean colony does:

(Screenshots from season 2, episode 13: Blackout)

(Screenshot from season 6, episode 4: The Colony)

Idk if this is a “chicken or the egg” type of situation, but the technology for the Komar and the technology for harvesting Alteans seem to have the same result of procuring concentrated quintessence. Not just the yellow raw stuff or the somewhat better purple. But the enriched, blue quintessence that Lotor coveted so desperately for breaking into the rift.

So, conspiracies aside that Haggar stole Komar tech from Lotor or vice versa, I find it pretty wild that Lotor’s automatic go-to for harvesting energy was the Alteans. Because with the technology he had, he literally could have linked it up to....just about any other form of life on the universe. 

What the Komar, totally destroyed or not, ultimately suggests is that the pure, concentrated quintessence is not actually unique to special Alteans--but that the trick is simply being able to more purely harvest any given life force.

In which case, it makes turning survivors of omnicide of one’s own heritage into cattle and breeding them for more “special” victims seem so...utterly pointless on so many levels. Lotor could have just pointed said tech at plants and fish, and received a similar result. Haggar and Zarkon confirmed within season 1 that it could canonically be done. The show even depicts them taking pure, concentrated quintessence from specifically animals and a large body of water.

I suppose prior to this rewatch of earlier seasons, I did think that, in response to this, VLD was arguing for Alteans as the only beings in the universe who had the “bluest” quintessence. Which would maybe better explain Lotor’s exploitation of them despite the squicky master race/species vibes that such a concept gives off. But this concept also can’t explain the s6 plot twist to me anymore after my rewatch.

In looking back at previous seasons, Alteans originally were dependent on Balmeras for quintessence-based energy:

(Screenshots from season 1, episode 8: Rebirth)

Notice how Coran talks of the Balmera giving of the crystals as a gift, but yet Alteans repaid their “sacrifice” (same language Lotor used for the Alteans) by providing a token of their own pure life force. This episode reveals that Balmera ultimately function as concentrated quintessence generators and storages.

But even then, Alteans were also dependent on the people of the Balmera to complete this transfer of pure, concentrated quintessence, as they could manipulate the Balmera’s energy for symbiotic purposes:

In which case, if Balmeras were the original™ self-replenishing stores of pure, concentrated quintessence, and also so readily found across the universe with entire groups of people capable of transferring its energy, why even need to harvest Alteans? And since Balmeras can be convinced to willingly give of themselves for a good cause, would it not have made sense for Lotor to work alongside these gentle giants and their people, perhaps finding a way to extract its quintessence in a form other than a crystal? Perhaps even using his smaller-scale version of harvesting tech? Because clearly, he had an issue with just wiping out an entire planet or culture:

(Screenshots from season 5, episode 1: The Prisoner)

And Lotor is shown as canonically very interested in wanting to work alongside other cultures:

(Screenshots from season 5, episode 6: The While Lion)

I think it very likely that Balmera would have worked out some way for him to extract concentrated quintessence in the form he needed—and even better, this would have presented the opportunity to re-initiate the culture and repayment ceremonies of old sacred Alteans.

Because...why wouldn’t he have known about this Altean practice?

(Screenshot from season 5, episode 6: White Lion)

(Screenshot from season 6, episode 4: The Colony)

So despite Balmera being prevalent concentrated quintessence stores throughout the universe, and despite their people still knowing how to enact an Altean repayment ceremony, and despite Lotor having “deep knowledge,” he somehow missed this opportunity??

Lotor would have happily nerded out over being like his Altean ancestors and sustainably and respectfully extracting pure, concentrated energy while also achieving his end goals. And if he’d connected to a Balmera even once, just to try it, he would have discovered that he was a “sacred Altean” as well. Because canon confirms it:

(Screenshots from season 5, episode 6: White Lion)

So Lotor is, canonically, a magical “sacred Altean” with deep cultural knowledge that not even Allura or Coran were aware of. He had generally pretty immediate access to or the ability to find Balmeras across the universe, which are also canonically storages of pure, concentrated life force. And Balmera have canonically deep and respectful relationships with the Alteans who harvest their energy for their own purposes.

Through Balmera and perhaps a simple redesign of his own harvesting tech he was working on, Lotor had an easy way to secretly siphon blue concentrated quintessence in the form he needed, from a willing, self-sustainable source—and afterward, to also give back in thanks in the ways of his mother’s people, without having to actually “sacrifice” anyone.

And yet...malicious Altean harvesting was the only explainable option and the answer this show went with...??

I’m really tempted to just conclude that blue, concentrated quintessence is not as scarce in other life forms as the latter half of the show makes it out to be, that more forms of life can actually interface with it and manipulate it beyond Alteans, and that Lotor had very simple ways to hide and run a sustainable and culturally meaningful quintessence experiment. 

So to me, it seems that the search for the “bluest quintessence” represents just another example of VLD inconsistently manipulating its own inconsistent worldbuilding to arrive at outrageous, universe-contradicting and pointlessly evil plot twists like the s6 colony plot.

But I’m curious what you all think and if I’m just...missing something? 

(Also apologies if someone else has already brought this up somewhere and I’m just lagging behind, haha.)

[thatgirlonstage]

I know you like, don't wanna write a sequel lmao but hear me out, Lotor revives Lance with some magic/fancy space tech the castle doesn't have. And so he's like, healing for like a month and we see the team grieving and then coming to terms with it. And then Lotor comes in and Lance is in the video and they all think it's a trick, and honestly add al the langsty abusive Lotor headcanons you want from here Tbh and the team has to rescue Lance. Happy ending. Cuddles. Lance feels appreciated.

[In response to the multiple requests that I write a sequel to this fic]

Honestly I don’t think I want to imagine the kind of psychological damage it would deal to Lance to realize that after all that he couldn’t even die properly. Lotor would barely even have to do anything to add to the langst. He’d be torn between being afraid that team won’t come rescue him because they think he isn’t worth it, and being afraid they WILL come rescue him because he KNOWS he isn’t worth the risk (he’s wrong, of course, but he whole-heartedly believes it)

It does bring up an interesting point about the dynamic between Lotor and Lance, though. I think that it would actually be impossible for Lotor to break or manipulate Lance given where he is at the end of DbS, because he’s already completely broken. I mean, maybe if Lotor had him for YEARS and basically rebuilt him from the ground up he could turn him, but otherwise no. He wouldn’t want revenge on the team because he thinks he deserves everything that happened to him, he wouldn’t want to go back to the team because he genuinely believes that not only does he not add anything but that his presence ACTIVELY HARMFUL by preventing Allura from becoming the Blue Paladin, and he still wouldn’t help the Galra because he still knows they’re evil. In the show, he has insecurities that are ripe for exploitation but enough confidence remaining to him that, given the right push, he could conceivably be convinced to blame everything on his teammates. He could be convinced that they’re the ones who don’t take him seriously and yell at him and don’t respect his ability as a pilot and a marksman, that his insecurities are their fault. By the end of DbS, Lance is so thoroughly convinced of his own failure that it doesn’t even occur to him to blame anyone else for it.

As a stand-alone fic, though, I love this idea - Lance gets injured and almost dies in a fight, maybe there’s a really heart-wrenching scene where the Paladins have to leave his (they think) dead body behind because the Galra are coming and they’ll die if they try to retrieve it, but then he gets picked up and revived by Lotor, and from there it goes as you said :D Maybe with bonus background pining Keith who realizes how much he misses the Blue Paladin’s jokes and upbeat optimism.

[franeridart]

Hello! I don't know if you usually do things like this, but a friend and I have created a BNHA blog! It's mostly to post about KiriBaku and our other ships for them like the holy OT3. Would you mind giving us a shout? It's called gettoknowkiribaku (It's kind of like an ask blog/hc blog but our inbox is empty ;-;)

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH sure thing man, I don’t mind at all! The more kiribaku blogs there are around the happier I am after all haha so!!!!!! you guys should go check out @gettoknowkiribaku​ if you’re into the ship!!!!!!! i sure as heck did

Anon said:seeing your art of amajiki, and the holy ot3 made me finally catch up on the bnha manga, and i was on chapter like, 10. so i read up to the current chapter within 3 days and i just love the ot3 even more than i did before now and amajiki needs blankets and cuddles and to be allowed to stay home

OHO!!!! I’m glad I could make you feel like giving the manga another chance, anon!!!!!! *O*

Anon said: I just wanted to tell you how much happiness your little bokuroteru comic brings me

GAH!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said: I hope you're happy, I got sucked into my hero academia because of you. Plus I ship the ot3 you've got ;; w ;; that plus the ot3 for haikyuu

TBH YEH!!!! I’m super happy about you shipping my ot3s omfg hahahaha

Anon said: Lotor hitting on Lance is becoming a thing. You know what is even better than that though? Keith being jealous. I can't. It's perfect.

Still haven’t watched season 2!!!! ...then again from what I’m reading around Lotor doesn’t even appear in season two...? Where did the Lancelot ship even come from I wonder

Anon said: As someone who got out of a pretty bad relationship relatively recently your art really gives me hope for love. I feel so much love when I go through your work. So many warm fuzzies. Thank you, you're an amazing artist and so creative!

Oh my god, thank you! And I’m happy I can help you feel a bit better!!!! Love is such a beautiful thing to me, I’m glad to know I can make it look nice through my comics~ I hope you’ll find someone to love and that will love you like you deserve, anon!!

Anon said: (Diff anon) Ok. But imagine Daishou as a low key trickster. He'd be sarcastic. He'd be sly about his pranks. He'd help Teru pull of more intricate jokes. At least that's how I'm imagining them.

No, you see, I can totally see that happen, which is why a part of me thinks about TeruShou and goes yes, but the other part of me thinks about Daishou canonically not caring if he turns the sports he plays in more of a mind-game kind of thing, something even he from an objective point of view knows to be an ugly way of going about volley, about Daishou being fine with it as long as he can win, I think about that, about how to him winning is more important than enjoying and then I put it next to Teru, Teru that lost the last point in the game against Karasuno because he decided that having fun was more important than fighting to win till the end, and I just ??????? this ship makes no sense

But on the side you’re talking about it does make sense and that’s why I can’t decide if I like it or not hah #rip

Anon said: You really should watch vld s2. Yes, there's less Lance, but that's because the amazing storyline just didn't really call for it. I'm sure he'll get more development in season three and I wouldn't want you to miss out on the pile of emotions that is season 2 just because of one character.

Oh anon, don’t worry, I never said I won’t watch it, just that I don’t know when it’ll happen 👍👍👍👍