#those are perfectly benign. same with lying - there's many contexts where lying is perfectly fine and socially acceptable or necessary

[bogkeep]

i think. that if My Trauma™ has taught me anything, is that a lot of the time, what makes something Malicious Manipulation is the context.

like, of course we want to be able to tell when someone is trying to decieve us, and there are plenty of phrases to raise red flags and linguistic tricks designed to rope us along, to be sure... but someone saying the truth in a kind way and someone lying with ill intent can say the exact same thing. the difference is that one does not match up with reality. and yeah, that's scary! that's the whole thing about trust!! every time i see an analysis of someone's behaviour on social media with a framing of that person being SUSPICIOUS and MANIPULATIVE, it honestly really fucks with my head because ANYTHING can be posited as Suspicious and Manipulative. blocked people? didn't reply to every message from strangers? didn't publicly adress a topic or a controversy? took a break from the internet? said literally anything at all??? sounds like normal and healthy social media behaviour to ME, but what do i know! anyone who has the misfortune of finding themself the target of a smear campaign will quickly find that there's Nothing you can say or do that doesn't look Suspicious. if even a genuine effort to rectify a mistake or explain what happened can be seen as MANIPULATING THE MASSES, what chance do you have if you react in a normal, human way to being bullied? or, on the flip side, if you hold on to bad faith and read it in everything, if even generic niceness creeps you out, if there is no way for anyone to prove their innocence or humanity to you - that doesn't seem like a pleasant way to live, either. nor is constantly worrying if anything you say will come off as Malicious or Manipulative.

like, yeah. there's shitty people out there. i don't have any good advice on avoiding them. i trust easy, i often forget people can Just Go On The Internet And Tell Lies - yes i am quite autistic thank you - and my main two defenses are "i don't like the thing you're saying, either because the contents are bad or because the contents don't make any sense" and "the things you're saying and the things you're doing don't match up". those only really work if i trust myself enough, and sometimes that's hard, too.

anyway those are another two cents nobody asked for but you're getting anyway

[nomadicism]

If you watch the Afterbuzz review (with LM and JDS as guests) it really seems that there won't be any kind of redemption for Lotor, which makes me a little sad, because it means that there's no thing as "more to the story" that Romelle told us.

Hi there! Thank you for the Ask!

My apologies in taking a little while to respond. I feel you on this, and I have A LOT to say about it. I drafted my answer several times as I am trying to exercise some brevity and tone down the salt. I failed. Your Ask touches on a serious issue that I’ve been slowly working on a separate post about, so expect a follow-up to this! 

First, some context to get where I’m coming from: 

They (in these interviews) are back-filling story gaps faster than J.K. Rowling can say “Dumbledore was gay.”

Seriously. 

There is so much back-filling going on (even before S6 and S5), that it appears as though many details got left on the cutting-room floor, which is to be expected with something this complex (Lotor and associated characters + arc/backstory/etc) being squished into 26 episodes where there are already many plot threads being followed that involve many different characters. And of course, some of what is said during these interviews, podcasts, tweets, etc has to be said carefully either due to spoilers or NDA, so there is some understandable misdirection that is likely happening.

However, all of this interview chatter from the show-runners (from S3 onward) about Lotor’s motivations and how hard and traumatizing Lotor’s existence was, the abuse he suffered, how he really loved Allura and was genuine, and how it was healing for her, and that his past actions were merely “skewed”, and that they [heroes] will see that Lotor was right in the end, etc; is unnecessary on their part, and comes across as “the authors doth protest too much”. 

If the story (e.g. writing) cannot adequately and clearly convey these concepts about Lotor without creator meta-input, then there is a problem with the writing or the narrative scope (e.g. over-reach). Hence, back-filling gaps in the story that may have been a part of the concept phase, but didn’t (or won’t) make it into the writing of the episodes and are not clear enough to be inferred from the writing. (I’ll get back to this further below)

(Either this, or they are lying, which is a degree of negativity and cynicism that I don’t care to entertain.)

So what does this mean?

It means that (to answer your Ask)—regardless of redemption (and does Lotor really need one?)—that any explanation will not be forthcoming, or will otherwise be minimal and won’t happen until near the end of the series. That is why they are back-filling the gaps ahead of time (again, assuming the positive/benign here). Additionally, the lack of clarity or details is affecting the perception of the character and author intent.

It seems odd that there wouldn’t be more explanation, but if there is, then it probably would not be from Romelle or from her PoV. Other than a flashback sequence in which Lotor may appear, it seems that it any explanation will more likely come from Acxa…(assuming that the generals survived being out in space without ships while the Castleship was exploding the reality tears shut). Given the Galra death count in the show, it is possible that the generals are dead or just not coming back. Lotor’s arc is over (as they’ve said), so it’s Honerva’s turn now, and that ends things (or greatly reduces scope) for secondary characters that were a part of his story (I would love to be wrong).

Since Lotor’s arc is over, does it really matter if there is no more explanation? Other than being very—and understandably—unsatisfying for many fans, I’d personally rather not revisit it as I find what they did in S6 to be thoroughly disgusting. As for redemption, I’m generally in the “villains don’t need redemption arcs” camp, but in terms of tropes/concepts as they apply to Lotor: Beautiful quasi-supernatural hybrid immortals that cross the moral event horizon (regardless of reason) are only redeemed through noble sacrifice/death (assuming they survive long enough to do so). That said, there is a case to be made that Lotor doesn’t need to be redeemed due to what I’m calling the “double standard setting” that exists in VLD: Hellscape with punishing choices for the antagonists vs easy mode with few consequences for the protagonists. (this will be the topic of my follow-up post)

Returning to back-filling:

As a designer (mostly UX/UI these days but my career has crossed many domains of design)—it is a huge problem if my audience comes out with two or more widely different interpretations of what is supposed to be the same coherent message (or user interface for the applications that I design). It is the foundation of design practice to clearly communicate a message, regardless of domain or application of design.

I cannot give interviews or answer questions in panels that explain what is “really going on”, or adding additional information that the design itself either does not explicitly convey—OR—does not convey well enough that most viewers/users are in agreement (or at least similar agreement) with what that message is or was.

In VLD, the back-filling of story gaps coincides with an essential problem with the characterization of Lotor and his arc as a whole: that his story and who he is is not clearly expressed and that has yielded at least three very different reads/interpretations that have very little overlap.

In application development terms: the widely differing interpretations of Lotor in VLD is not a feature, it is a bug—and this is not the fault of viewers/fans (for some this is a fun bug, and that’s fine). It is not on the fans to expend high amounts of energy and take on a cynical mindset/view (which can be bad for some people) to ferret out hidden meanings or unclear/inconsistent characterization in a Y7 show of this particular genre. Just as it is not the fault of my users if they do not understand the purpose of a component within the UI that I design, or if they experience high friction when attempting to complete a complex form. That’s on me.

I am not saying that every interpretation of a character must be perfectly aligned. Many stories benefit from contrasting interpretations (even widely differing ones, looking at you David 8). I am not convinced that VLD is one of those, and people will see what they see regardless of author intent, which is fine. My point is that the majority of the intent should be clear and should not require clarification outside of the story unless it is a story that was designed/intended to “have a manual,” or is otherwise of a genre where such things are expected.

I get that when it comes to writing, people can and should write whatever and however they want, and that’s great, but if one has to keep explaining their intent or characterization, then the message/writing wasn’t clear enough to begin with. I see that as an undesirable thing, some fans may not, and that’s fine. Also, the story isn’t over yet, so one does need to be patient. Still, I would prefer that they not say anything at all rather than continuing to talk up a message, or interpretation that is not clearly found or held, or worse, providing an explanation* outside of the story in such a way that the characters within the story never have to be faced with it.

Finally—since it happened on the heels of that Afterbuzz review—bless AJ for this tweet:

What a wonderful human, but AJ shouldn’t have to say this. 

The story should speak for itself, and right now, it isn’t.

*Outside of Story Explanation: Den of Geek has the explanation in the form of this fucked up business about Lotor’s upbringing as the cause of his downfall. [X] Cool message team, I certainly got that loud-and-clear without further explanation, as I (and others who can relate even more) have endured that tired-and-predictable message through countless pieces of fiction, including seeing this done in the 6 previous iterations of Voltron.

Way to perpetuate some damaging myths about abuse. There are people who endure terrible upbringings without a support system and manage to escape it without becoming mass murderers with god complexes.

Meanwhile, there are people who have every privilege in the world that are actively causing harm to society right now through their abuse of power. There are people who have had every advantage, including loving-and-supportive parents, who end up committing mass shootings in schools. Why don’t we start making them the monsters in the stories that we tell to children instead?