#voltron legendary defender kuron

[panons]

[pebblebrainz]

another shitty Vld painting post?? You’ve been fed fr

Based on ‘Fallen Angel’, 1847, by Alexandre Cabanel. (I love that painting so much 😭)

I am a proud clone Shiro enjoyer..also TUMBR BUTCHERS THE QUALITY. WHY.

[torveiglyart]

Bad quality teaser drawings for AralineDelia’s fic for my Avicorian Lance AU! Not much to say about it other than canon divergence, but like, in the way we all wished. Also! I! Hate! Drawing! The! Blue! Armor! In! Red! Light! Bless the animators that did for 6 seasons.

Bonus under the cut

Good quality Kuron jump scare!

[coolnonsenseworld]

Last two days to use the 20% discount code for prints 👀 And good time to grab the Klalendars linktr.ee/mezzy Currently playing connect the pairs with the same subjects

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

You all have no idea how obsessed i am with "Quintessence can turn humans into eldritch horrors" yall have no idea

[foxgloveciara]

thinking about voltron but like. how messed up is it that by the end of the series shiro was a clone.

like I'm going off this by memories but from what I remember shiro died. replaced by his clone (or kuron as we ogs called him) kuron activates. dies. but then not clone shiros soul goes into kurons body.

and like. that being said. shiros new body 100% has different scars as original did.

like maybe he had a scar on his leg from an incident with a stick as a kid, or a thin mark across his finger from cutting some food, yknow simple scars from memories of your childhood playing, then also sadder ones too, but he doesn't have them.

not to mention this new body has scars he doesn't know the origin from. the scar across his nose for example. we know how he originally got it. but how did this body get it? if we're going of this is an entirely new body he shouldn't have scars like this. there's marks all along his body surely from any experimentation the galra did to his body. we assume as viewers the glara removed kurons arm for the mechanised prosthetic (so does that mean og shiro had the same arm? that was the thing that activated kuron with the magic right? if shiro survived would he have become like kuron?)

then there's also a fear. was there more clones made. are they alive. what kind of people are they. do they think their team left them? we assume the clones must have some sort of need to go back to their teammates, kuron wouldn't have gotten to them if not.

also if we're assuming the amount of experimentation it too for the glara to remove the bodies original illness that would've killed him. how many died. what experiments did they go through before getting to kuron. did they try different human ages? is there a baby clone of shiro around?

just long sigh. I've not seen anyone question these things so I wonder.

[rubinaitoart]

Something that crossed my mind was how long Kuron’s hair was compared to the time he would’ve hypothetically been created, or hell, compared to the time Shiro went ‘poof.’ Like that is unnaturally long for human hair, even if it grows fast it wouldn’t have reached that length for a good few years. And on top of that he had like, maybe a couple weeks worth of unshaven scruff on his face so it’s just totally imbalanced. None of the other clones we saw had the hair length, stubble, or even the white streak so we can safely assume the Druids and Honerva made some edits themselves.

It really just gives me the mental image of the Druids and Honerva just kinda guessing as they’re prepping Kuron. They don’t know how human hair works. Is it like Altean hair? Other alien species? Until eventually they’re just like “fuck it” and they just haphazardly try to make him look like he’s all scruffy. It’s good enough.

And like NOBODY questions it because this is space and weird shit happens in space.

[emo-ostrich]

1: why doesn’t anyone talk about how heartbreaking this scene is

2: why doesn’t anyone talk about this episode?!?!

it’s actually very well written and serves as a set up for the much darker twist the show is taking

in this episode we learn:

-pidge would sacrifice a good amount of the universe to save her father. they’re the most logical and analytical on the team, yet all that goes out the window when her family gets involved. there’s an argument in the beginning of the episode that is very reminiscent of when pidge was going to leave voltron in season 1 and keith yells at them.

-honerva remembers that lotor is her son. this is a HUGE set up for season 8. she begins the phase 4 of the kuron project which leads to keith returning and becoming the black paladin. but she does all of this because she knows zarkon will kill lotor. she’s ok with lotor killing zarkon bc zarkon is merely a husk of the man he used to be. that realization definitely leads her down the path of “how can i restore my family” (cut to end of season 8).

-on the topic of project kuron, we see the effects of it with shiro lashing out and not being… very shiro like… but he gives lotor HIS BAYARD in the hostage exchange without telling the rest of the team. honerva calls for the beginning of phase 4, and we can see that phase 3 was the shiro that been with the team since he returned in season 3. he’s been living this jekyll and hyde type life with half kuron controlled by honerva and half real shiro.

-we see lance step up and give orders to the team. lance is the red paladin at this point in the series making him the right hand of voltron and this is one of the first times we see him step into that leadership position. watching him grow into that leadership position and learn to feel valued makes the end of season 8 hurt even worse. plus when shiro realizes they need backup he says “lance we could use a little help.” he already acknowledges lance as his right hand man even if lance doesn’t realize it yet. that’s the shiro part talking. lance gives an order and the team says “copy that” which is how lance normally responds to orders. it’s a very clear role reversal that i think is lovely in lance’s character arc (if only dreamworks actually finished his arc smh)

-lotor killing zarkon is proof he really did want peace. he wants nothing to do with his father, doesn’t want zarkon to be his father, and has no hesitation in killing him. lotor and voltron are fighting for the same thing, but simply have different methods. when they fight lotor, he seems hesitant to fire until allura says he’s like zarkon. that’s what throws him over the edge.

lotor becoming emperor of the galra after zarkon’s death shows that having a galra ally on the throne could be the key to peace (hello keith after season 8) so think about the set back in the war efforts when voltron kills the emperor, a former ally, and then disappears. maybe this is why the galra attacked earth? in the beginning on the series, they’re looking at a star map showing that the galra’s progress in conquering worlds is getting closer to reaching earth but hasn’t quite gotten there yet. so either and conquering has sped up and an insane rate, or earth was specifically targeted by the galra while voltron was gone.

-when zarkon is about to kill lotor, the team saves him. the first lion we see fire is allura implying that j was allura that saved lotor a life. that’s kinda big in her development or maybe she was just firing at zarkon who knows

ok sorry that’s all thanks for coming to my ted talk :)

(this is all about season 5 episode 2: blood duel)

[mothmanavenue]

while the black paladins is a brilliant episode of voltron and one of the better ones, frankly i felt cheated that the confrontation came with no resolution between shiro and lance, when it was lance who through the seasons was on the bad end of Kuron’s abuse and rapidly deteriorating temper.

it would’ve been, in my opinion, a more fulfilling conclusion for lance to have been the one to have the final showdown with kuron and bring shiro back home AND it would’ve been the payoff of lance slowly developing as a character in season 4 where it seemed like he was being groomed for the role of black paladin (another voltron storyline with an unsatisfactory ending how did they keep fucking up good premises-)

so here i offer you The Black Paladins, the alternate ending (wherein lotor isn’t the bad guy because seriously what kind of lessons is the abused becomes the abuser) where keith gets back too late to help shiro but in time to step up and protect his friends and team after missing them for years, while lance’s story comes full circle with him, again, rescuing shiro, not as a hero, but as a friend :)

[sylveon-and-velveon]

Hear me out:

Shance

But Lance likes crossdressing as a woman {Ya'll can make up his "female" name lol}. So much so that everyone thinks he's a woman the entire time because they met him when he was crossdressing nearly 90% of the time.

At some point Shiro {or if ya wanna be really fucking angsty, Kuro/Kuron} finds out Lance is actually just a dude that likes crossdressing, and promises to keep it a secret.

Platonic or romantic? Your choice!

Would Lance wear wigs when crossdressing? Yes!

Would Lance wear makeup when crossdressing?

YES!!!

Basically like a "Reverse Pidge" situation. But it's only happened because he's a crossdresser XD

[the-vampire-lance]

OMG! WAITAMINUTE! THATS THE SHIRO CLONE!

LOOK! LOOK! LOOK! NO UNDERCUT! SEE!

THE SHIRO DOING THE VLOG IS THE CLONE!!!

[most-screwed-by-writers-tourney]

Beverly: Got killed off way too soon despite being at the time, one of the few prominent Asian characters in a tv show.

Kuron: He didn't know he was a clone!! He was doing his best!! He didn't ask to be created and controlled!! And then after he pretty much died/was absorbed they retconned it like "oh yeah btw he was evil the whole time"

[atla-what-is-this-site]

Kuron: it was this day three years ago that i lost the real shiro

Shiro, muffled, from the black lion: quit telling everyone i'm dead!!

[nightmarecasterart]

This Cover wasn't used for a chapter of the Purple Glow in later chapters so I just made it into a foreshadowing drawing.

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

Thought about Kuron for far too long and started wailing screaming and throwing up blood

[violethowler]

Me, My Self, and I: An Analysis of the Operation Kuron Storyline

Back when seasons 3, 4, and 5 released on Netflix, Voltron fans were split into two camps regarding what was going on with Shiro: One camp insisted that we were still seeing the same Shiro as the one we saw in the first two seasons, while the other argued that the current Shiro was a clone programmed with the memories of the original.

On the surface, the show’s 6th season appeared to side with the clone theory fans, and I saw multiple people who had argued for it being the same Shiro lamenting because they felt that all the development Shiro had gotten after the end of Season 2 had been wasted now that we knew the Shiro we’d been following since Season 3 wasn’t the real one.

Even then, however, fans who supported the clone theory were upset because they felt that the resolution of the original Shiro’s consciousness being transferred into the clone body was effectively killing off a separate, unique character who deserved to have his own life independent of the original Shiro.

Yet while I could understand where both sides’ complaints were coming from, I never had that same feeling of outrage.

At the time, I assumed it was just because I noticed that it served as a bit of meta commentary on how the original 80s cartoon took two identical looking characters in GoLion and melded them into a single character.

But after talking to @leakinghate​ and @dragonofyang​ a while back, I realized that there was a deeper meaning and symbolism to the whole Operation Kuron storyline that, in hindsight, I had managed to pick up on subconsciously thanks to being exposed to similar ideas in other stories.

And once I became aware of those similarities, I couldn’t help but look back at Voltron and realize that many of the assumptions the fandom has about the details of Clone!Shiro’s story are not actually supported by the show’s lore.

For example, despite the paladins referring to him as such in Seasons 6 and 7, the idea that the Shiro we see in Seasons 3-6 was a clone in the usual sense that we expect from science fiction - that is, being a unique individual made from an existing character’s DNA with their own separate consciousness who develops their own identity and personality independent of the person they were created from - is not actually supported by the show’s lore.

For starters, the only people who use the word clone to refer to the other Shiro are the human characters, who do not have any intel on how “Kuron” was created. Meanwhile, none of the characters who are involved in Operation Kuron use the word clone to refer to him at any point in the series. In fact, even Haggar herself treats “Kuron” and Shiro like they’re the same person when she’s telling him to lead Keith away in S6E05. When you would think that if there was no point in pretending anymore she would at least acknowledge that he’s not the original.

Furthermore, based on what we are shown of the technological and magical capabilities of the Galra empire, it is not possible for Haggar or the Galra to just download Original!Shiro’s memories into Clone!Shiro’s head. Pidge and Hunk speculate in S2E03 about the possibility that the Empire implanted fake memories of escaping in Shiro’s head via his prosthetic arm are part of an elaborate trap. But not only are they proven wrong, but the series never even confirms that such a thing is within the mystical or technological capabilities of the empire.

The Galra military is never shown doing anything tech based with memory manipulation or the kind of brainwashing that would be required to make “Kuron” think that he’s the real Shiro.

Meanwhile on the mystical front, the only person in the empire who is shown doing anything that involves messing around with other people’s minds is Haggar. And the only abilities that we have seen her demonstrate in that regard are:

Looking into someone’s mind and viewing their memories (seen with Zarkon in S3E07).

Using a person as a conduit for Haggar to spy on the person’s allies (seen with Narti in S4E03 and Shiro in Seasons 5-6).

Removing a person’s spirit/consciousness from their body and storing it inside herself (seen in Season 8 with the spirits of the original Paladins).

Forcing someone to comply with her orders and bend to her will (seen with Shiro in S6E04-5, Lotor in S8E06).

Flipping a psychic kill switch and remotely killing someone from a distance (seen with Luka in S8E01).

Projecting someone’s consciousness outside of their body (Seen with Zarkon in S2E03, S2E07, and S2E12).

Transferring a person’s consciousness from one body to another (Seen with Myzax in S1E02 and Prorok in S2E03).

Nowhere does she demonstrate the ability to create an exact copy of a person’s memories and personality that can then be implanted into another person’s mind so thoroughly that they think they are the first person.

Based on what we’ve been shown of Haggar’s capabilities, the only way it’s even possible for the clone to have Shiro’s memories and personality is for Haggar to transferring Shiro’s spirit into a new body.

Which is pretty much the same thing that we’ve already sen her doing when she creates her Robeasts in Seasons 1-2.

She transfers the test subject’s quintessence from their original body into their larger, robotic one. And her words to Myzax in S1E02 Some Assembly Required indicate that the Robeasts are all meant to remain aware of themselves in their larger form and have all of their memories intact.

Because why would Haggar bother asking if Myzax wanted revenge against Shiro if he wasn’t even going to remember anything after she turned him into a Robeast?

This basically implies that all of the extra Shiro bodies that we saw at the cloning facility in S6E05 The Black Paladins were basically the organic version of empty Robeast shells - lifeless and incapable of independent movement until Haggar does her ritual to transfer the pilot/model’s quintessence into the new body.

And she has previously demonstrated that physical distance from her target is not an obstacle to being able to transfer a person’s soul from Point A to Point B. Because Season 8 shows that Zarkon was one of the spirits trapped inside her mindscape, even though she wasn’t anywhere near the planet he died on in S5E02.

In fact, “Kuron” being Shiro’s soul moved to a new body would also explain how Haggar and the Operation Kuron staff knew to release “Kuron” when they did. How could Haggar know Shiro was missing from Team Voltron unless she already had the ability to locate, and therefore manipulate his consciousness.

But there’s still one question about the logistics and timeline of “Kuron’s” creation.

Because in S6E06, Shiro indicates that his consciousness has been inside the Black Lion since the end of Season 2.

So how exactly could Haggar have yanked his spirit into a new body if he was inside the Black Lion from the end of season 2?

Well perhaps it’s something akin to how Steven’s gem turned into a copy of him when White Diamond removed it in the finale of Steven Universe Season 5.

That even if she couldn’t get his entire soul before he got absorbed by the Black Lion in S2E13, she only needed a fraction of Shiro’s consciousness in order to animate the new body.

In theory, this could hypothetically allow her to split Shiro’s mind into multiple bodies at once, explaining why S6E05 showed that she had made so many extra bodies.

It would also mean that the merging of the two Shiro’s in Voltron was the equivalent of Steven and Pink Steven fusing back together: Two halves of a single individual being made whole again, rather than one character being sacrificed for another.

But if the lore indicates that this is one Shiro with two bodies rather than two separate characters, why does Shiro treat his clone self like a separate person?

In one of my older essays, I pointed out how the visuals of Season 6 frame Haggar reclaiming her identity as Honerva in S6E01 as a parallel to Shiro and “Kuron” being merged in S6E07

Once Honerva goes through her “merging of two selves”, she tries to distance herself from her actions as Haggar, acting like the things she did to Lotor and others were done by someone else.

And her reason for doing that is obvious: she doesn’t want to face the fact that she hurt and abused her own son.

So following the parallels between, Shiro treating his actions in Seasons 3-6 like they were committed by a separate person logically reflects a similar level of denial. 

Like Honerva, he doesn’t want to face the fact that he’s capable of doing the things he did as “Kuron”.

Because Shiro in Seasons 3-6 is not as patient or compassionate with his team. He’s less considerate of others, and focused on his own priorities above everyone else’s.

And Season 6, he physically attacks and in at least one case injures the people he cares about.

Thanks to WEP’s meddling with Seasons 7-8, the payoff where Shiro recognizes and makes peace with that part of himself got left on the cutting room floor.

But the parallels with Haggar helps to at least make it clear what the writers were going for and what the point of this whole storyline was.

I’ve seen multiple people over the years note that Honerva’s transformation into Haggar, particularly the state we saw her in immediately post-Rift and shortly after Lotor’s birth in S5E02 and S8E02, can be read as a metaphor for Post-Partum Depression or something similar.

If you use their status as parallels to apply a similar logic toward the existence of “Kuron,” then the entire clone subplot can be seen as a fantasy representation of how Shiro is affected by his PTSD.

He goes through a traumatic experience and comes out mostly the same as he was before, but slightly off enough that he doesn’t feel right.

He initially hides his struggles and tries to pretend that everything is fine, downplaying what he’s going through. But eventually the strain starts to become too much and he tries to reach out for help, as we saw him attempt with Lance in Season 5.

But as we saw, he was brushed aside and his concerns were not taken seriously.

Without support, Shiro eventually reaches his breaking point, culminating in a fight with Keith in The Black Paladins, where - in contrast with his silent and stoic demeanor when carrying out Haggar’s orders - he repeatedly taunts and antagonizes Keith as if he's trying to goad Keith into killing him.

But Keith refuses to leave Shiro or let him die, and makes it clear in S7E01 A Little Adventure that he will never give up on him.

By refusing to let go in S6E05, Keith demonstrates that he will always support Shiro unconditionally, no matter what. This allows Shiro to finally begin to heal and come back to himself.

He’ll never be the same as he was before, but all the pieces of himself are finally whole again.

As I’ve outlined in older essays, the main theme of Shiro’s character arc is learning to accept that you don’t have to deal with your problems alone, and that needing support from others does not make you weak.

So when viewed in that context, the entire Operation Kuron subplot serves as a demonstration of what happens when Shiro doesn’t get that help and keeps on trying to deal with his problems alone.

TL;DR: While I understand how the idea became so widely accepted, the concept of “Kuron” as a separate character from Shiro is a fan headcanon that isn’t supported by the show’s lore. Instead, the themes and patterns of the narrative indicate that the “clone” is literally Shiro’s soul in a duplicate body, and the whole Operation Kuron subplot is intended to represent the consequences of his reluctance to let others help him manage his PTSD.