#was reading the interviews from the voltron show and the way i knew all of those scenes by heart. god i was fucking insane i should rewatch

[hansooyung]

getting back into klance and vld was NOT on my october bingo forget about my bingo for 2024 but by god am i not complaining

[ladyloveandjustice]

As Stevenson points out: "We weren’t subtle about what we wanted to do in the show... It's everywhere," but that didn't stop higher-ups from pushing back on these more visible queer moments in increasingly "frustrating" ways:

"I think early on in season one, we might've gone a little too hard with 'Princess Prom' in a lot of ways for the comforts of some of the people who were giving notes on the show," she said.

"And so it was something that was like… it is frustrating to have a vision and believe in it, and then be pulled back. You have to be careful. You can't do this. You can’t do that.

"And so it was something where over the course of the show… For me, it felt like a little bit of a chess game, just trying to figure out how I could do it. Because I knew what I wanted for that final season. I knew what I wanted for the finale.

"It was like: how are we going to get there when people are scared, and are like, 'Is this too risky a place to be in? People will say to your face, 'We can't show that. That's not something kids should be seeing'. You have to take all that in stride, and just be like, 'OK. Duly noted. I will ask again in a week, because it might have changed'."

reading a bunch of interviews now and Noelle is just being honest about how difficult it was to get the higher ups to let her do Catradora and I can’t help but wonder if execs ‘changing their minds’  and letting her do what she wanted has to do with the backlash for the Voltron fiasco

[everlastingfable]

a jumbled mess of my thoughts about voltron

This’ll probably be the messiest post you’ll ever read. I’m done trying to finish this and edit it into something coherent, so I’m just combining the 3 drafts I have written out into one massive post. I doubt anyone will read this whole thing, but each draft is a sort of rewrite of the last, so there’s a lot of overlap. But there’s also a lot of new thoughts too as I kept thinking about this. There’s also a lot of unfinished thoughts.

There’s mostly negativity in this btw. This fandom had/has an amazing ability in making you think that this show was utter garbage. on par with riv//erdale or s//pn, but it really wasn’t. Like many shows they had weak points, it was never perfect, but it’s much better than we’re told to remember it as.

Intro from Draft 3 because I liked the way I started it:

This is all of my thoughts about Voltron, the show itself and the fandom. I have tried to write this post out for over a year or two now, so it was originally intended to be my final thoughts about the show. Obviously, it’s evolved since then into whatever this is. There may be some things that I’ll be wrong about, because I’m not about to dig through hundreds of discourse posts and old interview videos to prove a point that I doubt anyone’s gonna care about. This will 100% be based on my thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

That said, I don’t even know how to begin to describe how much I love this show. I’m probably one of the few people who have no regrets about enjoying this show as much as I do. I’d wholeheartedly recommend watching it, because it’s genuinely a good show. Voltron did the unimaginable for me. I don’t usually enjoy sci-fi stories. I especially don’t enjoy mecha stories. Yet somehow, Voltron combined the two and made a show that I loved so much I can’t stop thinking about it even though it ended over 2 years ago.

Draft 1: thoughts about a year after it ended without rewatching any seasons since it ended

It’s been about a year since voltron ended. I never wrote my thoughts about s8/the show then so here it is now. Because I decided to wait a year I honestly don’t remember a lot of specifics. But I still have a lot to say about it. This is very long and is basically everything I have to say about this show. I love voltron. It’s been an important part of my life during college. 90% of all papers I wrote were about voltron. But as much as I love it, I won’t deny that it fell apart at the end. 

Note: I tried to categorize these thoughts so I don’t get off topic and can talk about everything fully. But because they overlap so much there’s definitely some minor repeats when I connect two parts but decided to hold off talking about it all the way until the right section.

PRODUCTION

This is something I’ve expressed concern over while it was airing, but in a span of 2 and a half years, they premiered 78 episodes. That’s a lot, especially when you consider that production for s3 started after s1 premiered. There’s a lot of really good voltron review videos out there that aren’t just “oh I’m so cool I hate voltron” but there was one that talked about how the production was a mess and the writers couldn’t make up their mind for the endgame ship. And while that doesn’t sound like an important issue, it really does show when it comes to how characters are written together and (I think) the fandom war. 

Summarizing what that video said because I don’t remember who made it, the writers/producers never made up their mind on which ship was supposed to be endgame (klance, sheith, allurance, kallura). And this really does show in the show itself. I don’t like klance. I especially hate it because of my experience with the fandom, but I won’t deny that they were sometimes written romantically. The same goes for sheith. And that’s the problem. 

I don’t think the world building parts of the show was fully developed either. Shiro was supposed to be a teen like everyone else but then he was an adult. His and keith’s relationship was honestly vague for a good while. I don’t think anyone really knew how each characters’ relationships with each other was supposed to progress. Was allurance always supposed to be endgame? Because they didn’t really interact that much until like season 6, and then it was kinda sudden from what I remember. There was very little, if at all, parts where we were shown oh allura might like lance romantically. Keith’s relationship with the main cast didn’t exist for like 3 seasons. It was messy. 

Speaking of which, keith disappeared for a good portion of the show. I assume it’s because steven yeun was busy. Which is fine but then I think about how quickly voltron came and went, I wonder why they couldn’t slow down a bit so they could still have steven voice keith during those episodes. Maybe it’s because of how much I love keith, but he honestly felt like a central character to me. 

If I think about teen titans, for example, this show also had 5 main characters. Sometimes certain characters would get a spotlight for a season, but all-in-all they were fairly equally represented. It didn’t feel like robin was the main character. But that’s how I feel about voltron. Keith, and shiro to an extent are the main characters. A good portion of the plot relies on them. Shiro got kidnapped, keith leads them to the blue lion. Shiro is the leader with keith has his right-hand man and they mostly interact with each other. So when shiro “dies” and keith takes over, it starts to feel like keith is now the main character. Now he’s the leader and the arc is about him growing into becoming the black paladin and stopping lotor, who is his main enemy. But then he disappears. 

Again this is most likely because of my bias towards keith, but the episodes after that felt lackluster. Lance didn’t really get his character growth to become a good second-in-command. Because that development was supposed to be based around keith. :P. A big part of lance’s growth is to learn to stop needing to feel that he’s better than keith. And him accepting keith as the black paladin was a huge part of it. But with shiro as the leader again lance loses that development. Keith’s not in the picture anymore, and the person in-charge was already in a leadership position and has nothing to learn by being there. 

Before I go way too deep into my thoughts about the plot/characterization, I do want to mention the animation. The fighting scenes are amazing and one of the most beautiful 2d animation I’ve seen. That is, when it is actually animated and not just the camera panning on a still image. Here’s where my biggest concern over the time comes in. 2 years is absolutely not enough time to animate that many episodes. I was genuinely worried for the animation company because it could not have been a good experience. And yes, we got more episodes sooner, the quality definitely dropped and it’s a real shame. Who knows when we’ll get another american cartoon in this style. I love this animation style but it takes time and a lot of skills to do, so not that many companies do it. I honestly wished they took their time with the show not just to get more time to animate, but also to flesh out some of the plot.

PLOT

As hunk said in one episode, they don’t linger on dramatic events that just happened. This show is very fast paced, and that’s not a bad thing. But they never took the time they needed to really feel the weight of everything that happens. Keith’s galra heritage reveal was basically swept under the rug. So was the shiro clone, lotor’s death, zarkon’s death, naxzela, and so many more. In general, that was a big problem with how the episodes went. If it wasn’t for the sheer number of fanfics covering those topics, they were really swept under the rug. It honestly kinda felt like the writers didn’t know what to do with the aftermath of their reveals. But some of these were pretty essential to the plot of the story. 

Keith’s part galra! So he doesn’t look it but there had to be obstacles with voltron forming the coalition. He’s part of the race that caused this war. I honestly think we should’ve seen that reveal become part of the plot, or what was the point of it? They could’ve just as easily wrote keith to be a regular human just like everyone else. Taking the time to add that part of his character needs to have some significance in the story. And yeah, they had krolia appear but she wasn’t really a significant character except to kinda magically fix keith’s problems. In general it felt like they forgot parts that they were foreshadowing with keith. Why could he turn purple sometimes? Did that quintessence he was hit with fix him or help him hide the galra parts? Why does he look so human? What is up with him having that quintessence sensitivity? I’m all for shows ending with some questions unanswered because sometimes it’s impossible to answer it all and let it feel natural, but this just felt like they forgot or decided it’s too much of a hassle and just ignored it.

Okay going into more specifics now, s8 was kinda meh. It especially felt bad because it came out the same day as spiderverse which had a very similar villain motivation, but objectively done better. I think honerva’s motivation came out of nowhere. We see in the flashback episode that she was so intent on getting knowledge that it literally destroyed daibazaal. So, it was established that her motivation is knowledge. Even though she lost her memory and regained it, as haggar she was still very focused on quintessence. We know she was gathering a lot of it, and maybe they said it and I forgot, but we never knew why. Family wasn’t really shown as a motivation for her. Even with lotor it didn’t seem like she wanted to be a family again, but instead was using him for her own unknown motivations. Anyways, the season felt awkward. And the new dynamic they had really needed more time. The last season should’ve expanded to be at least 2 more. It would’ve fit a lot better imo. S1-2 would have zarkon as the main villain, s3-6 would have lotor, and s7-8 would have haggar, who was also the puppeteer throughout the entire show. But she didn’t appear for s7 and her motivations didn’t really make sense in s8 so it evidently felt rushed. There were also so many major characters in s8 we needed more time to see them interact. 

So the ending with allura becoming constellations. Gonna be honest that whole last part had me confused. Especially with the fact that I barely remember what happened, why are the old paladins like trapped in the lions? I could excuse the other 4 but zarkon? Especially a zarkon that’s not corrupted? It was weird and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and that’s all I’ll say about that. I don’t even want to try to suggest an alternative because I think that whole last half of the season is so messy it can’t be fixed. But it was so obviously pandering to the fandom it hurt. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted lance to be altean in response to keith’s galra heritage. The shiro/curtis kiss was very “look see he is gay and not just because we said so” while nice, was very weak (why wasn’t keith in the shot?).

Despite my complaints, I remember liking s8. I really liked the addition of the atlas, even though it didn’t feel like we were watching voltron anymore sometimes. S7 had to be one of my favorite episodes since s2. Not to say that s7 is better or worse, but I really like it because it felt like a genre shift. I usually don’t like space sci-fi or mecha stories. Voltron somehow managed to combine the two and make me love it. S7 did not feel like either of those. First, a good half of it took place on earth. And I believe two episodes didn’t even have the main cast, and when team voltron finally made it to earth, voltron wasn’t even there until the final battle. I genuinely loved it. I think it was a very well done invasion/apocalyptic story that doesn’t get told in animation that often. But if I think about s7 with the rest of the show, it was awful. It broke up the tone the show usually had and it was a very different way of storytelling that voltron didn’t have before. It wasn’t a space sci-fi mecha story, it was an apocalyptic action story. Voltron was so unimportant they sat on a moon for episodes. It stopped becoming voltron and started becoming a spin-off. 

I do have to add that I absolutely loved the color themes in s7. We already had purple for the galra, but in s7 it was very obvious that alteans are themed blue and earth is themed with orange. I loved it so much and it was great. I do like that they gave shiro something to do. Honestly not killing him off in s2 made him an awkward character afterwards. But I didn’t like that they brought back sendak. There was no explanation for it and it wasn’t good imo. He didn’t really do anything besides conquer earth then die. Haggar was also absent the entire season which definitely didn’t help her storyline in s8 because we didn’t know what she was doing the entire time except abandoning everyone who was loyal to her. 

I’m usually not a fan of time skips, it has the tendency to gloss over character development or create glossed over recap. Honestly I wish voltron spent more time over the blade of marmora massacre or just the bom in general. They received no rest. Literally everyone part of that group died except for kolivan. Speaking of that episode, there was no explanation for how keith was able to know where macidus was about to appear and that honestly bugs me. There’s so much about keith we don’t know. He has so many abilities we were just never told. 

Again a lot of problems within team voltron is that there was never any follow up on things that happened, like keith leaving the team. He becomes the black paladin and no one bats an eye. Lance did make one comment about keith leaving but then it wasn’t ever mentioned again. I get that the writers/producers wanted the dynamic the original had, but they didn’t take the time to work up to it. Keith wasn’t a natural leader, but he suddenly is because he spent 2 years on a space whale with his mom and a space wolf. Like I mentioned earlier, voltron feels like keith is the main character but then they dropped him for a few episodes, realized that he’s important and added him back in while saying “oh he went through a time skip so he grew into the role he needs to be in now”. It feels like a cheap pay off.

I’d like to specifically talk about my thoughts on each season and work back but honestly I don’t think I can remember s3-6 separately. So they’re being chunked together. 

Lotor had the potential to be a really great villain. But he had to be foiled with keith. They have a lot of similarities that I think could’ve really played off well together. Lotor isn’t really allowed to have a leadership position. Yeah he was technically in charge while zarkon was recovering, but haggar didn’t really allow him full control. But, he was a great leader. He knew how to read his enemies and form an alliance. Meanwhile, keith had a leadership position thrusted to him, and frankly he wasn’t a good leader. He tends to keep to himself so he never really has to make decisions with a team. It could’ve been great, but shiro had to still be in the story. I’m honestly conflicted about this because on the one hand, I think it really ruined character developments for the main cast, but then I loved the clone shiro plot line. I think keeping shiro prevented keith from growing. He was able to remain dependent on shiro instead of actually bonding with the rest of the paladins. And of course he had to just go awol. Also, lance didn’t really get to have as prominent of a role as I think he could’ve had with keith. 

These seasons are also when the lions stopped being sentient robots that specifically choose their paladins to just really cool spaceships. We don’t get that level of bonding that was so prominent in s1 and 2. That’s also something I’m conflicted with. I think the lion swap was a great way for character developments, but it also removed a lot of it. It kinda made the bonding feel useless. The swap also changed the dynamic of the group. Instead of shiro and allura being co-leaders, and everyone else feeling like they’re on equal footing, it felt like Keith was the leader with lance being a needed right-hand man. Hunk and pidge were off doing their thing and allura was a leader but also not. Maybe if they had spent more time working with this dynamic it would’ve felt better. But they didn’t and it didn’t. Voltron also implied that allura was the only one that could control the castle ship, but then she goes to become a paladin and who’s driving the ship?

I do wish we could’ve gotten more about the altean colony and the reveal about lotor’s plans, but that got overshadowed and forgotten by the clone shiro reveal. Maybe I just missed it, but I wasn’t sure what the galra empire and lotor were collecting quintessence for. Was it just to make mechs to rival voltron? Lotor’s death was also very unclear. 

The coalition was a much needed thing, but I think very badly executed. They were gathering people from malls. These people are regular civilians who probably don’t know how to fight or fly a ship. I thought it was really weird that they were just getting regular people (aliens?) to sign up like they’re applying to be part of the army. But we never see them maybe join the rebel force matt is part of to learn how exactly to help. I think about avatar and how they also had a rag tag group of people to fight against the fire nation, but these weren’t just regular people living in a village. They were either warriors or very skilled benders. The voltron coalition was just regular people. That genuinely annoyed me because the voltron show just felt like those army propaganda ads, but exciting. Not to mention it was a very hard to watch episode. 

It was definitely making fun of how the fandom complains about how characters are getting reduced to a certain characteristic. But it wasn’t done in an entertaining way like the ember island players episode from atla because some of those were legit complaints (like hunk being the fat/food guy) and that stuff wasn’t resolved. Like the ember island players made fun of sokka constantly talking about meat or katara crying all the time, but the show made it very clear beforehand that these characters are much more than that. Is hunk really more than the food guy? As far as the show mentions, the only things he’s done was make the machine to help find the blue lion, and help save the balmera. All of which was in season 1. After that hunk honestly took the backseat in voltron.

I mentioned earlier, but the time skip on the space whale felt like we were cheated out of keith’s character development. I mean we got development, but we didn’t get to see it. The vlog short showed that keith believes a lot of his problems stems from not having a mom (and a dad) in his life. But instead of seeing keith learning to trust and open up to people despite having so many people in his life leaving him, we get a cute montage of him with his mom. As if it makes sense that two years with his mom would fix everything. (side note, I know a lot of people were saying how obvious it was that krolia was keith’s mom, I genuinely did not know until she said so at the end of that episode).

I’m not gonna talk about my thoughts on s1 and 2 because I’m pretty sure I live blogged those and honestly I don’t think I remember it. 

CHARACTERS

Now I’m finally talking about the characters and I’m starting off with keith as if I haven’t talked about him enough already. I love keith. He’s undeniably one of my (if not the) favorite characters ever. And he’s obviously a fandom favorite if we’re considering the two biggest ships in the fandom. Or maybe he really is just the secret main character of voltron. We know so much about him, for someone who loves keith, it’s great. We basically know his entire backstory, and yet we know no one else’s (except maybe lotor but even that’s iffy).

I never rewatched a single voltron episode since it ended, and I can’t watch any of the connected shows (meaning shows that have the same ppl that worked on it or the same fans, think dragon prince and she-ra) because the fandom was the absolute worst one I’ve ever been in and parts legit trigger me. I am fascinated with fandoms. I love it. I chose my major because it was the closest I could get to just learning about them 24/7. But the voltron fandom was so incredibly toxic and over two ships? Honestly the fandom itself was a major reason why I couldn’t get super invested in the later seasons. I get afraid when it seems like a certain ship might happen. I actually hoped that certain characters just didn’t interact. (I’m not gonna get much deeper in this because I don’t want to touch this topic with a ten-foot pole, at least not now) Aside from that, I think that the plot and characterizations for voltron got really messy post s2. The lion switch was never handled well imo, and post switch the lions lost that sentient personality that was established in the first two seasons. It also didn’t make sense aside from the writers wanted everyone in the original lions. Or at least, we never got the proper character developments into those roles. Keith left right after becoming the black paladin. 

I think another major problem with the show is how some decisions felt like pandering. I remember hearing that they didn’t kill off shiro because he was a fan favorite, so he had to stay for marketing and to make more money. But then keeping shiro alive would’ve derailed the original plot idea. I wish I could see how the story would’ve played out with shiro staying dead.

Draft 2: rewatched the show then started writing this

So I wrote a draft of this like a year ago, realized I don’t remember the show much, so I rewatched the whole show and started rewriting my thoughts.

Pre-rewatch thoughts: It was a good show that was poorly executed

Mid-rewatch thoughts: it’s a really good show that just has some weak points (the second half of lotor’s arc, team voltron’s importance in season 4-6 it feels like a lot of filler episodes until keith shows up again)

End-rewatch thoughts: it's actually a really good show. It has some weak points and some really strong points. Season 8 was confusing though. I went through most of it going yeah okay I guess that can happen.

Final verdict: it's a genuinely good show

What went wrong

It ended on its weakest season, which was also the most abstract and different season. While the main antagonist changed throughout the seasons, it still continued to be the galra empire. Even when lotor joined, the team was still fighting fractions of the galra empire. Meanwhile, season 8 didn’t have any conflict with the galra. The antagonists were honerva and the alteans, who are very different types of villains compared to the galra. There was also little build up to that change. Sure, we got to experience that briefly in season 3 when they went to the alternate reality, but I don’t think that was built up well. Also, the protagonists and the audience are just not prepared. We don’t know how the alteans work like the extent of their abilities, but we were given dozens of episodes to learn about the galra. As a result season 8 just wound up with me feeling confused and thinking “uhh sure I guess they can do that, that makes sense maybe?”

It could not pick who its protagonist is. Yeah the five humans plus allura (and coran?) are the main characters but most shows with multiple major characters still focus one one character as the protagonist. Like atla has aang, adventure time has finn, umbrella academy has five. Voltron just never picks someone and the group constantly changes too, so you end up having to not focus on any character for the sake of time. Of course not all shows do that. Teen Titans had each season focus on a particular member of the team, and tbh I was wondering if that was what they were planning for the show, especially when season 2 was so Keith focused but guess not.

It feels like they did not have the time to fully flesh out the story. Voltron came and went so incredibly fast. They had 8 seasons (technically 6 if you group up the halved seasons). But also the show only lasted 2 years. It honestly horrifies me to think of the time crunch everyone on the team was going through, especially the animators. You can see the drop in quality as there were very few scenes that involved actual animation for the middle bulk of the show. So then, how much time did they have to develop the story, in addition to execs telling them what they can and can’t do. There’s so many arcs that seemed to start then get forgotten, and I don’t blame the writers for that at all. Although I wish we could’ve learned more about Lance and the Altean sword and Keith with his apparent quintessence sensitivity, they probably just didn’t have the time to plot those out.

It had too much outside influence. Such as, the writers wanting to kill off shiro, but then being forced to keep him on the show because the execs said to. And honestly, the fandom. For example, the whole last episode with Lance getting the Altean marks (an obvious omage to ppl wanting Altean Lance).

What went right

There’s a reason why the show became so popular (aside from being a reboot of a popular 80′s show) and it’s because of the characters. I’m not about the whole “we become attached to characters because the writers did them wrong but we fans can see the potential and that’s why fan works are better” bs that I see going around this site all the time. The first season particularly wrote these characters so well. They’re relatable but also intriguing enough for you to care about what’s going to happen to them. 

Some thoughts regarding popular fandom discussions:

It’s a plot-driven show with character-focused fans

I like to think of there being two ways to tell a story: by being character-focused or plot-driven. Plot driven shows are ones like atla, young justice, legend of korra, etc. There’s a conflict that gets introduced and the story revolves around that conflict. Character-focused shows are ones like adventure time or we bare bears, they’re less concerned about a plot line and focus more on the characters interacting with their world. Of course all stories incorporate both parts, just some focus more on one than the other. So, here’s where I think a lot of the issues about voltron and the fandom comes from. Voltron is a very obviously plot-driven show but the fandom is very character-focused. I won’t deny I loved the episodes about keith. Season 4 and 5 were hard for me to watch because I missed my boy. But that’s where the arguments come from. People get upset that their fav isn’t in the spotlight

It didn’t queerbait

I understand watching a show for representation, I really do, but voltron is not that show and that's okay. Not every show has to be revolutionary in its representation of marginalized people. I won't pretend to know the harmful tropes for marginalized people. My consumption of media is not usually diverse. But I will stand by my stance that a large part of voltron's later seasons is about the casualties of war. So of course a lot of people died. I also firmly believe that the producers had a much easier time adding diversity to their own created characters than the main voltron characters, because of rights and all that complicated nonsense. So as a result the ones who were more expendable and could die were also the same characters that they could add diversity too.

I’m gonna add the definition of queerbait here so we’re all on the same page:  Queerbait is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation.

But here’s the thing. We were told at comic-con or one of those cons that Shiro is gay, and he had a boyfriend. They actually gave us that. Yeah it wasn’t as explicit as She-ra got, but that’s another point for later. There was no lying about it. Shiro is canonically gay, and his boyfriend was Adam. If anything, this whole thing came out of wanting Keith in a relationship with Shiro or Lance. Yes. I will admit, there are plenty of scenes between Keith and Lance, and Keith and Shiro that can be read as romantic. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but did any of the cast members tease the possibility of Kl//ance or Sh//eith (VAs don’t count, sorry but they don’t really have a say in the story)? Because unless they did, and they did repeatedly, the fandom queerbaited themselves. So many people in the fandom were so certain that Keith would be in a relationship with one of them, there was basically an all out war. Even if there was a chance, did you really think the creators (who were pretty active in early fandom days) would continue that development? It was so so toxic they were forced to shut off any possibilities of that.

In regards to minority characters

Again, I'll admit vld is not the place to go for real, proper representation. Their characters tend to be characters that happen to be a part of a minority rather than a minority character. wtf does that mean? Well, you can swap (earth) races for just about any character and it wouldn't make too much of a difference in how they act. There's some lines that wouldn't work like Lance's "I'm just a boy from Cuba" but other than that there would be no significant change. Of course this goes down to preference. Would you want a minority character whose struggles reflect those in real life and as a result be defined by that aspect of themselves, or do you want a character that just happens to be a part of a minority group but whose life is not really affected by that? 

Draft 3: months after the rewatch, mostly an attempt to reorganize the previous two drafts

I’m gonna start with the negatives just to get the ranting off my chest. Season 8 was bad. Yeah. No argument there. Although I wouldn’t say it was bad in the same way Game of Thrones and Supernatural was bad. Rather, it was an interesting and complex premise that didn’t have the build up it needed and honestly needed a few more passthroughs to iron out some parts. At worse, I felt it was confusing to the point where I just accepted whatever new worldbuilding thing they threw at me. The issue with Season 8 vs Seasons 1-7 is that Season 8 had a completely different villain, and a brand new cast dynamic. We got 7 seasons (65 episodes) developing the Galra as the villain. We got to learn who they are, their motives, how they operate, etc. Not only that, but they were pretty basic and easy to understand villains. They’re conquerors. They don’t have any sort of magic, they really just use brute force to attack and enslave the planets. In striking contrast, the Alteans in Season 8 weren’t conquerors. They didn’t care about controlling the universe. They also had magic abilities that our main characters don’t understand and didn’t explore. Season 8 had villains who could create illusions, mind control, and manipulate quintessence. The Alteans are leagues beyond the Galra in terms of complexities as an antagonist, but they didn’t get nearly enough time to be fully developed.

Also, Season 8 essentially doubled the cast size. So despite the fact that we have yet to see much of Keith-as-the-black-paladin Voltron group dynamic, now that screentime is being balanced with the MFE pilots and other Garrison characters. Essentially, there were too many characters, and too little time to flesh out the ideas of this season. A side note, Haggar’s (Honerva?) motivations were lame. I think it would’ve been much more interesting if her plans were just to continue the research she did 10,000 years ago with the rift. That would’ve also brought back the rift monsters which we never got an answer for. What even are they? Instead, her goal to have a family again is really weak. Even in the flashbacks she never showed any care for the more familial aspects of her life. It didn’t make sense for that to be her drive. It also didn’t help that Season 8 came out on like the same day as Spiderverse and the antagonists for both had the same goal, but Spiderverse did an immensely better job.

Another thing that didn’t make sense to me was Keith giving the speech to the rest of the Galra. He is not the right character to give that speech. Sure he’s Galra, but he didn’t even know for most of his life. For him to say “we” like he’s also a citizen of the Galra empire feels so weird. He never grew up with the Empire’s influence, and we never saw him experiencing Galra culture with the Blade. He learned about the Galra as an outsider, and despite the fact that he’s part Galra (he doesn’t even remotely look Galra), I don’t think that gives him the authority to say a speech like that. The speech is similar to Zuko’s at the end of ATLA, and that makes me feel like it would’ve been a lot better had Lotor said it. I think even Kolivan would’ve been a better fit than Keith. 

The more I’m writing about Season 8, the more I’m remembering just how messy and confusing it was. Additionally, the last bit of Season 8 was so obviously pandering to the fandom it gives me second-hand embarrassment. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted Lance to be Altean in response to Keith's galra heritage. The Shiro getting married was just to make it more obvious that he’s gay, but had no build up. (There were definitely more but I didn’t write myself a list and I’m not rewatching that season)

Second, “Voltron queerbaited”. [this was posted before here]

Speaking of which, Voltron premiered summer of 2016 and ended in winter of 2018. That’s about 2 and a half years where they aired 78 episodes. That’s stupid fast, especially for an animated series. I’m constantly worried about what the people working on that show had to endure. For sure, Season 3 with Shiro coming back wasn’t written until at least Season 1. I recalled the execs demanding that Shiro not be dead since he was a popular character. It’s honestly concerning how little time they had to work on the show, and it unfortunately showed. In the later seasons, a lot of the shots were just still frames that moved across the scene. And the plot line with Lotor could’ve used some work. Although, I think Shiro being forced in there was also a reason for it being so shaky.

I honestly hate Seasons 4 & 5. I cannot tell you what happened because my brain keeps erasing it. Obviously, the lack of Keith had a huge impact on my opinion of those seasons, but it also felt like a whole lot of filler episodes, and not the fun ones with character development. With Keith mostly out of the picture, and Lance becoming the right hand of Voltron, that should’ve been a great time to develop Lance to become a second-in-command. To have him go through an arc where he overcomes his insecurities. It would’ve also been an amazing time to develop his and Shiro’s relationship. But we didn’t get any of that. 

I genuinely believe Keith was supposed to stay the black paladin and Shiro wasn’t supposed to come back. Keith would be an amazing foil to Lotor. They’re both half-Galra. They’ve both been given a new leadership role that they don’t want. The middle arc always felt so weak to me, and as I mentioned earlier, the Allura/Lotor interactions were awkward. It feels shoehorned in because someone has to interact with Lotor and I guess the writers decided Allura was the best option?

Season 3-6 felt like the epitome of what happens when showrunners are forced to do whatever the execs say and have no time to properly develop their story. I’ll forever be bitter at all the character and relationship development we lost because of that. We never got to see Keith really learn to open up to the team and start to trust others. But Keith still had to get to that point, which is why I assume they had the time jump for him. It’s so disappointing because we lost what could’ve been a great character development. It also made Keith being the Black Paladin again feel cheap. We didn’t get to see the struggle he had to be the leader Shiro saw he could be. He was just suddenly leading them and they worked like a proper team.

Voltron also had a lot of plot holes. Now, I don’t expect shows to answer every question, because it’s impossible to tie everything up and leave no questions unanswered in a natural way. But, there’s a lot of things that felt like the beginning of a plot line or honestly needed some answers. Like, Lance shifting his bayard to a sword. What was the point of that if it was never mentioned again? It felt like that was an important start to an arc for him that just got forgotten. Also, what was up with Keith’s quintessence sensitivity? How was he able to sense where that druid was. How did he know he could summon his bayard to him. I think the part that bugged me the most was that Keith was the only one who did that. Also, Keith’s eyes becoming slitted during his fight with Kuron was never addressed, and I really wish it was. It felt like such a throwaway moment that could’ve been interesting to explore more. Although I’m not too upset with that one as I think we were given enough to piece together a reason for it. 

[ggfj84]

Ugh...

I think I’ll refrain from reading showrunner interviews in the future. I used to read creator interviews all the time when I was reading comics. I loved to see what was coming up and how a writer approached a storyline or character. 

But Voltron’s EPs were just horrible. Every other interview included how much they hated a fan favorite character and how they wanted to kill him. They eventually succeeded at killing a million and a half clones of him - among other really terrible things. They also used interviews as a way to plug holes in the show’s plot, which...isn’t storytelling. 

Incidentally, I absolutely loved the first season of the Saved by the Bell continuation. The characters are fun and engaging, and the show goes the extra mile to keep the charm of the original while also poking fun at what came before.

But then I read the showrunner’s interview in Variety, and it made me love the show just a bit less.  

Minor spoilers below the cut, but nothing that I think really will spoil any major plot points. 

Overall, the show was enjoyable where there is very little I can say I didn’t like. Mainly, I could have done without Toddmann’s connection to the original characters (was that really necessary?) and Kelly’s job was...not really a job. (I work for a start-up. I can say this.) But then I went to read some of the showrunner’s ideas - about the mention of Jeff (google him if you don’t remember him from the original show) and this show’s take on Zack. 

I came across this interview with the showrunner in Variety. Now, I encourage you to read this is you’re interested and want to read the context, but in one point of the interview, the showrunner explains how she wanted to make Slater a fat joke, calls him an “irredeemable loser” who is stuck in high school, and says she thinks that’s funny. 

And I don’t. I thought Slater’s role was great! I loved how he was still a coach in high school. I thought that was a wonderful continuation of his character and where he might have ended up after The College Years. He gives “vague” speeches that actually do help the new characters find their way in the show, and he grows throughout the season to where in the finale, Slater and Jessie put some issues from the original show behind them in a positive way.  

It’s a great path for Slater to walk - with some sections of comic relief that fit perfectly with teachers’ lives. (Slater’s line about the microwave and wanting doughnuts from a PTA meeting is actually spot-on for teachers/coaches.)

Overall - this isn’t a big thing. I know that, and I don’t see Slater as an irredeemable loser cuz if I did - then why would I want to root for him? Why would anyone want to write that character? And I am so tired of the “fat loser” stereotype - which thankfully, someone in the writer’s room knew not to explore. (I could have done without it in Avengers: Endgame, too.) 

But essentially, the showrunner’s comments make me love the show a bit less, and if I don’t seek out these interviews, then I can enjoy the show for its merits - and not hate it for its creator’s comments. 

[backupblogforjg]

The racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and cruel tropes in Voltron

So, it’s the anniversary of the ending of Voltron. And I’m getting really, really tired of people saying that only shippers hated the ending. There were many issues with Voltron, and they were neither limited to shipping nor to S8.

So, I’ve decided to compile a list.

It gets LONG. Turns out there was a hell of a lot of racist, sexist, ableist and cruel tropes in VLD.

In fact, I had originally planned on writing a list of both the terrible tropes and the plot holes. But there just wasn’t enough room for both. The post is huge as it is, and with the plot holes, it would have been twice as long, so I had to focus on only one thing.

Salt, obviously. So, so, so much salt. I could turn a lake into a sea here. You’ve been warned.

RACISM:

1) The Alteans are genocide survivors. Out of all the Alteans, only the black Altean was used for a Reverse Racism story where she resents a teammate for belonging to the race that exterminated hers. The white Alteans are totally cool with him, and with his race in general, and only hate the bad people. But the black one had to be taught that hating people because of their race is wrong.

2) VLD Allura is also the only version of Allura who is black. In every other Voltron media (several different cartoons and comics), Allura is blond with blue eyes. All the white versions of the character get a happy ending, while only the black version ends up dying to save the world.

While "hero sacrifices their life to save the world" is not a bad trope in and of itself, it becomes bad when it kills off one of the extremely few black female characters in leading roles. You kill off a white male hero, there are 463278462387 more. You kill off the black female hero, you are kinda screwed. Making it worse, Allura had been portrayed as suffering from depression throughout the latest seasons, so that her death comes across less as heroic sacrifice and more as suicide.

3) The brown Cuban kid who dreamed of being a pilot, and never once in 78 episodes ever expressed anything but sheer love for an exciting life, in the final two minutes of the final episode ends up realizing that the place for him is a farm.

4) As told in interviews, Lotor was meant to be a bad example of mixed-race person, to contrast him with Keith as good example of mixed race person. Do I even have to point out how messed up this is?

5) Even before they became Space Nazis, back when they were still on the side of the angels, the Galra invaded and conquered planets. This is portrayed as totally cool when they happily name the prince after a "hero" who invaded and conquered a lot of worlds, and the peaceful Alteans think the guy is just as heroic as one of their greatest scientists. Apparently there is such a thing as ethically killing people to steal their land.

6) They whitewashed Keith, a character who is poc in every other iteration of Voltron.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to get angry here, claiming that I hate Keith. Let me assure you, I don’t. I love Keith, and I hate what was done to him. I hate that they took a traditionally poc character and went to frankly ridiculous lengths to erase that part of his character. Keith should be Asian, and it would be incredibly easy to make him so in VLD (seriously, all they’d have to do is update the freaking bios, an intern could do it right now in 5 minutes). But they refuse to do it.

A lot of people don’t realise that the surname “Kogane” in VLD is fanon.

I’m serious. Check his official bios page. Keith is not actually called Keith Kogane in VLD. Fans started calling him that in fanfiction, and it stuck, but it’s not canon.

In every other Voltron media, Keith is an Asian guy. But in VLD, they:

- went out of their way to always avoid giving him an Asian surname

- gave him a Texan father

- refused to confirm his race, even when every other character had a specific race. Again, check his official bios. All the other characters got a race, Keith gets “human.” It got so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren’t sad. It pretty much went like this:

Fans: Keith is half alien, but about his human half, what is his ethnicity? EPs: oh, we couldn't possibly say, because the story takes place in the future, and in the future, everybody is mixed up! So, Keith is HUMAN, we can't give him a specific race because there are no specific races in the future! Fans: ok. And what are the races of the other characters? EPs: Pidge is Italian, Lance is Cuban, Hunk is half-black half- Samoan, Shiro is Japanese. Fans: but Keith...? EPs: HUMAN! There is no such thing as race in the future!

Some people at least hoped that Keith's Texan father had Asian ancestry because he kinda looked like Shiro, who is Japanese. But the EPs confirmed that the resemblance was just a coincidence, they never meant for the dad to look Japanese.

At this point pretty much the only evidence that Keith is Asian is that he is voiced by an Asian person. But then, Josh Keaton is not Japanese, is he?

7) After whitewashing Keith, they claimed he is the best leader of Voltron, better than his poc predecessor, because he has Galra blood.

So, instead of bringing up any sort of legit reason to justify why Keith should be in charge (like his empathy or pilot skills), they go with "the half-white guy is also half space-nazi and that's why he should give the orders instead of the poc guy."

If you think I’m bashing Keith here, please ask yourself why you are getting angry at the person pointing out the whitewashing instead of getting angry at the whitewashing. Especially when, again, making VLD Keith canonically poc could be done anytime with zero cost and zero effort, and DW just doesn’t want to.

- Hunk, the half-black half-Samoan guy, was going to be killed and replaced as Paladin by a blue alien. The EPs were pissed when DW forbade them to, and complained in the interview about it.

SEXISM:

Every single woman who is ever put in charge ends up going insane, making terrible decisions that endanger her planet, or losing all of her authority.

Allura starts out as co-leader of Voltron and leader of the Coalition. Ends up as a foot soldier who takes orders from the new leader and his right-hand man, and is treated as a cadet by the Earth military.

HOMOPHOBIA:

1) Dreamworks, Netflix and the EPs very, very, very heavily promoted S7 as GLBT-friendly. The EPs gave whole interviews about the past relationship between Shiro and new character Adam, retweeted a ton of posts celebrating Shiro’s homosexuality, and enthusiastically sent tweets like "you are going to see more of Adam in S7! :D" from their personal accounts after they showed the episode that introduced him.

In S7:

- Shiro's homosexuality is so ambiguous that even the Brazilian voice actor didn't realize that he was supposed to be gay. Just by watching the show, without knowing the World Of God, you can’t tell he and the other guy were engaged.

- Adam gets about 30 seconds of screentime after that one episode they had already shown. Then he dies screaming in pain and terror in a fire.

A lot of people claimed that it was okay to kill Adam because Shiro was supposed to be our rep, not Adam, who was a brand new character we knew little about. And, out of context, that would be true. Adam was pretty much a NPC, why would his death matter?

But the problem here is the context:

- Shiro is closeted in S7, you need to read interviews to know he is gay. So, if only Shiro is meant to be the rep, they couldn’t even do that right.

- They very heavily marketed both Shiro and Adam as gay rep, and specifically talked at length about Adam in several interviews.

In THAT context, REGARDLESS of what you ship, killing off Adam revealed a complete willingness to manipulate the audience to the point of outright lying. Even if you hated Adam, even if Adashi is your NOTP, the clear evidence that the creators had absolutely no problem making empty promises was NOT a good sign.

2) The moment Shiro is revealed to be gay in interviews, he is practically quarantined from the Team.

3) Shiro is also given a Totally Not AIDS deadly disease.

Making it even worse, Shiro never actually gets cured in canon. We are told he is cured in interviews, but the show itself drops the topic entirely. Depending on where you lean in the Word Of God VS Death Of The Author debate, Shiro may be doomed to die.

4) A female villain is revealed to be a lesbian. 30 seconds later she gleefully tortures a little girl. Then she, too, dies in a fire.

(Fan outrage about pulling two Bury Your Gays in the Season that had been very heavily promoted as GLBT-friendly caused DW to retcon her death and bring her back in S8, but she was originally meant to die in the explosion)

5) Shiro ends up marrying a random character who doesn’t even get a name in the show.

ABLEISM:

1) Shiro's PTSD magically disappears offscreen. In interviews, the EPs claimed that he "got over it" between S6 and S7 because "he is a professional." Wow! Who knew being a professional magically cures mental illnesses!

2) Shiro is an amputee. The EPs admitted that they never put any thought into his status as disabled rep, they just wanted a character with a cool-looking arm. It literally didn't occur to them that making him lose his arm (TWICE! First up to the biceps, then up to the shoulder) meant anything. Also worth noting that Shiro’s new arm makes him look like the guy who tormented him.

3) Shiro is systematically robbed of his agency.

- He is the only Paladin who never gets to use his bayard.

- He loses his bond with Black for no given canon reason (and the reason they give in interviews makes no sense, they basically say that transferring his soul out of the Black Lion makes her stop loving him. But she still lets Zarkon fly her!).

I know that Keith is traditionally Black’s pilot in Voltron media (although that shouldn’t matter, because VLD made a lot of huge changes to the traditional status quo). But if they wanted Black Paladin Keith that badly, they could have given some non-insulting reason for it. For example, say “because Shiro has spent so much time within Black, their bond is now so strong that he will get absorbed again if he flies her again.” Or co-pilots in Black (if Pidge can co-pilot with Matt, why can’t Shiro co-pilot with Keith?).

- He is defeated not only by Sendak, but also by a bunch of random Alteans. He basically can’t win a fight anymore unless it’s played for laughs.

- His new robot Atlas is bigger than Voltron, but also much weaker, and can only buy a few minutes for Voltron to come save the day.

- Every single enemy he ever defeated comes back to be finished off by somebody else (even the friggin' Gladiator from S1 comes back in S8). In the epilogue, he retires in his twenties.

4) Narti, the disabled General, is fridged shortly after her introduction. For a while at least it seemed like her death had affected the remaining three Generals, but then it turns out that the "For Narti" line was a trick and they never actually planned on avenging her.

CRUEL TROPES:

1) They intentionally baited the fans by pushing the plot thread that Lotor would be redeemed. They named the episode where he defects "A New Defender," they kept saying in interviews that they come from Avatar and they are very familiar with Zuko *hint hint*, they showed his family as incredibly abusive and Lotor himself as desperate, they showed that Lotor was a victim of severe racism (he is mixed race, and as stated above, the Galra are Space Nazis and are pretty obsessed with blood purity).

Then, after revealing him to be a villain, they gave an interview where they practically dislocated their shoulders by patting themselves on the back as they gleefully bragged that "we made them think we would give them a Zuko, but we gave them an Azula!"

(Nevermind the fact that Azula herself was a 14-year-old child, not a monster, and that Aaron Ehasz himself confirmed that he always wanted her to be redeemed).

When fans who are survivors of child abuse told them that the bait-and-switch was really hurtful, they laughed it off, and claimed that Lotor was just beyond redemption. Then they proceeded to redeem Lotor's abusive parents, who were objectively much worse.

2) Shiro’s clone, who sincerely believed he was Shiro and always meant well, was dehumanised, demonised and discarded like his life meant nothing. His short existence was full of pain from literally the moment he first opened his eyes, as Haggar kept torturing him with migraines to manipulate him. In the end, she brutally violates him body and mind, and brainwashes him to force him to turn on the family he was so desperate to find in The Journey. He dies in incredibly questionable circumstances, without ever getting to learn that his family survived Haggar’s plans. He is victim-blamed for the things she forced him to do against his will with mind-control, and is never mourned because the only family he ever had writes him off as a “thing” and “evil.”

In fact, the horrific treatment of Kuron foreshadowed S8. The Medium article “It never stops at one - Why Voltron: Legendary Defender's tragic ending wasn't a surprise and why more DreamWorks' series will follow suit” explains how.

The tl;dr version is that, when a story posits that the circumstances of your birth determine the value of your life, so that good intentions and hard work mean nothing, and long-established bonds can be discarded with zero thought and care, and your very humanity can be revoked over something you have absolutely no control over, and the whole sociopathic disaster is celebrated as a happy ending... it really, really can’t end well. Not just for you, but for the entire cast.

[horde-princess]

I honestly can see a very korrasami-esque ending for Catra and Adora. It’s totally obvious by now that Noelle meant for them to be romantic and that she would like to end with them on a romantic route. Unfortunately, I don’t know if DW will be onboard for something very “in your face”. So I can totally see them doing a korrasami ending but making it a bit more obvious that it’s romantic.

i know ive always said “they will definitely absolutely kiss no doubt in mind” but now that we’re at the end i think i should actually take the time to discuss this more… i’m what you might a call a realistic optimist because i choose to have faith but i’m not ignorant to the realities of the situation you know? so buckle up this is going to be a long and probably unpleasant ride lmao

to be real, going into the last season I’m trying to not let myself have too many expectations with catradora. I do 100% fully expect that their relationship will be shown to be explicitly romantic by the end, but unfortunately, yes, its possible that they may not kiss. i’m at peace with that and i hope this post helps you guys see my thinking and come to terms with it too

obviously i dont understand all the underlying mechanisms of producing a tv show. i do know that dreamworks has hardly been a progressive studio in terms of lgbt representation. there are a lot of factors that would go into a decision about whether to allow a lesbian kiss in one of their projects, not least the fact that She-Ra is a reboot. having said all that, i’m still optimistic and there IS evidence in favor of a kiss that i think is worth talking about! 

thinking about where to start with this discussion on Dreamworks vs. lgbt representation, Voltron came to mind. i’ve never seen the show but a quick google search brought me to this Geekdad article from an interviewer who did an investigation into Voltron’s lgbt rep failure and Dreamworks’ role in that. he argues that a lot of the blame belongs with the showrunners, because Dreamworks does at least provide resources and diversity consultants to help showrunners make respectful lgbt content, but the Voltron crew didn’t make use of them. the issue was not that Dreamworks actively blocked lgbt rep but rather that the studio did not work to ensure quality representation from the showrunners. which is a huge difference.

i dug a little deeper and found a transcript of an interview with the showrunners where they talk about the red tape they encountered, and what they say seems to implicate Voltron’s intellectual property holder as opposed to the Dreamworks studio itself. it sounds like Dreamworks’ hands were tied because the showrunners did not hold all the legal rights to the story.

of course we know IP is also an issue with She-Ra. however, correct me if i’m wrong, but I believe Mattel (the Masters of the Universe toy line) sold its property rights to NBCUniversal (Dreamworks’ parent company) a couple of years ago. this doesn’t mean all ties are cut with the original IP holder, but i think its safe to assume that She-Ra has some more wiggle room than Voltron did when it comes to the showrunners’ vision/creativity. especially because Mattel has been known to be pro-lgbt.

an interesting quote from Joaquim Dos Santos (voltron producer) was that after season 7, “She-Ra was in development within the studio and I think the studio was just sort of beginning to open its eyes to the possibilities of there being [lgbt] representation in their shows and there not being a huge public backlash for it.” 

Also, in a different interview they said “to Dreamworks’ credit, I think the tide started changing internally” regarding the studio’s outlook on lgbt rep around the time that seasons 7/8 were in production.

so in addition to potential IP issues, Dreamworks is obviously concerned about their reputation and losing money. however we can gather from these quotations that (due to recent cultural shifts in the U.S.) Dreamworks has felt comfortable making efforts in the last few years to distribute more/better lgbt rep.

you also have to consider that Dreamworks KNEW what they were getting into with hiring Noelle. it’s hard to know whether lgbt representation was the vision for the show from the beginning or whether Noelle brought it with her (tho it seems like the latter). but either way, the studio must have been actively seeking to improve their lgbt representation because i’m sure she made her vision clear from the very beginning.

There’s a great article where Noelle talks about the fight to include lgbt rep in She-Ra:

“When you’re aiming to tell a story like that, you have to get everyone who’s working on the show, whether on the crew, or at the executive level, to believe in that world as well. It’s all part of trying to create the type of world in real life that you’re creating in the show. While I hope it comes across in a natural way in the show, it’s something you have to constantly fight for. You can’t take it for granted. I never take it for granted. It’s a really important thing to fight for, and a lot of it is just, “Trust me, this is gonna work. Believe in me. I can pull this off.” I am really fortunate to work with executives who do believe in me and who have allowed me to do a lot with this show. I’m very fortunate for that.”

So that is awesome to hear!! It wasn’t a tug-of-war situation with Noelle having to make concessions for execs who didn’t believe in her vision. She says the studio was supportive. But I think only time will tell us what the definition of “a lot” is.

Okay so, whew, that was a lot of information. i’ll be amazed if anyone actually reads this far lmaoo 😂 anyway i wanna move away from logistical stuff and talk about some other things Noelle has said about her show.

geekdad did another great interview with Noelle (and a Dreamworks PR representative!! it’s a good read) where he asked “if you wanted to depict a same gender relationship with foreground characters, do you think we’re at that stage yet in children’s animation where you could? Or do you think we still have a ways to go?”

Noelle replies “I think that remains to be seen, and I think… that’s something that–you should watch the show. You should see the storylines that we pursue in the future.”

When asked about catradora’s romantic undertones, “just keep watching” is something Noelle has said repeatedly in many different interviews. She wouldn’t say that if there wasn’t going to be a payoff at the end. It’s obvious she’s not at liberty to discuss the ending of the show, you can tell she’s always extremely careful with her wording when she’s faced with questions like this. But she consistently expresses, as a lesbian herself, that she has created a show she expects her own community will be excited about. Whatever actually happens, Noelle doesn’t believe that She-Ra will let us down 😌

Shes also mentioned that she’s grateful for shows like Steven Universe and Adventure Time that were trailblazers before She-Ra, because every successive show has the opportunity to be a little bit more progressive than the shows that came before it. We all have to continually strive to push the envelope and demand more inclusivity. If it turns out that that’s all She-Ra is–a small step towards quality representation–then yes of course it will feel like a massive waste (just because this story Noelle created is so incredible), but we’ll have to remember that the show is still playing a very important role in the history of children’s media. Even without a kiss, She-Ra has made incredible strides in lgbt rep. what i would hate to see is people complaining (god forbid calling it “queer baiting”) if there isn’t a kiss. Noelle and the crew have worked on this show tirelessly and passionately and we can’t yell at them for something they had no control over. the only people we should hold accountable are Dreamworks/Mattel. so i agree with you there anon.

Personally, at this point, I’m just here for the ride because i trust Noelle Stevenson with my life and She-Ra is the best show i’ve EVER seen. and i’m gonna keep talking about catradora kissing because

[nomadicism]

Voltron: Legendary Planning Fail

Thanks to @ptw30​‘s post, “A Few Thoughts on DW/VLD Marketing” for reminding me that I’ve had a draft about VLD toys, merch, and marketing copy inconsistencies to complete. Read her post first.

I’ve been researching the toys and merch for several months now to follow-up on weird things that I noticed much earlier. I’m a toy collector who is also a designer and have worked in advertising/marketing, and in broadcasting at Cartoon Network. I left that world to design and develop applications in genetics/life-sciences, best decision I ever made (co-founded a startup in between all of that too. Good times). My experiences had me zeroing in on this show bible business that came up during that Let’s Voltron interview (March 28th, 2019). I’ve been suspicious about it for awhile, as the gradual unraveling of VLD’s narrative, lore retconning, and OOC dialogue and behavior of the characters (most egregiously in S8) is indicative of a lot of problems, and an incomplete or poorly-done show bible is at the top of that list. Now combine that with the weirdly slow-to-market of VLD merchandise and toys.

Both manufacturers and merchandise license program partners can’t get product to market in time to meet (or even anticipate demand) if they don’t have official assets from the show, and that includes anything that would have been in the show bible. When the show-runners let it out that their show-bible was the “loosest you’ll ever see”, and then complained about the elemental icons used on the toys by the manufacturer (Playmates) not matching their aesthetic, and after they redesigned them, Playmates didn’t want to use them, I was like: “Really? Y’all got hung up on that?”

It takes months, sometimes over a year, to design and test molds for toy prototypes and then to go into mass production and distribution. Traditionally, there is also a step where the IP holder has to approve the design concepts created by the manufacturer (toys and other merch).

The IP approval step could potentially have been made more complicated by the different players involved in the communication: WEP, DreamWorks Animation, Playmates, Studio Mir, and the most complicated layer of all, DreamWorks Classics, aka Classic Media. All of them could have been involved, I’m not saying that they all were, but it’s something to consider.

DreamWorks acquired Classic Media in 2011-2012 and formed them into a separate unit within DreamWorks Animation. Classic Media were the managers of the Voltron IP among many other brands in their huge IP library. That’s the short version b/c it’s complicated. IP ownership and licensing is not always as straight-forward as one might think, especially with these toy-cartoon properties from the 80s.

So where did the elemental icons come in during the creation of the show bible and toy design approval process?

Above: packaging inserts showing the elemental icons.

I kept the package inserts because—as a toy collector—I strongly felt that the packaging was done very well. The graphics are slick and look good. The ink has a nice saturation with a lot of color depth, range, and fidelity. The die-cuts are excellent and intricate. The packaging on the larger lion sets makes great use of aqueous coating and spot varnishes. Whomever designed the packaging knew what they were doing, and also understood the print production process (Hi! I used to do that too).

I kept these even though I always ditch packaging because I wanted to scan them for collage art. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these elemental icons, and they look reasonably well integrated with the graphic assets from DreamWorks and Studio Mir. These inserts were from the toys released in 2017.

The toy packaging gets more interesting when you see what marketing copy was sent to Playmates to use (or work from if it was from the show bible).

Above: Shiro’s package insert with descriptive text that says, “Long ago a mighty robot warrior, Voltron, was created to protect the galaxy from evil. Now, five young heroes must master the power of the Voltron Lions to defeat the Galra empire and restore peace!”

“Five young heroes” eh? They must have gotten that text early on because that’s kind of a weird way to say it when the Shiro packaging also says “…wise beyond his 25 years…”. I mean, 25 is still young, but that’s not what comes to mind when I read “five young heroes” on a toy box!

Shiro is the only one with a listed age in any of the packaging. I noticed this when I got these toys in 2017 and it reminded me that I had originally read that it would be five teenagers and I had to go looking for articles that I kept (yeah I do that b/c toys).

From this article on ActionFigureInsider.com about Playmates launching the VLD toyline in 2016:

“Let’s Voltron! Playmates Toys and DreamWorks Animation today announced plans for a new toy line based on the new DreamWorks Animation series Voltron: Legendary Defender, a re-imagining of the classic property featuring five teenage pilots and mystical robot lions, set to debut as a Netflix Original Series in 2016. Playmates Toys will serve as the master toy licensee and will create an expansive line of toys set to launch in spring 2017.”

and

“Voltron: Legendary Defender follows five unsuspecting teenagers as they are transported from Earth into the middle of a sprawling intergalactic war and become pilots for five mystical robotic lions in a battle to protect the universe from evil. Only through the true power of teamwork can they unite their lions to form the mighty warrior known as Voltron. Voltron: Legendary Defender premieres on Netflix in 2016.”

LULZ. That ain’t no fluke y’all. That loosey-goosey show bible and the initial story planning drafts/concepts must have had Shiro as a teenager. Oops.

Playmates got part of the message in time to slip-in Shiro’s age on his packaging, but why the discrepancy between the article in early 2016 and the 2017 toy release in the first place?

Obviously, things changed between the first story planning phases, the release of marketing copy to media, the release of production art assets to Playmates, and when S1 was made. There still would have been time to update that copy for Playmates and media in early 2016, given that S1 would have already been in production, with S2 to quickly follow by that time. The show-runners already knew before that article ran that Shiro was not going to be a teenager anymore (and likely many other toy-relevant details). Did they intentionally not update anyone who had a right to know, or did it just slip their minds? Did someone else in the chain of communication mess up? Did that disagreement over the design of the elemental icons take up a lot of time, or possibly include larger disagreements?

Since the first wave of toys were released in 2017, when Keith was in the Black Lion, they would have been designed for production and manufactured much earlier than that. Playmates can’t turn around on a dime to manufacture toys (not to mention design the packaging) to match the seasons. They need to have the information of what will happen in a season way ahead of time. This is one of many banal-yet-important reasons why your show bible needs to be tight, and your character arcs well-planned out.

We can see the first wave of the toys in photos from Toyfair 2017. There’s even a Zarkon figure, and various toys that are clearly for young boys (prop swords, masks, and the like). I remember seeing these photos right after Toyfair and thinking that Zarkon figure was looking pretty cool looking for what it was.

Above: Zarkon prototype figure with black bayard sword. Photo by Jim Kiernan for NerdyRottenScoundrel.com.

Since Playmates was able to create a prototype of Zarkon ahead of Toyfair 2017, that means that they began the design phase in early 2016 before the show first aired (possibly before that even). This also means that they knew that Zarkon had the black bayard, so that much was planned out.

Then in Toyfair 2018, Playmates had new toys, including prototypes for the Hunk, Pidge, and Allura figures, the HyperPhase lions, and the “Stealth Mode” translucent lions. It’s worth noting that photos of the Pidge and Hunk paladin figures show up on the inserts in the 2017 toys as they were originally intended to be part of that wave.

Above: Prototypes for the Allura, Pidge, and Hunk paladin figures. Photo by Joe Moore for Toyark.com.

So salty that Playmates cancelled these.

Below, an excellent video from Toyfair 2018 where Pixel Dan asks the hard questions of the rep (if video doesn’t show here is the URL to it on YouTube):

Pixel Dan asks about the possibility of a Lotor figure, and what happened to the other villain figures from 2017 (e.g. the Zarkon figure, and there was a prototype for another robeast other than Myzax). The rep says those were pushed back, and there “will be more Lotors” (LOL) in the next phases in development. I’m pretty sure he got Lotor confused for Zarkon.

It’s important to note that Pixel Dan and the rep talk a lot about the slow distribution of the first wave of figures based upon what retailers were doing with their ordering and stock. That people weren’t seeing them in stores. The rep explains that the toys are made in response to demand and that’s also up to the retailers to order them, but there’s also some comments that I interpreted as though they didn’t have enough details about what to make in the first place.

For those who haven’t already seen me share ToyGalaxy’s excellent video about the action figure industry being broken, give it a watch:

The video above explains a lot about why Playmates had problems with distribution, as ALL manufacturers were-and-still-are having distribution problems. It’s really hard to find toys at stores, my partner and I go hunting all the time, the lengths we go to are absurd.

I’m certain that retail distribution problems contributed to demand for the toys and that’s partly why they were cancelled. But this problem with the show bible also contributes because if Playmates had future season information when they should have, then they might have been able to design toys that more closely matched the show, thus boosting demand once it hit critical mass. I also wonder how much time they lost in the beginning due to the back-and-forth over the elemental icons.

Other merch, like t-shirts should also have been in production before 2017. They would have required details from the show bible as well. We could have had lion slippers y’all. Just sayin’.

So about those Allura with the Red Lion t-shirts that @ptw30​ mentioned in her post:

Above: officially licensed t-shirts for Allura and Keith with the Red Lion, bearing the fire element icon.

Someone (ptw30? headspacedad?) called these shirts to my attention privately a few months ago—after S8 but ahead of Hot Topic’s recent new t-shirt release—and alarm bells went off in my head. Typically, this is the kind of error that you’d see in a knock-off, but these are officially licensed and they were linked to directly from the Voltron store page (at the time they had a re-direct promo image for merch on Amazon, in addition to what they sell on their own store page).

Descriptive text in the shopping page for all of the t-shirts of this style reads:

“Join the Paladins Shiro, Keith, Lance, Pidge, Hunk and Coran as they combine their lion mechas together to form Voltron! Help them take on the Evil Galra Empire with these officially licensed Voltron: Legendary Defender graphic tees, pullover hoodies and popsockets!”

Coran eh? Interesting choice for text about combining lions. Why no mention of Allura on her own t-shirt? And what the hell is a popsocket?

On another Allura t-shirt—which also has different product specification text indicating that it’s probably not manufactured by the company that made the t-shirts above—has descriptive text that reads:

“Voltron is the classic cartoon series that began in the early ‘80s. It is an animated show that brings back the nostalgia of classic cartoon fever. Not to mention a popular show pretty much stole the idea. (starts with pow- ends with -angers….) Voltron will always be number #1! This women’s junior’s shirt features a high quality character design of Princess Allura and Blue Lion.”

Why are they dragging Power Rangers in the text for an Allura t-shirt?

And actually, it’s incorrect. Power Rangers aka Tokusatsu Sentai shows came first. Voltron/GoLion descends from the combining mecha genre that began with Go Nagai’s Getter Robo series in the 70s, which was influenced by the Tokusatsu Sentai shows. So no, Power Rangers didn’t steal that idea.

Did anyone involved with VLD do their homework other than Tim Hedrick and May Chan?

We can see here that the t-shirts that are available on the Voltron store, and what’s available on Amazon are not always the same, even though the shirts say they are officially licensed. What’s going on here?

Some—but not all—of the t-shirts in the Voltron store list “From Trevco” in their description. Trevco.inc does licensing for branded merchandise, and selling t-shirts via Amazon appear to be one of their licensing product programs. Both DreamWorks Animation and Voltron: Legendary Defender are among the brands listed. Oh look, another layer in IP licensing cake!

Meanwhile, in the Hot Topic store, there’s a completely different style—in terms of aesthetic and design—of both VLD and Voltron DotU t-shirts being sold. I suspect that HT licensed VLD and Voltron DotU for in-house design, plus artist collaboration design, as these are exclusive for Hot Topic and I’ve not seen them anywhere else. That could mean they have a different kind of license than what Trevco and others selling on Amazon have. The t-shirts from HT don’t list any other manufacturer on the label, other than being made in Haiti. I kind of want to buy that weird Allura with Red Lion t-shirt to just compare them. (Surprising no one, I bought the Lot//ura and Black Paladin Shiro t-shirts from HT).

The difference in style between what’s on WEP’s Voltron store and Amazon, versus what’s in Hot Topic is very interesting, and I assume it has a lot to do with demographics for their respective markets (perceived or real). In a traditional merchandize licensing agreement, WEP and/or DW would still have to approve any designs created by—or if artist collaboration with—Hot Topic.

How long did that approval process take?

The recent release of t-shirts (Feb/March 2019) include a t-shirt with a scene from S5 (the chosen marks scene for Allura and Lotor). There are no MFEs, Atlas, white-haired Shiro, or anything else from S7-S8. There is a Keith t-shirt with his cosmic wolf, and a shirt with the Monsters and Mana designs, so they got something from S6.

Above: Funko Pops. I’ve got a poorly-painted Allura (her right earring and tiara y’all), both Shiros, and the Pidge, Hunk, and Amazon Exclusive metallic paint VLD Voltron (Pidge, Hunk, and Voltron not pictured).

The VLD Funko Pops came out in the end of 2018 but ahead of S8. I’ve seen them at Hot Topic, and online (Amazon, and BigBadToyStore.com), but I have not seen them at other retailers that carry Funko Pops like GameStop and Target. We go toy hunting to those all the time, in many different places. I guess that demographic of boys aged 9-12 just aren’t interested in VLD to demand it at GameStop and Target. At least Hot Topic knows what’s up.

The Funko Pops use Allura’s uniform from S1-S2, and have two designs for Shiro (Black Paladin, and his black outfit). How long did these take to license and approve? Funko Pops are the lowest hanging merch fruit, so they should have been an obvious licensing choice by the end of 2016 once it was clear that VLD was a hit. But we didn’t see these until just before S8?

Finally, apparently WEP and the Voltron Store don’t mind those elemental icons that the show-runners hated, since they have a lanyard with them on it in their store (image below):

It’s almost as if no one is on the same page!

If I didn’t know any better—oh wait, I do because this is kind of my thing—it looks like these elemental logos were designed to be like Boy Scout merit badges. That’s fitting as the toys were meant to be bought by boys aged 9-12, and are safe for children aged 4 and up. With over 15 years of professional design experience across multiple fields and domains of design, if I were designing these, that’s exactly what I would have done from Playmates’ end, especially if DW and WEP had told me that their target demo was boys aged 9-12.

Shouldn’t the show-runners and Studio Mir’s very different design aesthetic have been made clear in the show bible and in any discussions and communications with Playmates (and whomever else was involved)? Who was responsible for communicating that?

To be clear, I like Studio Mir’s aesthetic much better, but what I like is irrelevant when we’re talking about toys and target demographics for marketing them, vs what’s appropriate for merchandise that could be for all kinds of demographics.

I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to design in parallel with an outside agency, and in the dark with little communication between us. It’s an awful position to be in, and I’m surprised that DreamWorks didn’t know better than to make sure that didn’t happen between those designing for the show and Playmates and anyone at DreamWorks Classics and WEP that might have been involved in communications.

I spat out my coffee when I read that bit about the show bible, because damn, if you’ve ever had to design an ad campaign (which can last for years!) with a half-assed or incomplete branding guide and little-to-no marketing and romance copy (let alone a style guide to help your copy editors write it), then you’re looking at a huge mess once that thing finally gets finished.

How did DreamWorks not catch that?

[panda-noosh]

Hold Me While You Wait {Shiro x Reader}{The Rockstars Series}

The Rockstar Series: a series of fics documenting rockstar!Voltron falling in love.

Words: 14k

Summary: What a coincidence that the first person to catch you breaking and entering is also the lyricist for your favourite band.

Genre: angst

Warnings: swearing - violence - abuse  

Notes: masterlist - well the rockstar series took an angsty ass turn. 

--

The window was open. That was their first mistake.

   It was almost as if this stranger wanted you to crawl into their house. The open window, the fact that they were never home. It was the perfect setting for a perfectly set out plan – one you were going to put into action today.

  Lotor took the lead, struggling to fit his broad shoulders through the relatively cramped window panes that apartments on this side of town provided. You stood impatiently behind him, arms folded over your chest and eyes gazing up into the sky – nobody could see you, considering the stranger hadn't cut down their trees in a number of years.

    “Take your time,” you jabbed. “I'll just wait here.”

  “Be quiet!” Lotor hissed, before he finally managed to squeeze himself through the window. He stumbled, just barely catching himself on a small coffee table holding an empty fruit bowl. You followed in after him, managing to squeeze through a lot quicker.

  Lotor glared at you as if that very fact was an insult on his pride.

  You ignored him and started what you had come here to do; even though you knew you had all the time in the world, there was still a sense of rush that came with doing things like this. Zarkon would never forgive you if you and Lotor walked back to the house with nothing to show for the days endeavours – those were the worst kinds of punishments. He hated it when you spoke back to him, hated it when you were out late, hated it when you didn't pick up the phone, but the worst kind of punishments always came when the two of you didn't do your job right.

  The apartment was smaller than you were led to believe from the outside. There was a sofa, a small TV, a small kitchen and three steps leading to a hallway that directed you to what you assumed had to be a bedroom and the bathroom.

  “I'll take the living room,” Lotor said. “Stuff in here is heavier.”

  You nodded, refusing to argue. You darted up the three steps and headed for the first door you could see. Opening it revealed a bedroom, a double bed in the middle, a guitar propped up in the corner, multiple crumpled up pages strewn across the floor. You didn't fail to notice the half-open bin of notebooks at the end of his bed – where most people kept a hamper of clothes, another desk perhaps, this stranger kept a bin full of old, used notebooks.

    You would be lying to say the curiosity within you didn't peak, because it certainly did. You had broken into many, many houses in your time, and each one had a story of their own. Why did they choose that wallpaper? Why did they like the pattern on that sofa? What made them not want to get Sky and instead suffer through the limited channels of Freeview?

  For this particular house, why did this stranger decide to keep an abundant amount of notebooks?

  You couldn't give yourself the time to think of an answer. Downstairs, you could already hear Lotor shuffling around, the crinkle of his bin bag as he stuffed it full of possessions that were not his own. You shoved the guilt to the side and darted into the bedroom, unrolling your own bin bag and starting from the bottom.

  You started with clothes. Mens clothes, mainly consisting of black and whites, a few grey shirts thrown in for selections sake. They looked close enough to Zarkons size – he would be happy about that. He would praise you for those.

    You moved on to the wardrobe. Inside, another guitar was propped up. You ignored the twitch of your fingers, that voice in the back of your head that was telling you to just give it a go. Just this one time. But already you had passed boundaries that nobody should ever pass, and you didn't want to throw any further risk on yourself or Lotor.

  So you shoved past it and dug inside the shoe boxes that were lined up by the wardrobe wall. Inside was even more notebooks.

   You frowned. What the hell? Were you dealing with a collector? Were any of them actually used? You didn't know, but you wanted to find out.

  Lotor was still rummaging around downstairs. You were ahead of the game, had a few extra minutes to kill before the two of you would start going through the escape plan and getting the hell out of here...

  You convinced yourself. You reached forward and snatched one of the notebooks up, leaning back on your heels to read through it.

  Lyrics.

   Lyrics, poetry – whatever it was, it littered each and every page. The words were accompanied by tiny doodles, the words 'Smokey Saturdays' written across the top of one of the pages in big, bold lettering.

  So the stranger was a fan of Smokey Saturdays too.

  The fact amused you; you had been a fan of Smokey Saturdays for years now, having bought their debut album entirely on a whim when you and Lotor were out perusing the high street for Zarkon. You had been a fan ever since, and here you kneeled in a strangers home, getting ready to steal their belongings, only to get distracted by the fact that they had something in common with you.

  “It's a small world,” you mumbled, before Lotor's heavy feet came barrelling through the hallway.

  You whirled around just in time to see his red face appear in the entrance. He skidded to a halt, grasped the door frame and said three little worlds that sent your heart stamping into overdrive; “He's home early.”

  You had no time to think about your actions, to think about the bin bag you had left stranded on the strangers bed. You shoved the notebook back into his shoe box, slammed the cupboard door closed and followed Lotor out into the living room – the living room that lad been left an absolute mess by Lotor's grappling hands.

  You froze. “We can't leave it like this.”

  Lotor was busy stuffing towels into his bin bag. “We don't have a fucking choice, alright? Now help me haul this thing back down the fire escape. Did you get yours?”

  Your heart thundered as you shook your head. Lotor's gaze hardened, his mouth opening; he was on the verge of yelling at you, on the verge of telling you how stupid you were because you both knew what this meant – you would arrive home empty handed, and Zarkon wouldn't like it. He would lose his head. He would punish you.

  Nonetheless, Lotor was smarter than that. He was also aware of the time crunch, and refused to spend another moment dwelling on your failures – not whenever the man who owned this house was on his way upstairs.

  “Fine,” Lotor said, going back to his own collecting. “It's fine. We're fine. Maybe my bag will be enough. Now help me-”

  He swung the bag over his shoulder and darted to the open window. You stumbled after him, gripping the window frame-

  Lotor tried to squeeze through and got caught halfway. Your heart sank.

  “Not now,” you whispered. “Lotor, not now.”

  “I can't help it!” he hissed, struggling against the frame. “Fuck, this hurts!”

  He had managed to launch the bag through the window, but his body refused to follow. You shoved your shoulder into his side, but you did nothing besides cause him pain. He swung his head back, white hair billowing over his shoulder.

  “We'll need another method.”

 “Hurry up!” you hissed. “You said he was home!”

  “I saw his car pull into the car park,” Lotor replied, before he inhaled deeply, turned back to the window and-

  He fell down the fire escape seconds before the front door opened and a voice echoed out in the living room.

  “What the hell?”

  Of course there was nothing you could say to explain what was going on. You didn't even want to turn around, afraid of what you would see because it was obvious what you would see – the stranger would be stood there, and he would see you and he would see the mess Lotor had left behind. It wouldn't take him long to add two and two together.

  You pursed your lips and slowly rotated to face him. He stood in the doorway, handling a guitar case, his eyes wide and his cheeks flushed with what was obviously exhaustion and shock mingling into one. He didn't look up to meet your eyes when you turned. He just stood there and stared, grip tightening on the handle of his leather guitar case.

  You recognised him.

  You recognised him, because he had been on the back of those albums you adored so dearly. You recognised him, because his name had been plastered over the acknowledgements of those very same albums, the word 'LYRICIST' stapled to his name. You had watched interviews with him, had never taken much notice of him because he wasn't part of the band but in more ways than one, he made the band.

  You swallowed thickly. This was Takashi Shirogane – Shiro. The man who wrote all the songs for Smokey Saturdays.

  He was a celebrity, and you had just been caught stealing from his apartment.

   You were so lost in your own thoughts that you barely registered the moment he looked up and met your eyes. They were a harsh grey colour, but you could only imagine they looked ten times more fierce now.

  You coughed, scratching the back of your neck. “I can clean this up if you want.”

   “Who the hell are you? And what did you do?” he barked. The anger had been released. He dropped his guitar case to the floor and darted forward. You flinched, half expecting him to grab you and toss you out the window, but he did no such thing. As you curled back against the wall protectively, he dropped to his knees beside his shredded sofa.

  “It wasn't – I mean, it wasn't me exactly,” you said, before wincing. “But that doesn't really help the situation, does it?”

  “I'm calling the police.”

  Your eyes widened. He stood up, headed towards his phone but you latched on to his arm before he could get very far. Where the momentum had come from, you could not pinpoint, but the sudden adrenaline rush that came with such a threat was unlike anything you had ever felt before.

  He looked down at where your hands wrapped around his bicep and raised a brow. A muscle continued to twitch in his jaw, a sure sign that he was still furious, and still had every intention to call the police on you.

  “Listen, why don't we just talk for a minute?” You were trying. It wasn't working.

  “I've got nothing to say to you,” he growled. “Get off me before I get you done for assault, too. It'll be easy enough with the theft charges.”

  “No, look, we don't have to go down that route.” Even as you continued begging, you uncurled your fingers from his arm. You stood back and watched him as he headed back into the kitchen – the window behind you was open. The fact you weren't running and clambering back out onto the fire escape was one that confused you just as much as it must have been confusing Shiro.

  He wasn't listening to you. He continued to stare, but the desperation in your voice was clearly not registering with him; he dialled those three essential numbers, pulled the phone to his ear-

  You dove for him.

  Hurting him was not your intention. You were wiser than that. Plus, you had eyes. It was clear that Shiro could overpower you in a matter of seconds if he so wanted; the idea of pinning him down was beyond even your imagination.

  Instead, you reached for the phone and smashed it against the sink.

  It shattered. Pieces of plastic and glass flew left, right and centre. A pain welled up in your wrist, and you bit your lip to stop from crying out because, at this moment in time, you had no right to be complaining about your pain. Blood dripped from a fresh cut in your hand, but you span around and darted for the living room before Shiro could mention it.

  “Hey! Hey, don't you dare!”

  You stumbled, catching yourself on an upturned piece of furniture. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That was so uncalled for. Jesus Christ, I'm making this worse for myself-”

    “You're gonna fucking bleed out, you maniac.”

    You jumped, turning just in time for Shiro to catch up to you. He grabbed your wrist and tugged you – not kindly – back into the kitchen, shaking his head.

  “You broke my fucking phone,” he mumbled almost to himself. “You broke into my house, ruined my stuff, and I'm sat here bandaging you up...”

   “I'm sorry,” you repeated.

  Shiro glared at you. “Stop saying that.”

  Never before had you been so confused.

  This wasn't how it was supposed to go. You were supposed to be in the back of a police car at this point, or at least handcuffed to a table leg as you waited for the polices arrival. However, you were doing neither of those things – instead, you were being lowered onto a wooden chair with a celebrity cradling your wounded hand. Blood welled up from the fresh cut, and it took everything in you not to pass out at the sight. It reminded you of Zarkon, something you did not want to think about right now – it brought you back to your punishments, the punishments that he would inflict on you if you eventually got home, the punishments he would inflict on Lotor.

  You shivered. Shiro's grip tightened on your hand, stilling you as he dabbed water onto your open wound.

  “I want answers,” he said, ignoring your clear discomfort. “I want answers, or else I'm calling the police and getting you arrested.”

  You swallowed thickly, looking up at him. He didn't look back at you, but instead continued to dab at your open wound with his black hair falling into his face. He looked so much taller than he did in interviews. His voice was a lot sterner, though you had a vague idea that that was more due to circumstance than anything else.

  “Anything,” you replied. “I'll answer anything.” And you would, because you could not afford to go to prison.

  “How did you get in?”

  “The fire escape.”

  “What did you take?”

  “Nothing.”

  He raised a brow. “Was that a lie?”

  “I'm still in your apartment. I didn't take anything. I never got the chance to.”

  “But you wanted to.”

   You paused. “I guess.”

   “What's that supposed to mean?”

  You shifted your gaze to the open fire escape. “None of it was for me.”

    He tested this statement out for a second, narrowing his eyes. “Did you find my address online or something? Was it leaked?”

  “No. I didn't even know this was your house until you walked in.”

   “You know who I am?”

 “Oh yeah. Big fan.” You cringed. “Sorry.”

   He shook his head, pushing his tongue into his cheek. “You're too young to be doing this kind of thing.”

   “I'm not much younger than you.”

   “That doesn't mean anything,” he snapped. “I would be too young to be doing this. It's not right. You have so much left to do, and you're spending your time breaking into other peoples houses.”

    “Not by choice, you know.” The words were out before you could stop them. Fear spiked in your system as soon as you realised you had spoken aloud, eyes darting back to the fire escape. Somehow, somewhere, Zarkon had heard that sentence and he was on his way to punish you right now, no doubt having already beaten Lotor to a pulp, maybe even to death. Your heart thundered in your chest, and you reached your good hand up to your pulse, pressing down on it as if that would-

  Shiro grabbed your wrist and lowered it. He was looking up at you now, eyebrows raised and mouth quirked. “Woah. Hey. What's wrong? You look like you're about to pass out.”

  “I'm fine,” you snapped, not entirely meaning to. You shook Shiro's hand off of you and stood up. Your hand was still bleeding. You ignored it. “Look, are you going to call the police or not? I can – I can help you clean up. I can get your stuff back. I just need to get back home before – before people realise I'm gone.”

   Shiro didn't answer. He just stared at you, a grey gaze that held so much emotion and power it almost made you stumble. In any other circumstances, you would have perhaps been hit with a wave of awe at the fact one of the most respected celebrities in your repertoire was standing before you, but the panic that had risen to the surface was blocking out any other natural, human emotion.

  You needed out. You needed to make sure Lotor had gotten home safe, was still breathing, that Zarkon hadn't gone too hard on him. There was no doubt in your mind that he would receive some sort of punishment – that couldn't be avoided – but Zarkon needed to understand this was your fault. You were the one who had gotten distracted by some stupid lyric book, the one who had left their bin bag on the bedroom floor, the one who had insisted Lotor go first, only for him to get stuck.

  You swallowed thickly and turned away from his gaze. “I need to go home.”

   “Your hand is gonna get infected.”

  “It'll be fine.”

  “No.” Shiro reached out, grabbed your hand and tugged you forward again. “It won't. Now sit down and let me get some bandages. And then you're gonna tell me who you're so afraid of.”

  ---  

   It was silent. It shouldn't have been silent.

  He should have been yelling. He should have been screaming, threatening you, asking questions you could never safely answer. He should have hated you, and yet he was sat cradling your bandaged hand in his own, refusing to look at you.

  You were good at profiling people. A trick Zarkon had taught you from a very young age, because he liked to know that nobody could slip past him – not when you and Lotor were around. Lotor was basically a human lie detector, whilst you had been trained to slip into the minds of others, get a glimpse of their next move before they had even done it.

  It was easy enough to do with Shiro. Though he was quiet, he wore his emotions on his face. Already he'd made a comment on your age, how you were too young to be doing this kind of thing. Judging by the way he refused to look up at you, the way he treated you so delicately, it was obvious he still believed that, and it was obvious that he was conflicted over whether or not to punish you for the crimes you had committed.

  His silence was good, though. Unnatural, but good. It gave you time to come up with a lie about why you had been so startled only a few minutes prior – something you were still ashamed to admit. Zarkon would call you all the names under the sun if he knew you had let your guard down so easily.

  “So when are you gonna start talking?” Shiro piped up.

  “When you tell me what you wanna know.”

  “I've already told you.” He looked up, your hand dropping to your side. “Who are you so afraid of?”

  You pursed your lips. “An awfully personal question for someone I've just met.”

   “A question you should be answering if you don't want me to call the police.”

   You faltered. “Good point.”

  He simply nodded. You were hoping he would talk some more, but he knew what he was doing – if he started talking, you would only stall further.

  You inhaled deeply. “It's just . . . . somebody I know. Somebody I've known for a while.”

  “Is this person friendly?”

  Your silence was answer enough.

  Shiro sighed, running a hand through his black hair. He crouched on the floor in front of you, one hand resting on his knee whilst the other tousled and messed with his hair. He chewed the inside of his lip, mind no doubt working at a million miles per hour.

  “It's okay,” you said. “If I just get home to him now, he shouldn't be too angry...”

  Shiro glanced up. “Do you wanna go home?”

  The question struck you into silence. Having lived with Lotor your entire life, you had grown used to the tactic of just falling silent whenever you wanted to lie; you could never lie around Lotor. You often forgot that not everyone in the world could sense deception as easily as him.

  By the time this realisation dawned on you, it was too late to backtrack your silence. Shiro had caught on to it, examined it and was staring at you intently. You bit the inside of your cheek and looked away.

  “This is – This is gonna sound ridiculous,” he started. “But you can stay with me overnight if you want. If you really don't wanna go back there.”

  Your heartbeat thundered in your ears. Your jaw dropped open. Your mind worked at a thousand miles per hour, because nothing he had said made sense; he was meant to be fuming. He was meant to hate you! It was common practise, common knowledge that a person wasn't supposed to offer the person that had stolen from them refuge, even if they needed it. Even if the idea of going home was so gut wrenching it almost made them double over.

  But Shiro didn't look like he was joking. His face was relaxed, shoulders slouched with just an eyebrow peaking to show that he held any emotion to his words at all. It made your stomach flip.

  “You can't be serious,” was all you could say.

  “I can set a room up for you quickly,” he said, already standing up. “If I can't, I can just hire out a room across the hall for the night. It's not a big deal.”

  You scrambled up after him, wincing at the pull of your hand. “You don't have to do this. I tried to steal from you, for christs sake.”

  “And you clearly regret it,” Shiro shot back. “You're young. I'm giving you a chance.”

  “You keep calling me young as if that excuses anything.”

  Shiro shrugged. “It doesn't. But I'm young, too, which means I know just how much life you have left to live. Life you won't be able to live if you keep doing what you're doing.”

   He wasn't listening. He was being generous for the sake of it, not knowing the true extent of his actions. Zarkon would come and find you eventually. He would grow tired of waiting for you to return home on your own like the good little lap dog you were, and he would come for you – with Lotor in his reach, it would be easy enough to get your location.

  He would kill Shiro for even trying to protect you, because in Zarkons eyes, there was nothing to protect you from. In Zarkons eyes, he was doing the right thing. Always.

  Shiro was heading towards his bedroom by the time you finally caught up to him. You tried to grab his arm, but he pulled it out of your grip and pushed open the door before you could; it was then that he saw the damage you had done.

  It wasn't much, not nearly as bad as the living room, but your bin bag was still slung carelessly on the bed, and there was no denying that you had definitely been rummaging around in his stuff. You faltered in the doorway – maybe this would be it. Maybe the evidence of your infiltration would finally break him, and he'd throw you out and tell you to never come back again – that's what he needed to do. That was the wise thing to do.

  But he simply inhaled, shot you a glare over his shoulder and said, “At least you didn't take the covers. You're gonna need those.”

   You closed your eyes. “You're fucking insane.”

   “Ah well.”

  ---

  You fell asleep and woke up in Shiro's bed.

  He had slept on the sofa downstairs, generously giving you his own bed despite your protestations. The two of you had been up until the early hours of the morning, with you questioning him on his motives, and him simply shrugging as if this arrangement meant nothing. He was too casual. He was treating you too kindly.

  Nonetheless, you had never slept better. You awoke with no pain in your neck, no pain in your lower back – not like you usually do. It was a good change, and you found yourself smiling as you hauled yourself from beneath his covers and made your way downstairs.

  He tried to clean up the living room. It was still a mess, the coffee table still broken, but it was beginning to look a little less messy than it had the night before. Maybe that could calm some of your guilt.

  Shiro was still asleep on the sofa when you walked in. One arm was draped over his forehead, the other dangling off the sofa that looked two sizes too small for him. His bare feet dangled over the opposite arm rest, the spare quilt bundled between his legs, his pillow long since knocked to the floor.

  Despite his cramped form, he looked peaceful.

  You made your way to the kitchen, pulled two mugs out of the cupboard and started the morning tea. It must have been the sound of the kettle boiling that roused Shiro into consciousness, as he groaned, rolled over and just barely managed to catch himself on the floor before falling flat on his face.

  You turned. “Good morning.”

  “You're still here,” was his immediate response, as groggy as it was. “I thought you'd have taken off by now.”

  “How is that any way for a person to say thank you?” You folded your arms over your chest. “I'm making tea. Do you drink tea?”

  “I'm more of a coffee person.”

   “Diabolical.”

  “What time is it?” He sat up, the quilt sliding down to show off his bare chest.

  “8:30.”

   His eyes immediately widened. He struggled against the quilt before stumbling off the sofa and grabbing for his phone. He opened it, groaned and ran his hands through his hair in that way you had seen him do so often the previous night.

  “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. My alarm didn't go off.”

   You raised a brow. “Alarm?”

  “I was meant to be meeting Hunk and Keith at the studio today to go over some last minute details for the album,” he replied, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. “I'm already a half hour late.”

   You frowned, despite the thumping of your heart and the urge to smile brewing in your stomach. You knew who Hunk and Keith were. They were the voices you heard on your albums, the guitar and the drums that pulled the songs together. You wouldn't admit it to Shiro, but the idea of meeting them was exciting to say the very least.

  You quickly reigned that hope back in, because it was pointless. Shiro would never let you meet his friends, because you weren't a friend. You were someone he took pity on.

  “I have to get down there now,” he continued. “Get dressed.”

  You faltered. “Sorry?”

  He clicked his fingers, already dragging the quilt back onto the sofa. “Get dressed. We're leaving as soon as possible.”

  You stumbled. “I don't have any clothes to wear, and I can't just-”

   “You can borrow some of mine,” he said. “Forgive me, Y/N, but I don't exactly trust you alone in my apartment at the moment.”

  You ignored how greatly those words affected you.

  “Go pick something from my wardrobe and meet me back down here.” He looked down at his phone, gritted his teeth and said, “Fuck,” one final time before you shot off upstairs and got ready.

  ---

   Shiro might not have called the police on you, but forcing you to appear in front of two musicians you looked up to wearing his clothes was punishment enough for your actions the previous afternoon.

  Even Shiro couldn't keep the small smile off his his face as the two of you approached the doors of the studio. His grey shirt reached your knees when you first put it on, and you were forced to tuck it into a pair of basketball shorts he gave you – basketball shorts that you were pulling up every two seconds.

  “This is humiliating,” you said through gritted teeth, trying to keep your voice low in the quiet hallways.

  Shiro glanced down at you, said nothing, but you made out the twitch of his lips. You rolled your eyes.

  Soon, you both stopped at a door made of glass, a black curtain drawn over it from the inside. Shiro opened the door, and your heart immediately lurched into your throat.

  Because they were there, and they were real, and this entire situation was actually happening.

  Your throat closed over. You forced yourself to follow Shiro into the room, even as your legs felt heavy and your palms became sweaty with nerves. You quickly dashed them along Shiro's basketball shorts, hoped you were being subtle enough for them to not notice.

  Keith turned around first, a black bass guitar propped up on his knee. His black hair was partly hidden beneath a grey beanie, and he wore a red jacket affixed with a black shirt underneath. A large brown belt dug into his abdomen, keeping a pair of dark, ripped jeans fixed upon his waist.

  “Look who finally decided to show up,” he said, strumming a few low tones on his bass. “Over half an hour late, Shiro. What kept you?”

  “Nothing,” Shiro replied without missing a beat. “I just slept in. What have you got so far?”

  Hunk had yet to turn around, but you were swooning nonetheless. His large bulk was huddled over a computer, a complicated looking program pulled up on screen. He was chewing at his thumb nail, his dark eyes narrowed and focused purely on what he was working on. In one hand he held the mouse, the other a single drum stick which he twirled round and round his index finger with professional precision.

  “We're doing the basic chords for Keiths solo,” Hunk replied without turning round.

  “So why am I here?”

    “We agreed that you would control the panel whilst I did the drums.” Hunk raised a brow, shooting Shiro a sideways glance. “Jesus, Shiro. You're usually on top of your game. What's wrong?”

  Keith raised a brow in your direction, the first sign of anyone in the room noticing your presence. “I think I can tell you the answer to that.”

  Shiro clicked his fingers in Keith's face, forcing the boys attention back to him. “Leave them out of this. They're just here because they didn't want to be left alone in my apartment.”

   “Apartment?” Keith said, slowly pulling himself out of his usual slouch. “You were in his apartment?” The question was directed at you. If you weren't still trying to figure out where your fluency of the English language had suddenly disappeared to, you would have replied with a snarky comment.

  But you could only stay silent, gaze bouncing between Keith and Shiro in a desperate attempt to get Shiro to acknowledge that he really needed to take the reigns right about now.

  With his eyes still glued to the computer screen, Shiro sent a swift kick into Keith's leg. “I said, leave them out of this.”

   Keith hummed, narrowed his eyes at you one last time before he stood up and headed towards the booth on the other side of the room. “Just tell me when to start.”

  Hunk sent him a thumbs up, and that's when business ensued.

  You hovered by the door, watching the magic unfold with utmost interest. It wasn't faked. You didn't grow bored, despite the fact that you were doing nothing. You watched as Shiro and Hunk took control of the panels, as Keith blasted his bass guitar in the microphone, closing his eyes and getting lost in the rock music you had listened to so many times by now.

  Rock music had never been your forte. In fact, music as a whole wasn't something you would say you particularly enjoyed – it was difficult to enjoy something you weren't allowed. Your memories of music consisted of you and Lotor sneaking around the house with your mothers old CD's, lowering the volume extra, extra low so Zarkon wouldn't be able to make out the soft bump of the bass guitar, the dull thump of the drums, or the harmonic voice of Lance McClain. The two of you would sit shoulder-to-shoulder and just listen, but it never lasted long. One of you would get paranoid that Zarkon could hear, and you would switch it off and scuttle back to your rooms before this paranoia became a reality. A lot of the time, you had to listen to one song in two sittings, purely because it was almost impossible to get all the way through a song without one of you getting cold feet.

  But this was different. This was the closest to a concert you had ever been, and you would be lying to claim it didn't make you feel alive. You would also be lying to claim that it didn't wake you up to the startling reality of just how little of a childhood you had really been given.

  “What do you think?”

  Your head shot up, eyes darting to Shiro. You hadn't noticed him standing up, but he was stood beside you now, awaiting your answer.

  You nodded. “He's good. He's always been good.”

  “I forgot you were a fan.”

  “Big fan.” You shrugged. “I'm glad you brought me here.”

   Shiro scoffed. “It wasn't a treat. I brought you here so you wouldn't steal from me again.”

   You frowned and looked away, quickly composing yourself. He had every right to bring that up. He wasn't exactly wrong that it was one thing letting you stay with him when he was in the house, but it was a completely different thing to leave you unattended in his apartment whilst he went to work.

  He wouldn't trust you, and he had absolutely no reason to.

  “We've got a few more seconds to record and then I think we're all gonna get something to eat.” Shiro looked down at you, spoke as if the words pained him to say. “Do you wanna join us?”

  Knowing you had nowhere else to go was the only reason you nodded along to his offer; you couldn't go home now. It was too late. If Zarkon didn't already have some of his men looking for you, it wouldn't be long until he did. You would be better off trying to lay low for as long as possible, no matter how odd the circumstances were.

  And so you waited until Shiro, Keith and Hunk wrapped up in the studio before you joined them for lunch at the cafe, located helpfully in the lobby of the studio. Shiro and Keith took your order and headed for counter. Hunk, on the other hand, joined you at the table, sitting down directly to your left.

  The big man leaned into you, a straw already dangling from his lips. You, Keith and Shiro hadn't even ordered yet, so it was a complete mystery to you as to when Hunk had acquired a smoothie of his own.

  “So,” he started. “Now that I'm not distracted by work, I think it's an appropriate time to ask who you are.”

  “Y/N,” you blurted out. “My name's Y/N.”

  Hunk hummed. “Have you been staying with Shiro long?”

   “Only last night.” My final night, because there was no way you planned on spending another day in his house. Staying in one place for too long would be dangerous, especially considering Lotor knew where you were.

  Hunk looked up then, glancing over at the counter. Shiro and Keith stood side-by-side, Shiro with his hands stuffed in his pockets and Keith doing air drums as he waited for his turn to order. Knowing the coast was clear, Hunk leaned in and said, “And how did that night go?”

  You jerked back as if Hunks words were a physical blow. You looked down at him, one eyebrow raised, hands clenching the leather of your seat. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  Hunk shrugged, playing the innocent card now that he could see you hadn't taken his question lightly. “I've just never known Shiro to let some random person stay in his house before. He likes his solitude. It's how he writes all those moody lyrics we're forced to sing.” He rolled his eyes. “Honestly, if it wasn't for the rock beats I put over them, those songs would lead someone to tears.”

   “I only slept in his house because I had nowhere else to go,” you admitted. It wasn't the whole truth, but you could see the tiny bit of reality in your words; that was good enough for you, good enough to release the guilt you may have felt if you were to have come up with an entirely different story.

  “Do you not have a family to go back home to? A house of your own?”

  “No,” you mumbled. “Shiro and I didn't exactly meet under normal circumstances.” You were treading on thin ice now, getting closer and closer to a truth you did not want to admit.

  Hunk opened his mouth to respond to your eerie comment, but never got a chance to question you before two more people appeared at the side of the table – people you recognised instantly.

  The gasp escaped you before you could stop it. Your eyes popped open, hand clamping over your mouth. Shock overtook you, and you could do nothing but sit completely still as Lance McClain and Pidge Gunderson looked at you like you were insane.

  Hunk chuckled. “Y/N L/N, meet-”

  “Hi,” you squeaked out. “Nice to meet you.”

   Pidge raised a brow, fighting an amused grin. “Nice to meet you, too.” She turned back to Hunk. “Friend of yours?”

  “Friend of Shiro's.” Hunk gestured to the empty seats. “Go ahead and sit down. I'll tell Keith to get you something to drink.”

   Lance grunted, slumping down in the seat directly across from you. His knee nudged yours beneath the table. He refused to sit up straight, instead slouching until his shoulder blades were digging into the top of the chair. His head tilted back, his brown hair falling away from his forehead.

  Pidge rolled her eyes, sitting beside him. “Don't mind him.”

   “Is he tired?” you asked.

  “Exhausted,” Lance replied. “Do you know how difficult it is trying to get the ticket companies to just pick up the fucking phone? I've been making phone calls since eight am this morning, trying to figure out where the false tickets are coming from.”

  “We told you that Coran was gonna deal with that,” said Pidge.

  Lance shrugged, folding his arms over his chest. “I don't want Coran to deal with it. Nobody with a fake ticket is getting into one of our shows, and I'm going to be the one to make sure of it.”

  Pidge rolled her eyes again. “Forever the hero, aren't you?”

  “I better be.” Lance's head suddenly snapped up, his eyes trained solely on you. “Wait, who is this?”

  “I think Shiro might be hooking up with them,” was Hunk's casual reply.

  You squeezed your eyes closed, resisting the urge to turn and belt him across the face. “You thought wrong.”

  “Why would you think that?” Lance asked. There was now a glint in his eye. His attention had been piqued. He sat up straight and leaned across the table for details. Even Pidge – who so often pretended like she didn't care – glanced between you and Hunk with an eyebrow raised.

  Hunk glanced at you. The fact that you were covering your face with your hands didn't seem to matter to him. “Shiro let Y/N sleep over at his house yesterday, and then he took them to work this morning.”

   Lance's eyes popped open wide, snapping to you. “Ooooh, is this true?”

  “Yes, but-”

   Lance reached over and grabbed your hand, giving it a firm shake. “Lance McClain. It's an honour to meet someone who can finally get Shiro to loosen the fuck up.”

   “What are you doing?”

  Shiro's voice startled the table into silence. Lance dropped your hand, grinned brightly as he placed his own hands on the back of his head. Shiro carried two smoothies whilst Keith sipped idly at his own on the other side of the table.

  “Absolutely nothing, my boy,” Lance replied. “Come, have a seat! It feels like I haven't seen you in ages.”

  Shiro narrowed his eyes, handed you your smoothie and lowered himself onto the seat next to Lance. “We saw each other yesterday.”

   “Only briefly. You went home early.”

  You grunted. He did indeed.

  “I was just talking to your good friend Y/N here whilst you were getting your smoothies,” Lance continued. “I was getting told all about how you spent the night together.”

  Shiro scoffed. “You make it sound like a lot more than what it was.”

   “That's what I was trying to explain,” you spoke up.

  Lance waved a dismissive hand through the air, as if you and Shiro denying any unspoken claims was irrelevant. “Are you two planning on taking this little fling to our concert next week?”

  You faltered. A concert?

  Growing up, you hadn't even been able to listen to music on CD's, let alone go to live shows. It was always something you wanted to do, always something you craved to experience, but at the time, it looked impossible. You had one job and one job only, and that was to serve Zarkon in whatever way he needed you to serve him.

  Now, here you were, being all but offered the chance to go and see one of your favourite bands perform live. It was enough to choke you into silence, enough for you to dart your gaze over to Shiro, silently begging for him to take the reigns and answer the question. At the end of the day, it was entirely up to him; if he didn't want you there, you wouldn't blame him.

  Shiro took a long, drawn out sip of his smoothie before shrugging. “We'll see.”

  And that was that. He put the lid on the matter quickly, swiftly changing the subject to instead talk about a new song he had been working on. Everybody else looked at you, gouging your response to such a simple reply, but you hid your emotions well enough so as to not provoke any suspicion. You were good at that when you wanted to be.

  As Shiro and the others fawned over Shiro's brand new notebook, already littered halfway through with fresh lyrics that they all critically analysed, you let yourself sink into the background. Your heart was still thundering. The conversation had distracted for only so long, but now the attention was diverted and you were allowed to dwell on the thumping of your heartbeat and the thrum of the blood in your ears; all of this was utterly insane. 

   You closed your eyes and leaned your head back against the seat, inhaling deeply. It would come to an end. All good things did, and you knew that. You had trained yourself not to get your hopes up, and as much as it hurt to put that training into practise now, there was no other choice. Not unless you wanted to be completely crushed in the long run.

  ----

  You tried to protest. Not very much, but the attempt was there.

  Shiro took you back to his apartment after lunch. The others had broken up for practise, meaning Shiro had no reason to hang around; he claimed he had lyrics to catch up on, an album to plan that would not write itself; you tried informing him that you would be fine on your own, but he insisted on taking you back to his place.

  “Why are you doing this?” you asked him at one point during the drive. Your arms were folded over your chest, eyes still set firm on the window. You watched the road skip past, the trees and the houses, the children coming home from school. You imagined yourself in their shoes, just like you always did. They were living a childhood you had never been given – it was a bitter sweet feeling.

  Shiro didn't look away from the road when he answered. “I don't know what you're on about.”

  “Yes you do. You're being nice to me for no reason. I don't deserve kindness from you.”

  “I'll decide who I'm kind to, thank you very much.”

   You bit the inside of your cheek. “You should have called the police on me. You should have knocked me out, saw me as dangerous as soon as you saw the state your apartment was in. You definitely shouldn't be giving me a place to stay.” You looked at him. “It doesn't make sense, and I refuse to believe you're doing this out of the kindness of your heart.”

  It took him a minute to respond. You profiled him, slipping into his head without really meaning to – he had already proved to you that he wasn't a man to make rash decisions out of nowhere. He didn't want to be spontaneous, didn't want to risk hurting the career he spent years building up. He didn't even have to tell you that his journey into the music business had been a long and bumpy road; nobody loved their occupation like he did. Not unless they had to work for it.

  So why was he taking the risk with you?

  His jaw twitched. “Do you wanna put some music on?”

  You gritted your teeth behind your lips but did as he said; you knew an indirect order when you heard one. He didn't want to talk, and you could respect that. It wasn't your place to question him.

  When he finally pulled up, the two of you walked into his apartment in utter silence. He held his notebook under one arm, a pen clipped to the collar of his black shirt. You had come in barehanded, fingers knotted in front of you. The silence was heavy. Too heavy for you to feel any type of comfort.

  Shiro closed the door behind you and gestured to the sofa. “I'll get the kettle on.”

   “Let me do that. You've got work to do.”

  Shiro raised a hand. You paused, raised a brow at him. “I've got it. Sit down.”

    You sighed and did as he said. It didn't take a profiler to recognise when someone didn't want to argue.

  You tapped impatiently at your leg as you waited for Shiro to finish in the kitchen. All that separated you and the door was a broken coffee table and the knowledge that Shiro was only a few feet away; he would hear you, but when had that fact ever stopped you? It was strange. You sat there, perfectly still, listening to the buzz of the boiling kettle and you didn't even really want to move; you weren't entirely comfortable, but the idea of stepping outside and risking the sight of Zarkons men was a lot more terrifying than the idea of sitting inside with Shiro.

  You supposed you should have been grateful. You were still here. His men hadn't come for you yet – he hadn't come for you yet. Maybe Lotor managed to get away with just a mild scolding, or maybe he had taken his chance and run for good. Maybe the two of you had left Zarkon in the dirt, just like you should have done years ago.

  As soon as you set eyes on the page tucked behind a sofa cushion, you knew your thoughts were misplaced.

  It was an intuition. Maybe it was because you had been anticipating disappointment this entire time. Maybe it was just because you were good at this kind of thing – before you even reached over and looked at the page, you knew what it was. It was the same cream paper you had seen so many times, stapled on the walls of your childhood home, locked in some oversized binder that held details so descriptive and so tormenting it was difficult to bring them to the forefront of your mind. It was that same paper.

  You grabbed it. The handwriting was familiar. The weight of the words was familiar. The entire thing was familiar, because you had been at his elbow so many times when he had written these notes in the past. He was never happy when he had to do it, and it was very rare that the person the letter was addressed to lived long enough to take the chance Zarkon always offered them. It was more of a throw-away kindness than a genuine offer.

      Dear, my sweet little Y/N.

   I understand. I really do. We all do. You got caught, and you're embarrassed, and you don't want to face us. You don't want to tell us the truth of your failures. I understand.

    I'm giving you a chance to come back. A single chance, one that you would be wise to take because you have nobody else. Lotor is with me, safe and sound, but worried. You don't want to worry him, do you? You know how he gets when he's worried, and if he explodes at me, my little Y/N, I will not show him the same kindness I'm showing you.

    You were always my favourite. It would be sad to lose you just because of a little blip in the system. You can make it up to me. I won't be mad. I promise.

   Come home and see for yourself just how understanding I can be.

       Hugs and kisses,

              Zarkon.

  “What's that?”

  Shiro sat down beside you, had already grabbed the letter from your hands before you could protest. A quiet whimper escaped your throat. You wanted to sob, but you couldn't. You wanted to scream, but you couldn't. You wanted to jump up and run as far from this place as possible – but you couldn't.

  Not whenever Shiro's eyes turned and clicked onto your own, wide and desperate for answers you knew you could never give him. Not now. Not now that Zarkon's men knew where you were.

  Shiro was on his feet in seconds, throwing the piece of paper back onto the sofa. He darted towards the fire escape, checked to see if it was locked – it was. He bolted towards the door, did the same thing and again, the door was locked and secured just as he had left it after walking in.

  He turned to you. “What the hell is that?”

  “Ignore it.” It was a demand, not a suggestion.

  His face fell. “Y/N. Y/N, what the fuck? What the hell did he mean? Who is Zarkon?”

  You stood up abruptly. “I'm leaving.”

  “You're not going anywhere. It's obviously not safe for you-”

   “It won't be safe for you if you don't let me go.”

  Shiro stared. “And who's gonna be the one to hurt me – you or this Zarkon guy?”

  Your stomach clenched. This whole thing was a mistake – you had said it from the very beginning. Shiro had given you refuge, taken care of you, made sure you didn't go out into a world that wanted nothing but the absolute worst for you, but he would never trust you. He would never look at you and think you were worth anything, because your initial meeting had set off the time bomb that would go off as soon as Zarkon grew tired of waiting.

  Which wouldn't be long.

  Shiro's words told you only one thing – he thought you were capable of hurting him. He looked at you, and he saw the mess left behind in his apartment, the way you had snatched the phone out of his hand and slammed it against the sink, the way you barely winced when the glass sliced your hand. He saw something that wasn't there, an idea based off of loose statistics.

  You looked down at the ground and bit your lip. Maybe it was because you idolised him. Maybe it was because he was right – you were capable of a lot. You could have hurt him. You could have got up in the middle of the night and slit his throat. But you hadn't, because he was Takashi Shirogane.

  He stepped forward. “Come to the concert with me next week.” It wasn't an invitation. “That way I know you're okay.”

   You squeezed your eyes closed, clenching your fists. “This has gone too far already. I can't stay with you for another week.”

   “You can't go out there either,” he replied. He sounded desperate. “I read the note. I read the threats. I don't – I don't understand a lot of it, but I'm not stupid. Somebody wants to hurt you.”

   “He doesn't want to hurt me yet.” Why were you standing up for him? “He wants me to come home.”

   “And what's gonna happen if you do go?” Shiro stepped forward again, so close that you could feel the heat coming from him.

  Your silence was enough. It was always enough.

  Shiro hummed. “I'll take the sofa again. Tomorrow I'll get the guest bedroom set up so we both have proper places to sleep.”

   “Shiro-”

   He turned on his heel, snatching the piece of paper up. He didn't let you finish your sentence, didn't let you protest before he turned to the lit candle placed upon the counter. He tilted the edge of the paper into the open flame and watched the words burn.

  ---

  Days passed. Your anxiety didn't waver.

  Shiro was trying. He woke up every morning, and he greeted you with a smile and a cup of tea, made exactly how you liked it. He tried to make casual conversation, to the point where you could genuinely sit down with him and talk like he was a good friend of yours.

  But it wasn't enough.

  He tried to distract you, but it wasn't going to happen. Days had passed. Zarkon knew you'd received his letter. It was becoming clearer and clearer that you were ignoring him. You weren't planning on coming home, and that was going to make him very angry.

  You slid into Zarkon's head on this particular morning. Morning, because it was four am and you hadn't slept yet. Your mind had been racing as you tried to fight off the urge to profile the man with the dark thoughts, the man who had raised you, the man who had tormented you and clearly had no plans on stopping. But it was as the clock struck four that you let your thoughts go, the exhaustion making it too difficult to fight. You slipped into his head.

  He knew who the apartment belonged to. He was a smart man. He knew Shiro was a celebrity, so he wouldn't risk breaking and entering. No. He would wait until you were loose on the streets and then he would take his aim. He would wait until you were completely vulnerable – maybe in a public place? A place where you would least expect it. He would put snipers on the roof. You had seen him do it. He would take you down and he wouldn't think twice, but he wouldn't risk getting Shiro involved in the story.

  You squeezed your eyes closed and pushed your thumbs into your temples. His head was too scary for you. You had been profiling people since you could understand the basics of the English language, and even now you were unable to bare the process of slipping into his head.

  You were awake now. You came to terms with the fact that you would not be getting any more sleep and slid from beneath the covers of the guest bedrooms bed. You headed downstairs to the kitchen, flinched in the doorway when you saw Shiro standing by the counter, drinking from a carton of milk.

  “You're awake.”

  He whirled around. His hair was a mess, and he was in his usual bedtime attire of no shirt and a pair of sweatpants. His grey eyes widened when he saw you standing there, looking no more dishevelled than you had done when you went to bed that evening.

  “So are you,” he replied. “Have you slept yet?”

  “Nope.” You snatched the carton of milk from his hand and took a gulp, savouring the brain freeze.

  Shiro raised a brow, folding his arms over his chest and eyeing you like a father eyeing a sick child. It made you almost want to roll your eyes. “Did you have a nightmare or something?”

  “I don't have nightmares.” A lie.

  “So why couldn't you sleep?”

  “I just couldn't.” Yet another lie. Why the truth was so difficult to admit, you weren't sure, but you didn't intend on indulging him any further. “Why are you awake at this time of day?”

  Shiro shrugged. “I was finishing up some songs and kind of lost track of time.”

  “Really? What were you working on?”

  Shiro tapped the side of his nose and slowly turned away from you, snatching the carton of milk back on his way round. You pouted, both grateful for the sudden shift in mood and frustrated at the fact he wasn't going to tell you what it was he had spent his time working on.

  “Come on,” you grunted. “I'm a fan. You can't just tell me you're working on something for my favourite band and then refuse to tell me anything else.”     “The fact that you're a fan is a big enough reason for me to keep quiet. You might post it on a forum or something.”

  You scoffed. “You take me as the type to have some kind of fan account?”

  He shrugged, smirking around the lip of the milk carton. “You never know. I've seen some crazy things in my career.”

  You grumbled. “Fine. Don't tell me. When are you going back to the studio?”

  “Whenever the others can find time. They've been rehearsing for their show next week.”

   You faltered at the reminder – the show. It startled you that you had forgotten all about it, considering this was the first concert you would ever be attending, and it was the concert of one of your favourite bands. You should have been ecstatic, counting down the days, marking it on your calendar.

  But once again, Zarkon had crawled into your mind and stolen those remnants of normal human emotions. Even when he wasn't physically there, he still somehow managed to alter the thoughts in your brain.

  “I was thinking we could get you some clothes for the night,” he continued. “Don't get me wrong, you suit my shirts and my shorts-”

  “I absolutely do not.”

  “But this seems like a more. . . formal event. We're gonna have to get you something nice.” He lowered his voice. “Something to make you stand out.”

   Your breath hitched. You looked down at the attire you were wearing now – a pair of Shiro's old boxer shorts and an oversized Nirvana shirt that he claimed he had worn back in high school. It was one of the only shirts in his wardrobe that wasn't completely plain.

   “How about tomorrow?” He glanced at the clock. “Well, today, I suppose. We can go out after breakfast and see what you like.”

  You nodded dumbly. Shopping. Clothes. New clothes – something you very rarely got to splurge on.

  Shiro grinned and kicked himself away from the counter. “Good. I'll see what I can do.”     ---

  “You look...”

  “Just tell me you hate it. Just tell me you hate it, so I don't have to embarrass myself any further than I already have.” Your eyes were squeezed shut. Your hands were curled into tight fists at your sides. Your shoulders were bunched up around your ears-

  Shiro's hands on the back of your neck startled you back to the present. “Would you calm down? I was gonna say you look beautiful, but I didn't want to make you more flustered than you already are.”

   Your eyes snapped open, darting immediately to Shiro's own. Over the past few days, you had grown used to those storm grey eyes, the way they always managed to be the first thing you noticed. Even in a room full of people, Shiro's eyes stood out.

  He smiled at the eye contact and gently turned you towards the dressing room mirror. Your breath hitched, because it certainly wasn't the Y/N L/N who had been cooped up in Zarkon's home who stared back at you. This was different. The clothes hung loose on your body, but it somehow worked. A pair of black skinny jeans, a dark orange button up shirt that showed a tiny bit of your chest, tucked half into the jeans, half hanging out around your sides. Along with it, Shiro had insisted you try on a pair of grey ankle boots.

  You looked good. You looked expensive.

  “This is too much,” you said. Shiro stiffened. “I don't even have the money for the top, let alone the jeans and the boots.”

   You started towards the dressing room, already tugging on the buttons of the shirt, but Shiro caught your wrist. You whirled around, startled at the sudden action but immediately your face heated up at his amused expression.

  “What have I said now?”

  “Just go get changed and put the clothes in the bag,” he said. “I can't believe you thought I'd make you pay after I offered to take you shopping.”

 It took a minute for his words to settle in your brain. “Wait, what? No. You're not paying for my stuff.” You said it with a scoff and a roll of your eyes, as if the idea of Shiro paying for you was a joke.

  Shiro narrowed his eyes. “You do know that I'll just buy it anyway. Buying you an outfit isn't going to put me into bankruptcy.”

  “But I'm an adult, and I shouldn't expect-”

  “Just go get changed,” he groaned, throwing his head back like a child having a tantrum. “It's my treat, alright? Now go!” He nudged you towards the dressing room door, leaving no room for argument.

  ---

  The crowd was big. Much too big for your liking.

  You thought you'd be fine. You were excited, craved to hear the music that had been promised – the music of Smokey Saturdays. The music you had grown up listening to, no matter how stealth you had to be to do so.

  But a crowd like this was dangerous. A crowd like this could hold so much danger and you wouldn't even be aware of it until it was too late.

  That was why you stayed as close to the edge of the room as you could possibly get. You tugged on your dark orange shirt, silently cursing your lack of carelessness – orange wasn't exactly a subtle colour. You would stand out amongst the array of people in black rock shirts and leather jackets. But it was too late now. Shiro had already disappeared back stage, and you were left to your own devices as you waited for the show to start.

  You were on high alert, even when the first chord was played and suddenly Lance, Keith, Hunk and Pidge appeared on stage.

  You wanted the breath to be sucked from your lungs. You wanted to jump up and scream and lose your head, perhaps even faint, because that was the concert experience. That was what the articles said.

  But even Lance's melodic voice and Shiro's gut wrenching lyrics could not pull you back to the surface. The crowd had swallowed you up. The realisation that you were completely vulnerable was suffocating you until you were shoving through the crowd in search of an exit.

  In search of Shiro.

  He had become a constant comfort. You hated to admit it, because it was dangerous territory to be on, but he had. Any time he saw you growing panicked, he was by your side, making sure you remembered to breathe, letting you know that everything was going to be okay no matter how terrible things felt in the moment. He was there for you, and you needed him to be there now.

  The music blocked out the sound of his voice in the beginning. You were on the verge of running, tackling people to the ground in any attempt to get to the exit. Zarkon's written words came back to the forefront of your memory, reminding you just how thin the ground you were walking on truly was. He was going to get you if you didn't leave now. He would have figured out that the concert was happening today and he would follow you until-

  A hand wrapped around your waist and dragged you backwards. You stumbled, getting ready to cry out but a low, deep voice cut you off before you could do so. It was close to your ear, the stench of smoke on the culprits breath.

  “If you scream, this entire place goes up in flames, and everyone with it is going too.”

  You clamped your mouth shut, curled your fingers into the palm of your hands. Crescent moons indented into your flesh. It kept you grounded, because you recognised that voice. He had come for you directly – what a strange move on his part.

  “Zarkon.” His name was a curse. It burned your tongue. “You found me.”

  “As I promised I would,” he replied. “Are you enjoying your little break, Y/N? Your little taste of freedom?”

    “I was going to come back.”

  “Bullshit.” His spittle slapped against your ear. You didn't wipe it away, too scared to move. “You and that Shiro bloke were far too enamoured with each other to remember little old me, weren't you? He took your mind off of things. He made you feel special.”

  Zarkon had taught you everything you knew about profiling. He could slip into your head just as easily as you could slip into his. You wanted him out. You didn't like him tracing your thoughts without even trying.

  “This man who should have hated you gave you a place to stay, a comfort blanket, gave up his own bed for you-”

   “How do you know that?” You knew the answer. You just needed to make sure your voice still worked.

  He continued as if you hadn't spoken. “So what were the chances you were going to give that life up to come back to me, hm? Me. The man who gave you a home for your. Entire. Life.” He punctuated each word by pinching your hips. You squirmed against him, pain flaring through your body. “You call it growing up, I call it being an ungrateful little bitch.”

  The first song ended. Zarkon leaned forward. His grin was against your ear. “Pretend we're dancing. Pretend we're just enjoying the show.”

    You did as you were told, because that was all you could do. That was all you had ever been able to do. It hurt – physically strained you – but you put a smile on your face and swayed, cheering to the sound of Lance's voice. The lead singer didn't even look at you as he addressed the crowd, already panting from the performance of the first song. He messed with his ear piece, taking it out to listen to the unfiltered screams of his fans – you wanted him to hear you. You wanted him to get the hint, hear your desperation even as you grinned and pretended everything was fine.

  He put the ear piece back in and announced the second song. The band started to play. They started to jump around on stage, and the crowd only got wilder.

  Zarkon took his chance.

  He made it look so casual. His arm was resting on your waist, and he was grinning from ear to ear – that's all it took, really. The crowd parted for him as he led you out towards the back door of the club, nobody questioning the tears brimming in your eyes. They took one look at your smile and just assumed you were perfectly fine.

  The fresh air hit you like a wave. The crowd was gone. You no longer had any security around you, no witnesses. If Zarkon were to kill you now, he would. He could, because he was good at what he did and he knew that.

  You broke out of his hold as soon as the door swung closed. You were trapped in the alleyway. Nobody was here. The music was too loud, thumping through the walls. If you were to scream, no one would hear you.

  The smile on Zarkon's face told you he knew that.

  He stepped forward, hands stuffed in his pockets. “I don't want an explanation.”

  “Where's Lotor?” you asked. “I want to see Lotor.”

  “He got home safely.” That meant nothing to you. Not coming from him.

  You wrapped your arms around your middle.

  Zarkon sighed. “Did someone let you dress yourself this evening?”

   “Don't treat me like a child.”

   “Shiro must really care about you,” he continued, talking with a childlike drawl just to get under your skin. “Buying you all these expensive clothes, giving you a roof over your head – a refuge, if you will. A refuge from me and mine.” Zarkon grinned. “You used to be mine. Do you remember that?”

 “Why are you talking?” you demanded, stepping back. “You're mad at me. You lost your control. You lost the one thing you thought you had forever, and you're mad.” You were profiling him. His nostrils flared. “Why are you talking then? Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?”

  Zarkon grinned even deeper. “I taught you better than that, Y/N. Use your skills. Use the skills I gave you – you tell me why I'm not killing you right now.”

  You slipped into his head again. It was easy. The answers were laid out in front of you, but you wanted to ignore them because sometimes pretending it wasn't there was easier than falling victim to an obvious truth.

  Your voice trembled when you spoke. “This isn't about me. You're not mad at me, you're mad at Shiro. You're mad at him for keeping me away from you.”

  “Go on...”

  “You're keeping me alive so I can watch you make him suffer. You're preserving me.”

  Zarkon shrugged. “Guilty.”

  “You can't hurt him. People will know. People will care.”

  “You say that because you care,” Zarkon pointed out. “But when has that ever mattered to me?”

  The door behind Zarkon swung open. You knew even before you looked up who it was – it was a gut feeling. You were yelling before you could stop yourself.

  Zarkon swirled around and laughed. He laughed at the expression on Shiro's face, the draw back of his shoulders, the flare of his nostrils. Shiro didn't move from the doorway, because of course he didn't. He didn't know who this crazy man was. Chances are, he saw you get dragged backwards and followed you out. But he didn't know that this was him, the author of the cryptic note that had been mysteriously left tucked behind his sofa cushions.

  “Shiro,” you cried out. “Go back inside. Now.”

  “Oh, no, no, no!” Zarkon shoved you with his shoulder. “Where's the fun in that? There's enough room in this ballroom for another, I think.” He grabbed Shiro's hand.

  And he twisted it.

  Shiro's eyes popped open in surprise and pain. He grunted, his knees trembling beneath him, but he was strong. He managed to swing his other arm around and catch Zarkon in the jaw just enough for the older man to release his hand. Shiro took the chance and stumbled to the side, gripping his wrist.

  “What the hell?” he exclaimed.

  Zarkon growled and whirled back around. “So you're a feisty one, are you? That's okay. I've dealt with worse.”

  “It's Zarkon,” you said, eyes pointed on Shiro. “You need to go. You need to-” You grabbed for Zarkon's collar, tried to pull him back, but you weren't as strong as him. Zarkon taught you how to be sneaky, how to profile people, how to get around without being detected. He was wise enough to know how bad it would be if he were to teach the people who hated him how to fight.

  Zarkon's elbow slammed into your chin, knocking you backwards. You grabbed for the wall in any attempt to keep yourself upright, but there was no use to it. Your fingernails welled up with blood and you fell to the floor with an 'oomf.'

  Shiro made to rush towards you, but Zarkon hooked him in the stomach before he could get very far. Shiro kicked out, slamming his toe into Zarkon's shin like a child – it was the only thing he could do. One of his wrists had already been broken, and now he was winded.

  Zarkon simply grinned at Shiro's sad attempts. “You know, Y/N – I don't really know how I feel about you letting this excuse for a man protect you. Clearly he doesn't know what he's doing.”

   “Zarkon, let him go,” you wheezed. Your vision was growing blurry. “Let him go and I'll go back with you. I'll do whatever you want.”

  “No,” Shiro grunted. His voice was barely audible, but you could make out the definition of desperation in its undertones.

  Zarkon sighed. “I find it very cute that you really believe you're not going back with me if I kill him.” He turned. “We both know that's impossible. Once he's dead, you'll have nowhere else to go. Your finger prints will be all over the crime scene. You'll be known as the person he let into his house, the stranger who showed up out of nowhere. You'll be the first one on the suspects list, and you'll have nowhere else to go except back home with me, or prison.”

  You shook your head. “I'd rather go to prison. I'd rather die than spend another minute in that hell hole you call a home.”

  Zarkon's nostrils flared. You hit a nerve. You meant to.

  He stepped forward. “There you go again with that ungrateful attitude. I think you're forgetting that I gave you everything. I kept you breathing. You and Lotor were mine.”

  “We were never yours. We were just too young to go anywhere else.”

   “And where is Lotor now, huh? Lotor came running right back to me after I asked him to ransack Shiro's apartment. He respects me.” Zarkon slammed his boot into your side. You squeezed your eyes closed, bit so harshly into your lip that blood dribbled down your chin. “You, on the other hand, need to be taught a lesson. I thought I'd raised you to know better, but I guess I was wrong.”

   You caught your breath. It was a gasp. Maybe it would be your last one. With the pain you were in, you were beginning to sink into that hopeless mindset of I hope so.

  “I guess you were,” you managed to choke out.

  Before blood sprayed out from the side of Zarkon's head.

  You cried out, jerking back as well as you could when his body tumbled to the floor. His legs wobbled, gave out and then he was beside you, and there was blood pouring from a wound in his skull, and his eyes were closed, and your breath escaped you, and-

  And Shiro's arms were wrapped around you. His lips were pressing into the side of your head. His tears were soaking the side of your face as he rocked back and forth and whispered soothing words in your ear that were probably meant more for him than for you.

  You panted, looking to the rock at Shiro's side. The rock he had just used to knock Zarkon unconscious. The rock stained with that monsters blood.

  Shiro's words fell away. They crumbled. You listened as they descended from words of comfort to one simple phrase that captured the nights mood perfectly.

  “Oh god.”

  This, he spoke on repeat until the ambulance arrived.

  ---

  “Lotor has been taken into questioning. He was asking about you.”

   You nodded at the police woman, still dazed from the slumber she had woken you from. “Is he going to jail?”

  The lady pursed her lips. “If his story is the same as yours, he'll be okay. You two are victims in this.”

   You nodded again. It was all you could do, words no longer computing. There was a phrase you could think of; goodbye, maybe. It seemed like the decent thing to say as the police woman gave you a warm smile, squeezed your fingers before she exited the hospital room.

  You should have said goodbye.

  “You didn't even give her a goodbye.”

  You looked up as Shiro entered the room. His wrist was cradled in a cast. His lip had been split open. He was shirtless again, revealing the bruise that was slowly forming on his lower abdomen.

  You smiled at him, the first person you had properly smiled at since you had been locked up in this hell hole and questioned until your voice was hoarse.

  He sat beside you. “The others are in the waiting room. I told them it would be a bad idea to overwhelm you right now.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Shiro's grey eyes softened. A small smile formed on his lips, and he spoke through a light hearted chuckle. “Yes Y/N. I'm fine.”

   “You've never had to . . . you've never had to do that before, have you?”

  A cloud shadowed his expression. “No.”

   “I'm sorry,” you croaked out. “He was after me, but he blamed you. I should have known better than to ignore his note, but-”

  “Don't, Y/N.”

  You faltered. “What's wrong?”

  Shiro ran his hands through his hair, inhaling shakily. “Don't apologise. Don't try and pin this on yourself. He's not here any more – the police have him in custody. You don't have to think about it. You can move on.” He reached over and gingerly touched your fingertips, silently asking permission. “We can move on.”

  You swallowed thickly. Slowly, without any comment, you flipped your hand over and intertwined your fingers with his. He looked down at the point of connection, a tiny, tiny smile gracing his face that had you unable to fight the smile that took over your own.  

  “He was the one that made you break into my house,” he said. Again, it wasn't a question. “You and that Lotor guy.”

   You nodded. “We've been ransacking places for him since we were eleven. It doesn't excuse our actions, but-”

  “You were brainwashed.”

“We were scared.”

  Shiro nodded. He nodded as if he understood, even though you knew he didn't, and for some reason that didn't frustrate you like it used to. He was trying to understand. He was trying to make sense of a situation that didn't make any sense, and you were grateful for his attempts.

  ---

   Shiro took another sip of his coffee. And another. And another, until he eventually tilted his head the whole way back and downed it.

  You looked up from the documentation in front of you, raising a brow. Whilst you were busy going through the piles upon piles of documents the agency had given to you to read over, Shiro was busy trying to come up with lyrics for Smokey Saturdays new album.

  He was clearly struggling a lot more than you were.

  “This isn't fair,” he grumbled, slamming his coffee cup back down on the table. “How come you're a natural profiler and I can't even get a hook down?”

  You chuckled. “That's what's got you so stressed?”

  “Of course it is.” He turned his notebook in your direction, letting you look at what he had done so far; once upon a time, Shiro's lyrics had been his most prized possession. It took a good six months of living together for him to finally trust you enough to let you read what he wrote.

  On the page, however, was not words, but a simple drawing – two stick figures. One in a detectives hat, and one with a guitar.

  Your cheeks warmed. “You're so cheesy.”

  He grinned from ear to ear, yanking the notebook back. “Isn't it perfect? Love of my life – the FBI profiler! And me – the lyricist who genuinely can't get a hook down.” He frowned, flicked his eyes to your own. “I wasn't joking about that. This song has been driving me crazy for weeks.”

  You rolled your eyes, putting your pen down on top of the pile of suspect profiles given for you to study. “You just need inspiration. I've seen you do it before – you get an idea, and you come up with something amazing. It'll hit you eventually.”

  Shiro pouted, looking down at the page. “There is one thing that usually sparks some inspiration in me.”

   “What's that?”

  He looked up. He didn't say anything, simply puckered his lips and leaned forward. You raised a brow, immediately gripping on to what he was getting at – your stomach flipped in that way it always did, and despite the heaps of work you had to get done, you couldn't help yourself when you leaned forward and kissed him.

  He hummed against your lips, pressing a hand to the back of your neck, gently stroking the chain of the necklace he had gotten you – the necklace that held the key to your shared home. The first home you and Shiro had bought together.

  You pulled away quickly, picking up your pen and shaking your head. “This is why I never get any work done when you're with me.”

  Shiro's eyes were still closed. He dragged his tongue along his lower lip, nodded, and then his eyes flicked open and he started writing.

  You watched him with your jaw hanging open. “Are you serious?”

  He smirked. “I told you. You inspire me.”

[spiftynifty]

On Let’s Voltron, the showrunners, and fandom

On Thursday an interview came out on Let’s Voltron, the ostensibly final interview with the showrunners of this now-completed show. Within an hour a few tweet threads appeared and incited a new wave of hatred and anger towards the showrunners, mostly by people relying on these tweet threads rather than listening to the interview themselves.

I don’t like secondhand info that sparks outrage; and having watched both AB interviews and seen how outraged people got over them, without having seen either, I strongly suspected that this interview was nowhere near as incendiary as the tweet threads suggested.

And lo and behold, I was right. Much of what was reported in tweets was misconstrued, or lacking the additional information that listening to someone’s tone provides. I didn’t hear two snarky showrunners smugly enjoying the chaos that their truly lacklustre season provided. I heard two people who were exhausted and beaten down by both the expectations of the fandom and the limitations placed on them by people with more money and power. They didn’t call Shiro “boring”, they referred to their initial vision of him as boring. They didn’t say he was repetitive, they said his backstory was repetitive of other characters’ in the series and was cut. There was one salty comment from JDS about how Voltron and Atlas merging was cool but everyone was too bummed about s8 to appreciate it, but there’s a dark humor to it that reads to me like a man struggling to joke about something neutral and positive in a season that was poorly received by fans and many critics alike. The vast majority of the interview is not much we haven’t already heard, though there is a very telling segment that lasts about 5-10 minutes where they discuss the heavy limitations on representation in cartoons. Ezor and Zethrid were allowed to exist, they say, because they were secondary characters. And female. The words “main heroes” with an S, are repeated several times by LM when describing who was and was not allowed to be LGBT. She explicitly states that wlw is one thing, but mlm is a whole other battle.

As disappointed as I am in the mistakes JDS and LM made, I find myself feeling very defensive of them as I see the people who once defended them from ants now begin to exhibit ant-like behavior themselves. “They should never be allowed to work in animation again” says one tweet. “They never gave a shit about this show” says another. “S8 was their explicit revenge on fans.”

It makes me unbelievably sad to read this. JDS and LM made mistakes. S8 was objectively terrible. Their attempt to shoehorn in “bonus” representation backfired terribly. They’ve been upfront about Voltron never having been planned with a happy ending in mind, and buckle down hard when confronted with the notion that killing Allura was a bad move.

But as they’ve said many, many times, this show was a labor of love for them. They worked their asses off to pitch something grand to Dreamworks because they were fans of the original and wanted to do it justice. But then they got the show and proceeded to get buffeted around for 4 yrs by dreamworks and the rules of a pre-existing IP and half the story ideas they come up with get shot down by execs for any number of reasons. People have latched onto the fact that the last third of the series wasn’t properly planned from the beginning, but I’d like to remind people that the plan they had for s3-6 was completely upended by one (1) executive call. The showrunners have said that they purposefully left things out of the bible to make it harder for execs to say NO to something well in advance. They were, as my director frequently calls it, “playing the game”, the careful balance of trying to tell a good story while also pleasing the client demands for a robot toy show. It’s a fight. Part of playing the game is leaving decisions so late that it becomes far too late to be changed by executives. But the downside of this is sometimes running out of time to do the things you want to do.

I’d like to point out too that in the interview at one point they actually say, “we knew who our audience was. They [the marketing people and higher ups] didn't.” So for 4 yrs they struggled to make the story they wanted to tell, they lost directors and writers, because the demands were way too high and people were burning out and leaving in an industry where being overworked is so par for the course that burnout is just a constant state of being. In other words, it takes extreme amounts of stress for people to burn out, and there is a certain mentality in this industry of burning out being a sign of weakness. When 2/3 directors left (one of them without the safety net of another offer) they put a bit of their reputation on the line-- and left anyway. And through it all JDS and LM, like any creators, were just trying to tell the story they wanted to see, scrambling to manage executive demands, working on multiple episodes at once and trying to maintain the storyline through them, losing people to burnout, having to rewrite entire scenes when voice actors weren’t available, and fighting for the show to be better than it was. 

I'm not absolving the showrunners of guilt, I'm just feeling bad that this is where they ended up because at the end of the day they genuinely were coming from a place of good intentions and a desire to tell, from their perspective a good story. And they did fight for rep, to the point that when initially Shiro was not allowed to be gay, they considered getting up and walking away and ending the project but they stayed because of the crew who would have been summarily put out of work. They weighed the importance of having that representation vs the jobs of 100s of people. That’s how important it was to them. 

Obvious, they didn't stick the landing, and it’s fair to say they outright screwed it up in a massive way that’s going to be remembered for a very long time. On the Shiro front they didn't have time to, in a way that would have felt genuine and agreeable for everyone. Keith was never ever going to be allowed. Maybe if Shiro and Keith had both been women, it would have been, which is a sad thought on the state of this industry and the kind of gendered homophobia that still exists in media both animation and otherwise. JDS and LM didn’t think far enough ahead on this, didn’t think outside of their pool of internal knowledge as non-LGBT people. As terrible as it is, it’s important to note they did this not out of a place of malice or vengeance, but an earnest, if misguided attempt to try and diversify the landscape. It did a lot of damage and they should not be rewarded for this move; but they also shouldn’t be being painted as the mustache-twirling villains so much of the fandom tries to make them out to be.

I hope this has been a huge lesson for them on the importance of stepping outside of your own situation when creating minority characters and properly discussing these characters with multiple people in real life who fall into those categories. No one LGBT person can or should speak for the entire community, as we’ve well seen with certain crewmembers.

Killing Allura is a much harder act to forgive because that was something they had time to think about and plan for and it should have been the more obvious lesson. There was ROOM to ask someone outside of themselves, “does this work”. There was room to be educated on why this was a terrible move both socially and narratively. There is room and time now, and dozens of articles about this very issue, that both showrunners should be reading and absorbing especially as their next projects involve a host of diverse characters. Their insistence to buckle down on the Allura Issue to me reads as; they haven’t learned anything from this, or taken the time to understand people’s pain about it. This is something that desperately needs to change especially as they continue to make movies and presumably TV shows. I do hope it’s something that will.

All this to say, please listen to the interview yourself before adding to the hate mob. If you’re still angry after listening to the interview yourself, that is your prerogative but I encourage you not to transform that anger into venomous hatred against the showrunners. The show is over; as fans we can transform this space into whatever we want it to be since Voltron is effectively ours now. Is attacking the showrunners, as ant1s have famously done for years, the image we really want to hold onto going forward?

[sugar--pie]

Recently I made a post talking about Barlee’s recent tweets and how I personally believe it doesn’t kill off Klance. I recommend reading it before you continue reading this HELLA. LONG. POST. As I might refer back to it a few times.

Edit: just want to add in here, that Barlee said those tweets weren’t about Klance, and that they were about Shiro being Rep. She also said she doesn’t know the end result of the series though... so I’m still gonna keep this post. But a lot of the things I talked about in that post about Klance in general, I’ll still refer to. Please remember to read my edits at the end too! Thanks :)

Okay.

So even after I made that post, I still had a major panic attack and slowly lost hope in Klance again. Idk, I’ve fallen way too deep into this it’s not even healthy probably, it felt like literal heart break. And I’m not even LGBT, I have another reasoning behind why I’m not really for Allura/Lance... and Season 7 kinda fuelled it a bit more. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. That post will be made after Season 8... if I manage to somehow be horrifically incorrect about what I’m going to talk about here. Which... I highly doubt I will. But I’ll keep a cushion to be safe.

I’m going to make bullet points:

One of the biggest problems the Klance fandom had before was that they put the Klance GogglesTM on for everything. Some specific things in the show were obvious yes, or at least it should be to everyone, but some things were stretched out way too far.

One of these scenarios is the theory (yes theory, this was never confirmed to be true, it’s just an assumption) that Hunk was given what was meant to be Lance’s arc with his family.

Reason why this became a theory was because of Barlee’s Tweets. And this is kind of where I started to lose hope again.

If Hunk was given Lance’s arc then that must mean Klance was written out. Because it was all about Keith and Hunk, when it “should’ve been” Keith and Lance.

However, I was seriously thinking about it as my last few morsels of hope started leaving me during work UNTIL BAM! IT HIT ME!

Yeah. Klance gogglesTM. Fans have grown to projecting Klance on to everything. And that includes Hunks arc, but trust me when I say this. Hunk was never given Lance’s arc. This is meant to be Hunks arc, through and through.

Keith was also included in Hunks arc because he is the one who didn’t have a family from the start. Including Keith in Hunks arc is demonstrating the growth Keith has had throughout the series.

Hunk was admitted to being the most underdeveloped character in the show. I remember it from an interview (video I believe) where Joaquim and Lauren say they had trouble with Hunk when creating him because, comparing him to his 80’s counterpart, was a lot different and they had trouble putting him in certain roles.

That is really lame, don’t get me wrong, but this explains why Hunks arc in Season 7 felt rushed and out of place. Hunk only mentioned missing earth or “not wanting to be a paladin” once in the beginning. And he wasn’t super upset about it.

Lance on the other hand was. He was vocal about missing earth, He was shown getting upset, leaving the room and opening up to Coran about it. This is where I think people mistook what Lance’s arc was meant to be. Even I misunderstood because of this scene.

however, this is where I’m going to point out, that yes, this is the start of Lance’s arc (“Lance and Keith’s arcs have been the only two that have lasted the entirety of the series” - incorrectly quoted by Joaquim)(I’ll expand on this a little later), but Lance’s arc isn’t about family.

I know, shocker. And it should’ve been obvious from the get go. But oooooh nooo, it wasn’t because we focused too much attention on Lance missing his family here. But let me ask:

How many times in the show has Lance voiced about missing home besides this scene? Yeah... try making a list for that lol. That’s because we took it way out of context and made it a bigger deal for Lance’s character when... it isn’t. Lance’s arc was never about family or missing earth.

Writing a show, you need to make sure the characters move into the spot they’ll need to be in. They used Lance missing earth in order to make him go off on his own, and have Coran follow.

Why you ask? It should be obvious. This could be a stretch but a very realistic one: Lance needed to be by the Crystal with Coran when it explodes, to ultimately, lead to the Bonding moment. Boom.

Lance’s Arc started here. Lance’s arc is a Romance Arc and it’s been in our faces the whole time.

He’s had more scenes voicing his charm and making it known from the get go.

He’s flirted.

It’s canon he wants to fall in love with someone.

His blog talked about crushing on Allura and wanting to be called pretty.

He’s the most feminine coded character as he enjoys generally feminine tropes like taking care of his appearance, even more so than Allura, who has only ever referenced being “girly” by having her hair done by mice(?) and wanting something sparkly.

This is also why Lance’s romantic life is such a focus not only for us, but when being talked about at Conventions. He’s the only one to have a canon romantic endgame. Gee, should’ve been obvious there what his arc is about.

And what finally made me realize Lance’s arc is a romance arc, is remembering when Lauren and Joaquim told us during a discussion that “Lance doesn’t know what he needs. We know what Lance might look for, but it’s not necessarily what he needs.” Lance being the only one known to have a canon endgame, ties into this.

This, made me realize. Lance’s arc, will be him realizing what he needs. I think it’s already leading up to it, personally because of this season alone. But arguably, it started picking up once Keith left in Season 4.

So No, Lance’s family arc was never given to Hunk because Lance was never meant to have an arc based around his family in the first place. We knew Lance missed his family and earth, but it wasn’t the main focus for him so that’s why all we saw was this glorious reaction to seeing his family again. And why the only lead role out of his family is Veronica.

(Keep in mine Keith is made out to be a focal point within this scene as well. Hunk too. I’ll bring this back up.)

So... now that I’ve covered the ground work in this long ass essay. Let’s continue the essay!

Now that we know Hunks arc was never meant for Lance, and Lance instead has a Romance Arc, let’s consider his endgame options:

In my post about Barlee’s Tweets, a lot of people assumed she was referring to a lot of things implying Lance will just end up in a rushed relationship with Allura, and I was one of these people too at first. But then it made me think. There was a lot, and I mean a lot of Keith and Lance interactions, and most of those, as I said in the Barlee post, demonstrated the trust and teamwork between the two right away, as well as had undertones and subtlety towards romantic intentions. Keith also has been a focal point in generally Lance centric moments, like above when he runs to hold his family. Hunk makes sense of being present because it starts the “family” portion of his arc this season. Keith however, only makes sense if he has purpose in Lance’s Arc, otherwise he wouldn’t be a focus and made apparent that he’s watching Lance reunite with his family. Make note that Allura was not.

The game show for example, If Lance liked Allura so much and was meant to end up with her, he would’ve picked her to leave. But instead, he chose Keith and also had a very sweet reasoning behind why, including a very dopey fond look on his face.

That’s why I love Pidge’s reaction in that scene because she practically sums up pretty much everyone’s reaction. Even mine. All of them were probably expecting him to pick Allura, (maybe even himself) but nonetheless, they weren’t expecting him to pick Keith, even Keith himself.

That’s why Keith reacts the way he does. I guarantee you he panicked.

Filler episodes in Voltron have always foreshadowed in some way, I wouldn’t be surprised if having Lance and Keith choose each other isn’t blatant foreshadowing.

Overall, there was more Keith and Lance interactions that included romantic subtext, compared to Lance and Allura, this season alone.

This is why it confused me a lot if the showrunners did write out Klance. They wouldn’t have included such strong scenarios with the two in this season if that’s the case. Not only this season but also the smaller ones that implies something more between the two in season 4, and season 6.

This is the point I’m going to bring in something interesting I read in this post. The OP said it’s probably a reach (when are they ever not?) but this is where I think Allura randomly having feelings for Lance, comes into Lance’s Arc.

Like we’ve been saying since the beginning, Allura has been what Lance has wanted from the start. But in OP’s post, they mentioned how the only time Lance had shown insecurity and being unsure of himself this seaosn, was right after his scene with Allura (and Veronica teasing him about it). That was the only scene that caused insecurity.

THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT YALL.

Lance had been secluded from season 4-6. He started getting closer to Allura, but then Lotor came along and changed that.

This is where I believe “what Lance wants isn’t necessarily what he needs,” makes sense. Allura has started having feelings for Lance, but then ending up together would be, as said by Lauren, “a disservice to both their characters.”

Allura getting feelings so soon kind of proved to me after realizing all this, that, no she isn’t Lance’s endgame. Like we’ve been saying Allura is what he wants. But not what he needs.

But who... pray tell.. is what he needs.

Keith.

I know, I know. This is the part where the typical Klance Goggles would probably come in. But I’m serious about this guys.

The moment Keith came back into the picture, Lance had been put into a more important role.

Keith listened to him, trusted him immediately and asked Lance to take over multiple times. Lance never had a moment of insecurity because everything fell back into place, and Keith made him feel useful again. Lance was once again the Red Paladin and Keith’s Right hand.

Tying in Lance being vocal about Keith “running away”, I don’t think people are far off from thinking Lance actually opened up to how he actually felt when Keith Left. And even showing worry when Keith said he’s going back for Acxa. Might as well put it in a present and wrap it up with a little bow.

Keith is ultimately what Lance had been needing the whole time. And Lance, I believe, will realize it. He’ll figure out that Allura isn’t what he needs, and because his moment of insecurity stems from an interaction he and Allura had, is also foreshadowing it too.

Throwing back to when I said Lance and Keith have had the longest arcs since the beginning, (quoted by Joaquim himself), this would explain why Lance’s finality to his arc hasn’t happened yet. It’s because it includes Keith, and Allura (possibly even Acxa which I explained in the Barlee post) and will most likely happen in season 8. The ultimate slowburn endgame.

This is where the bonding moment will be acknowledge.

They’ll also acknowledge two important scenes; Keith’s almost sacrifice, and Lances actual death (which included parallels to their season 1 bonding moment with Lance and Allura.)

And also “the other part” to Keith’s reason for leaving the team for the BOM.

Parallels are for a reason. And oooh boi.

Did my brain manage to restore faith back in Klance. Yup. Even if I’m the ONLY ONE LEFT IN THE FANDOM, I know what I’m talking about here. And if Allura/Lance do end up canon after all when it really makes no sense to, I will be one confused fucking bitch.

I believe I covered everything my jumbled brain puked out. So please, keep the faith Klance fandom. There is more story to unfold!

Edit: and technically I’m already again a really confused bitch. The Barlee post might be useless now, since she specifically stated she was referring to Shiro. And he was the intended rep.

I’m not upset again I’m just downright confused once again. Butttt... at this point. Maybe stuff will be answered in season 8. But overall, a lot of my points in this still stand!

Edit 2: Ultimately (I say this a lot), the one thing I knew from the start, is that Keith and Lance would have something to do with eachothers arcs, and arguably, they have, considering Lance and Keith’s arcs have been the longest arcs in the show. So even if Klance isn’t endgame. At this point, they have definitely become best friends and have grown on their own and with each other. And that, is still a very, very beautiful thing. No they don’t have to be together romantically. But they can and will be by each others side for a long time after the series ends.

Because that’s what Klance is. Lance and Keith, back to back. Thank you for reading. :)

[hirazuki]

I’m going to try and summarize what bothers me about VLD from as objective a standpoint as possible. A lot of people, including myself, have already made posts pointing out specific issues, especially with regards to the messages it sends to abuse victims, so I’m not going to touch on that or any type of emotional issues here at all. I’m going to skip specifics except where needed as examples, and just talk about the nature of story telling itself. As someone who not only has used fiction for escapism, but who has studied story telling both in terms of literary analysis of novels and of religious texts, it’s a subject that I feel very strongly about.

Warning: long ass post.

Okay, a couple of disclaimers first.

One, I am a firm believer in the “don’t like, don’t read” mentality. If I don’t like something, I don’t talk about it, I just move on. Y’all have never seen a single discourse post about The Dragon Prince, right? Yup, that’s ‘cause I really didn’t like it. It goes for countless other things too. I don’t expend time and effort and energy on things I don’t like, that’s just wasteful. So, why am I harping on VLD? Because I really enjoyed it, despite a couple of what I felt were minor issues at the time, for most of its run. That’s why I -- and I imagine the same goes for many other fans -- am so bitter.

Two, I came late into the Voltron universe. I joined in a couple of days before s6 dropped, and only watched DotU as well as the other Western versions in the past couple of months. Haven’t had a chance to see the original Japanese anime yet.

Three, I’m not a shipper, in general. I don’t ship anything in VLD except Zarkon/Honerva. Romance/sexual stuff is just not my thing, I’ll take swords and explosions any day over that. So my saltiness regarding the series has nothing to do with ships.

Alright, so I think my major gripes with the series can be sorted into three categories:

1. Inconsistency of Story Type:

This is, of course, my own opinion, but through my time of consuming fiction, I think there are three types of stories:

Good vs. Evil: the most basic type of story. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everyone stays well in their lanes. Think Disney movies, typical Saturday morning cartoons -- the heroes are exemplary of good traits, the villains are one-dimensional and unrepentant, evil for the sake of being evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story type imo, and there are several stories of this nature that I really do enjoy.   

Grey Morality: a much more nuanced take on the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. Due to the very nature of grey morality, there are varying degrees to which this can be implemented. Probably the most common one I’ve seen is where the heroes do some bad/questionable things, the villains/antagonists do some good things or have the right motives or are “noble” in some way; but overall, there is a sense that there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed, certainly by the heroes but also sometimes by the villains/antagonists too. An excellent example of this is Firefly. Another example, that puts a total twist on it by having the protagonist also be the “villain,” is Death Note -- even though the story resolves in a way that to the audience is, really, the only sustainable way possible, it still leaves neither the characters in-show nor the audience with any sense of victory. This concept is taken to the extreme by a series like Tenpou Ibun: Ayakashi Ayashi, where no one is right and no one is wrong, but at the same time everyone is right and wrong, and simply just human. There is no good and no evil, just context, circumstances, and choices. 

Combination: this type of story starts with the Good vs. Evil dichotomy but, as the story progresses and the protagonist becomes more acquainted and involved with their environment, both the protagonist and the audience come to understand that the picture is actually much more complicated than that, and it evolves into Grey Morality. Bleach is a great example. We start with seeing the Hollow as evil, mindless monsters that need to be killed; we learn that they are actually human spirits that have transformed into “monsters” through pain and grief and, therefore, we pity them but also understand that it’s a mercy to put them down; we then find out that, actually, not all are mindless and they have a complicated society and culture of their own; and, eventually, come to accept them as (reluctant) allies against a bigger threat, understanding that they are creatures in their own right. 

From the moment that Keith -- arguably the character within the main cast that had the most time/character development spent on him -- was revealed as being half-Galra (that is, half the “evil” race of the show), VLD promised to be that third type of story. Because there is no way that the writers would make one of their protagonists evil by default because of his blood in a kids’ show, duh, so by logical conclusion this means that that race is not all evil, after all. This was further emphasized by Lotor’s introduction to the plot -- a severe departure from his character in any previous incarnation -- and cemented by the episode, “The Legend Begins,” where we finally get to see the other side of things and the fact that not even Zarkon and Haggar were “born evil,” as well.

After the Keith reveal, we got shocked reactions from his teammates, notably and understandably Allura; got only an apology from her and not the rest for their treatment of him (which could have been better but, whatever, it was a step in the right direction, great!); and then... back to a weird strained relationship in working alongside Galra without another word on the subject.

Okay. Fine.

Then we get Lotor -- again, some of that initial resentment/treatment could be understandable to some extent, and eventually on the road towards, seemingly, genuine acceptance. Cool.

I won’t go into details about the colony episode, because that’s been done to death already, but, woah, major setback there. Back to the knee-jerk reaction of treating individuals of a race as complicit and responsible for the actions and perception of that race as perpetuated by a handful of individuals. And then -- flash forward to s8 -- we are welcoming Galra allies in our cause! Please join our Coalition! We want to help you!

Look. I’m not saying that you can’t retcon stuff; that you can’t go Good vs. Evil, develop into Grey Morality, and then reveal something and BOOM, jk, it was Good vs. Evil all along, gotcha! I’m sure that there is an author somewhere out there that has pulled that off effectively (I can’t think of any examples myself right now, but I’m sure it must exist somewhere).

I am saying that if you’re going to do that -- if you are going to pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet and sacrifice some crucial character development (and crucial characters themselves, let’s be honest) -- you better have a DAMN GOOD IN-UNIVERSE reason for doing so. And no, shock value or getting rid of a character because they were overshadowing the protags doesn’t count. Otherwise, your protagonists will look like giant jerks. Unless, of course, that’s what you’re going for, but I highly doubt that was the thinking here.

And then, we proceed to flip flop between “I knew it, the Galra are irredeemably evil, what’s wrong with these people?!” (I think Hunk -- HUNK, by far the most empathetic character -- said this at some point in s7?) and “Here, we can work together towards a brighter future” or some shit. You can’t do that. I mean you can, but you’re gonna get major backlash from your audience. Pick a fucking direction and stick with it.

For the past three seasons, it has really felt like the story line is being pulled into two different directions: 1) staying true to the original source material of Paladins = good, Galra/Drule = bad, and 2) providing the viewers with a groundbreaking, nuanced interpretation. 

My dudes. You can’t have both. Trying to implement both of these approaches means having morally grey, nuanced characters operating within a narrative framework that is subject to an overarching principle of a strict Good/Evil dichotomy. Do you know how fucking hard that is to pull off effectively without diving headfirst into the pitfall of punishing your morally grey characters by default, simply because they happen to exist in a universe that cannot, by nature, support them???? I can think of only a handful of authors that have managed that and, I would argue, that the man at the top of the list only managed to be so effective and influential because what he wrote was, in essence, a mythology. Mythologies have a totally different set of concerns surrounding them. And even then, he went to great lengths, both in his works and outside of them in discussions/interviews, to note that the “evil” in his world could never have happened without it intentionally being part of the larger cosmological design, i.e. balance. I’m talking, of course, about Tolkien. 

Why the fuck would you attempt to pull something like this off in a kids’ cartoon?! Avatar: The Last Airbender, since everyone loves that comparison, was defined by a black/white view that developed into a very simple grey morality, and it was this limited scope that allowed it to be presented so effectively. None of this sashaying back and forth. 

Especially when this flip flopping is done for le dramatic effect/shock value, with seemingly no good in-story reason?? Of course it’s gonna fall flat.

2. Concept vs. Execution:

This is probably what drives me crazy the most about VLD. 

As an idea, it was fucking brilliant -- anyone who has watched DotU, even with all the nostalgia, I imagine, can admit that it was very much a cut and dry 80s cartoon, with simple concerns; Vehicle Voltron attempted some nuances, but the Lion Voltron part of the show, which was by far the more popular part, was pretty stiff in that regard. VLD took that and introduced themes like: being biracial (Keith, Lotor, etc.), having to choose between duty and family (Krolia), having to choose between personal dreams and important relationships (Shiro), having to overcome deep-seated understandable prejudice and work with people you never thought you could come to stand for a greater cause and through that see that not everything is black and white and attain a greater understanding of the world (Allura), leaving home and learning to survive in a totally foreign environment in the worst circumstances possible (the paladins), dealing with disability, mental illness/ptsd while also dealing with issues of being in a position of leadership/power (Shiro), parental abuse (Lotor), substance abuse (Honerva and Zarkon), being a clone and coming to terms with that (Shiro/Kuron), learning to compromise and sacrifice personal integrity/morals for the betterment/survival of those you have made yourself responsible for (the paladins), and so much more than that. Lotor’s relationship with Honerva/Haggar had serious undertones of both Mother and Child symbolism, as well as Arthurian legend. The whole quintessence thing drew pointers from ancient and medieval concepts of alchemy.

The inclusion of any of these things, injected into a pretty straightforward and tame original source material like DotU, was inspired. What an absolutely fantastic take, with incredible potential.

... and it was the shoddiest, shittiest implementation and execution of any concepts that I have ever seen. Like... how? How did they manage to not be able to successfully see any of these themes to a close, and to actually offend the vast majority of their fanbase (regardless of background, age, race, sexuality, literally from all walks of life) by the way these themes were handled???? 

I’m sure time restraints, direction from above, etc., played a big part in it, but still. If you don’t have time to properly develop the interpersonal relationships between the core members of your main group of characters -- to the point that, say, Keith and Pidge? Hunk and Shiro? Did they ever properly, truly have any meaningful interactions? -- there’s no way you could properly handle all of this.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. 

Also? As stories are being fleshed out, they and their characters tend to take on a life of their own. The Lotor/Keith parallels? I totally believe and understand how it’s possible that it was unintentional. But when that happens, you go back and rework the rest of your plot to make sense with what you now have before you. You adjust and adapt. You don’t barrel on ahead headless and not acknowledging it, and you don’t force your characters into straitjackets just because you want to doggedly follow this one idea.    

3. The Female Lead: 

Let me begin by saying that I really, really wanted to like Allura, and the way she was written was one of the biggest turn offs and disappointments for me. I won’t go into specifics regarding her, as there many posts that already address the problematic nature of how she treats people of her race vs. anyone Galra, but I will just look at her character development as a whole.

Perhaps the easiest way for me to voice my frustrations here would be with a comparison. Let’s look at my favorite female protagonist of all time, Nakajima Youko, from Juuni Kokuki (aka. The Twelve Kindgoms).

Youko starts off as a very meek high school girl, from a typical modern Japanese family. Class representative, top grades, is scared of conflict and wants to live up to everyone’s expectations of her, which makes her very submissive, a total coward emotionally, mentally, and physically. She seeks to please everyone and, as a result, harms her own development by never giving any thought to her own desires and ends up bullied by everyone around her. Magic happens, shit goes down, and she is whisked away to a different world that is parallel to our own, along with two friends from school; ripped from her home, her family, with absolutely no way back. This other world has a different language, people who end up in there from our world are treated like garbage and are slaves, has a medieval level of tech/advancement, and Youko with her friends has to figure out how to survive. She finds out she is actually queen of one of the realms in this world, which makes her a target of various groups. She is betrayed by literally everyone around her, everyone she places her trust in, including the two friends that got transported to this world with her. 

She goes from meek and mild to bloodthirsty and brash; lashing out at everyone around her, plotting to kill those that offer her a helping hand, becoming unreasonably suspicious and racist and way out of line. Understandably so, but the narrative doesn’t, for one moment, present this as okay. Some more stuff happens and she finally snaps out of it, comes to a couple of realizations, and has major character development. She develops the attitude that, yes, people have betrayed and hurt her, but their actions towards her and their opinion of her is none of her business. It will not stop her from acting in ways that are in line with her own morals; if people choose to betray and use her, that’s on them. She will simply do what she must, and treat everyone as an individual according to their actions. This doesn’t mean that she adopts a pushover mentality -- it just means that she loses her knee-jerk reaction, and doesn’t rush to conclusions. She becomes a badass warrior and queen, strong and just, and, frankly, one of the most well-developed female characters I have ever seen.

Do I think this is the only way to write a strong female character? Of course not. But I’m convinced this is what the writers wanted to do with Allura, this kind of progression and path, from being angry, lost, and alone to being a confident, capable, magnificent ruler. And, imo, they totally missed the mark.

I think that the writers were so focused on giving us a “strong” modern female character, and getting as far away from her DotU damsel in distress depiction as possible, that they ended up writing her as, basically, a bully. Sure, they tell us -- both through other characters’ words in the show and through interviews -- about her diplomacy, peaceful nature, leadership quality, open-mindedness, etc., but they never show it to us. In almost every key moment in the series, she has been written to be combative and suffering from tunnel-vision.   

And a huge part of this is that they simply didn’t give her any room to grow. Youko’s character started off at maybe... 5% of her potential? She was honestly so “weak,” I thought about dropping the series. But by the point the anime ended (because the story itself is unfinished and unlikely to continue, unfortunately), I’d say she’s at around 70%. That makes for an extremely dramatic, fulfilling, and believable character development. The VLD writers started Allura off much higher than that. Too high. From the get-go she’s a highly accomplished martial artist, has incredible physical strength due to her Altean heritage, a seemingly natural affinity for leadership and for appealing to people, she’s very attractive, well spoken, had a loving and supportive family, is a princess, had a brilliant alchemist for a father, has access to the universe’s greatest super weapon -- I mean, yes, she’s had to deal with immense loss and grief and come to terms with it in a very short period of time, and lost her father a second time so to speak with Alfor’s AI -- but overall, everything has been set up and handed to her in a nice package. Other than overcoming her hatred towards the Galra and idealization of Altea/Alteans, really, there’s nothing left for her to do that would be defining for her character.

That’s not to say that characters that are extremely accomplished from the start are a bad thing. But in their case, their emotional and mental development and maturity is that much more important, because that’s all that’s left to work with. The writers didn’t really give Allura any significant room to grow in terms of any of that. (And no, I don’t consider her new alchemical powers from Oriande as her growing; she expended no effort for that, it wasn’t really a trial at all for her; it was like me playing a video game on casual mode with the “killallenemies” console command enabled). Her overcoming her racism towards the Galra, beginning with Keith and BoM and continuing to do so with subsequent Galra allies, had a TON of potential and I had been so excited to see where it would go; but that fell flat, totally forgotten by the story.

In contrast, you have Lotor -- we see him struggling to claw his way out of the hand that fate has dealt him, to grow beyond his family’s influence and abuse. Both on and off screen, even described by his own enemies in great detail, we see just how much he has had to fight and to earn everything he has and he is, even things that shouldn’t have to be “earned” in the first place. He’s lost Daibazaal and Altea, both his father and his mother, he’s too Galra for anyone who’s not and not nearly enough Galra for anyone who is. Literally nothing has been handed to him. The juxtaposition between him and Allura, had Allura been given more breathing room by the writers, could have been fantastic and I would have shipped the hell out of it, like I do in DotU. She’s had everything he’s ever wanted (loving family, supportive father, Alfor himself, exploration, alchemy), etc.; envy would have been extremely appropriate on his part, and very interesting to work through, but that was never explored either.

So, I feel like what ended up happening was that a huge imbalance in how these two characters came across was created, made only more evident when their relationship with each other was what was front and center. And, at least for me, this is what makes me completely unable to see Allura’s side of things, and I freely admit it -- I simply don’t understand her or her actions, because I don’t feel like I’ve been shown enough of her inner workings as a character to be able to care about her in the slightest. I can definitely see where the writers were going with her, or where they thought they were going. But unless they actually meant for the character that is, for all intents and purposes, their female lead to be a  racist, abusive, immature person playing at being an adult and at being the leader of a coalition spanning galaxies, who has no problem condemning millions of lives to death and devastation at a whim of her emotions because they are Valid™, and who wades dangerously close to “Mary Sue” territory many times due the way the narrative frames her... then all I see on screen is an unfinished character. Unfinished, because the writers didn’t take any opportunities in the narrative for the flaws and issues she does have to be addressed and overcome, opportunities of which there were plenty! I absolutely don’t mind that she has flaws -- flawed heroes are amazing. But, you gotta do something about them, i.e. address them and work through them. Otherwise your heroes remain static in a plot that is evolving and that’s not a good look.

And, you know, I honestly think DotU Allura is a much stronger female character. She works for everything she gets. She works her ass off. She has to fight to not only be allowed to be part of the team and fly a lion, but even just to do everyday common things like be out in the fields or swim or whatever; forget practicing martial arts. Coran literally ties her up at one point to prevent her from participating. Nanny is a constant battle for her. Over everything, from her clothes to her manner of speaking to where she’s going. But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t give up. And she fucks up, BIG TIME, several times, she does TONS of stupid shit. But she learns, acknowledges it, gets called out on it, tries again, and keeps on trying. DotU Allura’s biggest battles, in my mind, aren’t with Lotor or the Drule forces or Zarkon, but with her own team and those she considers family, and her struggle for the others’ acceptance of herself and her skills within the group. And for that, she is a much stronger, more solid female character than VLD Allura, despite all superficial appearances and frilly pink dresses and 80s voice acting.

Again, like I said in a previous post, I don’t conform to the view that creators owe their fans anything. Write things however the fuck you want. You want to kill Allura off, fine. Do away with Lotor too? Cool. I completely understand people who want happy endings in fiction because, it’s true, reality fucking sucks; there are several fictional works I turn to whenever real life is too much. And I would be lying if I said that I don’t crave stories where characters like Lotor are given happy endings; of course I want my favorite characters to be okay. But overall, I’m the type of person who, as long as things make for an effective, compelling narrative, I’ll be content with it, regardless of whether the ending is tragic or happy or anything in between. 

So you want to kill off your morally grey character and your female lead, who is also one of the only women on the team, who is also a princess figure, who has also been completely visually redesigned in such a way that you know women of color will relate to her? That’s fine by me, go right ahead. But do so in a way that is meaningful and makes sense within the larger narrative you created, and isn’t some empty, sensationalist gesture. 

And also be aware of your fanbase. This is a reboot -- that comes with certain expectations attached, as a number of the viewers will very likely be fans of the old series, watching out of curiosity, nostalgia, etc. Expectations like, the princess lives, the heroes aren’t assholes, etc. (and I’m referring to expectations from DotU and other Western iterations, rather than the original Japanese series). You don’t have to conform to these expectations -- personally, I’m a big fan of tropes being subverted -- but you need to be aware of them. You need to know the rules before you break them, and if you break them, you better break them damn well.

Imo, VLD ultimately failed to deliver on these fronts, and pretty much fell prey to what a lot of series do -- it couldn’t handle the shift from being primarily episodic in nature (i.e., each episode is self-contained, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, while operating under a distant general goal, like defeating Zarkon; so, s1 and s2) to becoming a more complex narrative unraveling a hidden agenda (s3 onwards). Kind of like how the paladins made no provisions for how they would handle things after Zarkon’s defeat, it feels like the writers didn’t really have one solid plan for how to develop past that point as well.

tl;dr: Whoever is responsible for the way VLD turned out should write a book: how to offend your entire audience in eight seasons or less.

[lusciakoushiro]

I Thought Family Meant Something

Was gonna space this out, but feel the urge to keep going, so let’s dive into the next question. In the interview it was said that telling about Shiro’s family would have been “repetitive” which could translate into boring.  All the other Paladins, including Allura, had mentions of their families, so why not Shiro?

Now to be fair, The Holts and Krolia had bigger parts to play, even Veronica gets some screen time. But they still give Hunk a family, a large one at that, and Lance is shown not only talking about his own big family, they get shown when he returns to Earth in season 7 and get actual interaction with them in season 8. Other than being driving forces to get home, the family members held no real weight (The Holts and Krolia withstanding). So why not say something about Shiro’s family?

This was a man who went into the military/space program, which I would think is a big deal and he excelled at it, but at the same time was fighting for his life in a matter of speaking while being ill. You can’t tell me his family didn’t have problems with it and maybe sided with Adam in the matter or were actually supportive of what he wanted to do. Either way, something in passing could have easily been said; a small scene of the Paladins getting to know each other early on or even in a flashback with Keith  pre-Kerberos. In a previous interview, one of the EPs said that Shiro’s disease was a hint as to what happened to his family; so are we to assume his whole family succumbed to that illness too? Both his parents, grand parents, possible siblings? That’s a horrible thought to say the least.

But let’s run with it; if he his family died off that makes them coming back to Earth that much sadder. Keith knew Krolia was away with Kolivan, so he had no one waiting for him on Earth, but he didn’t expect to. Pidge was reunited with her mom at least so she knows all of her family is safe (even Bae Bae), Lance gets mobbed by his large family and though Hunk’s were held captive, they did return to him safe and sound at the end of season 7. But Shiro was all alone! No one was waiting for him and then when the scene shifts we see a 60 second (or there about) scene of him saying sorry to Adam. He was ALL ALONE and had zero time to grieve. Yes, there was a war, but everyone got to see and talk to their families and Shiro can’t get a proper scene to let out his sadness or possible regret?

So now let’s say Shiro did have family. I know we have JK’s HC that he was raised by his grand parents and most fanon (including me) runs with it, but for this let’s say he has his parents and a brother. Imagine the horror they felt when hearing about the pilot error only to find out he is alive and not only alive, but that he no longer is sick. Shiro who had the heaviest of backstories would have had a happy reunion and possibly would have had people with him when visiting Adam’s plaque, providing comfort he sorely needed after all this time. Hell there could have just been a small scene with a phone call to show he was talking to them. 

But no, instead they give him more heartache to get over.

Aren’t the Paladins his family? Well of course they are, the thing I loved about the show early on was the aspect of found family. Shiro and Keith were certainly that from the pre-Kerberos days all the way through season 7. But even found family wasn’t there for him when they returned to Earth. He introduces Coran and Allura, who also know no one on Earth, but then is left alone. Though they did not know Adam, having them in the scene at the wall would have been even more emotional cause they showed they cared. And honestly, when the screen pans to show Iverson I was so disappointed. Though Iverson has probably known Shiro since he was a cadet, there really isn’t a family kind of vibe with him. Due to not having family on Earth and knowing Shiro, along with Shiro’s romantic relationship with Adam, it should have been Keith to go to him. Time and again we have seen both of these characters let their guards down for each other. This would have been one of those times that it was needed as Shiro himself had tears in his eyes as he said he was sorry. We never see anyone really comfort Shiro, but he is there for everyone else.

There are two different kinds of family that we see here and as we see with Keith’s character arc; knowing where you come from is important. For us as the audience I feel that it is important to know little things about the characters to round them out. Even if something like an immediate family that isn’t meant to be the focus, hearing that they have one is important and it is just something you learn about the character. “Oh Shiro has a brother!” or “Aw, his mom died to that same illness”. We want these reactions because it means we care about the character and are invested.

In terms of the found family, I feel that his love and comfort doesn’t go both ways, save for Keith and Allura. We see him comforting Pidge early on and he even gives her the choice to leave Voltron. Whether he could read Lance’s insecurity or not, he still gave the praise of “that’s why we bring our sharp shooter”, making him happy. Hunk, honestly had no real interactions with him and that’s a shame cause them cooking probably would have been hilarious. But going the other way? Nope. When Keith was grieving their thoughts of Shiro were rather one note. We heard Lance once before say Shiro was his hero and though Shiro might have heard that lot from people, seeing Lance actually talk to him about why he looks up to him would have been a nice pick me up for him due to everything that happened before he crashed on Earth. Or Pidge feeling sad about not being able to find Matt and Sam; having Shiro tell some stories about the mission to help ease her mind and in turn have her go off on how he was a legend at their house, again, would have been a nice pick me up, to help ease his confused and aching mind.

When Keith finds him and proclaims he’ll save him “as many times as it takes”, in a Form Podcast episode, it was said that the other Paladins did go and see him while he recovered. However, same episode cause the scenes were back to back, the line of “you’re looking better”, was originally Keith’s, but they changed it to Lance. Due to us not seeing the others talking to him or even talking with each other about Shiro, it would have fit more for Keith to say it instead. This is just one of many things that don’t quite make sense unless you go behind the scenes like that.

So how could us finding out about his blood family or having other moments with his found family been boring or repetitive, when they gave us an entire episode showing Honerva’s backstory in season 8 and most of that we had already seen from a previous season? Shiro was already a complex character, us just finding out about his family in away would have just been another tidbit about him.

[voltron-s7-8-rewrite]

“A Little Adventure” & “The Ruins”

Here are the first two stories of my Voltron Season 7 and 8 re-write. For more information you can see here: My Voltron season re-wright

A Little Adventure

This story is pretty much fine as is. Getting the full background of Keith and Shiro’s story, Griffin’s appearance, and the other Paladin’s hijinks is all good.

The only thing about the story that I would change is the reasoning for Shiro being in the pod. Rather than another ‘Will Shiro survive!?” plot to deal with, he’s in the pod to heal the wounds from his and Keith’s battle, and for some observation that everything with the transference went well.

Because Shiro is not barely hanging onto life again, the setting is more relaxed for Keith, Krolia, and Allura. Keith and Krolia talk a bit about Keith and Shiro’s youth, which piques Allura’s curiosity, as she had never heard how they knew each other before Voltron. So, Keith shares with Allura how he and Shiro met and became friends, which is what the flashbacks are.

I know these are little details, but they have huge meanings for my version. First, from this point on Shiro will no longer be a character for the story to abuse. He’s been through the harshest of fires and has come out tempered and refined. He is now rid of the illness that plagued him for years, he’s completely free of any control Haggar had over him, and the Galra arm that was a reminder of all the pain he endured as the Champion is gone. Shiro has overcome all that life has thrown at him and is no longer a victim for the story, but instead has become a victor of the story.

As for Keith, willingly opening up and sharing some of his past with Allura shows that he has grown during his time away from the Paladins and is opening up to people. I’m not going to really go into detail about this yet, since it will come up more later, but this is the first sign of the growth he’s gone through.

   The Ruins

After Shiro comes out of the pod fully healed and in good health, they all decide to head to earth to get the plans Sam has to build a new Castle Ship. With their Lions’ powers depleted the trip is going to take over a year. Pidge tries to contact the Voltron Coalition but is unable to get any response from their friends. As they discuss things, the subject of Shiro’s Clone is brought up. Shiro begins to apologize for the Clone’s actions, but the others try to stop him, saying it wasn’t him. Shiro, however, disagrees.

Shiro explains he and the Clone are the same person, as they merged into one being. He explains that from the moment he had woken up on the Galra cruiser he had known that there was something wrong. Though he tried to act normal and continue on with things before his death, he was in a constant state of fear, anxiety, and had an ever present sense of wrongness. No matter what he tried he couldn’t get past it, and rather than opening up to the Paladins and allowing them to help, he felt he had to keep up the image of the strong leader, which led to him lashing out at them.

Shiro apologizes and thanks them for being there for him, and especially notes Lance’s help. Lance says he wasn’t able to do much, but Shiro says that him just listening and being willing to help meant the world to him. The Paladins accept Shiro’s apology and, calling for a group hug, they now see Shiro in a new light. No longer is he the untouchable leader, he’s just like them, a person who struggles and needs help at times, and from now on they will make sure to never let him struggle alone again.

As the Paladins get ready to leave, Keith stands in front of the Black Lion looking up at it. Shiro joins him and tells him that they are all waiting for his lead. Nothing needs to be said to the implication of Shiro’s words. They both know, Keith IS the leader now.

Keith asks how he feels, and Shiro says he’s excited. Keith asks what he means, and Shiro tells him that while inside the Black Lion he came to understand how the Lions see the Paladins. The lives of the Paladins are finite compared to the Lions. One day they will all pass, while the Lions will continue on, bonding with new generations of defenders.

Shiro says while his time as a Paladin of Voltron has ended, his story isn’t over. In fact, ever since he woke up, he’s felt a pulling, something telling him that he has a new purpose out there that he has yet to fulfill. Keith tells Shiro that he and the others will be there for him no matter what, and Shiro says he knows.

The two share a smile and he pats Keith’s shoulder as Lance and Pidge get into an argument over which Lion each of the animals will travel in. Shiro pushes Keith towards the squabbling Paladins, telling him that he gets to deal with the kids now. Keith glares back before going to break them up.

After the Lions head out we see a Galra cruiser’s scanners pick up on them. A crew member asks if they should engage, but they are told to follow at a distance, not allowing the Paladins to know they are there.

After having traveled for some time, Pidge picks up on some signals. When Krolia hears them she recognizes a Blade distress signal, likely made by a senior member. Pidge pins down where the signal’s origin is and they head to that location.

Landing on a desolate planet, and exploring the place for some time, the Paladins find a survivor, Macidus. They all head to his home, where Krolia discovers he has the swords of fallen Blade members.

Macidus explains that after the lions and Lotor disappeared, the Druids began hunting down the Blades. The remaining Blades came to Macidus’ world where they had their final stand. In the end, Macidus was the sole survivor.

Krolia finds Kolivan’s blade and when it flashes she realizes he’s still alive. Macidus reveals himself to be the Druid Keith once fought, and drops a device. Kosmo, sensing danger, teleports Keith out of there as the device goes off and freezes everyone else in place.

As the Paladins are stuck, a handful of living Druids appear and surround them. Macidus orders the Druids to kill them while he goes after Keith. Macidus vanishes and the Druids charge their dark magic to end the Paladins…

.::+::.

Alright, here’s my little commentary corner.

First off, we needed was the whole Kuron-Shiro merger addressed in canon, and not just by the creators in an interview. So, how I’m portraying it is, Kuron was basically Shiro. When Allura put Shiro’s spirit into Kuron the two souls merged. Shiro-Kuron (Henceforth just called “Shiro”) views everything from both sides as being him. He sees his time with the Paladins during season 3-6 as his past, as well as his time being with the Black Lion as his past.

This isn’t really how I would want the Clone story line to end, but since I’m sticking to the canon amount of episodes the show had, this is how I have to go in order to fit everything.

As I was writing this, I thought one of the things that might add some depth, and give us insight into Shiro’s character during this time, as well as give him some character flaws, was by having some of Kuron’s un-Shiro like behaviors be actual flaws of Shiro’s, and not just Haggar’s influence.

We’ve seen Shiro be pushed and struggle many times. His illness, time as a prisoner, PTSD, etc… He’s an exceptionally strong character, and has always been able to push aside his issues and carry on. Giving him this “ever present sense of wrongness” during his time as Kuron, something that he can’t push away, causes him to lash out in ways we never saw before. Sure, there was Haggar’s influence in there, but some of it was just his own struggles at dealing with what was happening in his head. It shows just how much he was effected and hurting during that time.

It also shows the flaws in the relationship Pidge, Hunk, Allura, and Coran had with Shiro. None of them approached him about his behavior in the show; they just accepted it as is, while occasionally discussing it behind his back. That’s so wrong.

So, how I view that is that, sense Shiro’s always been the strong leader, they just took his personal struggles for granted. He’s always pulled through his issues, so he’ll do it again. It’s not that they don’t care about him; just they fell into the trap of seeing him as “The Leader” as much as he fell into the trap of being “The Leader”. This is now something they will never allow happen again, he will never be taken for granted again.

This also helps show development in Lance, as he tried to step up as second-in-command, and actually tried to talk with Shiro. While it didn’t solve the issues, he was there, taking responsibility, and looking out for the health of his leader.

Now, I know a lot of people wanted Shiro back as the Black Paladin and Keith back in red, but it’s pretty clear that the creators always intended for Keith to become the Black Paladin. When they weren’t able to write the story the way they wanted, they cobbled together what we got with Keith leaving for the BoM and the Clone Saga. Some of it was good, a lot of it was a mess, and most of it was a disservice to both Shiro and Keith’s stories.

While I know there are people who won’t be happy, I am keeping Keith as Black Paladin, Lance as Red, and Allura as Blue. All I see from returning them to their original positions is regressing where their arcs should have gone. As you will see later on, it’s vital for them to be in these positions.

I will talk about what Keith’s story should have been in S7E5, and Shiro’s role and story in S7E11.

As a small note, there would be no scene where Lance arranges to have Romelle ride with him. If he’s truly interested in Allura like he said he was in S6E2, then he’s not going to manipulate things so he can flirt with a pretty girl. Not saying she can’t ride with him, just it wasn’t Lance with a motive that made it happen.

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

NEXT

[everythinginslowmotion]

Season 8 Rewrite- Ep1: Launch Date

AO3 |X|

So obviously with everyone hating how basically the entirety of season 8 ended, I have been requested to do a rewrite. Some things from the season will be changed, some will be left, but everything that people were unhappy with will be kept out (i.e. Allura’s death or anything like that). 

Shout out to my girlfriend @imtheonlybeefcow for beta reading this first chapter. She also has an archive account with great fics and her archive is also imtheonlybeefcow. 

Anyway, here is the first chapter, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!

(Also the other chapters will not be updated on a specific schedule due to school and other outside commitments, but all 13 episodes will be rewritten). 

~Allura~

The hallway seemed darker than it had been the past several times she had stood outside of this window. From the outside, she could hear the sounds of the monitors and screens hooked up to the Altean girl that lay unconscious on the bed. It all seemed very surreal, the knowledge that her and Coran weren’t the only Alteans left in the universe was still so shocking. So surreal in fact, that it felt like a dream every time she stood behind the glass that separated her and the red headed Altean that seemed as if she would never wake up.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway behind her as they approached her side. Romelle. It was always Romelle. Coran joined her on occasion as she waited outside the patient's room, but she thinks that as more Alteans started showing up in their lives, it began to remind him of a better time. A time when this war wasn’t looming over their heads, determining their very being. So she didn’t ask him to come often.

Romelle, however, became Allura’s most recurring company. All of the paladins were off with their families or in meetings or just enjoying their time that they have left on Earth in general. Romelle didn’t have that. Romelle had lost just as much as Allura had, and now they both were experiencing that loss all over again as one of their own laid stone cold only just out of reach.

“You know, back on the colony, Luca and I didn’t always get along. But despite that, I had always respected her. She had strength and desire that few had. But it was never malicious in intent. She wanted good and fairness among our people. I don’t know what would ever drive her to turn against an innocent planet, especially after what happened to her own home planet.”

Allura remained quiet for a moment, continuing to stare through the glass. She knew all about the strength and determination that ran through Altean veins. She grew up with it. Found it within herself when she was thrown into the war so suddenly. She saw it every day in Coran as she had in her father before he had passed. And even in Lotor, who had a different sort of stubborn determination driving his very life, she felt it within him. He was the only one though that she had ever seen that determination turn into something that worked against itself. That quickly changed into a harmful path that got put above anything else that he may have believed in.

“Desire for something greater than yourself can be dangerous. If she was so desperate for something to believe in, she may have been susceptible to being easily manipulated.”

She didn’t need to say who. She was so sure that he had disappeared for good now, but he was always capable of much more than she had ever imagined.

She was so sure that this desire for a greater good could only stem from the one person who had control over the former colony.

Lotor.

~Lance~

The table was cool against his hands as they rested on the top. He stared down at them as Hunk had gone off to help his family and Sal make a few special request food items before they took off tomorrow. He heard them speaking in the background but their words came and went through his mind like white noise. He couldn’t pay attention to them. He couldn’t pay attention to much of anything really lately. He looked up at Hunk and his parents as they gave him two boxes. Hunk lifted the lid of one releasing the smell of freshly baked banana cake into the room, taking Lance back to the days when he would stay the night at Hunk’s house and his mom would make it for them to eat after dinner. They would always sneak down to the kitchen in the early hours of the morning and get themselves more slices to take back up to Hunk’s room as they talked about anything that their minds could conjure up.  

Hunks parents left the room with a simple “I love you” before Hunk turned and made his way back towards the table where Lance had been sitting the entire time.

“Big day tomorrow, isn’t it. It seems like almost forever ago when we found the Blue lion and piled in just to blasted out into space. Man, we had no idea what we were getting into! And now look at us, defenders of the universe.”

Lance didn’t look up at him, and he certainly didn’t meet his enthusiasm with his simple reply of “Yeah”.

“We are veterans now. We’ve seen it all, man. Going back into battle for the last time. Or hopefully the last time, I guess we could all fail miserably and die horrible deaths out in space. But here we go, back out into the unknown. Guess that makes us real heroes or something, doesn’t it?”

“Hm, yep.”

“Heroes enough that they made a show about us! Already! Can you believe it? Have you seen it yet? It’s not like the Voltron Show that we did to promote the coalition either. It’s like with real characters based on us. None of us really fit though, but it’s still cool. Coran is all serious and Allura isn’t really like Allura. Pidge can do cool flips and stuff but kind of sounds like a gremlin. They mixed up me and Keith pretty bad too! I’m all tough and mean and Keith is friendly! Can you believe it? Keith beling happy all of the time?” Lance had seen it. Everyone had seen it. They had to do some interviews with the writers about themselves. Hunk was right, they had gotten it all wrong. Lance just didn’t bother to stop his friends rambling though. “It’s weird though. I don’t know where they got it from, but I think they are even hinting at a romance between him and Allura.”

Lance’s head snapped up, drawing his attention from his fidgeting hands that had now been slammed down on the table to his friends shocked expression. He hadn’t meant to react like that- so abruptly. But it was reflex. Somehow this conversation went from being about absolutely nothing to everything that he had been thinking about since they were on that dumb space game show.

“What?! Allura and Keith . Nonononono, that’s not how it’s supposed to be!”

“Woah, a love triangle forming. I like where you are taking that.”

“Wh- what? A long triangle? What do you mean a love triangle… that would imply…”

“Well it would be perfect for that story. Obviously Keith has no real interest in Allura and you clearly do so it would work with you guys’ whole dynamic of going against each other and all.”

Lance looked down. So that was what he meant. Not about him…

“Oh wait dude, you said you were going to ask Allura on a date! Oh no, she didn’t say no did she buddy? Oh, oh man. I’m so sorry. That’s rough, I shouldn’t have said any…”

“She didn’t say no, Hunk. I just… I haven't gotten around to asking her yet, I guess. I’ve just had a lot on my mind about some stuff and she has been really busy with the new Altean girl that I don’t know if I should anymore. Maybe it just isn’t the right time.” He sat back down in his seat completely and folded his hands again, staring down at his fingers as they rubbed nervously together.

“No, Lance. It’s the only time. We leave tomorrow. It’s now or never dude, literally,” his brows furrowed as he put on his serious face. It was a face that Lance didn’t see often from his friend, mainly from when he was giving orders in the kitchen or protecting the ones he loved. Lance knew that Hunk figured out something was wrong. It isn’t like Lance was really trying to hide it. But he didn’t think Hunk knew the real reason why… Lancedidn’t even know completely why. “You are asking her tonight, and thats final,” he completed as he hit his palm gently on the table.

Lance didn’t say anything in protest.

~Shiro~

Never in a million years would he have thought he would be standing at the head of a table in the Galaxy Garrison giving orders to a room full of people. Not just any people, but commanders, officers, people of major importance. And he was their head. Their leader. Even when he wasn’t technically a part of team Voltron anymore he still formed the head. The person in charge. The leader and the one who knows exactly what to do and say in the exact moment that it is needed.

He didn’t particularly enjoy the position but he believed in duty and honor and even though in an ideal world he would be off exploring the unknown corners of the galaxy, this was what he was meant to do. And he was going to do it.

He took a breath in as the last people made their way into the large room and got settled.

“Everyone, welcome to our final Earth briefing. We’ve made a lot of progress over the past few months, but our work is not close to being done. Tomorrow we launch to continue the liberation efforts. There are several planets still under galra control and in order for this war to finally come to an end, we need to free those planets and their people.” He looked over at Sam, the man he once looked up to as his hero, but who was now looking up to him as if he had all the answers. “Commander Holt, what is the latest from your team?”

“We know there is no Galra activity in galaxies near the milky way. Sendak appeared to only have targeted Earth. However, we do have a new development. The Altean girl had several devices on her, one of them appearing to be a communication device. Earlier today it activated itself in what seemed to be a distress signal. It may just be a trap, but if not then then some of the pilots that we thought we lost when Earth was first invaded may still be alive.”

Shiro’s breath caught in his throat. Pilots still alive. But that could mean that he… Adam… could be out there. Somewhere.

He pulled himself back into the situation, turning his attention away from Sam to Keith.

Every time Shiro looked in the mirror, he doesn’t recognize the man that he sees. He remembers seeing a young man with dark black hair and a face filled with hope for the future. Now his age is showing at only 25, he is missing an arm, has white hair, and a scar that runs the width of his face as a constant reminder of what he went through and what all he has lost. But his transformation over the past couple of years will never shock him more than Keith’s.

Keith. The kid who stole his car. The pilot prodigy and genius. Turned from a delinquent, to his student, to his brother, to a leader. Before, when he would look at Keith, he would still see the 12 year old kid with messy hair and a scowl always on his face. Ready to fight and ready for adventure. Now he sees the scar that runs across his cheek. Sees how long his hair has gotten. Hears the change in pitch and even tone in his voice when he talks. It used to be so in the moment, sparse with quick decisions. Now he is all seriousness and strength. He isn’t the kid that Shiro took under his wing so many years ago. He is Keith, paladin of the Black lion.

“How are Earth’s defenses?” He said turning his focus to Keith as he brought his attention back to the meeting.

“All of the Garrison facilities around the globe have checked in. Everything is in place and they are ready to keep Earth safe.”

“Good. And the Atlas?” He said turning to Veronica who was standing behind him.

“All repairs have been made, and all tests have been passed. The IGF-Atlas is good to go.”

“And updates on the Altean pilot?” Allura’s face turned down when he mentioned it.

“Maybe if we had a couple of more days, she would wake and we can find out who sent her.”

Keith turned to face her next to him, “There is no telling how long it will take her to wake, or even if she will tell us anything when she does wake up. There are too many risks and we can’t wait any longer. Especially if those pilots really are out there somewhere. We need to get back out there.”

“Keith is right Allura. We will make sure to keep constant communication with Earth in case any new developments happen, but tomorrow is the day we have to leave. I’m sorry, I know you were hoping to get to speak to her.” He turned his head away trying to ignore the disappointment that washed over Allura’s face. He knew she didn’t like the decision, but she knew it had to be done. There was no other choice. “I have one more item to discuss. Tonight is the last night we have on Earth. We may not be home for years, so take this as an order. Take time for yourself and be with the ones you love. You have all earned it.”

He himself didn’t even know what that meant for him. He didn’t have any family anymore and the closest thing to family he has now is the paladins and the Holts. Both who will be on the mission with him. Maybe he would go out and do stuff with N-7. Maybe he would just stay home and watch some old movie that he still had in his abandoned apartment. He just needed something. Some distraction to take away from the fact that he might be out there.

That Adam may still be alive.

~Lance~

Be with the ones you love.

His family.

Well he was going to do that anyway. His mom is cooking his favorite meal tonight for him before they take off tomorrow.

He looked over the crowded room of people. All of them had their own ways that they were going to celebrate tonight. Or not really celebrate, but spend the night. All so hopefully in their victory and return.

An elbow nudged its way into his arm. He looked over at Hunk who motioned his head towards the front of the table. He knew what Hunk was thinking.

Be with the ones you love.

Hunk was going to make him ask her out. There was no doubt about it. No time for Lance to back out, for him to stop and think about if this was really what he wanted.

It had seemed like what he wanted for so long. He still remembers their first day in the castle ship when the pod opened and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen fell out and literally into his open arms.

Lance turned his head towards where she was sitting. Her position was very similar to the one he had been in earlier. Slouched over, staring down at her hands. She was upset over the possibility of missing one of her own people wake up when they had come so close. Waited so long.

She was still just as beautiful as she was that first day he met her. Her long white hair was up into its usual bun. Her altean wear replaced with a uniform similar to the very one he had worn as a student here so many years ago. The orange hue didn’t drown out her complexion as it had done with most of the students who had passed through these halls though. She still radiated power and beauty. But somewhere lost out in space, Lance’s childish crush started to be replaced with something else. Her power and beauty stopped making him lose his breath every time he looked at her, but instead he found himself admiring it all in a different way.

Be with the ones you love.

Just beyond Allura, in the chair next to her, sat Keith. Back straight. Face drawn tight in determination. He wasn’t going to let this mission fail. They were going to come back one way or another. Lance knew that. He trusted Keith. The very same Keith who, in the beginning, was all intuition and act-first-think-later, headstrong and who never stopped or slowed down for anything. Lance couldn’t pinpoint when, but as it had with switched with Allura, his own jealousy for Keith changed into something… Respect. Friendship. Trust. Stability. All though those things were true, in Lance’s head there was a pull that told him those emotions weren’t quite fitting .

He watched as Keith rose from his chair and stood next to Shiro. The meeting was now officially dismissed causing everyone else who had been gathered around the table to quietly get up and begin to shuffle out to their own activities.

Lance had barely made it one step out of the room before he felt a big hand on his back pushing him forward. He took one last look into the room, taking his attention towards the very front where Keith and Shiro were in deep conversation with one another. Turning his head to the right where he saw Allura and Romelle walking down the hall, he inhaled deeply before taking a step forward.

“Uh, hey Allura,” he said continuing to walk forward to catch up with them slightly. The two of them stopped and turned around to face him. Suddenly the room had become very warm as he felt his face heat up.

“What is it Lance?”

He turned his head to the floor. Back out. “Oh nothing much. Just wanted to check in. You’ve been spending a lot of time in the med bay and I just wanted to make sure you both were doing alright. So, uh, how are… things?”

“Lance I... I really need to be getting back.”

“Oh, right, sorry. Well… I don’t want to keep you waiting then… so talk to you later I guess.” He began to turn around to walk away as they had also done in front of him. The difference is he was faced with a towering and disappointed looking Hunk who took him by the shoulders, turned him around in one motion and pushed him forward again.

So close.

“Actually, Allura! I was wondering if you, maybe wanted to have dinner. Tonight. Dinner tonight with me? And my family. My, uh, my mom is cooking so I just thought you might join us.”

She looked at the floor. She doesn't want to. “Thank you for the offer Lance, it sounds wonderful. But I… I can’t.”

Romelle put a hand on her shoulder. “I know you are worried about Luca, but everyone else is worried about you. Go spend your last night experiencing Earth and I can take care of watching her. Get away and clear you head before you take off tomorrow.”

“Yeah, everything she just said. Totally. Great idea, Romelle,” Hunk said as he walked up and put one of his hands on each of their shoulders. Allura’s face still looked as unsure as Lance felt.

“Perhaps dinner would be nice… I’d love to Lance.”

Lance brought his head up completely, straightening out his posture. “Woah, really? Uh, awesome. Alright, tonight. Us. Yes.” He started to back up once again. Allura gave him a small smile that made his heart jump before she turned around and started walking in the opposite direction once again with Romelle.

“Yes! Dude! I knew you could do it. Good job, a date… with Allura. It’s only been years that you’ve been wanting this. How do you feel, man?”

He smiled up at his friend, “Great. Thank you for making me do this.” But when he looked back towards the silhouettes disappearing down the hallway towards the med bay, the jump in his heart had gone away.

~Pidge~

She got why her mom was angry with her. But did she think it was fair? No. She was 15 now. And without her, Earth would be destroyed, overrun by Galra, and her mom would have never seen her husband or son ever again. And what does she get for bringing them back and helping save the universe on multiple occasions? Grounded.

Grounded as if she was 7 again and her and Matt had gotten into a stupid fight where she had called him a bad name and she was the one who got in trouble for that, where he didn’t get in trouble for starting the fight in the first place.

But there was no point in fighting her mom. It was always a lost battle. Pidge may be smart but her parents are by far smarter, but her mom is where her stubbornness comes from. So instead she was spending her last night on Earth collecting data on plants species and making sure they had enough food growing to last the entire team out in space.

“Pidge, do you have a moment?” Allura’s voice sounded nervous, something Pidge hadn’t heard more than a handful of times before.

“Yeah, sure. What’s up?” Anything to take a break from staring at plants.

She watched out of the corner of her eye as Allura folded her hands together and looked off to the side. “I uh, I might have a…”

“She has a date tonight with the pointy chinned one!” Romelle butted in excitedly. “She needs your assistance in choosing proper courting attire for the occasion.”

Pidge froze in front of the plants she was looking at, shocked. “Wait, pointy chin as in Lance? You have a date? With Lance?” She turned towards Allura who still wasn’t looking at her. “Ew. Weird,” Pidge said awkwardly as she turned back away from Allura and Romelle.

She had a feeling that she wasn’t the only one who found this weird based on Allura’s actions.

“I was hoping you would be able to accompany me to find appropriate attire for Earth’s custom.”

Pidge heard her mom laugh from behind her, “Katie and clothes? They don’t exactly go hand and hand girls.”

She gave her mom a glare before looking back up at Allura’s face. “The mall I think has finally reopened and I was going to check it out, but I’m grounded meaning I am stuck here until we take off tomorrow.”

Both of the girls looked confused. “Grounded? I wasn’t aware that humans ever floated,” Romelle said.

“Not grounded like stuck on the ground. It’s her punishment for running off into deep space for years and leaving her mother worried and alone. It means she isn’t allowed to leave my supervision for quite some time.”

Pidge turned quickly to stare down her mother. She knew it was no use it fighting, they’d had this conversation multiple occasions before this. But the urge just rose up in her until the words just broke free. “Well sorry! I thought that saving my brother, father and the world would make up for the fact that I didn’t exactly get permission!”

Her mother just stared her down. Allura and Romelle had moved behind Pidge now, obviously scared of the showdown between the two. It wasn’t anything serious. Just a pointless and loud conversation between her and her mother.

“Not on your life would it get you a pass. And you already know that.”

Pidge did know that. She didn’t like being grounded. She hated it. Hated what it meant. Hated what it made her feel like. But while she did think it was unjust because of what all she had accomplished by going into space, she can’t even imagine how her mom had felt on Earth, alone, having lost every member of her family except for their dog.

“Please, Colleen. We could really use the help. I promise we won’t let her out of our sight,” Allura added in. Her mom just stared down at them and then smiled. Pidge knew that look.

“Fine. I’ll let her go with you. But only because Katie hates shopping. But after you get back it is right back in here to work.”

Oh. Shopping. She had been so caught up in thinking of how to get out of being grounded and then caught up by Allura and Lance going out on an actual date. It was still gross. But regardless, she was now stuck shopping which her mom was right, it might just be more of a punishment than it is a break from being grounded.

“Thank you, Colleen. We will have her back as soon as we can!” Allura grabbed her arm and started to drag her out of the room. The last thing she saw before turning the corner was her mom’s smug smile as she typed something into her tablet.

Their next destinations were to the only other girls that Allura could really think of that were around their age. Rizavi and Ina.

They had found them along with James and Kinkade in a room. Rizavi and James were in the middle of an arm wrestling battle when they walked in, Ina and Kinkade just sat at the other end of the table watching as their friends struggled against the others strength. James looked up, taking his focus off of his opponent for a moment when they walked in. Of course, Rizavi took this opportunity to force his arm down on the table.

“Ha! I told you I was stronger!”

James got up from his chair and stood in position. “Princess, how can we help you?” Rizavi turned around, not having realized the three of them had even walked in. She also stood at attention.

“Please, you guys can call me Allura. You don’t need to treat me any different than you treat the others.” They relaxed and sat back down in their seats. “But I do need help from you girls if you aren’t too occupied at the moment,” she said as she looked back and forth between James and Rizavi.

Pidge hadn’t gotten to know any of the MFE pilots well. She mainly stuck with her family and the paladins- well lately she has been just staying by her moms side- and they usually stayed around each other and the occasional other person they knew from the garrison. Outside of training, every one of them had been so caught up in their individual lives here on earth and preparing for the war that it never even crossed her mind to get to know the others better. But regardless, she was grateful that Allura hadn’t come to her as the sole person to get advice from for an outfit choice. For a date. Pidge had never even been on a date before.

“Sure, anything Allura! I’ve already kicked Griffin’s butt in armwrestling so my schedule’s clear for the day. What did you have in mind?”

“I need assistance in choosing proper attire for a date.”

“OOOOH, shopping! But a date? With who? Keith? That show that got made about you guys I think is starting to hint at something between the two of you.”

Ew. The only thing that could be worse than Allura going on a date with Lance would be Allura going on a date with Keith. That show had gotten everything so wrong about them. She wasn’t even sure if Keith actually interested in girls.

She looked up at Allura as her face twisted unintentionally into a slightly disgusted look. “No, um, with Lance. We are eating dinner with his family tonight.”

Pidge looked back over to where the others were sitting across the room. Rizavi was already out of her seat again gathering up her things and encouraging Ina to follow along. She seemed less excited about the idea of spending the afternoon shopping on their last day on Earth. Kinkade appeared uninterested in the entire topic of conversation. But James looked somewhat… relieved? Hmm, that could be interesting.

Rizavi made her way with Ina being dragged closely behind her by the wrist over to where they were standing in the doorway.

“So ladies, where to first?”

---

The location of the mall is exactly where it was when she was a little girl. Her dad would give her and Matt each a certain amount of money and while their parents shopped, the two of them would run off into store after store trying to find something that they could get for themselves.

Other than the location and the general appearance of the outside, that was the only similar thing about the mall she knew from her childhood. Inside, a lot of the stores had been replaced with individuals booths selling various items from all over space. Human retail workers had been replaced by shopkeepers and traders of every alien race that had joined the alliance and made their way to Earth.

“Okay girls, operation Date Dress is a go! We will scour every store if we have to, but we will not come out of this mission unsuccessful, team! Oh, I just love shopping,” Rizavi said before grabbing a bored looking Ina by the wrist and pulling her off into a direction of a clothing shop. Romelle did the same to Allura, following closely behind them. Pidge just crossed her arms and walked as the two groups of girls walked towards a store front.

They went on like this for a while. Walk into clothing store, try on several unsuccessful outfits, walk out towards the next one. Each time Rizavi and Romelle excitedly moving from store to store as if they couldn’t get enough of this.

Pidge, however, has had enough of it.

Shopping was all waiting. And while Ina looked like she was having some fun with going from store to store with her friends, Allura only looked excited while choosing clothes and trying them on. As soon as Lance was mentioned, her smile turned into something else. Something nervous. Something that seemed like she didn’t think this date was going to turn out like the rest of them seemed to. But that look didn’t last for long before she smiled again and politely turned down the option and they moved onto the next outfit or location.

~Allura~

Shopping had been rather enjoyable. It made her feel free, something that she hadn’t gotten to experience since before she was put into the pod thousands of years ago. Why Pidge didn’t find this enjoyable, she didn’t quite understand, but at the same time she knew Pidge was never one to enjoy what typical teenage Earth girls seemed to.

They had gone through store after store, trying on piles of clothes for the date, but none of them seemed right. Everytime she remembered what the occasion was, her vision turned against her and tainted the dress.While she was having fun,she could admit that this was absolutely exhausting and was coming close to giving up. Part of her felt like she should give up.

“No no no no. We can’t give up! We still have like 3 more stores that we can go to! We have to find you a dress for tonight. It’s your first date! Your first impression on his family! You look good all of the time Allura, but tonight you have to make that boy speechless.”

“It really will be fine Nadia if we can’t find anything. I really appreciate everything you all are doing for me but we have been at this for a while. Maybe it is just time to go back.”

“Nope, not happening Princess. I’ll tell you what, we try one more store. Each of us pick out one entire outfit for you and you pick the one that you like the absolute best. That’s the one we get. Sound good?”

Allura just nodded in reply. Really, she would rather just go. She didn’t feel like she even needed to dress up as much as she originally thought in the first place. It was simply just dinner with his family. But Nadia, Romelle and Ina all seemed to be enjoying themselves and Pidge pretend to be enjoying it simply for the sake of not going back and being “grounded” again.

They made their way across the mall to what Nadia claimed would be their last store.

“Oh, do I have a good feeling about this place,” she looked back and forth between all of them standing around her before crouching down slightly, her face suddenly turning extremely serious. “Allura, leave this to us. Ladies, divide and conquer.”

The store was the largest one they had been to so far, which is probably why Nadia had picked it as their last in the first place. Each of them went their own separate ways within the store, off to find their own version of her outfit for tonight.

I guess I should also start looking.

She walked around the store for quite sometime by herself. On occasion she would come across one of the other girls looking through a rack of clothing items. She would run her hands through a rack every so often, looking mindlessly for options that may be suitable for the date.

By the time Pidge had come over to find her to ask if she was ready to try anything on, she had yet to pick up more than a single item of actual clothing. She looked down in her hand at the only item she had picked up, a pair of earrings. They were golden but their shape was similar to that of a juniberry flower. She had decided once she saw them that they would be leaving this store with her regardless of whether they found an actual out fit or not.

“I… I haven’t had much luck in finding clothing,” she said looking back up at Pidge.

“Allura, is everything alright?” Pidge asked. She seemed concerned and Allura understood why. Nothing about her today really seemed to hint that she was okay. But truthfully, other than being worried about Luca, she couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong.

“Yes, Pidge. It’s just nerves, and with everything going on with Luca, I just feel like I’m not…” She didn’t really know where to finish that sentence. She wasn’t doing what? Waiting outside a glass window for one of her people to wake up? Not spending her time doing something productive to help out before they launch tomorrow?

Shiro had told them to be with the ones they love tonight and as of this moment she felt that was what she was doing. But it still felt wrong.

“Well Romelle, Rizavi and Ina are waiting by the dressing room, so unless you want to keep looking a little longer than the rest of us are ready for you to try on these outfits.” She nodded along and followed Pidge to the room by where the others were waiting. Nadia and Romelle were excitedly bouncing up and down as they had at every other store prior to this when they got to where she would actually try the outfits on.

“Okay, Princess. This is it. Here try on mine first,” Nadia said quickly as she shoved the large pile of clothing into her arms. She walked into the little room and pulled the curtain shut behind her before putting the pile on the bench.

She pulled up the clothing item in front of her. It was soft and light blue and as she pulled it up it just continued to pull up into what appeared to be an outfit similar to what she wore normally. Just looser rather than tight fitting, but it was certainly not a dress.

Carefully, she placed her legs through their each individual hole and pulled it up the rest of the way over her shoulders. It was a comfortable piece of clothing, probably one of the better ones that they had tried on today. She examined her reflexion in the mirror.

No.

She didn’t want this blue. She felt out of place in it. Other than the color, she loved almost everything else about this piece. But her mind just kept telling her no, no, no. Wrong.

She opened the curtain to show the others anyway, they all stared for a moment before shaking their heads back and forth in a silent agreement with her own thoughts.

Ina handed her the outfit she had chosen next. It was already more her color, light pink and white, but even as she held it up just to look at it she could tell it was too stiff. Ina had brought together 3 things for her to try on, and they were very obviously a set that she had found. Pants that went halfway up her midsection but not all the way down to her ankles, a jacket that wrapped all the way around her, covering the rest of her stomach from where the pants stopped, and shoes that had the same colors and pattern as the jacket.

She was right. It was too stiff. The entire ensemble made her feel much older, or as if she was going to a formal meeting with members of the coalition.

When she opened the curtain, everyone's reaction was much more immediate than with the last. This one very clearly wasn’t the right choice, at least not for tonight.

When the last set of clothes was in her hand and she had closed the curtain, Allura had let out a sigh.

Hopefully this one is good enough.

And it was.

The outfit that Pidge had picked out was a simple white dress with white shoes. The material was soft to the touch and the dress hung loosely halfway down her legs. It wasn’t too serious. It wasn’t too formal. It wasn’t too casual.

And from what she had learned in her brief lesson about earthly dating attire, this seemed to be somewhere in the middle of what it needed to be.

So this is it.

She didn’t even go out to show the rest of the girls what it looked like on her.

This is actually happening now.

She took off the dress and folded it quickly before opening up the curtain and stepping back out.

“We did it!” Nadia said, pumping her fist up in the air.

As they checked out and made their way out of the mall and back to the Garrison, Allura couldn’t help but notice the growing feeling inside of her that continued to nag at her thoughts.

Wrong.

~Lance~

Everything was just wrong.

His hands were sweating. His throat felt dry but also as if something was stuck in it- or worse, trying to come up. His clothes felt as if they were clinging to him, making him feel as if he needed to take them off right this very moment or else they were bound to suffocate him any minute.

He had already been pacing up and down the hallway for what had probably been 10 minutes at this point. He just didn’t get why he was so nervous. He had always enjoyed talking to Coran before. It brought an odd sense of calm over him in his worst moments when they were in space. But now the very thought of it made him wish that he could be lost in space right now instead of approaching Coran’s bedroom door.

It’s not like he had never asked for permission to date a girl before. He was old fashioned in that way. Despite his carefree and flirty attitude, he had only ever been out with a handful of girls in his lifetime, and each time he made sure to go to who the girl seemed closest to and get their permission before ever even asking.

Maybe that’s why he felt so wrong right now. That had to be it. He already asked Allura and she said yes before he had even thought to go to Coran first. Yeah. That was the reason. Totally the only reason.

“Come on, McClain. You can do this. It’s just Coran. It’s just a date. Everything will be fine. Just be cool.”

He exhaled completely, letting it all go before lifting his hand and knocking on the metal door that separated himself and the moment he had been dreading since he asked Allura out. The door opened, exposing Coran in his orange Garrison uniform putting away his old clothes.

“Lance! To what do I owe this visit?”

“Hey, Coran,” he said as he took a step in the room. It’s now or never. “I uh, I have a question to ask you about Allura.”

“Well then son, you came to the right place. Would you like to have a seat?”

“No, no. This shouldn’t take long. I just uh, I wanted to let you know that I asked Allura on a date and I…”

“You what?1 You aren’t Altean royalty! Nor are you either of those things separately! What makes you qualified enough to make you think that you can go on a date with Allura!? And you didn’t even ask permission from her primary guardian, which is me!”

This is exactly what he was afraid of. Partly.

“Woah woah, Coran. That’s kind of what I came here to do. I know it was wrong of me to not get your input first, but Hunk kind of made me do it as a spur of the moment kind of thing, and I didn’t have time.”

“Well I demand you ask permission, and if you pass the test then you may take her out tonight. So go back outside and start again.”

“But Allura already…” he started, but Coran was already pushing him out the door. It closed behind him. He slouched over and sighed.

Chickening out of this whole date probably would have just been a better idea. Why did he let Hunk talk him into this?

He took in a couple of breaths to calm himself down before a panic even started to come over him, straightened his back, and knocked on the door again.

As it had before, the door opened right up for him, but instead of revealing a calm and friendly Coran in a standard Garrison room as it had before, the room had been rearranged and he was sitting in a chair underneath a picture of him and Alfor that was now hanging on the wall.

How did he even manage to do that? And where did he get that painting from? Lance figured it was probably one of the few items he rescued from the castle, but regardless, the things that Coran could do in such short amounts of time always amazed Lance.

“Ah, Lance, come in. What brings you to my quarters this evening?”

Well this is definitely a lot harder than he ever could’ve imagined it being.

Lance made his way over to stand in front of Coran’s chair. “I came to ask your permission to take Allura out on a date tonight,” he said. He could hear the nervousness in his voice now.

Coran just looked at Lance up and down as if he was inspecting him for any possible imperfections, which Lance was sure he could find plenty.

“Do you have references of people who can vouch for your character?”

“Uh… no. But I can tell you exactly what we are doing and how long I plan to have her out for…”

“And that would be?”

“Well we are just eating dinner with my family because my mom is cooking for our last night here, and then I was going to take her to the park that I used to walk through when I went to the Garrison. And then I was going to take her back here. The latest she would be out is 10 tops.”

“Hmmm. Well, I can see that you really thought this through. And I guess I do know your character rather well being that you are one of the paladins,” he continued to scan his eyes over Lance. “I guess you have my permission. But, you will have to fix your outfit immediately. And seeing as you earthlings don’t have any Altean courting attire, we will just have to make do.”

Lance didn’t know what was scarier. The fact that Coran has never been more intimidating in his life than in this moment right now or that he had no idea what Coran was about to put him in.

---

When he said he had no idea, he really had no idea. Coran had immediately dragged him out of his room and all throughout the Garrison hallways to find things to replace “Altean courting attire”. Honestly, Lance thought that Coran was just trying to make him look as ridiculous as possible in order to embarrass and scare him out of even going out in public- much less on a date with Allura.

Luckily, just as Coran had found a bucket in a supply closet to place on Lance’s head, they heard footsteps running towards them. Both of them turned to face the Garrison employee that Lance had never seen before coming straight at them. The worker stopped briefly, taking a few short breaths in before pointing at Coran.

“Commander Holt has requested your presence in the med bay immediately sir.”

Lance turned back to look at Coran who’s face had drained of color. The Altean. Coran swallowed before looking at Lance and saying “That’ll do,” before going off with the worker in the direction of the med bay.

Lance just looked down at his new attire and sighed. How did he get into this mess?

He walked down the hallway until he found a clock. He still had quite a bit of time until he had to go back to his house but nothing to do.

Hunk was off with his own family and Shay, Pidge was grounded, he thinks Shiro went out for the night with Matt and his robot girlfriend.

He supposed he could go out to his house early, but his mom would scold him for not spending more of his free time with his friends. He didn’t even really get that because he saw them all of the time but she always told him that fighting a war with them didn’t count as spending time with them. She wouldn’t want him back home until the time that he said he would be home.

Be with the ones you love.

Keith. He would go find Keith. And he is pretty sure he knows exactly where he will be able to find him.

~Keith~

Keith had never realized the small things he missed from Earth while they were out in space. When they all got into the Blue Lion and launched themselves into the mission of a lifetime, he didn’t even think he was capable of missing anything. He had lost his mom before he could even speak, lost his dad at 12 along with his house. Lost Shiro at 16 and his spot as top student in his class at the Garrison only a few months later. He had lost everything in his life, and there is only so much loss a person can take before they stop missing things all together. Or at least, that is, what they convince themselves.

Truthfully, he missed Shiro so much that he was willing to rig up bombs and follow strange signals across the desert to find him. He hadn’t realized how much he missed having a mom he didn’t even know existed until he found her again. After being in the castle for a while, he realized how much he missed belonging to something, being special to people who actually cared about him. But even after realizing all of that, he still never got homesick.

Maybe it was because he never felt quite right at home on Earth. As if he didn’t quite belong. Maybe even because he just felt as if he didn’t have anything left here to miss.

But oh was he wrong.

For instance, the sun setting behind the New Mexico desert mountains was one of those things that he really missed but didn’t realize until he got it back. And now everything was about to be taken away from him again for who knows how long.

The light from the sun was so bright on the horizon, illuminating everything it could reach in its golden glow. But as the light began to fade into the sky, the colors changed from bright yellow to orange to a lilac field with few clouds in sight.

Part of him felt guilty for hiding out on top of Black with Kosmo alone for his last night on Earth. But all of his friends were out doing things with other people they cared about and Kolivan and his mom told him they would meet up with him later. So he decided that until then, this is how he would spend his night and not much could make it better than this.

The sunset was so mesmerizing that he just sat there, lost in his own thoughts. Thinking about how things could have been so different.

There was a clanging and grunting coming from behind him, but he decided that whoever it was was not as important as what he was already looking at.

“Man, you can a real hard guy to find when you wanna be.”

And of course, Keith once again found himself wrong.

“Hey Lance,” he said turning his head as the boy finished climbing to the top of Black’s head. He almost turned his attention back to the horizon, but his eyes did a double take at the sight that had presented itself in front of him. “Woah! W… what are you wearing?”

Lance just sighed, taking a seat next to him as he removed the metal bucket from him head and sat it down beside him. “Coran is making me wear this for my date with Allura.”

Oh.

“A… a date. With Allura? Uh, wow. Well done, Lance,” he said looking down to where their hands were. Just barely apart.

Keep it together.

“ Thanks. But I think it might be our last.”

OH.

“What? Why do you say that? You’ve been wanting this literally since then moment you’ve met her.”

“I don't know, man. I just… I’ve been having this weird feeling about it all day. Well actually for a while. And I don’t even know if she actually likes me. Now I have to worry about all of these Altean customs that I can’t even begin to keep up with. It just doesn't feel right, if that makes sense.”

“Listen, Lance, if she is going out with you, it’s because she likes you,” he looked down and smiled to himself. “The annoying, stupid, earth version of you.” He heard Lance chuckle but neither of them looked up or at each other.

“Thanks, Keith. Still though, I don't know what it is, but there is this feeling that I can’t seem to shake when I start to think about the date.” He paused for a moment, before looking back up at Keith. “Have you… have you ever been in love before.”

He thinks he is in love with her.

Keith just laughed quietly and looked back out at the sunset. “Yeah, surprisingly enough, I think I have.”

“What did it feel like?”

“I’m not sure,” he said as he turned his head back towards Lance. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

They sat for a moment then, just looking out at the almost set sun.

“So, you watching the sunset?”

“Yeah, I figured it might be awhile before we get to see it again.”

“Man, I’m really going to miss this place. It was hard being gone the first time, but now that we’ve been back again, I think it’ll be so much harder to leave. Especially not really knowing, ya know, what’s going to happen out there…”

“That’s why we have to go out there and win this war. Together. With the Lance that is the Paladin of the Red Lion,” he looked down again, thinking of all that has changed between the two of them. “The Lance that’s always got my back,” he closed his eyes just for a moment before getting the courage to get one last look at him before he has to go chase someone else. “And the Lance who knows exactly who he is and what he has to offer.”

Lance’s expression was stilled, stuck in a moment between shocked and awe. Keith just smiled slightly at him. “You’ll be fine tonight, Lance. I know it.”

Lance’s face softened as the corners of his mouth turned up to smile back at him before turning his attention back to the horizon.

Keith just looked back down to where their hands were only inches apart from the one another. He pulled his back, wrapping it around his knee before following Lance's gaze to watch the final moments as the sun hid behind the shadow of the mountains.

He didn’t feel like he was the type to be wrong often but tonight he had been wrong on quite a few occasions. His biggest mistake was, however, believing even for a moment that surely the sunset was the most beautiful thing he would be seeing that night.

~Sam~

The hallway just seemed to get longer and longer with every single step towards the door.

‘Sir. The Altean has woken up.’

Of course it would be now, with everyone so busy preparing for take off tomorrow and Allura gone for the rest of the night. Even Romelle, who actually knew the Altean- Luca - was gone.

‘Someone go get Coran immediately.’

He put his hand to the palm reader on the wall and the door opened up. The are was just like any other hospital room he had ever been in. The only difference was that in this one was a girl who could absolutely guarantee their success in the war. He heard the door open behind him and footsteps come up beside him.

“She’s awake,” Coran whispered next to him. The two of them just stared in awe at the girl who was being helped up by the workers in the room. More footsteps shuffled up behind them.

“How’s she doing?” Shiro asked quietly.

“She just woke up not long ago. I wanted a familiar face in here when she first woke up, but both of the girls are gone.”

They all watched as Luca sat up, pushing the hands of the men helping her off. Her hair covered her face partly as she looked down. She glanced up at them sadly.

“You. You’re altean,” she said. Her voice was soft and hoarse from being asleep for so long. Her eyes were barely looking at them, but the glare was sharp as a knife.

“It’s alright. We can help you,” Coran said as he held his arms out.

“I don’t want any help from the great destroyers,” she said as she looked down. They waited in the room a little longer to see if she was going to do anything else but anytime someone came towards her or tried to speak she responded only with a glare and flinch and a tightening of her arms around her folded up knees. She wouldn’t be speaking anymore anytime soon.

~Romelle~

It hadn’t been more than thirty ticks that she had been back before she was being rushed off towards the med bay. She had meant to help Allura get ready but people came to get her just before they entered Allura’s quarters.

“What is it Romelle? Is there a problem?”

“No, uh, everything is all good. There… there uh just has been an emergency in the kitchen and Hunk is off and can’t fix it. He had put the trust of the kitchen in my hands before he left the building. Anyway, very important. Gotta go, Princess. Have fun with pointy chin!”

She turned quickly and followed the uniformed Garrison employees down the hallway towards the med bay. Luca was awake. They could finally have their answers. Maybe she could even go home.

She saw how she was curled up in herself on her medical bed through the window before she had even entered the room. Luca was scared. Understandably.

She just smiled and stood at the door, hoping that a familiar face would encourage her to be less frightened by the situation, but didn’t want to invade her space while she was so vulnerable.

“It’s so good to see you all right and awake, Luca.”

Luca’s head shot up, the red hair that had fallen in front of her face while looking down moved itself revealing her pale skin and frightened face. A face that quickly turned sour.

“We want to help you. Where is the colony?”

“Traitor. I would never tell you anything!”

“Traitor? Luca, what are you…”

“She told us what you had done. How you left us for the ones who killed our great leader. How dare you abandon us for them, Romelle, and then come in here to tell me you want to help me.”

Romelle was taken aback with shock. “What? No, you don’t understand! It’s not like that. Luca you…” She tried to take a step towards her.

“Don’t come near me, you traitor! You are with the great destroyers now! She told us all about you and their lies. She is going to fix everything and you won’t even get a glimpse of the new Altea that we will live in. Honerva…” As the name fell from her lips, her body fell back on the bed. Limp. Lifeless- or so it appeared. Romelle didn’t know what to do.

The great destroyers? Honerva… but she had been dead long ago. What did it all mean?

She didn’t move from her spot near the door as people rushed in around her to try and get the monitors connected to Luca’s unresponsive body under control.

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m not… I’m not a traitor. No. What does she mean?” She felt hands grab ahold of her arms on either side. They started to pull her away from the view she had of Luca and out of the room. She struggled in their grip, but they had ahold of her too well.

“I’m not a traitor!” She yelled as she let her body fall to the floor. She looked to the ground as a tear ran down her cheek. She saw one of the bodies of whoever dragged her out kneel down next to her as they placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“You aren’t a traitor, Romelle. She will come around eventually. We just need to give her some time,” Commander Holt said softly. She looked up towards the window where she saw Coran looking sadly through at the men working endlessly to try and figure out how to revive the one shot they have at guaranteeing they win this war.

~Lance~

When he had gotten up from Black to start to make his way to his house, Keith had made him ditch his ridiculous outfit.

-

“You won’t need all of that stuff to impress her.”

“You think? Coran seemed pretty sure…”

“Yeah man, I’m sure. Just be yourself and everything will go fine,” Keith had stood up to follow him down the lion. “It’ll be great Lance. Go have fun.”

-

Now he was stuck standing in front of the small bathroom mirror attempting to fix his hair into a better fashion than what it had been after taking off that helmet.

The doorbell rang below, reminding him of even more of the reality of this situation. He gave himself one last look in the mirror before nodding to himself. As he stepped out into the hallway to make his way down the stairs he straightened out his shirt one last time. He was halfway down the stairs before he actually heard the door open.

“Oh, come in! Allura you look wonderful, my dear.”

Lance looked up, pausing mid step on the stairs. His mom was right. Allura looked wonderful. No, more than that. She was stunning.

Allura was the type of person who no matter what they did, they always looked good. Everything about her radiated beauty, but the only time Lance remembers being this shocked by how she looked was when she fell out of the pod and right into his arms.

“Lance, doesn't she look wonderful?” His mom said opening the door wider to let Allura the rest of the way into the house. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but the words got caught in the back of his throat.

He made his way down the rest of the stairs, “Wow Allura, you look… amazing,” he said finally as his feet hit the floor.

“Thank you. You look good yourself.”

He laughed to himself, “Well, it’s no Altean vestments, but…”

“You? In a Forlongian brill hat? I can’t even imagine it.” Lance had no idea what that was, but he was pretty sure that the bucket Coran had put on him earlier didn’t compare.

He put his hand on his mom's back, “Allura, you know my mom and Veronica already.” He used his other hand out to gesture to the rest of his family, “That’s my dad, Rachel, my brother Marco, my other brother Luis and his wife Lisa. And those are their kids Silvio and Nadia.”

“Hello, it’s nice to finally meet the rest of you. Lance talked about you all quite a bit when we were up in space,” Allura said as she walked next to Lance more into the living room where the rest of his family was gathered.

“Well we have all certainly heard about you,” Marco said as he walked up to Lance and threw his arm around his shoulder. “Haven’t we little bro?”

Truthfully, no. They haven’t heard much about Allura. Not from him at least. Not anymore than they had heard about the rest of the paladins. The only time Allura had been brought up outside of stories about what they had all done in space was when Veronica teased him about his crush on her. But he knew Marco was only saying this to embarrass him, and it was working. He felt his face start to heat up rather quickly as he heard Allura’s soft laugh towards his brothers comment.

“Who’s hungry? I sure am! Is dinner all ready mom?” He said quickly, trying to change the topic as smoothly as possible. It didn’t really work, Marco just patted him on the back and chuckled as he took a step back.

They all made their way into the dining room where the table was already set and the food was laid out. Lance pulled out the chair Rachel usually was in next to his mom for Allura and then sat down next to her in his usual spot.

The food was passed around and it wasn’t long after they started eating when the embarrassing stories about him started to find their way into the conversation. Lance, having lost his appetite long ago, just sat there pushing around his food listening in only occasionally.

“Oh, there was that time when we were kids and Veronica mixed dirt with water and told Lance it was chocolate milk,” Marco started with his new story.

“Oh really?” Allura said, laughing. “That’s rather interesting. Did he drink it?” Lance looked up from his plate and crossed his arms. This story somehow always managed to make its way into conversations about him when he was a kid. Especially when it was someone he wanted to impress.

“Did he drink it? He practically chugged the whole thing down before he realized what it was!” Veronica said, causing everyone at the table to laugh along with her. “Yeah, I still can’t believe he fell for it!”

“What did he do?”

“Well he told on me of course. Then pop-pop took him out for ice cream while I got put in time out for the day.”

“Yeah, Lance has always been the baby. It took him bringing you over to promote him from the kids table,” Luis said gesturing to the small fold out square table where his kids were. Again, just something said to embarrass him. Rachel only had to sit at the kids table tonight because Allura needed a place at the regular table, but he hasn’t sat at the kids table since he was, well, a kid.

“Okay everyone, stop trying to scare the poor girl off,” his mom cut in. Thank god. “Lance never has brought a girl home before, so you must really mean something to him,” she added. Of course it got worse. Lance just put his face in his hands and continued as the torture kept coming.

“That’s strange. He always gave off the impression that he was rather popular with women.”

“Well, he gets that from his father. But it’s all just talk. If you can get past that show though, you’ll find a good boy with a big heart.”

“Thanks mom,” he said with his face still buried in his hands.

“Hey Lance, speaking of dates,” Veronica said. Lance didn’t think that that starter could go anywhere good. “Maybe you could put in a good word for me with that long-haired friend of yours.”

Lance’s head shot back up as his hands hit the table harder than he meant for them to. He looked at Veronica who was just smiling smugly. “What?! Keith? No, no, no, no! No way. Not in a million deca-pheobes should you go out with Keith! All that guy likes are knives and space wolves. So why would you ever be interested in him. Plus he’s got that stupid mullet. So no. Just… no. No .” He looked up at everyone. They were all staring at him as if he had gone a little crazy.

“Calm down, Lance. I’m just kidding,” Veronica said breaking the silence. He felt his face start to heat up again. Why did I do that. “Anyway, a toast. To family,” Veronica said standing up out of her seat. “Though we may be apart after tomorrow, we will always remain close at heart. Family is forever.”

They all raised their glasses in the air. “To family,” they said in partial unison. Lance looked over at Allura whos smile had turned down. But regardless she lifted her glass and repeated “to family” softly before taking a sip of her water. Lance looked back down at his plate as he felt the odd feeling that had been eating at him begin to crawl back up his throat.

-

He doesn’t know why he decided that walking through the park was his first idea for the rest of their date. He had only ever been here during the day back in his Garrison years with Hunk or with his family when they would come to visit him on certain weekends. So he had really never seen it at night, and it didn’t even occur to him the damage that Sendak’s invasion would’ve done on the whole place.

The trees were bare and dead. Lifeless forms destroyed under the vicious attack. They loomed over the two of them as they walked along the path, the branches appearing as cracks in the clear night sky above them.

Together, they walked side by side, Lance’s hands in his pockets, Allura’s clasped together in front of her. They walked in a silence that Lance couldn’t decide was comfortable or awkward. Or some strange mix between the two as if this situation was both right and wrong at the same time. Like they were supposed to be here, but not like this. Crickets chirped in the background only making silence between Allura and himself that much louder in his mind.

I shouldn’t have brought her here. She probably thinks this date is boring- just walking through a dead park in silence.

They hadn’t talked a lot since they left his house. Just a small conversation about how his family was lovely and how his mom’s food was amazing. He briefly mentioned how his mothers food was great but it didn’t compare to his grandma’s cooking when he was younger and would visit her in Cuba. Allura then mentioned her mom cooking food for them back on Altea when she was younger, but her story faded into silence fast and that was the last of the conversation that they had.

They had approached the tree that marked the center of the park and stopped, sitting on a bench facing it nearby.

Allura looked up to the sky. “The stars are really lovely tonight.”

Lance’s gaze followed her’s upward, “Yeah, when I was a kid you could see them like this all the time where I lived. As I got older though, the world got more and more polluted and they got harder to see at night, even outside of the larger cities. The promise of adventure and the hope that one day I’d be able to see the stars again is what drove me to the Garrison.”

“And you did.”

“Yeah, thanks to you, I did.” He looked back out among the park, “This place, it used to be so beautiful. This tree, it was the oldest tree in the state. That’s why the park was built here, around this tree. Kind of like to make a home for it where it could be properly seen in all of its greatness.”

“It’s all my fault that the Galra did this to your home,” she said as she looked sadly at the dead tree in front of them.

“No. It’s not your fault. Without you, Earth wouldn’t even exist anymore.”

She stood up from the bench and began to walk towards the tree. Lance just watched from where he was as she stopped in front of it and gently placed her hand on the trunk. She closed her eyes and leaned forward as if she was giving herself to the tree.

A white light started to glow from underneath her hand that slowly moved up and wrapped itself around the entirety of the tree.

Lance stood up, amazed at what he was seeing. The entire tree eventually started to glow a bright blue that then traveled along the ground, making its way in all directions outward causing the grass and other trees surrounding them to light up in the same way.

As she started to take her hand down, the light began to fade, revealing a newly revived park filled with bright green grass, blooming flowers, and trees covered in leaves once again.

She put her head down, still keeping her body turned away from Lance. “When we were out there fighting against the Galra, I somehow… I felt like we were a family. And while each of us was alone, we were alone together.”

Lance put his hands back into his pockets and took a few steps towards her. The feeling from before began rising to his throat again, though now he was thinking he was starting to get what it meant.

“But now, being here, back on Earth, I see that everyone already has a family,” she turned around to face him again. “A place to return to once the war is over. Everyone except me and for the first time, I feel completely uncertain about what my future holds.”

“What are you talking about Allura, we are a family now.” They were family.

“It’s silly. I used to think that the entire team relied on me. The I was the one who needed to be strong for everyone else, but now I see that it was I that needed you.”

“Allura, meeting you was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. We- all of us- were all meant to find each other. To be together.” He looked around at the park and then back at her. She was still beautiful. She always had been. But now, he realized that her beauty was just a background thought to a much bigger picture. She was just like any of them. “You are not alone, Allura. And no matter what happens, you will never be alone. Not with us around, your family.”

“Thank you, Lance. I really appreciate that. And all of this, tonight has been great. I just…”

He took a few more steps towards her and held up his hand. He took a breath in and closed his eyes before letting out what has been eating him up inside for a long time.

“I think I already know where you were about to go with that statement. Allura, I know this is our first date, but you are right, we are family. And while I know we are meant to be together, we aren’t meant to be together like this,” he said gesturing between the two of them. She just looked at him and smiled, looking the calmest she has seen all night.

“Yes, I… I know what you mean. Together but not together.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that. I can imagine it was a little irritating being hit on by a guy you didn’t even like all of the time.”

“No, Lance, I’m sorry. I feel like recently, ever since… Lotor, ” She paused for a moment to take a breath in, “I haven’t exactly been turning away your attention. That was wrong of me.”

“Everything is okay now. But no matter what,” he reached forward and grabbed her hand, “just remember that we are a family. And that I- or any one of us- would gladly follow you across the universe without hesitation.” She smiled at him and squeezed his hand, “And more importantly, that we will never leave you alone.”

He let go of her hand and looked around the park smiling.

One would think that after years of trying to get a girl to like you that a failed first date with her would be soul crushing. But she was only what he wanted, not what he needed, and her was surprisingly okay with that. Besides, he had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before what he needed would fall right into his arms.

---The Next Day---

~Shiro~

Coran, Allura, and Romelle were already in the meeting room waiting on him when he arrived.

Ever since the girl woke up, he was dreading this moment. What do you even begin to say to the people who have lost everything? The people who thought they were the last of their kind left, only to find out they aren’t just to be called a traitor of their own kind.

He was never meant to be a leader, but now he was one, so it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what to say to them because someone had to say something. And he was the only person who could.

“I still think I should try and talk to her. Maybe she…”

“No, Allura. You didn’t see what she was like. She won’t talk to anyone. Especially not an Altean, she thinks we are all traitors,” Romelle almost whispered that last part. He could tell she was still shaken up from it.

“But we need to find out more of what Honerva has to do with this. If Honerva sent that beast, then the mission has to change.”

Adam.

“No. We have a plan and we are sticking to it. If Honerva is really behind this, then I’m sure we will find her along the way. Also our first mission is to try and find those missing pilots and if she is behind it all then it’ll probably be sooner than we even expect.”

Allura’s face turned down into a scowl. He knew she was upset about not being able to see Luca, but it was for the best. But regardless, she didn’t say anything more on the subject. Instead she stood up and began to walk towards the door.

“We better get going,” she said before she left the room, not even turning to look back at any of them. “It’s almost time for the send off.”

---

The crowd in front of them was huge. Probably the biggest he had seen in a long time. Maybe ever. It was comprised of everyone who was not about to go off into space for an unknown amount of time. Families. Friends. Aliens. Garrison faculty who would be staying on the ground. And anyone in between. All waiting to see if the people standing on the podium in front of them could truly save them all.

And here he was, just a man who had stumbled upon several misfortunate events in a row that led him to standing up here, in front of them all as they looked up to him for hope. For a reason to believe that everything would be okay. He stood tall with his head held high as Sam spoke next to him.

“This will be perhaps the most defining moment in our history. The day humankind reaches out from our world to help the immense universe of which we inhabit such a small part.”

They had rehearsed their speeches quite a bit in the days leading up. Sam first. Keith next.

“In the blink of an eye, the world as we knew it became much larger than we’d ever thought possible. And now we rise up to join the fight alongside so many other different from us, but of like minds, to stand strong against tyranny.”

Allura goes next. All the leaders speak. It’s what the people need to hear.

“For all deserve to decide their own future, as we have decided to spend our’s ensuring the freedom of the universe.”

“Each and every one of you have given something to this fight. We have all lost something, many themselves have been lost, but not in vein. Because through their sacrifice, so many more will live on,” he knew his next line would be his hardest. Simply because it was the only one that nobody could actually be sure of. “I make you this promise now. We will return triumphant!”

The crowd began to cheer as the speech came to a close. Shiro let himself breathe out and relax.

They stayed on the stage for just a little longer before the atlas doors were opened and the ramp to go inside was let out. He watched from the stage as Hunk and Lance said goodbye to their families. As Pidge and Matt gathered around their mom and dad to have a quick word before making their way towards the loading area. He watched as Keith’s mom wrapped him into a hug before they followed the rest of the Blade up the ramp and into the ship.

He looked around as everyone but him said their goodbyes and loaded onto the Atlas. He didn’t have anything here for him. Nothing but those people out in the crowd that were waiting for him to take off. Everyone he needed was aboard that ship now.

Everyone but one.

He turned away from the crowd and made his own way over to the loading dock of the Atlas, his ship, and walked on board. All of the paladins were already standing in the main bridge waiting for him. He took a step up to his place at the captain’s station and looked out the window as they rose up and out of Earth’s atmosphere. He looked down at his own family standing in front of him and all the worries he had during the speech were gone. He was certain now.

All of them would return triumphant.

AO3 |x|

[slashtakemylife]

Just finished the last episodes and I need to rant about Adam because boi, if they had actually given the importance to Adam they said he had, Voltron would've been very different, in a better way

When S7 aired and I learned of Adam's death I felt upset and shocked but I never raged, I was just disappointed, I nosedived to every interview to see if the general media talked about it, and they did! However in the interviews I read things about Adam like, "since Shiro is gone, Adam is the next best pilot there is" (as to why it was Adam on the first unsuccesful wave), "he didn't hesitate" " he was made of the same cloth as Shiro" "His importance to Voltron is very big", I got massive warning signs of they doing what I personally call "sugarcoating" specially after reading the apology were JDS said they never intended to make Adam a recurring character, but alas, I waited to finish the season and properly make an opinion, well the warning signs were true and now I AM RANTING!!

I'll be going a little off topic but one thing I seriously hate in movies and shows are when female characters, specially love interests, are the best of the best, the most high rank, the smartest, the strongest, the handmade creation of the gods themselves, up to a point that sometimes you go, then why is the male character the leader? Isn't she more qualified? well yeah but she isn't just because, but other than saying how awesome she is, they barely show it, in important, crucial, deciding, defining moments they are not there when by their rank they should be or they are just adorning the background barely making any opninions, or despite being shown to be badass in certain scenes they are just sitting plants in others just for the hero to rescue them

Female characters are awesome and I love many of them but there are obvious parts were they are simply pushed aside despite the amount of importance they give them, Hollywood is afraid of putting female leads but also afraid of being called mysogynist so they create secondary female characters and then they "sugarcoat" them to us with valuable aspects such as a big family conection, a big link to the plot of the movie, a rank, a skill or smth to show she is a "strong woman" but only when convinient

As a female I'm used to this sugarcoating, so when on interviews I read those things about Adam, that is what pissed me off. Listen, in my true honest opinion, the VLD crew really wanted to make this rep for us, Barlee admitted it was greenlit late, it was smashed together (and it shows) but they did their best, I accepted Adam as JDS letter clearly says, Adam was just a character meant to show Shiro's sexuality, nothing less and nothing more, it's not that he is not important, he just wasn't planned for more and I'm not mad about it, I can accept that.

Suddenly declaring Adam as a symbol of loss, regret and war; a major character that has a major impactful role in Voltron..., please, that comes straight out of nowhere, since they saw how meaningful Adam was to ppl, they decided to "sugarcoat" him by giving him more value than he actually has or was meant to have, just let the man die and let me mourn him in peace

If I really give Adam the characteristics and value they said, things would've and could've been different in a so much better way and here is my how: (remember Adam is supposed to be like Shiro, one of if not the best pilot, behind Shiro, the garrison has to offer and a brave man that doesn't hesitate to jump into action, a team leader)

(Take this as a prompt as well please because I would love a fic like this)

So Shiro wants to go to Kerberos but Admiral Sanda won't let him, Sam Holt is pushing for Shiro because he is the best, but you need to replace him so, who is the second if not also the best pilot such as Shiro? You know it, Adam, he was there for every record but he is Shiro's flight parter so there is a high chance some of those records are Adam's as well, also Sam is close to Shiro so he probably would accept Adam as a replacement (or at least that is what Sanda would think)

If Adam is a self sacrificing hero like Shiro, he would want to accept just to keep Shiro safe back on Earth, Shiro could feel betrayed by Adam and the whole drama would've been so much better, but we need Shiro on Kerberos (unless you want BlackPaladdin!Adam) so imagine Adam coming over to Shiro and saying:

"Out of our time together, out of my respect and love for you, I'm doing this last thing, I'm rejecting Admiral Sanda's proposal and promote for you to be there, so go, but don't expect me to be here when you get back"

So Shiro basically has Adam's blessing but they still break up, they still parted on rocky terms but is more bittersweet and you show how mature and deep their relationship is

Back to canon, I believe they introduced Adam in the breakup because we are supposed to like him but not get invested in him so when he does die we won't feel so bad, VLD promoted Adam as Shiro's significant other, then they sugarcoated him by saying they were close to marriage but when we finally discover Adam's fate they go like, "we'll remember he is his ex, not current, so while feelings are still there Shiro already knew it was kind of over, so don't feel sad for Adam or Shiro, just remember Shiro is gay"

Having Adam just, "how important am I to you?" let's just say I'm not surprised ppl disliked Adam because he gave Shiro that ultimatum, his character felt needy and greedy but then again, we are not supposed to get too invested in him. (Boi, that went exactly the wrong direction, the fandom imprinted on Adam like newly born ducks)

I'll be going a little off topic but I'm coming back to Adam after explaining this thing: the cadets, why you use cadets and not fully trained officers? In all shows the main characters share their audiences' age but they always explain why, the adults are evil, fate just happened to put them there, a mystical something chose them (in the paladins cases) but here? They just say they are the best of the best, and that is good but still, just cadets, you can't do test with them, they could die, ppl have died while testing things, some of the crew of the guys that went to the moon died in a test in rl, right?

I thought, ok I'll go with it, but the Why You Don't Do That pretty much slaps them in the face, when the Galra attack, why they don't want to deploy them?

They are just cadets!

THEN WHY TF TRAIN THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!????

Sam came back knowing a Galra attack is inminent, the garrison is about to make the most advanced ships and weapons and they are giving them to cadets?! WHY?!?!

(Fix it and prompt time!)

Before Sam arrives they couldn't even make the pod move, so they could've explain the cadets as this

"It will takes us Years to create a simple prototype, if we were to train older cadets, they woulb be close to or retiring so better young ones so when we finally fly something they would not only have years of training but would be at their prime"

When Sam arrives

"I know you all expected to use this years from now but the Galra won't wait and neither will we, you are already trained for this so may as well keep it up"

- (the continuation of this prompt is after we talk Adam some more)

Back to the interviews, in one they said Adam's death was inminent given the natural flow of the show, if the Galra attack then we will deploy the best we have but the best we have is Adam so tough luck.

Me after watching the show: I'm calling BS on this! They HAD a defense line, they HAD the knowledge, they just sent them because they were stupid enough to put cadets in the only advanced weapon they had and to show how shitty Sanda was, and our poor gay man was the price, also brave Adam? I don't doubt it but then again, he did what soldiers do, he followed orders, so they didn't show me how brave he was, they showed me him doing his job, he knows what those commands mean, he knows what is his job description so while yeah he is obviously brave, so is everyone, he doesn't stand out, if he had been already buckled in Before the command then yes he is great but no, he just followed orders

You want to show his bravery and leader skills? Hold my juice, (I don't drink beer, sorry) we are about to get to the next part of the prompt

- (The next part :D)

Sam:

"We will keep you cadets but since the making of the ships is about to be done with the info I brought, we need an experienced pilot to be your leader specially in battle since you are new to that"

-Quiz time!-

Who is the best pilot the garrison has to offer known and acknowledged by both Sanda and Sam?

ADAM!!!

MFE pilot and leader!Adam

When the Garla attack, Adam is no longer in his squad, he stayed in base when Sanda deploys his unit and sees them get decimated, before they all die he does this

Adam:

"Cadets, I won't force you into doing anything, but there are good man and women out there getting killed by the very threat we've been training to defeat, so I'm taking my MFE and blast them to the next moon, anyone who wants to come along is welcome"

Sanda: "don't you daaare, court martial BS!"

Adam, while in his MFE:

"Open the particle barrier or I'll see a way to blast throught it!"

Sam does open it and they cover fire enough to save the few remaining earth pilots

(End prompt)

You see?!?! This is how you show me Adam being brave and a team leader, the original paladins are 4 young ones and a space dad, they could've had the earth equivalent with the 4 cadets and their own Shiro with Adam as their leader, can I also mention how he is now VERY much alive? So yeah, Adam is dead because you chose so! Shiro is alive because you chose so too! He was supposed to die to let Keith be the leader but you found his value and made great things with him and we all love him!

WHY COULD'NT YOU DO THIS WITH ADAAAAAAM!!!!!!

And you can't tell me it wouldn't be absolute poetry to have Space Dad as Captain of the Atlas, Space Son as the Voltron leader and Earth Dad as he leader of the Earth forces, being the support to keep safe his two idiots he loves and calls family

Adam should've left Griffin in charge for a moment, go to Shiro and blast Sendak with his MFE while screaming, this is for killing the love of my life! (Ok I got over excited in that last bit but you know it would've been epic)

If you reached this far you probably think I'm just a rabbid Adashi shipper ranting about my ship, and yeah I sorta am, as I said, I'm really just venting but still my true discomfort is the whole sugarcoating thing

I accepted Adam as JDS said, as what the show is showing me he is, a background character that, while he definitely is a major someone to Shiro, it is just for him, he doesn't have so much major importance in Voltron as a whole but he was designed that way, he is still part of Shiro's backstory but he is dead now and we shall move on

Don't try to make him more than he is outside of the show canon, this whole issue is because EVERYTHING is out of canon, the show reflects NOTHING of everything you said of both Shiro's sexuality and Adam as a character, if S8 brings Adam back whether is a flashback or alive, I'll come back to this because I will judge if they will own up to what they said he is or once again leave vague things that reflect nothing and try to cover it up outside of canon, I'm mad but mostly disappointed

I'll be fine in a few days and I will see S8 with the same excitement as I have all the rest of the seasons

[backupblogforjg]

The canary in the coal mine

I hear people saying that Voltron became terrible in S7 and S8. If I may, I’d like to expose my own theory.

Kuron, and specifically the treatment he was subjected to, was the canary in the coal mine.

That is to say, the ending of the much beloved S6 foreshadowed what would come to pass. Let’s review, shall we?

We have this character who repeatedly showed that he truly loved his family, to the point that a mind-reading entity probed his mind twice and both time found him sincere. To the point that, while about to suffocate to death after spending seven days with no food and no water in the freezing silent dark void of space after setting his leg on fire, all he could focus on were the moments he (believed he) spent with them. This character:

-suffered from constant painful headaches because an evil witch was fucking with his head

-was starting to suspect that his memories had been tampered with and everything he knew about himself was a lie, thus lived in constant fear and confusion

-believed he suffered from a degenerative disease that would cripple him, and possibly kill him, within a few months

-felt guilty over accidentally getting a bunch of kids involved in a war, thus was desperate to bring them home safely. And, as stated above, by S5 he believed that he only had a few short months left to do it, so was starting to get bullheaded and reckless over his franticness to win the war quickly for their sake. He let his upset get the better of him one (1) time, when he yelled at Lance, but immediately looked away in shame, and by the end of the day apologized to Lance and praised his good work.

Over the course of a year, this character suffered in silence and did his best to save as many people as possible. His hard work resulted in the salvation of 1/3 of the universe. He cared, and he tried, so very hard.

Then this character gets possessed by the aforementioned evil witch, and mind-controlled against his will into trying to kill his family. As a result:

-Shiro, a man defined by his compassion, labels him “that thing.”

-The team takes Kuron out of the healing pod while he is injured but explicitly stated to be still alive. In addition, we are shown that he was still alive because he groaned when he was unconscious in the Black Lion.

-Keith refers to him as just a body. Again, this while Kuron is explicitly stated to be still alive.This is particularly hurtful because Keith had been desperate to save Kuron when Keith believed him to be Shiro, but as soon as Keith learned that he was a clone, Keith stopped caring.

-Lance, the kind-hearted emotional support of the team, cries that the real Shiro tried to warn them from the Astral Plane, but doesn’t even mention the time Kuron reached out to him for help in the hallway.

-Allura never even tries to use her powers to heal him, despite the fact that just a couple of episodes before she showed the ability to heal mortally-wounded people. Instead, she forces Shiro’s soul into Kuron’s body.

-When the guy who wakes up identifies himself as the real Shiro, nobody asks what happened to Kuron. Nobody grieves, nobody mourns, nobody cares. Kuron either died during the soul transfer or immediately before it after being taken out of the healing pod, and both the characters and the narrative treat it as a happy ending.

Can we agree that this is terrible? All the listed canon facts indicate that our heroes let their teammate die by withholding medical care so they could use his corpse as a vessel to save somebody else. The Paladins fought Lotor because they claimed that harvesting people is the worst possible crime, then turned around and did the exact same thing to one of their own. And it’s supposed to be okay because we are apparently not meant to think of a clone as a person, but rather as a “thing,” despite the fact that he was sentient and compassionate.

Post S6, interviews clearly showed that the EPs never expected anybody to care for Kuron. They gleefully recounted how they planned “to put the [real Shiro’s] proper essence into the Shiro husk,” and called Kuron an “it.” Why supposedly professional writers did not expect people to care for the character who had been leading the heroes for 4 Seasons, I have no idea. After a couple of interviews, and realizing that people were sad for the clone and disturbed by his fate, they introduced the Word Of God that Kuron and Shiro merged together. Whether the heroes intentionally merged the two men together to save them both or it was just an unintended side-effect of saving the real Shiro, and whether that involves an actual soul merge or just Shiro getting the clone’s memories, is left vague.

(By the way, if it’s the latter, it’s worthless. Kuron had Shiro’s memories, that didn’t make Shiro any less dead. For that matter, Alfor’s AI had Alfor’s memories. Hell, at one point the heroes extract Sendak’s memories, and presumably could put them into anybody. Memories are not substitutes for the soul, and keeping somebody’s memories doesn’t mean that the person did not die, so they should still be mourned).

Unfortunately this Word Of God is never, ever even hinted at in canon. No indication whatsoever. The team freaks out when "Shiro's consciousness is being rejected by the clone's body," but they never acknowledge the clone's consciousness at all. White-haired Shiro only ever talks about stuff the original Shiro did, and doesn't show any recognition when people talk about stuff the clone did, like the Voltron Show. The official books describe the process of reviving Shiro as simply putting his soul into the clone body, no mention of any merge anywhere. Finally and most damningly, canon directly contradicts the WOG when Shiro outright states that the clone died. Thus I can only assume that the EPs lied, as they have many times before.

(For the record, there is also no canon indication that Shiro is cured of the disease. It's never brought up even once in the show, they only say he is cured in interviews. As far as canon is concerned, Shiro “left the battle behind” because his disease finally caught up with him).

After S6, Kuron is brought up once in the entire rest of the series: in S7, when Shiro talks about “the dead body of an evil clone of myself.” Kuron’s family has written him off as evil, and his death as a joke, because they victim-blame him for the things he was forced to do against his will while under mind-control, and it’s supposed to be a happy ending.

So. When people ask “how could S7 and S8 be so cruel and heartless to Allura? How could they treat Lance so badly? How could they mess with Shiro’s character like that? How could they be so brutal to Lotor? What happened to the theme of found family?

Kuron was the canary in the coal mine. S6 took this well-meaning victimized character and had the family he loved throw him away like a piece of garbage, while acting like everything was fine and dandy. Having shown that much lack of empathy, it was just a matter of time before the series did the other characters dirty. It never stops at one.

EDIT: to clarify, I’m not blaming the characters for the horrific treatment of Kuron. I’m blaming the writing. I pointed out that Shiro is “a man defined by his compassion” and that Lance is “the kind-hearted emotional support of the team” to make it clear that it’s insanely OOC for them to act that way. The showrunners expect me to believe that Shiro would look at a fellow victim of Haggar and dehumanize&demonize him? They expect me to believe that Lance would shrug off his preventable death as if nothing happened? That Keith, Allura, Hunk and Pidge would be totally cool with writing him off as a villain? No. The writing did everybody dirty, and that includes the characters’ reactions to the ungodly mess.