Wait u went 2 seperate directions with the Hunk news just now... what's wrong with Hunk being half african american??
Okay so, originally reading that he was half black was EXCITING. I’m so fucking happy like I kept saying his Mom looks like she’s black and she had my hair texture so I was like YAAASSSS!!!! But then I was reminded of my long ass list of issues I had about how Hunk’s character was treated and my heart sunk. My problem comes in with the main thing I’ve been the absolute most upset about which is Season 6 Episode 1.My “problems with Hunk’s character” asks are very hard for me to answer because there’s so much for me to unpack but the whipping in S6 E1 is the hardest for me to explain. I also feel like non- Americans won’t fully understand why this was a problem. But to those who do understand the entire scene with Hunk and Lotor’s nanny WAS UNNECESSARY and coded as comic relief. It did nothing to move the plot along and anything Hunk did because of it could- no SHOULD have happened in an entirely different way.
Why did I find this racist? Originally with Hunk we thought he was just Samoan because of the guide book. During s7 I clocked that his mama looked black and was hyped about her hair texture because it was MINE. But, if we go all the way back to season 6 episode 1 with Lotor’s nanny. She whipped tf out of Hunk as a form of discipline and to teach him shit. She didn’t hit him once...she hit him MULTIPLE times and it was supposed to be funny but for me and a lot of other people it was unsettling. I was pissed off because Hunk is the darkest skinned HUMAN character on the team. We all know far too much about American history to know why this was a fucking issue. Hunk being half black makes this situation stand out even MORE.
Many people will try to argue with me that the shit that happened on Earth here in real life didn’t happen in the Voltron universe. Like for example Lance lives in a version of Cuba that was always free (or so I’ve heard). I’ve seen people say the world wars never happened and neither did slavery in their US. That makes sense as to why the CHARACTERS didn’t react to what was happening. BUT because LM and JDS are both American and live in THIS reality they wrote this shit KNOWING our actual history. The argument that the world is fictional doesn’t stand up. No matter who wrote what and no matter how far off in fantasy something is, someone in our reality fucking wrote that. It is IMPOSSIBLE for a human to not take influence from the real world and apply that to their fictional pieces. You will always find parallels otherwise our stories aren’t relatable at all. It doesn’t matter how hard they try reality will always be grounded in every work of fiction because the authors who wrote them use their experiences and knowledge from living their lives here to be able to pull it off. Voltron does this but they go a step further by basically making everything as close to reality as possible in terms of World building and race and such.
You can’t tell me they didn’t use real life as a base for this show otherwise they wouldn’t bother with telling us Lance was Cuban verbally in the show. Clearly Shiro is Japanese and Hunk being confirmed POC was a given. They also are aware of the social issues here in reality and tried to say these things don’t exist in their Universe. BUT YET YOU ARE OKAY WITH TELLING US WE WILL BE REPRESENTED. So then tell me why we as black people are just supposed to not be mad about the way Allura was represented in S2 and now (well not just now but even more so now) how Hunk was treated throughout this show especially with the whipping scene? IF THEY REPRESENT US THE SHOW RUNNERS ARE AWARE WE HAVE THIS HORRID HISTORY. They are even aware of the lack of character diversity. So of course this gives off racist undertones! They are American. They are aware of the social issues and they wrote whipping the darkest skinned human who is half Samoan and half Black as comedic relief KNOWING HISTORY HERE and KNOWING that people will make parallels. They clearly do not have POC in the writing room because it had to have flown right over White and non Black poc’s head. And if there is POC in that writing room I wanna know how they thought that was a good idea....
On one hand I’m SO HAPPY but on the other hand I’m even more disappointed.