Hear me out: Shiro is basically the John Wick of the Voltron universe. He's the Champion, an undefeated gladiator and basically became the boogie man of the Galra ever since his escape. Haggar aside, its why they were so keen to get him back into custody. This 'weak' little primitive was just THAT terrifying! There's even horror stories passed around by Galra commanders and they had to be watered down because the truth would so thoroughly demoralize the troops.
I read a comment somewhere recently that Shiro was basically in an entirely different show from everyone else on VLD and in a way I kinda agree. Which isn’t saying he didn’t belong or fit into VLD and its universe and its team. But rather that there was So Much going on with his character that was much more Adult than what was going on with almost everyone else. (before I get jumped, yes, other character’s dealt with ‘adult’ themes and some of them were obviously more ‘adult’ with their arcs/issues than others (no matter what the EPs belatedly put in about her supposed age range). But Shiro’s whole story was just so much darker and more involved than most, perhaps especially the parts of his story we didn’t get to see but just heard about via other characters or brief flashbacks. Frankly from his Garrison days onward, from whatever sparked his need to mentor younger kids to his dreams after the Calypso that drove him onward to what made him not just the best pilot in the Garrison, ‘legendary’ in fact, but even saw him wearing what looks like some kind of award pin on his uniform. So much of Shiro’s backstory hints at a much more mature underlying story, and the fact that we only get bits of it from others comments and never actual visuals of any of it doesn’t do anything to detract from that feeling.
When you look at it, here Shiro was, some nobody race from a backwater planet at the edge of the universe, smaller than just about every other alien, no claws, no fangs, no outer protective shell, not even any extra arms or legs. Who not only holds his own in what we see is a brutal and unfair spectacle sport to the death for over a year but also ‘gives others hope’ and is seen as someone to be trusted without question or hesitation from his fellow prisoners even after he’s disappeared for an unknown amount of time only to show back up in entirely different gear (like its possible they recognized him from his voice alone considering he was wearing his helmet the entire time). Haggar talks about him as if he was a special interest/project of hers that she put some serious time/effort into (and apparently made literal hundreds of clones of).
And we never get any backstory or even explanation for any of it beyond a few early flashbacks and comments by other side characters.
Which brings me to your point that Shiro must have been absolutely shit inducing terrifying to a specific group of aliens and utter inspiration and reassurance to another. All at the same time. We see how racist some of the Galra military are when it comes to Lotor. And before Lotor there was this tiny nobody alien that held his own for over a year against whatever it was they threw at him. Shiro was literally the dark horse and that had to piss off and terrify a certain section of the Galra population (and some of their allies) to no end. Because you don’t inspire hope in the downtrodden unless they’re watching you stick it to the oppressor on a regular enough basis that its obviously a habit they can count on. And the downtrodden don’t trust you and your orders without hesitation unless you’ve proved in the past that you’ll do what’s best for them no matter what the cost. And to me that’s a huge part of what makes Shiro such a wonderful character - that he’s a nightmare and goes for the throat shot in his fights without hesitation - and yet he’s very obviously also such a caring and caretaking character when it comes to those he sees need it.
And all of his story is told in the dark so that we only get hints of it as canon.
Fuck a VLD remake. I just want The Adventure of Shiro (and the Shiros (and Sven and that Slav can make regular guest appearances). There was a whole story going on behind the scenes of VLD when it came to Shiro. I’d like to see that story instead please (told by better writers).
Not a long rant - if I really wanted to get into this I’d find screenshots and rewatch episodes so that I could give you really solid examples but I just dont’ have the mental energy to go delving right now. Basic breakdown of the legs being support as @void-tiger pointed out - the legs were the ones that not only stabilized the team but also took the team forward (as legs will tend to do).
Hunk showed he was a competent leader multiple times but the one that pops to mind first for me is when the Galra base was attacked by Sendak and Voltron had to quick time fix it. Jiro did what a good leader is supposed to do and gave charge of things to the team member most capable of knowing what to do and Hunk took over beautifully. He utilized his team’s strengths, he was clear and concise about what everyone needed to do, he made sure they all had what they needed to do their assigned jobs and he handled multiple situations in a way that showed he was adaptable in speaking whatever language was needed for each group he dealt with (including the Galra one). No one pointed it out, but in that episode, Hunk really did get to be the head of Voltron (while staying with Yellow) and he did it without hesitation or questioning himself. This kind of ‘loses his stage fright once he’s actually on stage’ shows up multiple times for him when he’s put in charge - from taking over the food court stand to the whole Shay and the Balmeria story. I always got the idea that Hunk might question himself and be much more comfortable in a supporting role but he could take a leadership position and do it amazingly well and competently when put into that situation. And - the team trusts him. They know he’s going to support them and they know he comes through. He’s their rock and when their rock says to move or that something can be done, they believe.
Lance is more mercurial than Hunk is and that’s why I think he made such an amazing Right Hand Man. He’s show to be amazingly good at looking at something and jumping ahead to what’s next. People with a lot of siblings seems to be this way a lot IRL I’ve noticed. Its an anticipation clause in their make-up. From Lance realizing that ‘Rover’ is actually not Rover and saving Coran to the moment Jiro calls for the team when the ‘trade off’ for Sam goes wrong and Lance says ‘already on our way’ - Lance is incredibly good about seeing a need before its become a need and already moving to fill it before anyone else realizes something needs to be done. He’s also very good at, like Hunk, speaking to someone in a language they will understand. The way he talks to and encourages Keith is different than the way he talks to and encourage Allura when both of those two are questioning their ability to do something - and he says it in a way that both of them will listen to and accept. Like Hunk, Lance’s strong point is support. But that doesn’t mean he can’t lead and lead well when called on to do so. Lance is the one that is the first to walk into Blue’s mouth. In the very first episode he’s leading the Garrison Trio multiple times. And each time the team is leaderless - Lance is the one that usually steps in and starts calling the shots. It always seems to be in a ‘temporary take over until the leader gets back on track’ but he’s fast to recognize and respond to what’s going on and just as important, once again, the team trusts him and follows his leadership without question (partially I suspect because they don’t even realize he’s leading, it just feels natural). I would have honestly not been surprised if the speculation about him flying Black for a time had been real simply because, if he put his ego out of the way and it was about the team instead, I think he had the window of qualities that Black would have responded to. (don’t crucify me - Shiro is the only true Black Paladin but if we’re playing musical lions, I stand by Lance being a viable fill in, especially a Lance that was allowed to have a maturing character arc).
Support, to me, tends to make incredible leadership. Think Maria Hill in Marvel. She’s not in charge most of the time because she fits best as ‘second in command/support’ but when she is in charge, precisely because of the qualities that makes her so effective as support, she’s a great leader. Support tends to understand the team and how it works and what it needs better and also to see problems ahead in the pre-mindset of ‘this is going to need fixing, how will I do that’. So to me, while the arms are great for innovative ideas and thinking outside the box, the legs are the best leaders when it comes to Shiro/Jiro/Allura not being there to make a call.
---- salt warning ----- incoming salt ------ salt warning ------
As for self-inserts. Unfortunately Keith got stuck with Dos Santos putting all his teenage ‘edgy bad-boy’ fantasies into (wolf included) and Pidge got stuck with Montgomery and her ‘not like the other girls’ issues. Neither character started out that way but unfortunately its easy to watch it creeping in and eventually taking over their story lines entirely by the end. When you take away a character’s ability to be wrong, you strip away what’s interesting about them as well as any story tension regarding them and by the end neither Keith nor Pidge could do wrong (even when they very obviously did)
Speaking of Keith’s (squandered) potential, I was rewatching s4e1 recently, and that could have been such a fascinating study on the nature of war! Team Voltron’s shifting focus towards diplomacy and PR is at odds with Keith’s insistence that the war is not over and that ignoring it and doing damage control when things go wrong is a terrible strategy. Add to that Keith’s abandonment issues, at odds with his fumbling attempts to be a good leader, at odds with the fact that he never wanted this
The ‘war’ part wasn’t VLD’s strong suit. Which I would have been okay with kind of waving past since I was there for Teamwork and Found Family and Friendship Power and Characters not a war story. Except the EPs were so insistent on how they wanted to write a war story and were just as equally bad at actually having any idea of how to do that. There were a lot of angles that could have been explored and used in character and story arcs and they could have really added to the story and the lore. Keith had a very different approach to things compared to others - he clashes hard with Pidge in the very first season about what their priorities should be for instance. And the whole ‘Galra span the universe and have an iron control over it’ - yet VLD puts on a show in a space mall - it was.... jarring. It gave the impression that the Galra Empire was actually only holding on to as much of the universe as it was simply because it was a habit for almost everyone by this point. We never saw a large collection of the Galra population, never saw them actually inhabiting any planet/s and most of their space ships seemed to be run primarily by drones with only a few Galra involved. It reminds me of the speculation way back in early seasons that the Galra are suffering from a low birth rate/population drop over the millennia they’ve been in space. (also that they’ve lost a great deal of their native culture hence why the Galra food being served at the mall is referred to as ‘sustenance’ and is so bland which was another speculation). Anyway, back on track - yeah, VLD handled the ‘war’ and the ‘coalition’ really weird and if they were going to be so weird about it at least it could have been used to showcase the way the different characters looked at how to deal with things. But - well - we got the writing team and EPs we got instead and
new, better canon: Shiro's disappearance was an accidentally botched transport that left him physically on the astral plane. he pops into re-existence in the Black Lion, and then spends like half a season Worried about his clone until the clone gets all healed up, gets a new arm, and now there's Twinganes out there bonding and having the time of their lives
its kind of sad how fast and easy the fandom comes up with better canon than the story. But beyond that -
I remember when season two ended. The speculation was rampant about what had happened to Shiro. I don’t remember a lot of ‘he’s dead’ going around - there was no body and VLD was, we thought at the time, a children’s series. So the speculation was mostly that he’d been transported somewhere else and there was both dark and light side speculation about where he’d been transported to and who had done it. It went from Haggar kidnapping him to use for dark purposes (and potential Winter Soldier later appearances) to transported to Matt and the rebels by Black to help get their group really kicking ass before a reunion with his team. Heck, I think I even speculated for fun that he might have been transported back to Earth to help prepare them for the coming Galra invasion (which we all kind of thought would be a fun development. ha) But the general consensus was ‘transporter incident’ (well, that and the joke that he was just in the bathroom and would come back confused as to why everyone was crying, dang... I miss those times). Anyway, if Star Trek taught us anything its that matter can be converted to energy (science!) and since nothing is ever lost (science!) shifting energy back to matter is sound enough sci-fi principle to use in, well, sci-fi. So Shiro being shifted into energy, transported elsewhere and then shifted back into matter was pretty much what most of what I read on my dash was going with. It made sense which is what, unless you’re VLD, is what your story is supposed to do. The fandom was presented with an empty chair but no black armor left behind and all the other paladins that had been in the same position Shiro had been in perfectly fine. Naturally we’d figure that meant he was - well, not dead.
but yes, your canon answer is sound. His body was changed to energy and stored until Black could figure a way to convert it back into matter. Boom! No need to body snatch and straight up murder another living, individual personality. Shiro gets his body back (possibly without Evil Arm and fluke disease if Black happens to have Actual Alchemist Allura to tinker with things), Jiro gets time to heal and recover (and hopefully have any remaining Evil Implants removed) and the audience gets to feel the Power of Family/Friendship where Good Guys actually value others lives and suffering doesn’t mean you don’t still get a happy ending. Jiro is added to the Paladin Family with a side dose of Discovering What Makes You Special and Unique in true 80s children’s story form and we the adults get double the Shiro pleasure, double the Shiro fun. The freaking team stays a freaking team instead of a bunch of argumentative strangers who mock and belittle each other. And we all Learn An Important Lesson About Never Giving Up on Each Other. I’m all for it, anon. Shiro (and Jiro) deserve their happy ending, their bonding and their bright future.
As much as I love all the headcanons about the Shiro/Kuron/Ryou/etc. collective, one thing that’s always bugged me is why the clone plot line was even a thing to begin with, and what its existence meant for a character that canonically struggles with a lot of trauma and PTSD. Is it so terrible that someone like that to not be perfectly composed all the time? Was it so out of character for him that it HAD to be an imposter?
I’ll admit, at first I was pretty ‘meh’ about the clone. I didn’t feel anything for him in his introductory episode even though at that point there was doubt as to whether he was Shiro or a clone. The fact I didn’t feel anything for him, when Shiro had been the driving force behind my interest with VLD up to that point was probably what had me onboard with the ‘clone theory’ side of fandom so quickly on. I didn’t like him, I didn’t dislike him (and I stand by my support that, while not perfect, a lot of what fans blame on the fact he was a clone was actually just things Shiro would have done anyway (some things not, ie. I can’t see him asking his team to simply take pain to achieve a goal if he wasn’t right there with them to take it himself for instance) but not nearly as much as gets blamed on ‘clone’). It still broke my heart for him when Black didn’t respond because I’m capable of empathy and Shiro and Black’s bond is such a thing for both of them. I figured I understood why the story wanted to take ‘Shiro’ out of the picture for a while so the team could learn to do some of their own adulting without him always being there to make it easier for them and I assumed (wrongly) that the clone must therefore have a different purpose in the story because stories don’t just throw in pointless plots they don’t have a resolve for (VLD did/does but - this was before most of us realized the current ‘writers’ didn’t know how to write a long term story plot). I remember a lot of speculation getting tossed around and a large group were all for the clone turning out to be an enemy agent, willing or unwilling depending on the speculator, but I was kind of hoping for something that wasn’t so depressing and cliche. It still kept me from backing this maybe/maybe not Shiro 110% for a while.
What sold me on him, and got me entirely in his corner and rooting for him all the way, clone or not (and I attribute a LOT of this to Josh Keaton for his voice-acting) was when Shiro/Jiro went to Black to basically beg to be allowed to save his team from dying. Black’s acceptance wasn’t what won me - I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the Black Lion’s characterization the way VLD writes it - it was that this man, clone or not, was desperate to protect and save a group of people he considered his team and he would do anything necessary, even risk incredibly painful rejection again, and put aside any sense of self-worth in order to BEG to be allowed to save them. And that was a purely Shiro moment for me, clone or not. Desperate to do anything necessary to protect the people he cared about. I still thought he was a clone. But he was a clone I now completely supported and rooted for.
And yet, when Shiro showed up to his team in the astral plane and called out to Lance - I literally yelled loudly in the middle of the night with relief and longing in automatic response (and played those five seconds over and over for weeks).
Sure, I love Jiro. And did even then. But I wanted MY Shiro back too. Because the clone, as much as he tried, wasn’t really Shiro. (Granted, a great deal of that ‘difference’ was the fact the writing itself was on its way downhill and eventually going to throw itself gleefully right off the edge of a cliff but I would like to think the animation and VAs still managed to put subtle differences inbetween Jiro and Shiro). The binding feeling Shiro brought when he had been head of the team wasn’t there and some, not all, of his gentle warmth was missing. To me, the two of them were distinct enough that I could feel the difference all along even when I doubted my feelings on it. I wanted MY Shiro and now I wanted to be allowed to keep Jiro, who, to me felt more like teenager than Shiro ever had (and I loved Jiro for it) as well.
Anyway, that’s background so its clear where I’m coming from. Let’s go to what we know was happening behind the scenes. JD and LM wanted Shiro dead and out of the story for good after season two. The DW powers that be saw that, understandably, Shiro would become a fan favorite and killing him off for good would lose viewers and support. Story hints (this is speculation) point to the fact that, originally Shiro might have been intended to be gone until season seven or so with the team moving along without him until then. Factually we know that the DW excs said Shiro couldn’t be gone that long. Speculatively - I’m guessing this moment is when JD and LM developed their weird grinding hatred against Shiro for being the thing that thwarted their wonderful plans for VLD as they wanted to write it. Either way, they weren’t allowed to leave Shiro out of the story. At some point JD also came up with his idea for a Winter Soldier rip-off (the EPs have admitted they had no idea where they were going with the story and were making it up as they went while ignoring the story ‘bible’ that was put together to help guide the direction of the story at the beginning of the series so who knows when in the timeline JD got his rip off idea). So Shiro, or a version of him, had to have his self-autonomy ripped away from him and be mind controlled into attacking his team. Maybe this was the original idea for when Shiro came back around season seven, maybe it was thrown in much later, we’ll probably never know (and if it means we don’t have to ever hear another interview from the EPs its a sacrifice I’m willing to make). IF the story had been planned out in advance, than bringing in Jiro IN ORDER TO pull a Winter Solider route without ‘tainting’ the OG Shiro is one way writers might do that. It would make Jiro the sacrificial lamb, who was given to the story line to be used as the Familiar Betrayer character in one of these types of plots. Usually, if the Familiar Betrayer isn’t doing it of their own will and evil all along this kind of plot will end in Breaking the Mind Control and either Redemption/Reintegration or else in Noble Sacrifice. Because VLDs writers sucked so hard they were inhaling through the backs of their heads by the end of the series, Jiro got neither and was treated as a throw away tissue. IF the story was not planned out in advance, than Jiro’s Winter Soldier moment was off the cuff and the clone was brought in because, for whatever reason the EPs simply didn’t want Shiro to be around during that time period, either because he was due in later and they didn’t want to rewrite or for another unknown reason.
The clone plot could have been there for any reason from ‘we planned ahead and need a Winter Solider and don’t want the kids to get turned off to Shiro/we’re going to kill the WS to resolve the story, so we’re going to use a clone instead‘ to ‘maybe its Shiro, maybe its not, this story isn’t headed by anyway that can plot ahead, we’ll have a last hour Winter Soldier epiphany and ask the head of the animation studio to take on the extra workload of last minute animating it’. Or it could have been anywhere inbetween those two. Season seven starts with Shiro recovering in a pod and is by a writer that hadn’t been on the writing team for quite some time so its old material brought back either as it was meant to be or with a different coat of paint on it. The second half of season seven reads a lot like the wrong characters were tying up arcs that weren’t theirs and Sendak was definitely one of Shiro’s arc. The whole ‘trip through Haggar’s mindscape’ was a rehash of Shiro’s journey but with Shiro missing from it.
TL:DR - all we can tell from what we’re shown is that originally Shiro was supposed to go missing at the end of season two and come back sometimes around season seven. At some point Jiro was added to fill in the ‘can’t leave Shiro out of the show for that long’, that the DW execs passed down to the EPs. Perhaps Shiro was supposed to originally go Winter Soldier on his team complete with unexpected arrival just like Bucky did. Perhaps Jiro was always supposed to be the Winter Soldier/Familiar Betrayer. At the end of the day though - Jiro was introduced because the EPs didn’t want to bring the OG Shiro back earlier and were trying to work around the order to keep him in the story that DW execs had given them. In the hands of competent writers who can plot and don’t have EPs with a weird vendetta against a fictional character it could have been an interesting story line with good resolve and beneficial questions brought up and answered along the way. Instead - we got VLD’s last three seasons.
Writer Nonnie and quick question. I saw somewhere that Allura brought back Altea and Daibazaal? Did I read that correctly? And if so, was it only the planet and not the people? Like, she reversed their destruction or whatever but everyone on those planets(specifically Altea unless some were unfortunately not able to evacuate Daibazaal) are still dead? Need this info for fic reasons and I'm still stubbornly refusing to watch S8.
Yes. You are correct. One of the end seasons’ multiple ass pulls was Allura, somehow and without explanation, bringing back Altea and Diabazaal. ONLY Altea and Dibazaal, not any of the multitude of other planets destroyed in the time since. And somehow I was under the impression they were just kinda - stuck there, in space, adrift from their original solar system. I mean, there was obviously a sun dropped in there too but it was a weird disjointed mess that got passed over way too quickly to answer any questions. I mean, maybe it WAS in the spot the original system had been in and they just cleared up the ruins of Old Diabazaal or something. But yeah, she magicked back the two dead worlds but since we didn’t see Alfor or her mother and Coran was put in charge I think we can pretty safely assume that the people themselves stayed dead. So.... huzzah? We got two empty planets out of Allura’s death. I’m sure the EPs and their writing team thought that was triumphant and totally a ‘cherry on the top’ to the ‘super’ ending of needing Allura to sacrifice herself down to her own life to restore all the universes that I never understood the logistics of how they had all been destroyed exactly in the first place.
what drek.
And I might have gotten the details wrong myself since I refuse to watch the last two seasons too. But I do know the planets popped back into existence and there was no Alfor so the fact everyone was still dead seems pretty sensible.
Man you ever think about how they made a character they wanted to kill from the beginning the main lgbt rep of the team and just >:^/
I’m just going to put in here that Shiro was:
1. a MOC in a leading man role
2. an Asian in a leading man role
3. a brutalized war vet in a leading man role
4. an amputee in a leading man role
5. a PTSD sufferer in a leading man role
6. a abuse victim in a leading man role
7. an ‘older’ character (25 isn’t old but parts of fandom acts like it is) in a leading man role
I’ve said before that Shiro was the writers bingo card of representation and that was long before he was given all of five seconds to be lgbta+ as well. He was a beautifully crafted, non-stereo-typical heroic character that didn’t suffer from toxic masculinity either with his team or from happily serving under the command of a woman. And sometimes I feel as if certain parts of the fandom only started caring about him in season seven when he was also revealed to be lgbta+ and ignored all the other facets of the incredible minority representation he was as well. I’m going to get flack for that sentiment and its not that I’m unaware of how very important it was/is to so many people to have Shiro revealed as under the umbrella. We need more representation along those lines, a lot more. But its not the only representation he was and fandom on the whole ignores every other aspect of his character to focus on that one and doesn’t complain that all the other representation that he was got trashed along with the lgbta+ one.
Yes, absolutely, the EPs were idiots that were somehow allowed to talk in public. Who had admitted early on that they wanted to kill Shiro and only the execs interfering kept him alive. That still killed him at the beginning of the series, ‘replaced’ him with a second ‘Shiro’ that they also killed and discarded as a non-entity, only to bring Shiro back in order to sideline him as hard as they could. We knew they wanted Shiro gone since early on - thanks to their own words. And then, after they tanked all the enthusiasm that came after season six with their interview about Shiro no longer being Black Paladin for ‘reasons’, suddenly they were scrambling for attention by revealing Shiro was lgbta+ at a con a week or so later and sitting there with shit eating grins, accepting fandoms accolades for including a lgbta+ character that they’d ‘planned to have gay since season 2 and realized they couldn’t kill off once they decided on that rep for him’ (which according to their earlier interviews about exec interference was a lie, but we already knew they lied in interviews). Look, they knew a section of their fans was desperately hungry for representation (rightly so) and they preyed on that like the jackals they are, using it to manipulate hype for a season they knew wasn’t going to deliver and also that happened to be the beginning of the worst run of the series straight until the end. Anyone that had paid attention to their interviews would have already known they’d decided early on to kill Shiro off, that he was the ‘boring GI Joe’ character that was ‘bad at relationships’ ‘holding the team back’ ‘had no creativity because he was boring’. Them making him the 11th hour rep of yet another group of people that needed representation in media and claiming they’d been meaning to do that all along should have run face first into their entire treatment and attitude about Shiro for years prior to that and caused a lot of people to pull back and notice the manipulation/warning flags.
Basically what I’m saying is - Shiro was a character that was rep for a lot of different groups and the writers that helped create him and gave him his first two seasons of story really cared about that and him and did right by him. Everything after that was increasingly in the hands of people that thought that kind of rep and tropes breaking character was ‘boring’ and wanted it replaced with - well, a stereo-typical ‘hero’. Any time the EPs played up a rep card, you can guarantee that they were only using it for manipulation purposes. They made it very clear that they wanted Shiro dead from the beginning and since they couldn’t kill him, they shelved him as hard as they could. They didn’t care about the story, they didn’t care about the character, they didn’t care about what he represented to anyone else, they didn’t care about what kind of messages their show was sending to people that might see themselves reflected in the characters, they didn’t care about what real representation means in a story. The EPs were never allies of anyone but themselves.
And it paid off for them because they’re now both involved in one of the biggest upcoming multi-representational series out there. And I need to go mow the lawn or something now because I’m furious all over again.
I reblogged a joking ‘where are the parents?’ post a bit ago. It was funny and i was true and I’ll probably reblog it again. But it got me thinking.
I think we forget sometimes, that these shows are written for kids just as much and often more than they’re written for adults. It doesn’t mean adults can’t enjoy them too, of course anyone can enjoy a good story but we, as adults, have to understand that these shows are not written FOR us. They’re written for kids.
Let’s go back.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Classic story. Loved it as a kid, love it as an adult. But, if we really look at it, its a story about four young kids going through events that should be, quite literally, high traumatizing. If I look at it as an adult and treat it as an adults story I would be horrified by some of the terrifying things those young children went through.
Except its not a story written for adults.
Look, children need to read stories about brave children going off and being independent and being heroes and overcoming scary odds and triumphing. They get to project themselves onto those fictional children and it helps their own hearts and their own imaginations and their own desire to be a hero and have adventures to grow. Children need to know that, at least in stories, they can have the power and be in charge and fight the bad guys all on their own. They need that in their stories because so often real life is scary and intimidating and it helps to have the stories to retreat back into. Stories are escapism for children just as much as they are for adults. In a children’s story a kid fighting a dragon or flying a space ship isn’t a child soldier. They’re a hero.
Now we as adults can look at a children’s story and as long as we understand it operates by the rules of a children’s story we can just sit back and enjoy the ride. We can joke about ‘where are the adults’ but we understand. This is a story for kids and so kids will be heroes. The problem is when we start treating childrens stories as if they are adult stories. Adults need something different from their stories than children do and so the rules for adult stories are different from the ones that are for childrens stories. If we try to apply adult rules to a childrens story of course it is going to become a problem. Because adult rules don’t apply in childrens stories and trying to make them apply warps the childrens story in an attempt to make it an adult one. The childrens story is always going to break if you try to judge or fix it with adult rules.
(note that adult stories can have child heroes but they still operate by adult rules. also note that just because a story runs by non-adult rules doesn’t mean it can’t be a deep, compelling, interesting, emotional story that adults enjoy.)
What I am saying is that we can joke about ‘where are the parents’ in a Pokemon game without having to immediately try to dissect it with adult rules by seriously wondering where the parents are (unless its for fun and then we can completely run amok as long as we understand its speculative ‘adult rules’ fun and not that the story itself is written badly).
Let’s get down to the bone now. I haven’t seen this come up lately but I do remember talking with a friend about it, discussing the differences between ‘adult shows’ and ‘kids shows’ and what you can do in both. So this seems like a safe example no one will think I’m directly pointing the finger at them over (because I’m not, I have no knowledge of anyone having this current discussion). In Voltron, as our example: why were Pidge’s family members never killed? In an adult story, it would make sense that she would lose at least one of them, grow because of it, bond with her team, etc. It would be an important turning point for her. But - this is a kids story and in a kids story you can’t kill a kids family. Or you can but you have to start the story off with them already dead. The second you let the child watching your story empathise with a child character in that story you are no longer allowed to do things to that child character that might reflect on that real child’s real life fears. You can threaten them with evil Galra. Children know that Galra don’t exist. But you can’t threaten them with the death of a family member because they already watch the news and know that family members go out into a scary world and might not come back one day. You can’t kill of Pidge’s brother or father no matter how much sense it would make to an adult story because this is a children’s story and a child is viewing it through a child’s eyes and self-inserting into Pidge as the main child on the cast. It doesn’t mean you can’t have the child worried about it. Children enjoy the ride of a story just as much as an adult and Pidge’s father and brother being missing and even pretend dead for a whole hot half minute is good tension and good story telling. But you have to deliver on the family members being safe and healthy at the end of the tension thread because the child needs that in their escapism.
A lot of us went into VLD willing to play by the childrens story rules. In fact, we were counting on them. It was still a great story and one we adults enjoyed but our safety net was that we understood it would operate by childrens rules. We could explore more adult rules in our own fics but the canon would run by kids rules and that was fine with us. And I would say, for the most part, seasons one and two ran by childrens rules even if they toed the line just the smallest bit from time to time. I would argue that a great deal of the problem with VLD’s story was that the people that took over writing after season two tried to write it by mixing adult rules in with the childrens rules and in doing so they broke the story. (all right, they broke the story in every single way a ‘writer’ can break a story, like hogs let loose in a jewelry shop. They very obviously didn’t understand even the most basic of story writing principles and expecting them to realize anything more nuanced would be like expecting those same pigs to appreciate a beautiful necklace but I’m just focusing on one point right now). The writers/EPs that took over VLD wanted ‘dark and gritty’ and I would argue that you can write childrens stories dark and gritty (Treasure Island, The Grey Ghost, even, in its own way, Charlotte’s Web). But the writers of the series used adult dark and gritty principles instead. And that’s why we have the horrible ‘morals’ of the story sounding as such dissonance from the story we expected. Its why we have ‘heroes’ that don’t act like heroes and yet never get called on their behavior. Its why we have so many deaths that should mean something and don’t. It’s why we lose our ‘teamwork’ and become ‘there can be only one’. In the end, the writers applied adult story rules to a childrens story and they broke it.
long story short. Childrens stories can be good stories and can be ones that adults completely embrace and enjoy with themes and plot twists and depth. But they have to be written by childrens rules to keep the integrity of their story. Applying adult rules to a childrens story breaks the story’s integrity because it is trying to make a childrens story into something it is not.
addition: Shiro is an adult in a kids story but he’s an adult that’s done right. Because he’s reassuring and he’s human and flawed (and he gets the brunt of the torture in the first few seasons to show how dangerous the situation is without letting the child feel threatened through their own self-insert). Shiro never belittles the child characters, he trusts them as competent, he sees them as friends, he lets them shine in their own areas and he trusts them to make their own decisions. He respects them. In a child’s story a character like that works because they build up the confidence in the children watching and reassure them. Children don’t often have to be a Highlander kind of hero. They enjoy the ‘group of kids’ heroes and so having an adult in the mix doesn’t steal from their own feeling of ‘being a hero’ if the adult is done right. (Teen stories are another matter and play by different rules but that’s another post). Shiro was done right for the first few seasons of a childrens story and his having flaws and being hurt inside is fine for kids because it makes him someone they can relate to as well and that the children are important in helping. Kids like knowing they can help (and sometimes save) adults. Its another form of empowerment for them. Shiro was respected and loved by the team in the first few seasons and you’ll see he never forces them to do anything except once when he tells Keith he needs to go looking for his lion on his own because another kid needs his attention more. (and that works for a childrens story rules too)
second addition: I am not saying the kids only found themselves or self inserted into the kids/teens in the story. Kids could self-insert into Shiro as well. Being an adult character doesn’t mean that a child can’t self-identify with them. Shiro had the ability to show a lot of children that saw themselves in him that they could grow up to fight and win against the odds as well even if they felt they’d been hurt along the way. Allura (whether she was an ‘adult’ or not in canon) had just the same kind of position. Lotor as well. Children’s stories don’t have to be about children, though they usually are. Children can aspire to be adult characters in a story too. Its the rules that set the type of story, not the characters.
