Hey just wanted to drop in and let you know that I absolutely ADORE your Sero art/ comics! He is absolutely the most underrated boy and you are so creative in how he could use his powers! On a similar note, I had a dream a few nights ago that Sero had to protect himself from a massive explosion/ fall and just bundled himself in endless layers of tape. It worked in the dream! Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for all your great work!
HEY DUDE THAT’S A GREAT IDEA special move: tape cocoon. Nice.
also thanks man I appreciate all the love and same to all the rest of you sending these lovely messages! sorry I don’t got time to reply to them all (also I mayn’t be drawing much more BNHA this week bc dang I got work to do but I appreciate all of you)
Do you have any theories on why Lotor was banished? If he was an experiment/ asset that Haggar would want close, what circumstances could cause her to distance him from her reach?
At this point, I don’t know if we have any threads to pick on the specific subject, but, I think the biggest point of conflict that seems to arise between Lotor and his parents is, quite simply, Lotor wants to be his own person.
He has his own agenda and ideas, and life. And for a guy who’s very calculating in many regards, we see that Lotor, overwhelmingly, doesn’t like to use the massive asset of the imperial fleet. He would much rather rely on not just his own generals, but his own technology.
This is completely not conducive to how both Zarkon and Haggar have been showcased to be incredibly possessive people. Haggar’s attitude, as seen with regards to Shiro in s1e11, is if she takes interest in someone, if she decides to make a personal project of them, they owe her, she is entitled to them- and it really doesn’t matter how they feel or how much she might have hurt them in the process of what she sees as improvement.
Haggar’s not ignorant, but there’s definitely a level where she plain does not process resentment, even from someone like Shiro who she literally tortured.
And this is a point of significant similarity between her and Zarkon. Because Zarkon has that exact refusal to ‘get’ the idea that someone could resent him- because he’s the empire, because he’s entitled to that servitude. Because the Black Lion has to yield to him. He owns it!
Again, this is completely irreconcilable with Lotor. Because Lotor, quite frankly, is not a Zuko. Lotor’s not gritting his teeth through all this and accepting it because he thinks he deserves it.
Lotor’s outrage at Haggar is the righteous indignation of someone who knows that fundamentally he’s being maltreated. His boundaries are not respected. His protestations, even if he makes them louder and harsher than he is ever normally inclined to being, fall on deaf ears.
In some regards, it is quite possible he has been a prisoner of his parents for much of his life. Because it really doesn’t matter what Lotor feels, or what Lotor wants, Haggar and Zarkon invested in him for a purpose, and they don’t want him to do anything else. That Lotor has his own feelings is something Haggar sort of backhandedly acknowledges, and then immediately follows up with, basically, “your feelings don’t matter. That isn’t what you’re here to accomplish.”
Does this sound familiar? Because it’s one of the classic elements of Lotor’s relationship with Zarkon.
And in this same line in DotU, Zarkon actually tells Lotor he’s a tool, and I don’t mean slang for “uncool”.
Because if you think about it- if Lotor is a “brat” by Throk’s measurement, that means Lotor’s entire lifespan is within Throk’s memory, and Lotor has not been around the way his parents are. And fittingly, he’s nowhere to be seen in the flashback,
We only see him later, in the context of the empire. After Zarkon and Haggar are both immortals who don’t actually need a royal heir. They plan on living forever.
This all boils down to: Lotor was never even a son in their eyes. He was a resource.
Even Throk expected Lotor to have some personal, familial relationship with Zarkon- “Why is he not at his father’s bedside?” to which Haggar snaps angrily that Zarkon doesn’t need anyone at his bedside- horrifically hypocritical of her, given that’s exactly where we see her for most of the time since s2e13.
Haggar has a close emotional relationship with Zarkon- they’re husband and wife and they seem to have held onto that, Haggar’s amnesia notwithstanding. But she actively sneers at the idea of Lotor having that kind of closeness with his father.
And Lotor has nothing but scorn for his parents. Which is significant- because Lotor is pretty clearly someone who thrives on emotional connection with the few people he trusts.
Lotor enjoys being merciful. He likes talking to people, he thrives on public attention even when he doesn’t trust someone.
So frankly, even outside of the exile, there’s a very powerful feeling here that there’s a massive rift in trust between Lotor and his parents.
Something happened, and I’m willing to bet, not all at once, but over a long time.
And our obvious aftermaths?
Haggar doesn’t trust Lotor to be alone. She talks about how she knew there would be “risks” calling Lotor back, and sends people to follow him.
The exile itself-
and the fact that Lotor is a massive raw nerve when it comes to his parents’ attention being on him.
My two cents on the whole exile is, I’d guess Lotor experienced something to the tune of lifelong, definitely emotional if not also physical abuse- and there was a point where he became confident enough in his own power that he started biting back, arguing, retaliating.
I’d guess something in particular had to be the catalyst, some event- and that’s the specifics we’re still vague on- but whatever it was, Lotor argued with Zarkon and Haggar, and refused to back down.
And his parents, unwilling to kill Lotor because of whatever purpose they want him to fulfill- settled for disposing of him another way.
What kind of structure would an episode of your generator rex podcast follow? Spoilers vs no spoilers section, monster of the day, headcanon section, etc?
sorry for the late reply! got caught up with some uni stuff
it’d probably go something like
introduction
what episode are we doing today?
brief episode recap from what everyone remembers, with small discussion
[small break, we watch the episode, probably a small tune goes here]
what actually happened
our #hottakes/the review
headcanons/extended discussion
monster of the day
conclusion
since it’s a review, there probably won’t be a spoiler/no spoiler thing. plus this structure is already really long
Hello! Just saw your platonic art post. Would you consider drawing Shawn and Gus from Psych? Or if you don't want to go realistic, Lance and Hunk from Voltron
Maybe it's just me, but I thought there was an awful lot of emphasis placed on that arm clamp in s3 e5. The rebels both pointed it out and explained its purpose extremely blatantly. I foresee this technology coming back into play in the future. Do you think the team would build one to use on Shiro if he loses control?
It does raise a very interesting idea that Shiro’s arm can be nullified, doesn’t it? In-context it makes a lot of sense because it forces Shiro to find another way to circumvent his problem but now that that’s an established thing in this setting, it’s going to be pretty concerning. Especially because Shiro’s current difficulty with Black, and that the Lion Switch includes the bayards, means he’s still short a bayard and relying on his prosthetic.
I can definitely see Lotor plying something like that against him since Lotor’s quite fond of technological workarounds the main empire doesn’t use, and also quite fond of playing a card that allows him to just plain not have to fight someone.
Of course, that said, if we’re pointing to Lotor as the person to bring that into play, in that case we can write off him bringing it to the table because at this point he doesn’t know that’s Shiro’s main weapon- or even that someone on the paladin team has and uses one of those prosthetics.
Do you think one of Lotor's generals will die in a future season? If the paladins were involved, even indirectly, I see it as a way to really set Lotor against them. I also foresee it engaging a protective and vengeful side of his personality. How do you think this would affect him?
Response in several parts:
First, considering the generals, by the rules of their setting, are minority women one of whom is disabled, and all of whom have a lot of personality and potential, I’d be personally uncomfortable killing one of them off to further Lotor’s story. That seems like a very degrading use of a female character, and not something I’d put to Mir and Dreamworks- I think the people working on VLD are better than that.
Second, my other two cents on this are... the generals and Lotor form a Voltron-esque unit that seems to be developing via the comet ship into an actual feasible anti-Voltron. So... realistically, Lotor’s entire power base hinges on the generals. Whether or not he felt like Voltron was responsible for what happened, taking out one of the generals would permanently defang Lotor in a way that would make him far less formidable. Wrath isn’t really a substitute for teamwork.
And third: even outside of the anti-Voltron unit, it stands that I think if Lotor lost one of the generals, he wouldn’t recover. They’re the only people he really trusts. Betrayal of, or death of one of the generals would, I think, evoke something in Lotor pretty much similar to Azula’s downfall in ATLA- he’d just kind of crumble. Maybe quietly, maybe loudly, depends a lot on context, but, he’d pretty rapidly stop planning to preserve himself.
And that might be interesting to explore from a temporary perspective- if we see, kind of like what happened in s2e13 where the paladins thought Allura was dead but had no way to check- how exactly Team Lotor responds to a perceived loss, but I wouldn’t want to throw them a real one. Because, again, I feel like it might break them- and it’d definitely break Lotor.
I love love LOVE your fic "On the Mend." I read it all the time. You do such a great job of handling the characters and dropping new pieces of information into the story. Thank you!
Aw, thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying. New chapter is written, but I’m waiting a few days to post. No one is gonna care right now, haha.
