#vld critical

[blanceyblance]

Lance is such an interesting character to me in part because of how the narrative wants to portray him to the point it becomes contradictory.

His "arc" is supposed to be "cocky and immature teenager grows from his need for glory into a reliable team member"

And he does! He becomes Keith's right hand man, taking charge in battle, covering the team's backs and becoming an emotional support for other members when the time was needed.

But he is also a Comedic Relief™

Other characters have comedic relief moments too, like Hunk's love for food, Pidge's excitement about tech, Keith being socially awkward, etc.

And as aggravating as Hunk's fat jokes can be they don't contradict the fact that he is a brilliant engineer and became a brave paladin. Keith's social awkwardness doesn't contradict the fact that he became a capable leader.

But then you have Pidge and Hunk, making fun of Lance being "naturally dumb", and then a space deity calling him "the dumb one"one moment then following Lance's orders in battle and having him give emotional speeches to others the other.

The writers want us to take him seriously and see he is growing only to make fun of him when its needed for a laugh.

I feel the episode The Grudge is a good example of this:

Lance finds a way to find where they left their Lions.

Hunk and Allura seem impressed but Pidge dismisses it.

That would be the end of it until later when Veronica is talking with "Keith" (actually a hacker pretending to be him) and the says "Lance has it figured out", Veronica then in a sarcastic way says "Lance, the navigation genius".

Keith agrees and that's what clues them about something being wrong.

Is it a joke about Keith being openly nice to Lance? A joke about Lance's navigation skills?

Either way, the joke is at his expense, even when early in the episode we see him actually suggesting a way to correctly navigate.

In the end what I'm trying to say is, that the writers want to have their cake and eat it too. Showing Lance growing and being capable but also making fun of him and not really having that much respect for his character.

[lnkedmyheart]

Extremely controversial opinion apparently and I don't care if I piss off someone with horse shit media literacy and no concept of how things work, klance was not queerbait, it was never queerbait, shadam was not queerbait and shurtis was not queerbait. Voltron Legendary Defenders did not queerbait you.

Klance had no actual subtext. Most subtext was forced attempts to read queerness in a messily written show because a couple of non relevant minor artists on the team made kl fanart. And then the Netflix team saw how y'all eat that shit up and used them to promote the show. HOWEVER and this is important so I hope you open your eyes to read, the producers repeatedly, repeatedly, stated that they never intended to make kl a thing at any point. There is nothing wrong with trying to read subtext between those two twinks, but it has no basis in canon. I need y'all to actually read and watch good media. There is no way people with actual ability to comprehend subtext and context think kl was queerbait when everything was pointing at allurance being endgame for several seasons. If we're being extremely honest, every reason used to insist that allurance doesn't work is doubled with kl, why? Allurance makes lance a second choice, well kl makes Keith a second choice (but we don't actually care about Keith you see), Allurance has Allura talking down to Lance, okay and kl had Lance being a prick to Keith, Allurance has Allura in love with Lotor (my poor baby) and so what? Cause kl had Lance in love with Allura. It gets to a point where things get ridiculous and as someone who has done actual dissertation on queer subtext in media where people are not allowed to be queer it's wild. And even your lord and savior Shada was openly talking about kl shippers going way too far with their speculation over everything he did. No LM and JDS didn't hate you and secretly sabotage canon kl, it just was never there.

Shadam was not queerbait. Why? Because they were introduced in a shitty breakup, Adam was introduced talking down to Shiro, guilt tripping him and breaking things off with him. If this had been Lance and not Shiro being talked down to by Allura, y'all would have eaten that shit up to prove how incompatible Allurance are and why kl will be endgame. Except cause this is Shiro, you just wanted him out of the way after he became some kind of competition as a queer character (cause how can this disabled asian man be gay rep and not out precious skirt chasing loncey) paired off with this prick of a man. And why is it not queerbait? Because they broke up. The showrunner explicitly said on the panel that shadam were never going to get back together even though once upon a time they wanted to get married. YOU all made up the lie that they were married/engaged. You spread that lie and insisted it was queerbait when this asshat died, you know, in a war.

Shurtis was not queerbait. Shurtis was shit writing. And it wasn't some peak content either. You got one talking scene of Curtis being irrelevant and then badly slapped together, shittily inserted stills of Curtis somewhere in the background while Shiro exists as a non character. Y'all are it up again because, yes get rid of Shiro, he doesn't need a well developed romance even though we constantly rail about allurance coming out of left field despite several seasons of development. And then you got a shit scene of a wedding where they gave him the wrong name in the subtitles/audio. Shurtis was a shitty attempt at trying to get last minute brownie points to compete with Steven Universe. So no, Shurtis was shit writing but it wasn't queerbait.

Vld promised a queer character, and gave you a queer character, that isn't called queerbaiting. Killing off it's 2 irrelevant queer characters doesn't mean it was queerbait.

Now if you want to talk about how Shiro, the moment he is revealed to be queer, is suddenly completely removed from the paladin group, how he never interacts with his literal best friend who very nearly died for him just a few episode ago that kls insist is secretly his son-brother-adoptied cousin-what have you just after being made explicitly gay, then I'm all for it. I have a lot of criticism for vld, I genuinely think it's a show that fucked itself over trying too hard to do things without having the ability to. But none of you is actually ready for a conversation about problems with vld's treatment of it's only openly lgbt main character without making it about how your twink ship didn't become canon when it had the subtext of someone's crackship at worst and a badly done bromance at best.

[kaijuna]

sorry for the incoming tangent but i'm rewatching ATLA alongside VLD and a friend of mine pointed out how convenient things often are for Team Voltron. Versus ATLA, where the group often has to come up with a creative solution to win their fights.

Example: In Book 2, Episode 16: The Drill, Sokka devises a plan to take down said drill via the "pressure points" / the internal mechanisms. While it doesn't go smoothly at first, they work on the fly to eventually win and save Ba Sing Se. Instead of cutting completely through every metal beam, they weaken the majority of them allowing the eventual collapse to break said beams for them. Then, as Katara and Sokka exit the drill, Katara and Toph bend back the rocky-water sludge to build up more internal pressure, Aang goes up top to deliever the final blow- and all of their continous work together is what allows them to win against this major threat.

Versus Voltron, which I swear to god, who never genuinely feels like their earn wins in the story. They fight three Robeasts within the first two seasons, (I think the Alteans later are considered "robeasts" but I'm not really counting them, btw did you ever realize they only had three robeasts for all eight seasons? )and they only actually earn their win against one of them:

The first Robeast is, luckily, a former enemy that Shiro fought. Though it slowly comes back to him, he eventually recalls how he bested him in the arena and that's how they win.

The second Robeast (Drazil, I found out is their name) attacks the Balmera and while the team tries everything they can- even to the point where Hunk is able to unlock the Yellow Lion's special Voltron ability to form a giant cannon- they only temporarily weaken it. The Balmera (WHICH WAS ON THE VERGE OF DEATH AND JUST SUDDENLY HAS ENOUGH ENERGY FOR THIS, I GUESS) is the one to stop the Robeast, encasing it in crystal.

Technically, the gang come back to fight it again and do win- but for a majority of the fight they're getting their ass's whooped and suddenly Voltron is able to form the blazing sword (I think) and that just. Bests it. Instantly.

The third and final (sorta) Robeast (Provok) takes the shit out of Voltron the entire time until Ulaz sacrifices himself to destroy it.

If Voltron had to deal with an in-world equivalent of the drill, they probably would just "Form Voltron!" and try and brute force it the whole time until either A. something convenient happens and plays out in their favor or B. a third party intervenes and probably dies because of it.

Some other examples of "RANDOM BULLSHIT GO" from VLD that annoy me are:

On Naxela the gravity is so strong that Voltron can barely move. But somehow, Lance's "motivational" speech is enough for Allura to empower Voltron? I guess? Enough to the point where they can escape. How does it work? Dunno, they don't even bother to tell you in the show itself.

In "Greening the Cube", they're getting dusted by the giant Olkarion Cube. When Pidge is shot out of the sky, she thankfully bonds with her Lion enough to get the exact weapon that is the key in winning them the battle. While I understand on a storytelling level they introduce the problem and then the solution, this is an upgrade that I struggle to fully feel was satisfyingly earned. (Pidge kinda bonds with nature this episode too, and ends up using this whole thing maybe once later on versus the Treezilla monster. Kicking rocks.)

Kinda the finale of Season 2; they do this whole epic fight against Zarkon's knock off Voltron-mech where they are getting pushed around the whole time until, thankfully, Shiro just kinda gets them all to lock in and then they severely injure him and Shiro just fucking evaporates, I guess. (I know it's meant to be a bittersweet win because the writers half-heartedly tried to explore the horrors of war, but I DUNNO MAN, MAYBE IF YOU REALLY WANTED TO SELL THE DEATH OF ONE OF YOUR MAJOR CHARACTER YOU SHOULD'VE LET HIM DIE WITH RESPECT, MEANWHILE SIDE CHARACTERS WE MEET LITERALLY IN THE SAME EPISODE (ULAZ) DIE WITH MORE EMPHASIS THAN SHIRO DID. EGG ON MY FUCKING FACE I GUESS)

but ngl i might be overthinking it genuinely so [explodes explodes explodes]

[szmaciarz-pospolity]

Voltron the legendary defender would have been a better show if instead of that lame intro it had either a slick Ben 10 classic opening or a goofy cartoon opening rap with quick introduction of each paladin. Think TMNT 2012 or One Piece For Kids dub.

Ngl the second would be preffered beacuse holy shit the idea of paladin rap oppening fucks sooooo hard just imagine the goofy introductions like KEITH! He's a loner type! His red lion is idk I can't fucking rhyme

[imaginative-123]

Dreamwork's Voltron Legendary Defender's Queer representation including Asian representation and Men of Color is half-baked and lacking.

Edit: Minors do not reblog,comment or like on my posts or I will block you.

On the topic of Dreamwork's criticism aside from films, even if I'm a fan of VLD in the past but I wanted to put my opinions out regarding this controversial show, let's talk about the queer representation and how men of color who are love interests to Shiro are treated first, Adam who is Shiro's love interest has less screen time in S7, most of his scenes revolved around his argument with his partner related to Shiro's well-being of his body but Shiro protests of wanting to continue going on the mission to which the couple ended on bad terms, his last scene where he was sent out to fight Sendak as being one the pilots to fight against the Galra ships and he died during the war, and Shiro never once get to meet him again in person only to visit his grave.

It's even worse with the lack of screen time that he's barely even a character nor we get to spend time bonding with him before his death. He feels more of a disposable POC character than an actual character. Next is Curtis, who I might describe is a background character, yet we never seen him ever interacting more with Shiro yet I'm surprised he got married with Shiro at the end despite the two barely interacting or ever have on screen chemistry.

Even if it's the first MLM kiss in cartoon, the payoff was unsatisfying. I get that the show was rushed in production issues and may have to appeal to a worldwide audiences considering there are still conservatives who are against gay relationships and might get attacked due to censorship but it doesn't mean it excuses the lackluster writing. I recommend to watch this video that goes into depth about the issues of Voltron's queer representation and one the writers calling Shiro a "Straight Man." Whether intentionally or unintentionally by accident just says a lot about the effort on writing gay characters in media.

Just think about it, two of the men who are both brown skinned, the other is tan and one is darker skinned are only men who are basically love interests to Shiro, they're barely even memorable characters or have narrative impact in the story, they're just love interests with barely any strong characterizations to them that the fandom has to fill in the gaps with their headcanons to make them feel like actual characters. It's kind of strange to me that DW decided to not give two men who are POC their own story arcs or develop a strong relationship with Shiro to just be instead "love interests." Kind of problematic if you ask me and considering they did Allura the Black Girlfriends Disposable Trope at the end doesn't make it better.

Now lastly let's talk about race, I watched VLD back in 2018 after the show ended, and it's my only introduction and exposure to Voltron, and what I wasn't aware of until recently is that most of the main casts are raceswapped from the originals most especially Allura was originally blonde until they made her a black woman in the remake. But considering there are other Voltron shows that are not accurate to the originals so VLD might be it's own AU version of it. The reason I want to discuss about it is regarding Keith who among the main casts who has no established race despite being half-galra, and it's implied by DW of the AAPI Heritage from the wiki that he might be Asian.

Just think about it, most of the main casts have established races yet Keith was not, sure he might be implied to be Asian, but Asian people are vast, we have Southeast and Eastern Asian people and I was one of the Southeast Asian people who are Filipinos, yet DW couldn't bothered to give him an actual race only implied to be Asian even tho he was voiced by an Asian VA? With the only exception of Shiro Takeshi who is voiced by an American VA. It's even worse that he's biracial, and I thought Kogane was his actual surname until I realized it was the fandom who gave him that bc DW couldn't bothered to give him a official Surname, despite that Keith is fine as a character, as for Shiro the same can be said about him except his romantic relationships surrounding his story is underdeveloped and Sheith as a ship has more chemistry than Shiro's 2 love interests was quite ironic honestly. Considering that Dreamworks was hyping up their queer representation only to turn Adam into a disposable gay man at his tragic demise while a background character with less screentime and lines managed to be married with an Asian disabled man without onscreen chemistry and development. Just bc Dreamworks may not be as pandering like Disney and Pixar or any other companies when it comes to representation that it feels forced sometimes that it makes anti SJWs or anti woke people call these companies woke, does not mean Dreamworks should be given a slap on the wrist for their poor and half-assed representation and just willingly accept it even if from what I've seen about the She-ra The Princesses of Power reboot and I have not fully watched it but got spoiled by the critical fandom in Tumblr who voiced out their complaints about the queer or lesbian representation being abusive and romanticized that even if DW gave lesbians more screentime than VLD ever did with it's gay characters considering it's a trend in Western Media who have more love for lesbians than gay men. Still does not mean it's great representation.

That being said, Queer and Asian representation including Men of Color and Allura deserved better than this.

[shallurallels]

You know what I think about a lot.

The writers could’ve easily avoided the lion swap and Kuron as a whole by simply making it as if Shiro had been teleported to the Galra during those those last few seconds in the fight of 2x13.

To me that storyline would have been 10x more interesting.

Imagine Shiro being recaptured and having to figure out how to escape but we actually see his escape this time. Imagine the overarching issue for the Paladins being they can’t form Voltron in season 3 because they’re down a lion and Black doesn’t allow Keith to pilot it. They’re then forced to forge a better bond with their lions, unlocking new abilities and a greater understanding of the lions individually.

That way we still would’ve gotten the origin story of Voltron (with some major tweaking cuz I didn’t care much for the actual origin story) but it raises the stakes.

No Bp Keith. No Allura assuming a lion. None of that bs. They could’ve done so much with these storylines. Then either at the end of season 3, Shiro somehow reunites with the team, or that’ll be top of season 4. Seeing true emotions of fear, anger, sadness driving the paladins throughout the season would’ve added so much depth to each of their characters, especially Keith’s.

Lotor would still the be big bad of season 3 since Zarkon is down for the count, along with Haggar and the generals by his side. Ooouuu what if we actually got a scene where Haggar is explaining to Shiro why he could’ve been their greatest weapon.

On that note, I would’ve really liked to see more on Shiro’s ptsd. That could’ve been highlighted with him being back in the hands of the Galra. Perhaps Black was trying to teleport him to safety but Zarkon was interfering up til the very last moment? Just as Keith has suggested.

Idk I just feel like season 2 really set up season 3 to be the downfall of the show—the Lion swap specifically.

[soniccrystal]

Lance shouldve been a peace maker instead of a farmer

The first episode shows how well Lance can avoid conflict by shutting Pidge up with his hand before Iverson did something, then in a few seasons manages to get Keith to let himself be leader for the good of the team and when they have to switch lions Allura herself says that he values the team more then he does glory.

Lance's development shouldve been about instead of pretending and trying to be this awesome space hero for fame, fortune ,for a cool adventure and for the feeling of actually being important for once ,he starts seeing how political or regular work can help people and apreciating that and becomes this smart political people person advisor type of guy that has to talk to difficult royalty or governers in order to help make the paladins alliance easier, help the poor or war victims while seeing value in himself. He becomes a hero that while not famous has helped voltron and other people.

[devilsofficialfanfic]

Am I the only one who thinks that the whole lore with Voltron is so incredibly underwhelming? Its basically mechanical space lions that everyone keeps saying its all powerful and special but it’s literally just like all of the other ships and robots we’ve seen except it has plot armor 💀💀 and Voltron doesn’t even feel powerful either. The creators say that each lion has a special ability but we’ve only seen that with the blue, black, maybeeee red lions? Voltron as a ship/bot just felt so underwhelming which is a shame because they could’ve done so much more with it other than Alfor building it and everyone saying how mighty and special it is. The writers really don’t know what show don’t tell means 💀💀

You are not alone!!!

Don’t even get me started!!!

Other things the writers did not explain:

-what’s up with the Druids? Are they like…a Galra religious sect? A cult? Really dedicated phd students? If they are Galra (heavily implied), why is an Altean zombie leading them?

-are Haggar and Zarkon undead? Are they still themselves, or are they possessed by rift creatures? What are rift creatures? Do they even exist?

-the blade of Marmora? What’s their deal? Another religious sect? Does it predate Zarkon? Or is it a rebellion created after? Do they have special powers? Or is it just Keith? What makes Keith so special?

-why are Alteans so racist? Is it a superiority complex?

Also Voltron is so ugly, and giving it bigger and bigger wings does not make it cooler. Just makes me think one of the writers was an edgy 15 y/o