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shadow-djinni · 2 years

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Oh, please elaborate!

Alrighty! So, I think we’re all aware that I’m not saying anything remotely new by saying that Voltron has some serious issues with its plot and pacing, particularly after Season 2. That’s, like, extremely well-trodden ground, everyone’s been yelling about it for a bit over three years at this point, everyone has opinions but the consensus is that it’s bad, et cetera, ad nauseum. I don’t need to retread it. However: this is a point I’ve been mulling on for the aforementioned three years, which I’ve never put out on this blog before— mostly because back in ‘19 it would have gotten me murdered, and because in ‘20 and ‘21 I was otherwise occupied.

The thesis, essentially, is this: Seasons 1 and 2 set up Shiro and Allura as the clear lead (or “keystone”) protagonists, and the failure to follow through on that is why Seasons 3-8 felt, oftentimes, like a janky, shambling mess punctuated with moments of “hey, what’s this interesting plot point doing in here?”

(under the cut, because this got long)

What is a “Keystone Protagonist”?

First, a clarification on terminology. Every narrative has characters in it whose functions are irreplaceable, and without whom the narrative just…doesn’t go. These are the movers and shakers, the team leaders, the people who are so intimately intertwined, from the very foundation of their character, with the plotline that removing them causes the plotline to disintegrate entirely. Keystone villains are easily identified— they’re the Big Bad and their second-in-command, and their challengers or successors as applicable.

A keystone protagonist, on the other hand, is most readily identified in a small, focused cast— they’re the Chosen One, frequently the POV character, always the one with the coolest powers or the visceral hook. They’re a little harder to identify in ensembles, but even the most far-flung ensemble has one or two characters who make the plot function, and they’re always the ones most tied to and shaped by the plot.

Looking at Team Voltron, the protagonists with the clearest ties to the main plotline are obvious. An Empire, led by a ruler twisted into cruelty, stretches its grasp across the stars to claim a superweapon hidden from them. A ramshackle group, led by the last surviving daughter of the first nation to fall to them, and an escaped prisoner who has seen the worst cruelties the Empire has to offer, rises to face them. Of the main protagonists, Allura and Shiro have faced the most visceral wounds from the Empire; Allura’s entire culture was destroyed while she slept in stasis, Shiro and his crew were abducted, kept as prisoners, and subjected to violence and torture. None of the other Paladins come anywhere near that kind of connection.

The rest of Season 1, and a majority of Season 2, plays this out exactly as it’s set up. Allura spends most of Season 1 rebounding from her loss and beginning to grow into both her powers as a sacred Altean and her role as a leader of Voltron. Season 2 centers Shiro more strongly, as he battles Zarkon for control of the Black Lion and the fate and future of Voltron. The two of them, together, take up the mantle of leadership— and bear it well, given their lack of experience.

And then the Season 2 finale turned it all on its head, and the rest is history.

The Deal with Keith

Structurally, Keith is interesting. He initially comes across as sort of a stock protagonist— the hotheaded, rebellious one, who needs to learn to actually work with the team— and the most interesting first impression of him is of his bond with Shiro. However, aside from that bond, he has no strong connections to the main plot; he’s solidly middle of the pack, below Allura, Shiro, and Pidge, but above Lance and Hunk— until the Season 2 reveal that he’s part-Galra and connected to a group of rebels who oppose the Empire, which introduces complications to the team dynamic right when they most need to trust each other.

The Blade of Marmora plotline, during which this occurred, is pretty widely acclaimed in fandom. I have no idea what the Paladin fans were doing during this time, but I know Galra fans were excited to have a little complexity to an otherwise monolithically cruel, unscrupulous, and violent antagonistic force. If they’d handled that reveal, and Keith’s new connection to the plot, a little differently, it had the potential to both up the stakes and complicate both the portrayal of the Galra and the protagonists’ morality.

You’ll have to forgive me a lack of links— I can’t remember what interview or interviews this next paragraph’s points came from originally, and frankly I don’t care enough to look it up or I’ll have to start yelling and hitting things instead of writing an analysis. Anyway. The showrunners said, at some point, that their reboot was intended to capture some of their nostalgia for Voltron: Defender of the Universe, and that this was meant to include a first-episode plot point— that Shiro would die (or otherwise be removed from command) and Keith would replace him as the Black Paladin. They pretty clearly accomplished this, to what is widely considered the show’s detriment.

The Breakdown

Three main factors contributed to the plot’s disintegration after Keith was moved into the spotlight. As a protagonist, Keith’s backstory and approach to the plot were unsuited to holding the keystone role; the divisions within the team that appeared during Season 3 and worsened after weakened the narrative focus; and removing Shiro and sidelining Allura unravelled the underlying themes and cut off plot threads set up in the first two seasons.

Keith and Shiro are first introduced to the viewer as close friends, from before the Kerberos mission. It’s heavily implied that Keith’s discipline issue, and subsequent dropping-out, from the Garrison were caused by Shiro’s reported death on Kerberos, his desperation to rescue Shiro in S1E1 The Rise of Voltron, and their subsequent rapport and mutual support and encouragement speak volumes. However, while Shiro spends most of the first two seasons stepping into his role as a leader and striving against Zarkon, Keith spends most of it in the background, until the Galra reveal comes to light.

And herein lies the trouble. Holding the reveal of Keith’s Galra heritage until the second season delays his closest tie to the plot— that he’s related, by blood, to the scourge grinding the universe under its heel— until well after the overall narrative and major players have been established. They could have easily fixed this by showing that hand earlier; having Keith know he’s part Galra from the very start, revealing that sometime after the midpoint of the season, and using Season 2 as part of the blowback from the reveal would have much more effectively established him as one of the leads, and made his background better able to support the plot by bringing it in immediately. Deferring it made it seem less important, especially as the fallout was curtailed by the strike on Central Command in the Season 2 finale rather than being given more time to play out.

Season 2 ends, rather abruptly, with Shiro’s disappearance. We open Season 3 with him gone and Voltron struggling without him, and spend half of the (albeit much shortened) season without him around at all. Keith founders in the new leadership role, and, as we’re shown in Season 4, ditches it as quickly as he can to go work with the Blade of Marmora. Aside from the obvious question— why remove Shiro at all, if only to bring him back and then oust Keith?— this causes other difficulties in balancing the narrative. Between the two of them, at least one is missing for six episodes in Seasons 3 and 4 alone.

As one might expect, this is a major faux pas for an ensemble cast. Removing one or more cast members from the screen, and having them develop elsewhere during that time, undermines the viewer’s attachment to and understanding of the character, in addition to destabilizing the ensemble’s dynamic. Additionally, the tug-of-war on command of Voltron calls things into question for the viewer: who is supposed to be in charge here, and why is it taking them so long to establish that chain of command? And if the group can suffer such a huge loss, and Lion positions be swapped so easily, why the big deal around having the appropriate Paladins? Canon seems disinclined to provide an answer.

This radiates out to the rest of the group as well. The Paladins of Voltron, established within the first two episodes as a group of psychically bonded warriors— a ready set up for a found family or battle-forged companions dynamic— collapses repeatedly as members leave and return. The group keeps fighting within itself for far, far more of its runtime than it should have— a not-insignificant portion of Season 7 is dedicated to how divided the Paladins are, over fifty episodes into the show.

Cut Threads, Loose Themes

The Paladins’ relationship isn’t the only thing to suffer from the power struggle. The first two seasons organize a delicate balance of narrative foils and a solid underlying theme, centered around healing from trauma, which is tossed repeatedly out the window in favor of giant robot fights over the course of the rest of the series.

Looking at the motivations of Seasons 1 and 2’s keystone characters— Allura and Shiro on the side of the protagonists, Zarkon and Haggar on the side of the antagonists— a dichotomy reveals itself. All four are incredibly traumatized characters; Zarkon, Haggar, and Allura by the chain of events that led to the destruction of Daibazaal and Altea, Shiro by the backlash of that event ten millennia later. The difference is this: Allura and Shiro both make strides towards coping with and recovering from that trauma, where Zarkon and Haggar have spent ten thousand years wallowing in grief and anger. The Galra Empire as a whole remains trapped in that moment of cultural trauma as Zarkon lashes out, his efforts fueled by Haggar’s unrelenting support and cruel inventions, unable to move forward from it. Even the Blade of Marmora are trapped by it— despite their best efforts, they still work within the framework of the Empire and are unable to stop the cascade of violence. Allura and Shiro, on the other hand, are both shown coming to terms with the harm they were dealt— Allura by coping with her grief and learning to let go of what was lost and move forward, Shiro by facing what was done to him and what he did and refusing to let it define him.

Laid out, this looks like the set-up for a narrative centered around cultural and personal trauma, one with Shiro and Allura at its core. The parts of later seasons which are most compelling— Lotor and Allura’s dynamic, particularly in Season 5, the parts of Season 7 where the protagonists as a whole must deal with the devastation wrought on Earth— also draw from this narrative around trauma and learning to heal from it.

Unlike Shiro and Allura, Keith’s trauma— around the loss of his parents, and, one would assume, the loss of other members of the Blade— is never explored or played out on-screen. The narrative dances around it at best, or outright removes it at worst, such as by the introduction of his mother, Krolia, in Season 5. This, I suppose, foreshadows in the worst way the ultimate thematic undermining: the restoration of Altea and Daibazaal during the Season 8 finale.

…Anyway. Let’s not get into that.

Let’s talk foils.

I’ve mentioned them twice now, actually— and, for all its flaws, VLD is actually pretty good at drawing parallels between its protagonists and antagonists. As mentioned above, Allura and Shiro serve as direct thematic foils to Zarkon and Haggar, both as pairs and one-on-one. The most obvious comparisons, of course, are Shiro and Zarkon and Allura and Haggar— two Black Paladins, one seeking to use the role to grasp for power and control others, the other using it as a tool to bring peace; two powerful Altean alchemists, one using her abilities to twist and destroy, the other using it to soothe and heal. The parallels work the other way, too: Zarkon and Allura are both leaders devastated by the loss of their people and home, Shiro and Haggar both suffer amnesia and physical alterations from their trauma and have grown around those wounds.

Additionally, Shiro and Allura both have another antagonist foil in Sendak and Lotor, respectively. I’m certain I’ve already delved into Shiro and Sendak’s relationship somewhere on this blog, but I’ll touch on it again briefly. Both seem to be (as portrayed in Season 1) relatively new leaders, both stubborn and tenacious, gifted fighters, and both having suffered massive physical trauma and been augmented afterwards in specifically weaponized ways. Season 1, particularly S1E9 Crystal Venom, frames them as a pair of darkened mirrors— a change of circumstances, and one could readily be the other.

Allura and Lotor are a bit more complicated. Both are the only children of a leader of a member nation of the original Voltron Alliance. Both are driven, charismatic leaders with specific goals, and both are also driven by personal curiosity and a desire for knowledge and power. The divergence is in the details— Allura was beloved by her father and encouraged towards her strengths, while also being sheltered by the peaceful circumstances of her youth; Lotor faced parental disapproval and routine rejection, and his natal environment encouraged stubbornness and often cruelty. This plays out obviously in their approaches to leadership; while Allura is open, honest, and direct, Lotor uses subterfuge and misdirection to hide his intentions.

You notice, of course, that Keith is absent from this discussion. Keith has no narrative parallels to any of the aforementioned villains— he’s not in contact enough with any of them to really compare, not even to Lotor, who was a temporary ally of team Voltron— and quite literally undercuts Shiro’s connection to Sendak in Season 7. He doesn’t contribute anything to any of these dynamics, and the only time he’s present for one, he destroys it.

#asks #vld meta #not quite sure id call this #vld salt #but ill tag it anyway for safety #apologies for the delay; i had a dnd session to run before i could get my meta written up #and in a way that was more...analytical and charitable rather than just bitching #anyway!#really if theyd wanted Keith as a lead they should have established him as BP in the first season rather than establishing Shiro first #and since they established shiro and allura first they should have kept the spotlight there instead of trying to move it #no one is well served by this narrative switchup and im actually still sad about it bc it had the potential to be REALLY GOOD #and it just wasnt

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fantisci · 5 years

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Why Allurance didn’t work (for me at least)

This was meant to be a brief detour before I started griping about the way each individual characters were treated in Voltron, but it turned into an absolute monster, so I;m posting it in parts so that I’ll finish the thing.

Also: not tagging this Allurance, because heaven knows that set of shippers has been badly treated by the show already. No need to add my vitriol to the whole mess.

The thing that flummoxes me about that failure of Allurance was that it should have worked. It was the safe choice (shipping issues aside). The setup was all done. It should have been cute.

How the hell did it fail this badly?

Falling at the Starting Blocks:

First of all, while the groundwork was laid, it contained two major stumbling blocks that led to UNFORTUNATE IMPLICATIONS in big, shiny capital letters: Lance’s relentless pursuit of Allura, and the team’s (and show’s) failure to demonstrate that Lance is more than one of life’s runners up.

Lance had pursued Allura relentlessly despite her repeatedly stated disinterest. Poor Allura falls out of cryo-sleep and is faced with some kid flirting with her…whereupon she insults his ears and decks him. I have no idea why writers continue to think that this harassment-followed-by-violent-retribution is “cute”. For the rest of the prologue, Lance continues to be…well, a graceless teenager, talking over Allura before she can explain the Blue Lion’s qualities, acting the big shot and getting made an ass of as a result. Any time he hits on Allura, she’s exasperated – not threatened (she could wipe the floor with him) but certainly annoyed. Even as Lance shows more maturity in other areas, when it comes to Allura his character development suddenly gets thrown out the window. For example, the “greatness within” moment (probably the best and most genuine Lance/Allura moment in the show, so of course it comes to nothing) is undermined by Lance’s jealous snits five minutes later. The message being sent is that jealousy is an unavoidable (and even endearing, since Lance is clearly supposed to be the “virtuous” option to the “seductive and conniving” Lotor) part of being in love. It is not! That’s a terrible message to send to kids! It teaches young boys that pouting and sulking will make their crush give in, and that young girls should accept jealousy as a sign that they are loved. I have no words for how screwed up that is. True, Lance’s angst in later seasons is kept to himself, but we the viewers are still privy to it. I adore Lance, but this part of his characterisation was a disaster: like Shiro’s favouritism, Keith’s isolationism and Pidge’s selfishness, it was a fault that was never explored or addressed properly as a fault, and therefore we’re meant to think it’s okay.

It's also worth noting that real girls, unlike Allura, are unlikely to have a strength and combat advantage over an unwanted male suitor, so that should have been taken into consideration.

The second problem was establishing that Lance has a serious complex about being the second pick/runner up/consolation prize – and that the narrative constantly reinforced that this was correct. Lance can’t be someone’s first pick, he doesn’t get anything unique or special that he can actually keep for himself because he is, in the EPs’ eyes, the living personification of “meh.” Blue is Lance’s moment in the spotlight, but come Season 3 she locks him out because someone needs to be knock-off Keith. He’s the team shooter, until everyone and their dog gets a gun of their own. Hell, when his own family are introduced, the first thing established is how superior Veronica is to her loser of a younger brother, how respected and independent and badass she is. And with Allura, we know fine well that she’d choose Lotor over Lance – because that’s exactly what she did. Lance got to be a shoulder to cry on when it all went pear shaped…which actually ties into the first problem, because we’re left with either a “nice guy” situation (just sacrifice enough for her, and be there for her all the time, and mope over her, and never move on, and never give up and she’ll HAVE to date you!) or Allura using Lance as a rebound. Not a great start.

As adults, we know that we’ll probably not be our partner’s technical “first choice”: a tiny minority of us marry the first person we date, and even fewer are still with that person when we die. However, Lance was clearly and blatantly a backup plan in this situation: Allura was traumatised, she was lonely, and Lance had a family that she envied – and he was interested. So he’d do.

#vld critical #vld lance #vld allura

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ganymedesclock · 6 years

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Your biromantic ace Lance headcanon... I just? Love it so much?? I’ve noticed people never headcanon the flirty people as ace, so I love ace!Lance.

It was honestly inspired because... watching things like Lance talking about Allura in his vlog, it betrays that there’s a pretty harsh divide between how he really experiences attraction and how he thinks he should seem attracted. Him gushing about how cool Allura is and then hastily correcting it to how he’s sure that Allura thinks he’s cool.

With that, and how much he talks about what seem to be kinda old-school action movies, I think it’s pretty clear where Lance gets this attitude of he should be the passive ladykiller who draws people to him when it’s much more Lance’s nature to just... adore someone. He’s really, at his heart, this sweet, sentimental guy and that part of his personality is really adorable when it comes out.

The idea that he’s acting about sexual attraction is, and I touched on this a bit in the post, was that s4e4 gave all of the paladins very fake, shallow reads of them that are fundamentally untrue. Shiro as a generic beauty with nothing important to say, Hunk as a bumbling buffoon, Pidge as someone just blathering off meaningless nonsense science, Allura Keith as an arrogant lone wolf who’s only isolated because he’s too cool for this teamwork thing.

The main conflict in s4e4 is this schism between the acted personas and the real people, and even before we really get into those personas, we discover something interesting about the team: all of them, including the charismatic Shiro and the stated diplomats Hunk and Allura, are positively wooden actors.

The only person who acts well, without any instruction, and consistently does the best the entire episode?

Lance.

And Lance’s persona stands out- because he’s framed as the “loverboy”, mister romance, flirtatious, and- at an incredibly superficial read, that seems like that’s true to character, in contrast to everybody else’s.

But it’s not.

Lance is not a sexual lover- and, it’s very clear that his persona is. He practically does a pole dance hanging from the Red Lion. This is- hedged in a g-rated show- blatant sex appeal.

Which sends a very interestingly complicated message. It tells us that casanova Lance isn’t real- but also, that Lance, out of the team, is the best at playing something he’s not. Allura sort of manages Keith’s role by being literally too frustrated to participate, making her seem aloof and stoic. Hunk has his role externally manipulated onto him. Shiro and Pidge are just stewing in discomfort the entire time and arguing with Worm Coran about what he’s expecting of them.

Lance is the only one who isn’t uncomfortable the entire time. And his input? Whatever he’s doing, the audience loves it. He’s basking in the approval of his fans, signing autographs, listening to the cheering.

At this point- that’s more important to Lance than the fact that he’s pretending to be something he’s not. And again, of everything they could’ve chosen to be Lance’s fake persona, they chose casanova.

So I guess the headcanon sprouted out of that: if Lance is faking his relationship with sexuality, then is it possible he actually doesn’t feel sexual attraction at all? Again, that’d be hard if his main role models he’s looking up to are old-school male action movie heroes- pretty much every macho man action hero is frequently defined by having lots and lots of sex with lots and lots of beautiful women.

Assuming Lance was exposed to this young, and going off the implication that Lance doesn’t really have a strong relationship with his own orientation as much as an expected orientation- that would do a lot of damage. It’d be fundamentally alienating. But it’s also hard to articulate an absence of that sort of thing- and I’m drawing a bit from my own experiences as an asexual person here. For the longest time, I simply assumed that sex was something I’d inevitably want once I got to the Right Place and the Right Person. Suddenly this desire would just, unfold. Clearly.

(Spoiler: it didn’t.)

The vlog also further highlights a lot of what s4e4 implies about Lance- because while Lance isn’t the only one to share things he’d rather not, Lance is the only one we see actively discussing the possibility of doctoring the footage afterwards.

Lance is very concerned about his image. How he’s seen, how he presents himself, this is not an effortless thing. Hell, Lance’s personal grooming routine, introduced as early as s1e2, even tells us that out of the team he’s the one that puts the most thought and effort into his appearance. It isn’t a joke- it’s establishing characterization.

The reason why s4e4 doesn’t have Lance struggling with being saddled with this fake extra personality is “Loverboy Lance” is a piece of baggage he’s had since the first episode.

Like- let’s go over Allura, who Lance actually does have a full-blown crush on at this point, even if I don’t think it’s reciprocated or, really going anywhere.

We see three phases of Lance meeting Allura. The first two fit very cohesively with what we know are Lance’s virtues, and who Lance is as a person. Allura startles awake, calls out for her father, and then starts collapsing.

Before anybody else processes this sudden turn of events, Lance panics- he runs over to Allura and catches her so she doesn’t hit the ground. In that instant, he has no idea who this person is and hasn’t really processed what she looks like- all he cares about is that she’s going to get hurt. It’s a very knee-jerk, heart-on-sleeve moment of compassion.

And this is who Lance is! He feels things, right there, and obviously- he’s a good guy who does good just because it’s the most natural reflexive thing to him. This is the same Lance who shoves Coran, then a relative stranger, away from a bomb, and draws Iverson’s attention and lets him say some very hurtful things to protect Pidge, who’s been mostly just rebuffing Lance’s friendship and criticizing him at that point.

He helps because it just plain doesn’t occur to him not to.

And then Allura looks up- and Lance sees her face for the first time and it strikes him he’s holding a beautiful woman in his arms.

This is not the face of a casanova. It’s, again, that kind of immediate emotions-first response; he’s sweating, his expression is nervous. This is where a crush he’s continued to harbor for four seasons now first takes root, but immediately, he doesn’t want to mess this up- and that’s when we see a very marked shift:

Loverboy appears.

In contrast to his first two reactions, this is unsympathetic, and it’s very fake. This is the facet of Lance that Allura first insults and then immediately loses patience with because he’s flirting rather than answering her questions or taking her seriously. Because as soon as Lance decides he values Allura’s opinion of him, he whips out this fake personality and puts it on.

Because for Lance’s action hero idols, this kind of smarmy attitude works without a hitch. He’s trying to be James Bond. But in the real world that isn’t pretty much an outright power fantasy, that doesn’t work- and if Lance had kept being the sincere, mildly-smitten but mostly worried person he shows time and time again when surprised, stressed, and focused on everything other than how other people see him, he’d have been fine.

This, I think, way more than Lance fearing his lack of a role, is the underlying implication behind his insecurity and his never hearing the virtues or stated “identity” of the Blue Lion.

It’s not that Lance’s role is undefined or he needs to find it. Because remember- the reason why Lance doesn’t hear Blue’s virtues is he interrupts Allura to push his own fantasy.

I can’t think he didn’t do that on purpose. All of the other paladins have their Lions described and then given to them- Hunk is clearly not expecting to be paired with Yellow after Allura describes his temperament. But Lance already knows which Lion is his- and he cuts off Allura before she tells him what the Blue Lion is like.

Which frankly? Sounds like the behavior of someone who’s scared about what he’s going to hear- rather than desperately hanging on Allura’s words to tell him who he is. Lance at the start of the show just plain doesn’t think he’s good enough. And Loverboy is just his poison of choice to defend himself- taking the superbly-confident fictional men he’s watched and making that a defensive mask he can brandish at any situation that makes him uncomfortable or insecure.

Think about Lance calling himself the “cool ninja sharpshooter” when- even establishing himself as a sniper, Lance overwhelmingly uses his scope and range on the battlefield to check on all his friends, quip and joke with them, and play support rather than stoically sneaking out and precisely headshotting the most important target. He’s a friendly mother hen with a gun. Impressive marksman? Yes. Stoic assassin as implied by “cool ninja”? Well... there’s a reason Keith thought that was a joke and it’s not because he doesn’t think Lance is good with a gun.

So the rough tenets of Loverboy is: he is very sexual, he’s always composed and cool in every situation, and everyone is supposed to like him. He’s James Bond.

But the thing about Loverboy, as spotlighted by s4e4, is it’s not real. It’s fake. And the further Lance progresses as a character the more he’s letting this mask crumble away, in huge chunks.

Lance’s moments of strength as a character- s3e1 and his connection with Keith, the instance that makes Red decide he’s worthy of connecting with, and s4e6 supporting Allura- come from a point where Lance’s reflexive compassion surges forth not only with intensity, but a sense of complete calm. It’s Lance affecting a soft, serious, benevolent demeanor.

Because the Blue Lion is the ultimate nurturer. The lover, not as smoldering libido, but that softly takes their beloved’s hands and sees all the universe in their eyes. It’s the kind of love that looks at someone and understands, and accepts their faults, and sees all of their strengths, whether that’s a friend or a crush.

Insecure, vulnerable, uncertain Lance attempts to seduce, attempts to brag, attempts to posture, and it’s a very selfish kind of love- it’s a love that attempts to make everything about him. “Uh, I mean, I’m sure Allura thinks I’m strong and cool and pretty”. And he’s not very good at it.

Confident, certain Lance, at the height of his power doing what he does best- he supports, he understands, he reads right through people and responds with compassion and empathy and a sense of surrendering to a kind of higher flow. And that’s not always serious! I would argue that the Lance we see utterly smitten in the vlog, gushing about man have you seen Allura she’s so great and wonderful and pretty- is his true self acting out. Again, it’s his nature to adore and his nature to support. There’s a reason this kid is a leg pilot through and through, and arguably moved to Red because Keith needed him there.

Since love is such a big deal to Lance, it’s thus not surprising that romance is stated to be something significant in his arc. And I think this whole thing of transcending the immature casanova archetype that he tries to hide behind- of becoming more certain in himself and embracing his true virtues- could tie very nicely to an arc with Lance beginning a relationship based on what his actual needs and wants are, rather than the expectations tied to the Loverboy persona.

Because the real relationships that Lance flourishes with are supportive ones. He heavily connects with Plaxum as an intelligent rebel and someone whose cause he supports and situation he’s concerned by before he ever finds out she’s a beautiful mermaid and thus someone he’s attracted to and might want to pull out Loverboy to deal with.

Now- reading Lance as a biromantic ace who’s been struggling with trying to live up to what can only be called a violently heterosexual ideal isn’t necessarily essential to this arc, but, I think it would fit very nicely here- especially because there’s this thing of when women have seemed totally into Lance, he never once makes any motion towards pursuing sex or even expresses interest therein. He verbally espouses a great desire for intimacy, both romantic and platonic, and I think that’s sincere, but Lance made a raunchy joke only once over the course of four seasons.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lance #readmore #thirty-two paragraphs later......#whoops I've got some feelings about Lance and romance #Anonymous

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