Why did anyone expect Voltron to be brave or progressive?
For the first six season they seemed almost ashamed to be doing a Super Robot Show. (Like how many Hollywood people treated superheroes as shameful).
Possibility + Bragging = Hope
Voltron isn’t a bad show. Its got some great elements and wonderful moments/plotlines. There’s Allura as a black character as a great variant of the Princess archetype, Shiro a gay man of color, the diverse race cast, Pidge’s deviation when it comes to gender, Lotor and his struggle to free himself from his abusive parents, etc.. The pieces are all there for Voltron to be a game changer of kids cartoons.
And the crew knew this, they bragged about this. The marketing around Adam is the prime example. The intentional hyping got people’s hopes up. The good bits of the show and the continued possibility that it could turn progressive kept them up.
Until season 7 and 8 but that’s a whole another fish.
I never followed the crews announcment and the press releases so I was pretty in the dark about all this.
And Pidge was a mess coding and plot wise when it comes to gender. Season 1 she came off as a trans girl who passed as male in the garrison (public showers people, the writers never aparrently considered that), rumors the creators talks about her in private as if she’s nonbinary, and then they just came out and said she’s cis and not gender-conforming.
But the fact she came off initially as hiding feminity rather than intentionally wanting to be a tomboy makes it all weird.
Not to mention they claimed Earth is progressive in the future, making any of her deception weird. Are tomboys not accepted? Are trans people not accepted? Prejudice is required for either narrative to make sense.
where does going undercover end and the personal identity issues begin?
People mistook a disguise to infiltrate a base as her actual identity and assumed she was trans or nonbinary in some way.
In other words, she didn’t just fool the military, she fooled the audience.
But how could she when military showers are public? That’s where it all falls apart.
And why? There were female trainees at the base. Changing her name should have been enough. A change in presented gender brings logistic issues.
A Mulan style plot in a futuristic setting requires more of an explanation than what we were given.
And why not revert to the Katie persona after confessing then?
Personally? I think the creative team enjoyed the “pidge” persona way too much to try and bring in the “katie” persona. Or even take a minute to tackle the gender confusion/gender fluidity that Pidge introduce. Like much of Voltron, the idea is introduced then dropped.
If you want an in-universe explanation, I’d would say that Pidge’s “katie” persona was Pidge over compensating for her lack of traditional femininity. Once she was in space and around people that accepted her tom-boy look, she grew comfortable in it and decided not to go back to the “katie” look.
But that’s not shown at all in canon so who knows.
I just remind myself of one of the most common oxymorons in English.
“Military Intelligence.”
Yeah, I’ve used that to explain away Keith’s hybrid nature not being picked up, but unfortunate here it doesn’t work because the narrative doesn’t explain why Katie made the choice to present as male when there are already female trainees on base.
Well, as a girl she was barred from entry. Another layer of disguise? Or people assumed and she went with it.
The more layers to a disguise the more likely it is to fail . However Pidge is 14 so I can buy her being an idiot there
The MST3K mantra just isn’t helping for once, and I think its because the writers were so confident they were clear in their intentions, but they weren’t. They neither showed enough, nor did they tell enough.
I think its narrative conventions clashing. The type of future they show is one that calls to mind DNA scanners and full body scans, and that would wreck a Mulan type disguise.
And the idea Pidge pretending to be a non-op trans-man after being caught as a result just feels in poor taste,
You know, with all the language throughout Star Wars about “giving in” to the Dark Side, how the Dark Side makes you more powerful, how the Dark Side makes you age strangely and destroys you, it sure doesn’t sound like an “opposite side of the coin” so much as the “deeper end of the pool,” like it’s actually the true form of the force and being a Jedi is about keeping it tamed so it doesn’t eat you the way it actually wants.
the force is entropy
Eldritch Jedi pls
This is one of the reasons i love the second Knights of the Old Republic game, wherein one of the major characters (who defines herself neither as Jedi nor Sith) actually views the Force this way, saying “I hate the Force. I hate that it seems to have a will, that it would control us to achieve some measure of balance, when countless lives are lost.”
It’s also the game that gave us the two most entropic, eldritch characters in the franchise: Darth Nihilus, whose dark-side-borne ability to feed on the Force and consume life itself has twisted him into a half-living “wound in the Force”, more presence than flesh
and Darth Sion, whose entire body is a ruin, his flesh nothing but ragged scar tissue, every bone and muscle broken and torn, kept animated by will alone as he forces himself, second by agonizing second, to exist
I wish there were more horrifying perspectives on the force like that
This is one of the reasons the term “Light Side” never felt right to me, even before it was used in any official media; The Force always struck me more like an ocean than a binary concept: the deeper you go, the darker and more crushing it gets — at a certain point becoming an effectually consistent darkness — and while light filters down and fades for some distance, if there is a truly light “side” it’d be the surface.
Which isn’t to say “the Force is evil unless you flounder about near the top” — just that it’s a natural force, and as such is something you need to respect and be adequately prepared for. (Take electricity, for example: super awesome and pretty dang useful, but OH HOLY SMOKES don’t try and harness it unless you REALLY know what you’re doing!)
In this sense, being tempted by the Dark Side is less a case of “Hey, I wonder what’s on the other side of this coin it looks pretty cool haha oh whoops I’m Space Walter White now,” and more one of “The deeper into this thing you go, the harder you’ll need to fight to resist the ever-increasing pressure, to remain whole, even to just see whatever the heck you’re actually doing.”
(which is why Jedi training is so important: those padawans gotta build themselves a mental Deepsea Challenger!)
THIS META BLESSED ME
Okay but let’s suppose, for a moment, that the Force is actually malevolent.
That would make a lot of sense.
Consider, for a moment, an eldritch parasite. This ancient being feeds off of the life-force of other creatures. Not that unusual, as most living things also consume other living things, to various degrees. But this one is technically somewhat removed from the usual structures of biology. It is a passive and opportunistic predator, for the most part. Whenever a living being that is connected to it – however weakly – dies, it consumes part of its energy, and gets bigger.
As life in the galaxy flourishes, and time passes, this singular entity gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Like a catfish; the only limit to its growth is how much it can consume to fuel it. The larger it gets, the more it is able to sink its invisible claws into other living beings, until eventually there is hardly any life out there which hasn’t been ‘infected’ by it, and slated to become its spiritual dinner as soon as its biological form gives out.
And here we actually come to – of all things – the midichlorians. Which, the Jedi use to measure someone’s sensitivity to the Force, which works because midichlorians are the vehicle for the predatory parasite to infest living beings. The immune systems in some people begin to develop a certain degree of resistance to them, which is why some folks have more, and some have less, and this directly correlates to their Force sensitivity. The more midichlorians you have, the worse your immune system is at fending off the parasite.
The Force counters the risk of being bred out of subsequent generations by developing camouflage, and adapting itself into a more seemingly-symbiotic relationship with its prey.
What the Jedi see as the ‘light side’ of the Force, is a reflective layer that this predator has created via its connection to all living things. This network is the honey trap that encourages the beings still strongly connected to it, to spread that connection, because it affords them advantages while they are still alive. But its elements are comprised mostly of echoes and reflections of their fellow prey organisms. Force Ghosts that resemble the departed. Emotions that are transmitted along this layer and between individuals. Small amounts of power that can be siphoned off to impact the environment, and can also spread the Force to whatever living thing it comes into contact with.
This being is huge now, it needs a lot of juice in order to maintain its existence, let along continue to grow. And like most predators it’s willing to expend a certain amount of energy in order to guarantee a bigger pay-off.
The deeper you go into the Force, the more the Force starts exerting its own will through you. And the less you see of the reflected camouflage of it, and the more apparent it becomes that the Force wants large swaths of death to feed it. Which is why Dark Siders often become so preoccupied with things like Death Stars.
But it’s a balancing act. A large population of relatively peaceful Force sensitives, like the Jedi, cost more than they’re worth, because beyond a point they take too much energy from the Force and don’t kill enough people to pay for it. A single individual abusing their powers for self-gain and murdering left and right, though, accomplishes the goal of feeding it. The Force obviously doesn’t want its food supply to die out completely, but this explains the persistent cycles of the Star Wars universe – as a soon as a group of peaceful Force users becomes prominent, they get wiped out by a few Dark Siders who have tread too deeply past the reflective surface of the Force, and become actual vessels for its will.
And then when the Dark Siders have finished killing a whole bunch of people, it’s time for them to go, too, so that they don’t wipe out the entire populace and kill off the Force’s food supply beyond its ability to reasonably recover. The peaceful types then see an upswing, as they are more adept at spreading the Force. So the cycle goes – Jedi spread the Force, Sith kill the Jedi and feed the Force, Jedi kill the Sith and resume spreading the Force. It’s a planting and harvest cycle, and the galaxy is populated with the Force’s living spirit crops. Anakin Skywalker, who was arguably one of the beings most closely connected to the Force, and had an extremely high midichlorian count, basically lived this cycle in its entirety as an individual – he spread the Force as a Jedi, he killed people as a Sith, and then he ended it all in order to preserve his progeny for the next round.
tl;dr – the Force wants to eat your soul. The reason the ‘light side’ types always get so up in their own asses is because what they perceive as the Force is basically their own reflections dangling in front of them like an angler fish’s lure. The reason the ‘dark side’ types get so messed up is because they’re basically the equivalent of those grasshoppers who get infected with a parasite that makes them drown themselves.
This point of view would actually explain both No-Attachment rule and the Order’s cradle-robbing – some more self-aware Jedi saw the Force for what it is and pushed for a rule that potentially would cut births of Force-sensitive kids to a bare minimum. And those who were born Force-sensitive thanks to a quirk of the Force are to be taken from the society in the quickest way possible before they mess up, given tools to keep it at bay, and indoctrinated to never want to dabble in the deeper ends of their ability. It would also explain the whole debacle of Unifying vs Living Force and why Jedi seem to prefer the former – all of the description of the Living Force I came across present it as more ever changing, nearly organic entity and Jedi that use is as more responsive to its nudges, so potentially more inclined to being “corrupted” by it.
Or, alternativly it is literally like the ocean. So apathetic and power it matters not that it isn’t malevolent.
If you stay at the surface, it’s easy to get a breath, stay grounded. But to go deep, you need to dive. And diving cuts you off of some… Spiritual Air shall we say. The longer you stay down and more reckless you are the more likely you are to drown.
But if you’re… Consumed by it? If you go too deep for too long? You can either suffer brain damage from lack of air… or get the bends. The bends is when the air that gives you life does it’s best to kill you. So you go back down. Deeper and longer. Until you invariably fuck up and die. Probably because you’re hallucinating.
Eggman would eventually try to take control of Bill, then Bill would mollywop his ass and betray him and Eggman would eventually have to team up with Sonic to take Bill down lmao
No, Eggman doesn’t play second fiddle to villains anymore. Now he turns primordial entitites into clockwork cyborgs.
Aside from SA2 where he was blinded by hero worship and the thought of his grandfathers creation working for him, his problem is with bestial monstrosities
Why did anyone expect Voltron to be brave or progressive?
For the first six season they seemed almost ashamed to be doing a Super Robot Show. (Like how many Hollywood people treated superheroes as shameful).
Possibility + Bragging = Hope
Voltron isn’t a bad show. Its got some great elements and wonderful moments/plotlines. There’s Allura as a black character as a great variant of the Princess archetype, Shiro a gay man of color, the diverse race cast, Pidge’s deviation when it comes to gender, Lotor and his struggle to free himself from his abusive parents, etc.. The pieces are all there for Voltron to be a game changer of kids cartoons.
And the crew knew this, they bragged about this. The marketing around Adam is the prime example. The intentional hyping got people’s hopes up. The good bits of the show and the continued possibility that it could turn progressive kept them up.
Until season 7 and 8 but that’s a whole another fish.
I never followed the crews announcment and the press releases so I was pretty in the dark about all this.
And Pidge was a mess coding and plot wise when it comes to gender. Season 1 she came off as a trans girl who passed as male in the garrison (public showers people, the writers never aparrently considered that), rumors the creators talks about her in private as if she’s nonbinary, and then they just came out and said she’s cis and not gender-conforming.
But the fact she came off initially as hiding feminity rather than intentionally wanting to be a tomboy makes it all weird.
Not to mention they claimed Earth is progressive in the future, making any of her deception weird. Are tomboys not accepted? Are trans people not accepted? Prejudice is required for either narrative to make sense.
where does going undercover end and the personal identity issues begin?
People mistook a disguise to infiltrate a base as her actual identity and assumed she was trans or nonbinary in some way.
In other words, she didn’t just fool the military, she fooled the audience.
But how could she when military showers are public? That’s where it all falls apart.
And why? There were female trainees at the base. Changing her name should have been enough. A change in presented gender brings logistic issues.
A Mulan style plot in a futuristic setting requires more of an explanation than what we were given.
And why not revert to the Katie persona after confessing then?
Personally? I think the creative team enjoyed the “pidge” persona way too much to try and bring in the “katie” persona. Or even take a minute to tackle the gender confusion/gender fluidity that Pidge introduce. Like much of Voltron, the idea is introduced then dropped.
If you want an in-universe explanation, I’d would say that Pidge’s “katie” persona was Pidge over compensating for her lack of traditional femininity. Once she was in space and around people that accepted her tom-boy look, she grew comfortable in it and decided not to go back to the “katie” look.
But that’s not shown at all in canon so who knows.
I just remind myself of one of the most common oxymorons in English.
“Military Intelligence.”
Yeah, I’ve used that to explain away Keith’s hybrid nature not being picked up, but unfortunate here it doesn’t work because the narrative doesn’t explain why Katie made the choice to present as male when there are already female trainees on base.
Some more creature concept arts for Subventure, my upcoming RPG. Like the precedent batch, theses ones are creature from the surface who mutated in the deep tunnels and forgotten sewers of Circande, the capital of supernatural.
– Angora Doglodytes are a breed of Cynoptere, a race of giant bats, akin to wolf and dog of the surface. Angora Doglodytes are loved for their loving and joyful traits, their cudly fluffy fur and their big size, who makes them good “watchbats” for underground houses.
– Klabauters, also nicknamed “Tinker-Beavers” by the Surfaceans, are not actually beavers in origins. They are derivated from rats and water-rats. But their similarities with beavers are many: their tail flattened to make them good swimmers, they grew in size, and they are famous for building dams, blocking and flooding entire tunnels… Wood is rare in the tunnels, so Klabauters build their dams and “villages“ with whatever they can find, and it mostly implies stealing from the tunnel’s inhabitant. They steal motors parts, metallic foundations, precious objects, anything… all in all, Klabauters cause as much damage by stealing than by meddling with underground rivers. They are the goblins of the tunnels, the tricksters, hated by most.
– Odiloraptors, sometime called Nessies or Bad-Beackies, are a huge race of birds, mostly featherless, carnivorous, agressive and dangerous. They have regressed so much they are close to be identified as dinosaurs again, and originate the urban legend of T-rex in the sewers. Except that they are the descendant of swans… hard to believe that such a beautiful breed of birds could become this hideous hunters. You could distance them on land, though they have great jump and acceleration they can’t run for a long time. But be cautious in water. They are amazing swimmers, and their long neck reminds many people of plesiosaurs…
why does Christopher Robin look like he’s just committed murder and he’s trying to explain to his ursine childhood hallucination that it’s a fun pastime
Exactly. Pooh isn’t an evil spirit here, but a creepy image reflecting lost innocence.
Article 13 is going into it’s final stages of voting.
If this gets through, it will allow many, many companies to abuse and misuse this article to take down as many memes, fan works, and even other independent creators on sites like YouTube, Facebook, and other websites INCLUDING Tumblr.
THE FAIR USE LAW AND SAFEHARBOR LAW WILL NO LONGER APPLY IN THE U.S OR IN OTHER COUNTRIES.
IT HAS ALREADY PASSED IN SEVERAL OTHER COUNTRIES.
WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO TAKE AWAY WHAT WE BUILT FOR THE INTERNET SO FAR.
So here is what you need to do to drag this article down.
1. Spread the word
I can’t stress this enough. The more attention this gets the more people we can get to take this down.
2. Make your own content
Make your own content on the matter and make sure it is clear to others that Article 13 is bad for every internet user involved.
3. If you live anywhere in Europe, contact your MEPs
Ask them if they approve of the article and why. If they do approve of it, try to convince them in a clear, reasonable, and most sensible way possible that this law is BAD.
The article itself is way to vague about what it’s conveying to its people.
Saying that as long as the use of said internet memes or content is good as long as it’s in “good faith.”
We cannot let some shoddy government tell us what we can and cannot post.
FREE SPEECH IS A HUMAN RIGHT. NOT A PRIVILEGE.
Here’s a video on Article 13 that Film Theory made on the matter. It will explain things better than I can.
Why did anyone expect Voltron to be brave or progressive?
For the first six season they seemed almost ashamed to be doing a Super Robot Show. (Like how many Hollywood people treated superheroes as shameful).
Possibility + Bragging = Hope
Voltron isn’t a bad show. Its got some great elements and wonderful moments/plotlines. There’s Allura as a black character as a great variant of the Princess archetype, Shiro a gay man of color, the diverse race cast, Pidge’s deviation when it comes to gender, Lotor and his struggle to free himself from his abusive parents, etc.. The pieces are all there for Voltron to be a game changer of kids cartoons.
And the crew knew this, they bragged about this. The marketing around Adam is the prime example. The intentional hyping got people’s hopes up. The good bits of the show and the continued possibility that it could turn progressive kept them up.
Until season 7 and 8 but that’s a whole another fish.
I never followed the crews announcment and the press releases so I was pretty in the dark about all this.
And Pidge was a mess coding and plot wise when it comes to gender. Season 1 she came off as a trans girl who passed as male in the garrison (public showers people, the writers never aparrently considered that), rumors the creators talks about her in private as if she’s nonbinary, and then they just came out and said she’s cis and not gender-conforming.
But the fact she came off initially as hiding feminity rather than intentionally wanting to be a tomboy makes it all weird.
Not to mention they claimed Earth is progressive in the future, making any of her deception weird. Are tomboys not accepted? Are trans people not accepted? Prejudice is required for either narrative to make sense.
where does going undercover end and the personal identity issues begin?
People mistook a disguise to infiltrate a base as her actual identity and assumed she was trans or nonbinary in some way.
In other words, she didn’t just fool the military, she fooled the audience.
But how could she when military showers are public? That’s where it all falls apart.
And why? There were female trainees at the base. Changing her name should have been enough. A change in presented gender brings logistic issues.
A Mulan style plot in a futuristic setting requires more of an explanation than what we were given.
And why not revert to the Katie persona after confessing then?
Personally? I think the creative team enjoyed the “pidge” persona way too much to try and bring in the “katie” persona. Or even take a minute to tackle the gender confusion/gender fluidity that Pidge introduce. Like much of Voltron, the idea is introduced then dropped.
If you want an in-universe explanation, I’d would say that Pidge’s “katie” persona was Pidge over compensating for her lack of traditional femininity. Once she was in space and around people that accepted her tom-boy look, she grew comfortable in it and decided not to go back to the “katie” look.
But that’s not shown at all in canon so who knows.
Monsters and Stuff 
