space loser giant kitty committee (voltron)

I can't either. And I was trying to pay attention to that.

 

Okay so we were goofing around with headcanons in a writers discord, as you do, and we were talking about how the Galra needed social medial/internet and that there HAD to be memes about Shiro, the Paladins, so on. Someone came up with this.

It is a delight.

 

The Galra peoples' faces are pure old timey He-Man-style goodness. So's a lot of the script-writing. It's stupid in so many of the same ways that 80's toy commercial cartoons were stupid, but somehow in this context it's charming and fun to watch.

 

Looking at Pidge in their flashback in episode 4... They've definitely been binding their chest. Man, this is giving me some feels...

 

Really? Pidge usually wears pretty baggy clothes, and in the photo with Matt it doesn't look like there'd be much there anyhow?

 

Lance is a filthy xenophile after my own heart. Dude is ready to establish friendly relations with all the space babes.

 

I would love it if maintaining diplomatic relations with Balmera became Allura's first step into doing Real Princess Stuff beyond just being the Voltron team's mini-general.

 

I pretty much assumed Pidge was binding! It looked like there would be enough for there to be jiggle that baggy clothes wouldn't be enough to hide.

 

I suspect that Allura's trying to act a lot more confident than she really is. Considering that there's a lot of magic going on with how the paladins bond with the lions, it's entirely possible that the paladin needs to believe they can bond with the lions (or at least, needs to have no compelling reason to disbelieve or resist).
I was kinda hoping that she'd be wrong about who gets which lion, though. But I suppose it makes sense that she wouldn't be, because she's had enough practice feeling the auras or whatever of people who're bonded with each specific lion.

Things we don't know for sure but can speculate on:

Spoiler: Spoips, maybe

Mankind has not yet fully colonized the solar system, but we're workin' on it. Keith mentions that Lance was a cargo pilot before he got moved to fill the void Keith left. We know that the academy was teaching people to pilot, navigate, and maintain spaceships, which means that there's cargo spaceships - which requires that there be somewhere that cargo needs to get to. This suggests that we've got at least a couple more space-stations and maybe some bases on the Moon and Mars. Pidge mentions, while the blue lion is bouncing around through human space, that they got to Kerberos (Pluto's moon) within a matter of minutes, when it would take human ships months to get out there.

Currently, it would take human ships decades to get out to the edge of the solar system. This means that the engines we use have changed - possibly they're using ion drives; there's an ion drive trialling right now (or planning to be trialed) since they need to check if it works in space as well as it works in vacuum chambers.

We know that humanity has not yet made contact with anything from outside our solar system, and that there's nothing but us inside our solar system (based off of Pidge-dad mentioning looking for evidence of aliens on Kerberos). And there's the implication that travelling out to the edges isn't so unusual that it's really something to be hyped about - or at least, Pidge-dad and Pidge-brother aren't super excite, the way you'd expect someone who's doing something that's never been done before would be; they're excited, but it's a quieter kind of excitement. More of a "maybe we'll find something cool, and even if we don't, we're doing Useful Science" kind of excitement, if that makes sense? I got the feeling that this was Pidge-brother's first mission out, so I doubt that it was anything considered terribly revolutionary.

Pidge is definitely the youngest, but we don't really know how much younger they are? Or how old they would be expected to be, in order to enter the academy. We don't know how old Hunk and Lance are, although Keith seems to be around the same age. Shiro seems to be maybe five to ten years older? He's definitely more experienced.
We don't know how old Allura and Corran were before they got put in cryosuspension; Allura seems to be somewhere between Lance and Shiro in physical age? But it's hard to tell. Corran's definitely a full adult, completely physically mature.

I'd honestly be really, really shocked, considering the size and age of the Galran Empire, if there isn't any social media/internet. Something that big? You've got to have a means of communicating quickly with everyone else. Which requires internet. And if you've got internet, you need a really divergent culture for social media not to be far behind. From everything we've seen of the Galra so far, I don't think their culture's that divergent? Different values, certainly. But nothing making them go "nah, no point in keeping touch with people unless you're required to", so far as we can tell; in fact, the "the strongest must be lauded and the weak must be eliminated" culture seems like it would lend itself more heavily to social media - the sort of Facebook bragging of "I got a promotion, I have a partner, lookit my kids" at a minimum.

Spoiler: I've seen up to episode 2 or 3 of season 2

It was really neat to see Allura having to handle things on her own, and how fast she caught on to "oh shit, we're in a loop and we need to figure out how to escape it". Considering that everything else in the ship seemed to be sliding backwards in time, I'm not sure why the mice kept changing species? Possibly it was just Corran who was sliding backwards, and the mice were changing because general instability.

Seeing Pidge put together a beacon and manage to call out for help (or at least go "hey, friends, I am over here") was also really cool. And seeing Pidge go "okay, the best thing to do when you're lost is to stay put and honestly, it'll be nice to have some alone time" was really clever; because the best thing when you're lost is to stay put unless there's a pressing need to keep moving.

I was a little disappointed in Hunk and Lance's episode, really? Because Hunk was already shown as being wary of people, while Lance is more willing to go "hi new person, you're pretty, I surely have no concerns here". And it felt like Hunk really, really ought to have been wary of just - everything. (He was pushing to keep moving and get the lions repaired and go find a way to rejoin the Castle, buuut he immediately downgraded the urgency of things as soon as they went "we have food" it felt like.)
Like - first of all, Hunk should've been going "well, we need to test and make sure that we can safely eat your food - no offense, but we are a different species, we need to do those kinds of checks". And second, he should've been going "look, even if there is a mermaid out there, we need to stick with the lions and see if we can get them repaired on our own"; I don't blame him for panicking and going with Lance, when Lance threatened to leave him alone in the dark - I'm really more pissed with Lance there.
Because this isn't the first time Lance has gone haring off after a pretty girl, and it's not the first time it's gotten him and everyone around him in trouble. And I get that it hasn't been that long for him, since he nearly lost the blue lion through listening to the wrong head, but I would really really like for it to stick with him longer than it seems to have - he should be more averse to chasing after a mysterious girl, not less coming right off the heels of that and considering that they're in unknown territory and very far from any form of backup.

...okay, honestly? I'm extremely pissed with Lance, during that episode. Because yes, Lance got them out of trouble, but he's the reason they were in trouble to start with. I'm spending most of the episodes so far being exasperated with Lance, now that I think about it - the ones where he's strongly in the foreground, anyways, instead of the ones where he's more in the background. But he'd just gotten hit with the lesson of "hey, be a bit more wary when someone's flirting and being nice, not everyone has good intentions", I don't think he should have forgotten it so easily - if anything, it should've been more present in his memory, considering that they were in trouble and a mermaid darting around and drawing them out and away from their lions is exactly what any Galran commander would've done to try and grab the lions out from under the paladins.

And I'm not happy with Hunk being so trusting, considering he'd gotten proven right about being wary not that long ago? Especially considering that they just got out of battle, they've got beaten-up lions, and they're in an unknown situation. But no - soon as someone offers up food, he's completely on-board. And I know that Hunk's got a strong connection to food, but...it feels like he really, really ought to be more wary, at this point. Especially with "all are safe and all are warm here" being trotted out so often.

Now that said, I suspect that the hypnosis was two parts: the food makes people more complacent and more willing to go along with what they're being told, and the dancing octopus makes them forget anything that isn't related to being safe and warm and well-fed. And I suspect that the monster was able to mind-swoosh one or two people at a time, and it got lucky that the queen was the one who went to investigate the meteor rather than literally anyone who would've had less authority.

 

Hunk's character did feel a little flanderized this season, and I hope they course correct that in the next. Like KB pointed out, he's a brilliant engineer in his own right, and when faced with super amazing new technology, he shouldn't be getting the munchies like he's Shaggy from Scooby Doo. He's cautious, he's smart, he's not down to to take unnecessary risks.

I can soooort of see why they did it in that ep though. Lance hasn't really gotten many good eps that let him shine on his own, and since Hunk is definitely the more competent one in that scenario, he would need something to distract and incapacitate him.

 

And then, in the moment Allura chucked Shiro across a room to get him out of harm's way, a ship was born.
Despite the mood of that whole scene, I keep imagining him making the same expression Li Shang makes after Mulan thwacks him in the face during "I'll Make a Man Out Of You."

 

Fair warning: you will encounter antis in this fandom if you mention shipping Shiro with anybody, but *enables*

 

Whaaat, why? Allura's a grown-up, even.

ETA: I do most of my fan stuff here in the Kintsugi community these days, but even if I was still on Tumblr I'd probably be inviting the fun police to kiss my ass :U

 

Yeah, I can absolutely see why they hobbled Hunk like that. I just...really wish they hadn't? Because it would've been way more impressive if Lance had shone in an ep where Hunk was still perfectly competent. Heck, they could've done the flip-side of the lesson from last season, and had it so that Lance's willingness to trust was why they got the help they needed to repair the lions and get a signal out that the Castle could follow! That would actually have been really impressive, because Hunk's caution can turn into a handicap in certain situations.

Hopefully they do stop flanderizing him like this, yeah. It felt almost like a really well-written fan episode, tbh? Not like something written by people who showed, just last season, that Hunk is an incredibly competent person and a brilliant engineer who can readily comprehend stuff that Pidge needs time to study and understand. (Admittedly, part of that feel might be coming from the fact that I'd just read a fic where Lance and Keith are trying to repair their lions and Lance's is stuck underwater for a portion of it.)

 

Voltron Fandom is full of wee naked babbies who are full of the Discourse.

 

Liveblogging season 2, episode 5, "The Ark of Taujeer"

Spoiler: spoipurrs (giant kitty puns)

Yo, this season is a lot heavier than the first. I like it. Also, I think I spy an animation bump!
Giant tardigrade people <3
!!!!!!! THAT'S MARK HAMILL! That's why Zarkon's voice sounded so familiar! I heard him do a zillion different characters on Metalocalypse, I'd know his voice anywhere!
Shitty social-climber commander is a hoot. Great, expressive animations and voice acting on him.
big lion get moar big
Corran Hieronymus Wimbledon Smythe. This is his canon full name.
Keith continues to be so anime I almost can't handle it.

It's kinda fun seeing the paladins have little "learn about your designated classical element" sideplots. Pidge's one was pretty cute.

 

Space Mall best episode

 

Oh shit you're about to get to my favorite one :D

 

Listening to an interview with Josh Keaton where he's speculating about what might have happened during his time as the Champion and owwww, my soul.

 

Transcript?