Demi & Fucking End Me

So @leakinghate pulled a wonderfully long @janestrider maneuver in Chasing the Ghosts of Season 8. Meanwhile, people have been noting the audio-narration (for non-sighted viewers) has a transcript that’s chockfull of oddities and things that just plain don’t match the actual visuals onscreen. 

I’ve written before about a possible chronology of revisions, the question of revisions given the cost and why DW would let the EPs revise mid-stream, and a bit about the impact/influence of different VLD staff writers. You can find a bunch more under my tag for television-production.

Here’s the thing about all the posts noting broken story points, dropped plot lines, and so on… all of them revolve around more than just the script. And if you’ve been paying attention to what the EPs have been telling us, quite bluntly, about what they wanted… You’re probably realizing the same as me. 

The version we want, the one we should’ve gotten – the one that would make sense, per fandom analyses of S7 and S8 — isn’t the one the EPs created. The version we should be requesting is the one they destroyed.

If you’re working from scratch, why would you make it look like something there from the beginning was in fact added later? Why would dialogue not match established characterization? Why would a character’s color scheme suddenly change, but only for certain scenes? One guy’s entire job is color-based continuity. Did he sleep through the last two seasons? 

Every indication is the DW execs decided to ‘fix’ things only after the S7 fiasco. If you’re going to argue their fix was to redo/butcher all of S8 — 286 minutes of story — into a wholly new shape, I need to borrow your time-turner.  

After S7, it would’ve been at least a week or two before the DW execs had a game plan (realistically, closer to three weeks). Eight weeks later, JDS tweets he’s turned off the lights and shut the doors. Are you really going to argue that somehow the entire season was rearranged so thoroughly in only two months?

That’s editing/adding/removing characters, reworking dialogue, remixing sound, chopping scenes, padding gaps; a single filler episode would be 9 weeks or more. That’s script to recording to storyboard to animation, not counting time for execs to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. The goal is fixing things, after all, not making them worse.

DW could’ve pushed S8 into early 2019, and they didn’t. The only reasonable conclusion is they felt the fixes were minimal enough they wouldn’t hold up the planned schedule. A minute or so of epilogue + editing a few frames in earlier episodes to ‘plant’ Shiro’s new spouse. It’s a wrap, let’s bury this bastard.

In short: the S8 we got really is the EPs’ version of the story.   

Here’s what I think. When JDS said there was a ‘version’ where Shiro was the BP… I think all the seasons were almost completely animated. Maybe not to the point of post-production, but a significant amount must have been done, or there wouldn’t have been footage to reuse. 

JDS, as usual per his arrogance, is honest about it, if vague on the deets. He had a complete ‘version’ with Shiro as BP, he requested permission to make Keith BP permanently, he pitched the idea, he got permission.   

And then he and LM were free to tear apart the last two seasons. They cut and pasted visuals and dialogue, possibly reusing S3/S4-era episodes tossed when Shiro had to come back early. The filler episodes and two-parter Garrison were probably new. They removed Lotor’s return, killed off Allura, damseled and isolated Shiro, removed a possible Pidge-Lance ending, and may’ve also reversed plot points between S7 and S8, to add sequel bait. 

If there was any point a head editor would walk, this would have to be it. Gutting the last two seasons would make any editor see red. Injury to insult that a whole lot of people then had to redo work they’d thought already done. 

[Aside: this is just horrible management, not a firing offense on its own. If this was late 2017, there wasn’t enough data to know for certain why S4 sank. Was it Keith’s absence, or Kuron’s presence? If the latter, bring Shiro back; if the former, put Keith in Black, permanently. It’s just our bad luck that some exec chose… unwisely.]

That also means the VAs were possibly as surprised as the rest of us. That VA meeting at DW a few weeks ago may’ve been to discuss the epilogue, but would the execs think (or even know) to review the season itself? Doubtful; who wouldn’t expect the VAs to already know? So, yeah. The VAs may not have had any more warning than the rest of us, poor bastards.

I keep saying: when someone tells you who they are, believe them. 

JDS and LM have told us repeatedly they wanted Shiro dead and gone. Over and over they’ve made clear Keith is their main protagonist, that they chafe at ‘having’ to show the titular robot, that they’d rather be remaking Robotech, that they’ll give Pidge all the candy. JH even blames Allura for her own people’s genocide, and sees Lotor’s childhood abuse as ‘camp’ and ‘funny,’ so I bet he gets along great with the EPs.

If S7/S8 left you frustrated, baffled, upset, hurt, angry, or demoralized, the only blame we can put on DW execs is for their apathy of standing by and letting it happen. We can blame the VP who okay’d the changes. But the story itself? It’s exactly what the EPs intended, and they’ve made that clear in just about every possible way.

If you want to petition DW to get the original versions of S7/S8 (ie a limited-edition DVD, perhaps), go right ahead. But stop with the ‘give us what JDS and LM wanted us to have’ — because we’ve already got that. 

When people, survivors especially, and children who identified with Lotor, were so upset and blindsided after S6… when JDS came out and said to please just breathe and wait and see. That he know survivors too and understands and just stick it through…

Don you think that was a purposeful lie to bait us all into sticking it out and keep watching when he already knew, KNEW, what would happen and what it would do to such a sensitive group? Including KIDS?

Because if that’s the case, I’m more than disgusted… that’s… I have no words. Its downright sick.

And if this is the case it is sad that this sick bastard will probably keep working…

That narrative is rooted in the belief that children are obligated to love their parents, and thus to also forgive their parents’ abuse. The narrative sees any long-term damage as grounded in the victim’s unwillingness to get over it and forgive, rather than the actual trauma of abuse. 

By that token, I suspect JDS was confident that as soon as Lotor forgave his parents, we would all sigh in relief: now everything will be fine! Lotor realizes his parents did their best, and forgives them, as a child should. Probably with a side-order of acknowledging the familial tension was because he’d refused to accept his own responsibility for the situation.   

They’re his parents, after all. Of course they love him, and it’s wrong of him not to love them in return. Now they can finally be the happy family they should’ve been. Gee, if only he’d done that sooner. 

Which is complete and utter bullshit, of course. It just doesn’t work that way, and the very notion is repellant. 

From the outside, this narrative is reassuring. It’s simple, pat, and doesn’t force the non-abused onlooker to recognize (let alone make room for) the very real and lifelong scars from such trauma. it’s also one most often perpetuated, I should note, by abusers themselves. It lets them excuse their abuse, shift all blame to their victims, and frees them from having to change. 

If JDS is even half as toxic as the current tea claims, he may also find the narrative a comforting thought. It reassures him that it’s on the victims to change their attitude, not him. If that impression is even remotely accurate, then JDS was probably certain it was entirely on Lotor to do the work to make the family happy again – and that, having seen Lotor do so, we would all agree that now everything is fine.

What if they had always wanted to remake Robotech, and that was what was originally was pitched to DW. DW told them that they weren’t interested in remaking that (either because it didn’t gel with their brand or couldn’t get the rights to Robotech), so instead Monsantos pitched a different show (one that also included mechas, was much more kid friendly, and might have been easier to require rights to). They pitched Voltron and got approved and funded. 

Everything went according to plan for S1. As far as i know it stuck to the original plot skeleton. Once the show was a hit and they were funded for 7 seasons, LM and JDS were presented with the Shiro “issue”. They were told they could do everything according to plan, except they had to bring Shiro back. This easily could have been worked around with the original plot skeleton, considering how much filler there was, i’m sure some of those filler episodes could have been cut for more Shiro time and that was what the execs originally prompting them to do. 

Instead of this LM and JDS saw an opportunity to make the show they ACTUALLY wanted to make, and pitched the idea of reworking the series like you explained. They told the execs about reworking the plot and they got approved. Once they had the money, they thought they could do what they wanted. Then around S2 they told Tim Hendricks how they planned on nuking his script and just remake the Robotech plot line. TH was probably appalled by this for obvious reasons, and jumped ship as soon as they heard what they were planning to do (he was smart). They went ahead with it though, despite the fact that they lost most of their crew from overworking and were behind schedule and probably bleeding money. They thought they could write it themselves with TH scraps and the Robotech outline. 

I think that they ran into trouble when the ratings started to drop in S4, and DW execs started paying closer attention. They didn’t realize what the duo were planning but they hadn’t committed a fireable offense as of yet. 

DW may have found out that they were reworking the story to essentially rip the entire plot of Robotech around season 5/6 when Lotor came in, since his and Alurra’s relationship mirror Minmay’s first relationship in Robotech.

Japan is very protective of their properties, especially popular ones. Even though Robotech wasn’t as popular in the US, just the fact that Macross made it over here in any form shows it’s popular enough to earn a world wide release (Macross had spawned multiple series and movies in japan by that point already). Back when Macross was made, not that much anime was brought over to the US. Companies were more choosy with the properties they licensed and dubbed because before the internet it was such a niche market. Something like Voltron ripping off the plot line of a popular anime that they HAVEN’T LISCENSED might have flown under the radar for execs unfamiliar with it, but once they saw how the story was unfolding - around S7- they pulled that plug as fast as they could to prevent any legal troubles. They told LM and JDS they had to change the plot so that it didn’t mirror Robotech so much, and that is why the hack job of S8 happened, why VAs and animators were working into late October on the project, and why LM and JDS ultimately got fired. DW realized they had a huge legal problem on their hands, and chose to hack up the final season as opposed to suffer any legal repercussions. 

That is why in the original leaks, Shiro was supposed to marry Roy Fokker. LM and JDS put him in there after they were fired and forced to do damage control after S7 as a final fuck you to DW. 

I’m gonna turn this over to some of the folks who might be able to identify what specific plot or character elements would be enough to raise copyright issues: @nomadicism, @thegunheart, @dynared, anyone else who has insight is welcome to chime in. 

I will say that whatever the reason for the VAs meeting at DW, I doubt it was to enlighten them about S8. If it were, they wouldn’t have been caught so off-guard, enough that nearly all of them abruptly went dark on various socmed. My guess is that meeting at DW was to negotiate new contracts for the next Voltron-based project in the franchise. 

Greg: You did mention a continuing relationship with Dreamworks: is there anything that could be hinted at about possible additional media outlets for Voltron through Dreamworks? Is there any chance for a future Voltron production of any kind?

Bob: I think for sure there will be future iterations of Voltron—what medium, how and what that looks like is something we’re looking at right now and there’s a lot of exciting directions that we could go with it. We’re in talks with Dreamworks about that.