#vld kuron

I especially enjoyed your analyses on Lance and what the creators' original intentions likely were with his character. You've convinced me that Black Paladin Lance was, at one point, meant to happen but was scrapped. Reading your thoughts is pretty vindicating in terms of him particularly, because I remember feeling confused and aggrieved watching him get continually sidelined in later seasons, despite being pretty sure that, "Hey, wasn't he originally set up as the main character??" I've always felt there's something discordant in the storytelling starting with Season 3 and ESPECIALLY in S4, and I think you may be correct in that it's because Shiro was initially supposed to die at the end of S2.

On that note though, I can't help but wonder how exactly they would have managed to make such a significant change (adding him back into the story) so early on, when it's my impression that the team was already quite a ways ahead in the production of later seasons? That's a pretty massive overhaul! So do you think the Kuron arc wasn't in the initial plan at all? Or just that the real Shiro was never meant to come back from it?

(Anyways, thank you for your contributions to the fandom and the effort to make some sense of what the heck might've happened behind the scenes!)

Omg hiii thank you so much for your interest and for sharing your thoughts!! I had many of the same feelings and questions as you, which is why I embarked on this quest to begin with and especially lately, this question:

I can't help but wonder how exactly they would have managed to make such a significant change (adding him back into the story) so early on, when it's my impression that the team was already quite a ways ahead in the production of later seasons? That's a pretty massive overhaul! So do you think the Kuron arc wasn't in the initial plan at all? Or just that the real Shiro was never meant to come back from it?

Has plagued me for some time.

I know for certain the Kuron arc was not a part of the original plot at all in the development of seasons 1-2, because when Shiro disappears at the end of season 2 he was meant to stay gone forever, as was Zarkon, his antagonistic foil. Everything that happens in season 3 as well as season 4 was meant to involve the new lineup of the team, with Keith in the Black Lion, including the first episode of season 4. The remnants of this are actually in the SDCC 2018 poster of season 3-4 (originally the poster for OG season 3, which contained all of the episodes we now call season 3 and 4):

For example:

Keith is paired with the other Voltron members (apart from Pidge who is paired with Matt, since she found him in season 4) rather than with Kolivan, even though Keith joins the Blade of Marmora in season 4. We also see him drawing the signs that the fans are holding, which is a reference to the show in Season 4 episode 1:

[Season 4, Episode 1: Code of Honor, 08:45]

[side note: the sign the fan is holding looks very weirdly stretched out and blurry, which makes me believe they changed who it actually depicted, since if Shiro was dead, how would they know who he is and thus hold up a sign of him? If I had to guess, I'd say the sign originally contained Lance, because Lance is usually seen around a lot of "fans" and is especially popular with the female aliens they come across:

[Season 3, Episode 1: Changing of the Guard, 06:02]

[Season 4, Episode 4: The Voltron Show, 12:51]

but anyway back to the poster.]

Keith drawing the signs is odd, because he wasn't there at the show, so how could he have drawn the signs that they are holding up? Besides, wouldn't it make better sense to have him paired with Kolivan, since he was at a Blade of Marmora mission here? Well no, because in the original poster, Keith was still wearing his paladin suit, because he never left the team to join the Blade of Marmora, since Shiro didn't come back as Kuron. This is further supported by Shiro's part of the poster:

Shiro is the only one who isn't marching forward with the others. These posters always show all of the characters facing forward in a march, but Shiro here is not. His part of the poster is also clearly in a different style from the rest of the poster, and stands out quite a lot because of it. That is because this Shiro was added to the poster after they got the order to bring him back. The fifth episode of season 3: The Journey, was a later addition to the series to explain "Shiro's" return to the team, and this part of the poster is a direct reference to that episode even:

This is the only reference Shiro has in the poster, because it is the only episode he is in which he actually is a part of the plot. We have further evidence from Kihyun Ryu's instagram, a very senior member of the crew, who posted this panel of Shiro on his instagram, which means he is the one who drew it:

Kihyun Ryu usually only draws something for the show if something needs to be edited post-production, otherwise usually the Studio Mir animators animate the show based on the storyboards they received. Well, they can't animate something that wasn't in the storyboards, so... this episode was not a part of the original storyline. He wasn't supposed to come back and he wasn't supposed to be in the poster either.

This poster actually has a lot of discrepancies that I am going to talk about in another post, but for now, we can conclude that actually there are many things that point towards Shiro staying dead after season 2, aside from all the foreshadowing in seasons 1-2.

I knew that the order to keep Shiro alive had to have been after the shows release, because in season 4, they reveal the reason through multiple jokes:

[Season 4, Episode 1: Code of Honor, 08:45]

[Season 4, Episode 4: The Voltron Show, 17:27]

How could they know if Shiro was the most popular character unless the show was already released and they saw fans' preference to him through something like sales numbers of his toy? That is why I speculate the delay of Season 2 from late 2016 to January 2017 to be the point in time where they got the order. If I had to guess precisely, I'd say it was around October-November 2016, because of Lauren's sketch here:

which is dated the 8th November 2016. I suspect around this date, because in the sketch, Shiro and Lance are implicated to have some LGBT themes surrounding them, and there is a mysterious quote going around that I can't find the source for, in which they allegedly say that they wanted to reveal Shiro's sexuality already in season 2 (before his original death). Well, it must have been around here, if not shortly after this sketch, that they were told to keep that under wraps for now, and to revive Shiro for Season 3, after they saw the reaction to him in season 1, released June 2016, only 4-5 months prior.

It is indeed quite a massive overhaul, because they are at this point in time already producing season 6, as I state here. They buy themselves some time by splitting OG season 3 up, as well as OG season 4 (our seasons 5-6), and give Shiro all of Keith's lines and amend the story in a way to make room for "Shiro" and the Kuron plot. This is for example why we frequently see Shiro cross his arms from season 4 onward, even though he rarely used to do this before, in seasons 1-2:

(Shiro's even wearing Keith's expressions...) Because it was originally supposed to be Keith. Keith is the character whose most frequent pose is crossing his arms:

This is also why we don't hear from Keith for most of the seasons 4-5, because he was supposed to be with Team Voltron, still, and his voice actor, Steven Yeun, didn't have time to rerecord lines for a whole new plot. Everything that Team Voltron go through in seasons 4-5 were supposed to be with Keith, because he was supposed to be the pilot of the Black Lion until the end of season 6 (OG season 4), when Lance steps up to the mantle.

so to answer your question:

do you think the Kuron arc wasn't in the initial plan at all? Or just that the real Shiro was never meant to come back from it?

Kuron! The being the fandom has very mixed feelings on my beloved.

The Kuron/Clone arc in the rewrite takes up less time proportionally than it does in the show, for a few reasons! One: me and Lief are under the firm belief Keith would have realized something was wrong with Shiro. Two: a big focus within Cosmic Dust is the team and their relationships. It would almost undercut a good chunk of what we have planned if Shiro just... wasn't Shiro for most of it.

I'd describe our version of Kuron like that post by @\bizarrebazaar13: "what if your doppelgänger wasn't evil it was just a person. what if your doppelgänger wasn't trying to replace you it was just trying to learn to be a person and you were the best model it had. what if your doppelgänger looked at you with your eyes and said with your voice that it just wanted to be loved. what then."

He doesn't know what he's being used for. Kuron doesn't know he's a spy, and he didn't ask to be the first (and only) of thousands to succeed at a perfectly planned escape. He didn't want to "re"unite with his team only to watch who in his heart is his brother leave.

Kuron didn't want to turn on the team, he didn't want to be reduced to a puppet. But his consciousness was never real to begin with, it was a mask for Haggar to hide behind. She even regarded him as such, didn't believe he could have independent thought.

Shance

But Lance likes crossdressing as a woman {Ya'll can make up his "female" name lol}. So much so that everyone thinks he's a woman the entire time because they met him when he was crossdressing nearly 90% of the time.

At some point Shiro {or if ya wanna be really fucking angsty, Kuro/Kuron} finds out Lance is actually just a dude that likes crossdressing, and promises to keep it a secret.

Platonic or romantic? Your choice!

Would Lance wear wigs when crossdressing? Yes!

Would Lance wear makeup when crossdressing?

YES!!!

Round 4

Korekiyo Shinguji submission

I wanted to come back and talk to you because I wanted to discuss some points!

I made my Keith statements without really explaining what I meant and I wanted to try again.

I don’t want Lance to be the black paladin and I just need to state that now. However, I also didn’t want Keith to reside as the permanent black paladin.

I know that his color palate and clothing have black in them but shiro is also all black. In my opinion I would’ve preferred Keith to be the substitute black paladin.

Ryou (the clone) should’ve never been able to pilot the black lion because he’s just a copy of shiros face not him. Making Keith stay within the team and allura going to red (because I really don’t know how they thought allura in blue was a good idea, love her but what?)

(I want Keith to stay with the team and not go to the blades as I would prefer the paladins sticking together)

(Also because the plot line for the altean colony is ridiculous)

I would’ve loved to see ryou find out he’s a clone along with the paladins and not just kill him off. I think it would’ve also brought some realization into Keith about shiro and such.

The way I think of the paladins and their relationship to the lions is that the lions physically created the paladins.

The reason why it took 10,000 years is because earth doesn’t have quintestance, so the lions had to basically build their paladins from the ground up by creating generations of humans with it.

Because earth doesn’t have it, it takes a long time until there’s finally enough for the paladins now!

Which is why I don’t think Keith should continue to be the black paladin. Because he belongs with red just as Lance in blue, pidge in green, hunk in yellow, and shiro in black.

and because Shiro never gets to go back to being the black paladin his character gets reduced to cardboard.

which is the reasoning for my initial comments that I couldn’t describe clearly.

I didn’t mean to come off as a black paladin Lance supporter or that Lance was the best option. Because he isn’t.

There are things with lances character that I feel as though could’ve been worked so much better. (I saw a previous post of yours discuss lances having altean markings and your so correct, honestly they feel like fan service since the fandom goes nuts with altean Lance and honestly I can’t understand why)

I’m far more a shiro fan. In all honesty he has done a lot for me. I don’t like that he was just meant to be thrown away.

I mean the writers created an entirely new character for crying out loud!! Shiro didn’t exist in the other versions. Technically he is sven but sven was always the blue paladin.

Shiro has obvious PTSD and has a genetic disease that needs his arm forcefully removed from him. He fights so hard for his lion and his teammates.

My feelings on Keith are in fact very biased but it feels like a lot of Keith’s character completely erases all of shiros.

With ryou and the paladins finding out that shiro is in the black lion i would’ve loved to see them search desperately to find where the clones were made to see if they could bring Shiro back.

My thoughts are a little all over the place I apologize for that.

Hello again!

This is a bit awkward because I basically agree with almost everything here so there's not much for me to dissect haha.

If anyone's been reading my past, PAST, posts, you'll have probably seen my post as to why Lance never should have went to Red, and why it should have been Allura. I can understand why Allura is Blue and Lance is Red in the ORIGINAL series, but this is a rewrite where the characters are basically completely different.

Which also means that, no, I will not be using the original series to back-up my belief that Keith is a great Black Paladin.

Like I said, I basically agree with everything you wrote, except that I didn't personally care for Ryou. I felt sorry for him and was kinda shocked when they just used his body for Shiro's soul, but I didn't care about him.

I do think it would have been interesting to see Ryou be a little stinker and try to manipulate everyone, due to him being a sleeper agent. Like, in canon, when Ryou apologised to Keith, he says "I'm sorry I had to step in there" instead of "for stepping in there". He's still putting the blame on Keith. He says sorry without truly saying it, if you get what I mean.

Then, one day, he goes a little too far. Like, I dunno, he calls Lance useless or Hunk cowardly or something, and Keith immediately goes: wait. That's not right. Suddenly, Keith's a lot less willing to take Ryou's 'advice' to heart and things pile up until he realises Ryou is a clone.

I think that kind of story line is much more interesting that what we got. Of course, if you care about Ryou and are horrified at his death, there are others ways. Ryou slowly learning he's a clone and hating himself until the paladins make him realise that it's not his fault and he can choose to be his own person. Heck, he kind of already is.

Of course, another option is just to not kill Shiro off? Like, put him in a coma or reveal that Haggar yoinked him from Black with quintessence magic and he's been captive this whole time. Keith would still have to pilot Black but, because Shiro isn't a clone, when he gets back Black opens up immediately.

The thing is, Shiro and Keith's style of leadership is different. Very different, meaning that they're suited to lead different kinds of things, with varying efficiency. What I think would have been cool to see is them changing the roster (Shiro leads, Keith in Red/Keith leads, Allura in red) depending on the mission. Which can mean that, if you decide to keep season eight for some reason, Shiro or Keith can lead them into the final battle. Shiro leading them might make more sense.

I've heard a lot of people say that Shiro is boring and it's like– why do you think that? I kind of wanted to see more of his character arc, wanted to see Keith, Coran and Allura take care of him when he's too high strung. I wanted to see him be there, actually there, when Pidge saves Matt. I wanted to see him accept that he may have been hurt, but he is not broken.

I think that those people who think Shiro is boring just weren't watching the same show, or only remeber him from season 7-8 where he does basically nothing. Season 1-2 Shiro are great. He feels so human, scared of the world but pushing himself through for the sake of others and to not seem weak. He makes bad gun noises, immediately denies Coran trying to feed him like a baby with "no. Just– no.", displays some dark humour when he's alone with Keith and bleeding out. He's terrified of being seen as broken, because that's exactly what he thinks of himself.

So. Yeah.

Either make Ryou more interesting or don't kill Shiro off. It would still let Keith become his own Black Paladin, and it would let the group change members depending on the situation, which would make it less jarring if Allura was the one to pilot the Atlus, as was originally planned.

I can understand why you believe Keith's character erases Shiro's. Because, in all honesty, it kind of does. Of course, that is mostly DreamWorks' fault because they just can't give Shiro any sort of happiness? Like, Keith has also been hurt over and over again, but at least Keith has his mother.

Shiro was supposed to gain the ability to teleport. HE WAS REPLACED BY KOSMO - HE WAS REPLACED BY A DOG. Shiro didn't even get to end Sendak! Even if I adore Keith, I was so baffled when Keith made the finish blow, because that was Shiro's fight! Shiro has nobody to go home to, only returning to find that his ex-fiancé is dead, and it's just– I know that gay characters tend to suffer the most, but come on DreamWorks! Give him SOMETHING!

From my perspective, I've always noticed the difference between Keith and Shiro's leadership styles, and just in general. But DreamWorks is so allergic to giving any of them anything, so they wrote in the Broganes bond, tore it apart, then played a darts game to decide their traits after Shiro's death. It makes it especially worse when they decide to make Keith go through development off-screen, so he comes back when he's become more mature like Shiro, but it gets no explanation so it feels like he was just given more of Shiro's traits.

Alas, we get no explanation, so it is jarring. Which is another reason why making Ryou unable to pilot Black, or Shiro still being alive, would have been much better. Keith had a point about leaving, but Shiro, the real Shiro, never would have let him leave, and Keith wouldn't leave if Ryou couldn't pilot Black.

I would still make it so that Keith stayed with BoM just for the sake of meeting Krolia, but nothing else much.

So. Yeah.

I do agree with basically all of this, only I wouldn't have Keith be just a sub for Black. I think he and Shiro should have used it interchangeably, or at least provide an explanation for why the real Shiro, the one who bonded with Black the most, couldn't pilot her.

AND SCREW KOSMO– GIVE SHIRO HE TELEPORTATION BACK! GIVE HIM HIS RELEVANCE BACK!!

(Sorry if there's any mistakes, I just woke up haha)