Do you think if Lotor had broken his cycle of abuse, would you like his character? I mean I know you haven't seen s8 and have no means to (totally understandable) but in the second episode Lotor tries to make an alliance with a planet, works with them as their equals, then Zarkon yells at him like the imperialist bitch he is and lights on fire the whole planet as punishment.
see⌠i donât like the way this is worded, and iâm gonna first of all address how this is phrased. because âwould you like Lotor more if he broke his abuse cycleâ carries a certain implication: namely, that my issue with Lotor is that heâs âdoing recovery wrongâ, or that iâm gatekeeping abuse survivors and reserving sympathy only for those who have âbroken the cycle of abuseâ, or reached a certain arbitrary point in their recovery where i deem them âworthyâ of my sympathy. and thatâs really not what iâm about. this is not about me and my feelings towards abuse survivors in real life, because IRL i can be sympathetic and understanding to anyone with a history of trauma and abuse, regardless of how far along they are in their recovery or how much that trauma might affect their current actions. i can be sympathetic even whilst iâm gently-but-firmly challenging them on harmful and unhealthy behaviours.
this is not about real life abuse survivors âbreaking the cycle of abuseâ or my capacity to feel empathy for real people dealing with traumatic childhood experiences. maybe thatâs not what you mean by the question, anon (i suspect itâs not because the second half of your ask talks about the writers, which iâll get to below). but iâve seen this attitude bandied about the fandom that if you donât like Lotor youâre somehow a big evil meanie or whatever, and iâm gonna just confront that here and now. this isnât about empathy or compassion for survivors or any other hotbutton issues that fandom wants to hang on this. itâs about bad writing, plain and simple.
the reason i object so much to this phrasing of the question is that Lotor is not a real person. whether or not he âbreaks the cycle of abuseâ has nothing to do with Lotor, an individual person making choices - because he isnât a real person getting to choose how he deals with a traumatic past. heâs just a made-up character in a show. the reason why Lotor didnât break out of that abuse cycle is because the showrunners wrote him that way. thatâs literally the only reason. there is no moral judgement on his character or personality. my dislike for Lotor isnât me turning my nose up at someone for being âtoo weakâ to recover from their trauma - i just donât fucking like how the whole issue was handled and i donât like how his character was written on the show. and i think itâs really really important to keep sight of that distinction.
which brings me to the second part of your ask:
Iâm not trying to justify anything he does later on, Iâm just talking about what he does before being exiled and at least in that given moment, he had good intentions, Iâd say redeemable even. Do you think if v slur had better writers and eps who donât lack self-awareness, Lotor wouldnât have gone through âthe abused becomes the abuserâ trope and would not get a unnecessary romantic plot device but an arc where he gets to break the cycle?
here is my entire issue with Lotor and his whole storyline: Lotor did not get the angsty abused-as-a-child backstory because the showrunners genuinely care about abuse survivors and want to represent us in the best way possible and give us powerful and meaningful stories about trauma and recovery and hope for better futures. he got the abuse backstory because LM and JDS think itâs âedgyâ, and a quick-and-dirty way to make the character seem âmorally greyâ and ambiguous. thatâs the reason.
this kind of behaviour is part of a pattern that happens in both fandoms and canon works: sexy male villain with a British accent gets angsty child abuse backstory as a way to generate sympathy for the character, excuse their horrendous behaviour, or make them appear complex and nuanced. this is a pattern that takes the narrative of abuse and survivorship out of the hands of actual abuse survivors, and remoulds it into a cheap backstory mod that can be tacked onto thirst-bait antagonists without thought or consideration for the message it sends. we, the actual survivors, do not get to control the narrative around what a survivor looks like, and what recovery looks like, and how people respond to trauma and overcome it. that power is taken away from us, because people look at our life stories and all they see is âfree angsty back story real estateâ.
fandom started doing this with Lotor as early as S3, when highly questionable metas offered up Lotorâs âhypervigilanceâ and his tendency to sit with his back to the wall as âproofâ that he was clearly an abusive survivor and therefore nothing he did was actually that bad and we couldnât hate him. and let me tell you, as an actual real life abuse survivor who had to live through the entire abused-as-a-child backstory, for real, in real time, for my entire childhood and adolescence⌠lemme tell you, that time after S3 was a trip. the more the show went on the more fandom embraced Lotor as a troubled survivor just desperately trying to do the right thing, so that when the Colony reveal happened people began slandering Romelle and acting like none of this could be real etc. the Lotor sympathy died down for a bit after S6, but now the show is over and iâm seeing a resurgence of âLotor did nothing wrong, ever, he just wanted to be loved!â and iâm like ââŚ.remember when he killed Narti haha fun timesâ and no, i still donât like him and i still donât want him as my rep, thanks.
a huge part of the issue with Lotor is - as you suggest - inconsistent writing. specifically i think the issue is that two conflicting versions of Lotor co-exist in canon, as if one half of the writing room wanted to write him as âcharismatic evil schemer with his own agendas whomst you cannot trust but is cool and interesting to watchâ and the other half insisted on writing him as âsad abused baby Doing His Best⢠whomst everyone should feel sympathy for and forgive because heâs morally grey uwuâ. Lotorâs characterisation swings wildly between these two incompatible takes, and the end result is both offensive and narratively messy. the year is 2019 and we really need to stop conflating abuse survivors with psychopaths, thanks very much.
to me, Lotor is not a good pick for abuse survivor representation, because he falls into that same pattern i described earlier: violent charismatic asshole who lies and schemes and manipulates⌠but wait! heâs actually the victim! feel sorry for him! even though heâs literally also a murderer⌠excuse the murder! he did it cos heâs big sad! and like⌠yes, trauma recovery is messy and many of us are deeply maladjusted, but⌠âyelling at your friends or leaving them on read for six weeks because you donât know how to trust people and get close to themâ is not morally or ethically equivalent to murder. thereâs âbe patient and empathetic with abuse survivors because we learn a lot of unhealthy behaviours from our abusers and often need help unlearning themâ and then thereâs âmurder doesnât count his parents were mean to himâ and those two stances are not remotely equivalent or comparable. people excusing Lotorâs violence and manipulation and general awfulness are not expressing their deep and abiding support of abuse survivors, theyâre just making excuses for a hot twink because he has a British accent and thatâs a -12 to common sense checks.
âbut abuse survivors relate to him!â YES BECAUSE WE NEVER GET ANYONE ELSE, BRENDA. because this is a pattern, and it plays out time-and-time again, in multiple fandoms and canon works. and abusers are very good at making their victims feel like itâs all our fault and we deserve mistreatment and we donât deserve love or friends, and weâre bad people who have brought the abuse upon ourselves. and then you step into a fandom and the only character with a widely-accepted abuse backstory is⌠the villain. when you already feel like the villain because of childhood trauma, of course itâs easy to latch onto the only person in the narrative who seems to be the same as you. but the year is 2019 and itâs about fucking time we addressed just how fucked up and toxic and harmful it is to survivors to constantly reserve the abused-as-a-child backstory solely for antagonists and/or assholes, and to constantly equate trauma recovery with villain redemption arcs. itâs not the same thing. abuse survivors donât need a redemption arc so we can âearnâ love and sympathy and care. the fact that we sometimes push people away or donât open our mail for 3 months does not place us on the same moral low ground as a guy who used his people as quintessence batteries. can we all collectively stop acting like these are remotely the same situation.
Lotor is terrible representation for abuse survivors. and that is a hill i will fucking die on. what message does his story send to actual IRL survivors trying to find our way in the world? nothing good. nothing hopeful. the message of Lotorâs story is âabuse inevitably turns people into violent sociopaths who kill their friends and have no regard for the sanctity of lifeâ. itâs âthe best you can hope for is a grey morality and no friends you can really trustâ. itâs âyou can live for ten thousand years and youâll still never escape the damage of your trauma, recovery is impossible, you will remain forever trapped in a cycle of bad behaviour because even if you lived for literal millennia thereâs no hope of ever changing your unhealthy coping mechanismsâ. everything about that is awful. itâs also not true, which is partly why i object to it so much. Lotorâs storyline is one that perpetuates some of the worst stigmas and stereotypes about abuse and survivorship: that we are all irreparably damaged by what weâve been through, that we can never get better, that we will always be bad people who deserve to die alone, that abuse turns people into psychopaths, that the only thing preventing us from going on violent murder sprees is just circumstances because weâre all inherently violent and vengeful and fucked up beyond all hope for happiness and joy.
those messages were present in the narrative before S8. they were there before Lotor got melted to a chair. they were there even before the Colony reveal. when you present a character whoâs 10,000 years old and tell the audience âyes heâs a manipulative dick but he was abused as a child so you know. thatâs the reasonâ what youâre saying is that you think recovery from abuse is impossible. this guy had ten thousand years to fix up and get his life back on track, and he was apparently unable to do so. heâs still stuck in behaviours that people insist are âsurvival tacticsâ even though thousands of years have passed. in all that time he somehow never managed to escape his circumstances and live a healthy and happy life? thatâs fucking bleak, man. thatâs not representation. thatâs just reinforcing the worst fears of abuse survivors. and the fact that itâs done for cheap melodrama is really fucking offensive.
it is possible to write stories about abuse survivors who are antagonists or do villainous things but turn it around and find recovery and redemption. AtLA did it with Zuko. She Ra is currently doing it with both Catra and Adora. iâm able to watch both those stories as a survivor and not feel hurt or offended by the messages. but itâs because they are approached with nuance and care, by writers who care about survivors and want to tell those stories with love and sympathy. VLD managed none of those things. VLDâs showrunners viewed âabused as a childâ as a cheap way to be edgy or try to make out that Lotor is morally grey and interesting and a nuanced character with depth. instead they just ended up with a hot mess of offensive implications.
could the show pull off a good abuse survivor arc for Lotor? it would require a complete shift in how the character is portrayed and framed. too much of Lotorâs early characterisation seems designed to get the audience to mistrust him and suspect him of deeper, mysterious motives. take, for example, the scene where he goes to see Zarkon and Honerva in the throne room, and as he turns away the audience is privy to his knowing smirk whilst his parents remain oblivious to it. that scene lets the audience see a side of Lotor the other characters arenât seeing, and itâs a moment just between Lotor and the viewer. itâs used to tell us that Lotor isnât as upset as he pretended to be; that he feels confident and in control of the situation, despite earlier appearances. if we are to feel sympathy for Lotor as a survivor, moments like that should be used to showcase Lotorâs vulnerability and inner conflict - to show the audience a side of Lotor he never lets anyone else see. we should see Lotor appear composed and coolly unconcerned when talking to his parents - and when he turns away, we should see him looking pained and conflicted, and deeply hurt by his parentsâ rejection. there are plenty of opportunities to change the narrative around Lotor and frame him in a more complex and sympathetic light, but the story missed them. i suspect that happened because of conflicts in the writers room about how Lotor should be portrayed - but whatever the reason, the end result is that Lotor comes across as manipulative and cruel, and most of the âinner conflictâ over how he âfeels so badâ comes from fandom projection.
could Lotor be redeemed? would i like him better if he was? those are rather nebulous and hypothetical questions, and i donât have a good answer for them. i donât actually hate Lotor - itâs just that i vastly prefer his âcool interesting asshole villainâ characterisation over his âuwu soft sad baby uwu he only did a murder cos heâs so upsetâ characterisation. and iâm generally of the opinion that abuse backstories should not be attached to villains unless youâre prepared to commit to the complexity and nuance that requires. i am an abuse survivor, and i want to see myself in stories - but not as a murderer. not as a manipulative sociopath who kills his friends and views people as objects to be used. either commit to making Lotor an abuse survivor and put in the thought and care that storyline requires - or let him be the charismatic asshole villain and drop the abuse storyline all together. pick one, not a weird hybrid mix of both thatâs an offensive hot mess.