There is a lot to talk about when it comes Allura but I am going to double down with her growth as an alchemist and her relationship with quintessence
General knowledge
When we first meet Allura we know are given the information that out of all our main characters she is the only one who actually knows more about quintessence and has a connection to it thanks to her father. She also therefore pilots an old altean technology with said power via the crystal in the castle
Reviving an entire planet
A super pivotal moment (jaw-droppingly beautiful may I add) is her reviving Balmera while it was falling apart. At this point in the story we don’t really know the full capabilities of her powers and it is hinted that this is what older generations much more powerful than her used to do as an ancient ceremony. She was warned it would take a toll on her (which she knows and it does). But still she revives.an.ENTIRE.PLANET
Hagger vs Allura S2
This is the first time in the show we are more aware that even Allura does not fully know the extent of her powers as she takes the blast of a 10,000 year old Altean witch and just plain absorbs it. This is impressive because its Hagger she is going toe to toe with. You know the witch that pretty much puppeted Zarkon as was revealed in the season
Voltron in Naxela
Squad was in some deep trouble here man. True to circumstance they were bogged down and going to be crushed, if Allura didn’t tap to her power despite her insecurities and drilled through the shield they would have straight up died. Also adding using quintessence enhancements with voltron as one of her powers (this comes to important later too as I will talk about in a bit)
Oriande
Remember how Allura felt like her lack of guidance in how to use her powers hindered and confused her. Come the guardians of Oriande and knowledge they bestow her because from here on it becomes really clear she has tapped into some high level of power and restraint that she never had before.
Reviving Lance
Although we already knew she can give life to things (see Balmera), nothing sells the fact that she GIVES LIFE TO THINGS, like her reviving Lance from the dead. It also shows the knowledge and experience she has gained from Oriande because she doesn’t think twice about doing what she must do
Allura vs Lotor
Remember Naxela, yep. It’s back. After an exhausting and intense fight with Sincline that involved hard blows and jumping through dimensions she straight up obliterates Sincline and Lotor with the giant blast with Voltron all thanks to her deep connection to Voltron and to her powers. Also reminder, for better or worse just like her father built Voltron she built Sincline with Lotor. Another facet of what she can do with quintessance, but also meaningful that she is the one to attempt to destroy what was made out of malicious intent
Reviving Shiro
We already had this kind of foreshadowed with Lance but along with reviving sick living planets, and actual dead humans she can ALSO transfer the consciousness of a human to a new body
The Ruins
Season 7 was admittedly not as heavily on Allura as much as it was more about the other paladins. But the writers did sneak in that yes she is still an incredibly strong magic user
So anyway I am excited to see where vld takes Allura and her journey with her powers in season 8. What it may mean that she is a life giver, the extent of her powers and how and if it fuses with voltron to defeat whatever big bad they have to fight next
Prompted by an Ask, this very long post examines the White Lion and its condition for obtaining the knowledge of Altean Alchemy.
“Hi! I can’t stop thinking about White Lion. Why is the condition for obtaining the knowledge so stupid? Give up your life? If anything, Allura wanted that knowledge for personal reasons (being Altean, father’s daughter etc.), while Lotor went there with a purpose—he needed that knowledge so his own “Voltrons” would work with Alteans from Colony. It seems natural to fight, when lives of people depend on your success. And how did Haggar get that knowledge?”
My answer as to these questions—especially the White Lion and its condition for obtaining knowledge—is to deep dive into some meta and analysis by:
Skimming some literary and mythological concepts that relate to the Life Givers of Oriande and the White Lion via the basics of the Quest for Secret & Sacred Knowledge
Comparing VLD and the Prometheus and Alien: Covenant films where this quest appears
Exploring the requirements for entry to Oriande and the price of obtaining Secret & Sacred Knowledge in VLD
And how that applies to Lotor, Allura, Haggar, and Alfor
First, some context: There is a Reason™ why certain tropes, and certain types of plot lines, and certain types of character arcs are bundled together and progress in certain ways. These combinations are Timeless. Generally speaking, they work well so long as one follows the unwritten rules that bind them together. Their predictability can be offset by a skilled and clever writer. These combinations are the building blocks of Ur Stories, and many Ur Stories (and their contemporaries) involve Quests for Secret & Sacred Knowledge.
The White Lion’s strange condition for obtaining knowledge is one found in many such stories, told in myriad ways, and is one of the oldest concepts in human story-telling, hence why it almost always appears bundled with certain tropes, plot lines, character arcs, etc.
From Odin’s unyielding quest for knowledge and willingness to pay any price for it, to Prometheus’ defiance of the Gods to give mortals the Gift of Fire, to Victor Frankenstein’s ‘dangerous pursuit of knowledge’ resulting in the tragic creation of a monster, to Enkidu’s tryst with Shamhat leaving his physical prowess diminished but his mind expanded, and throughout many more such stories; the following theme emerges: When knowledge is gained, something is lost.
The loss can be intentional (e.g. sacrifice) or unintentional (e.g. consequences).
In many stories with a similar setup, the White Lion and the Life Givers of Oriande would be a case of Blue & Orange Morality (this is not the same as being “morally gray”). In these kinds of stories, the Keepers of Knowledge often judge worthiness in a completely different way from that of the Knowledge Seeker, and they may even be pulling the strings for their own purposes that are incomprehensible to those who seek their knowledge. Their requirements for the gift of knowledge fulfills their own morality, and one to which they adhere, but that morality has little resemblance to what a Seeker of Knowledge may believe in…unless that Seeker learned their ways and began to practice them.
The Secret & Sacred Knowledge is for the taking by whomever is willing to pay the price, meaning that even the most vile and evil being that ever lived could gain the Knowledge for their own use. Thus the Keepers of Knowledge are not bound by a morality that would require them to prevent access by the evil and wicked. The only time the Keepers will care (e.g. divine retribution of some kind) is when the rules for gaining or using that knowledge are broken or some line is crossed by a prideful mortal. While there are stories where the morality of Keepers of Knowledge align with a general black-and-white morality of good and evil, Oriande and associated Altean-related concepts (not to mention, the Voltron lions) do not consistently give off the usual and unambiguous signals of black-and-white (e.g. good vs evil) morality.
Part I: Breaking the Keeper’s Rules (two examples).
The titan Prometheus’ punishment for defying the Keepers (e.g. Zeus and the gods) is to be bound to a rock for an eternity as an eagle eats his constantly regenerating liver each day; and
Victor Frankenstein has no deity to punish him for his God-defying scientific experiments, but tragedy finds him anyway.
In both of these examples, the knowledge gained came with a heavy and tragic price.
In example of Prometheus, (there are several versions) he is moved by the plight of mortals, their hard lives could be made better with the Gift of Fire (e.g. Knowledge), a gift that is jealously guarded by Zeus and the gods on Mt. Olympus. In some versions, the mortals already had the Gift of Fire, but Zeus took it from them out of anger of a trick played by Prometheus which benefitted the mortals in the form of sacrificial offerings. Either way, Zeus and the gods have a Blue & Orange morality. Prometheus’ intentions were noble and good, but his means via trickery broke the arbitrary rules of the gods (e.g. the Keepers of Knowledge). Why would the gods withhold this gift if it could do good? Because in the wrong hands, Fire can be weaponized and used for destruction. Remember that because we’ll return to this as VLD gives us a subtle Promethean character arc.
In the example of Victor Frankenstein—from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus”—he takes his obsessive pursuit of knowledge, the secrets of life and death, too far in the name of science. He realizes too late the horror that he has created, and abandons his creation (the monster that is erroneously called Frankenstein outside of the story). Frankenstein’s monster gradually destroys his life by murdering friends and family, even framing him for it. Shelley’s use of “The Modern Prometheus” as the subtitle of her novel intentionally invokes the myth of Prometheus and the divine retribution he suffered for his transgression against the Keepers of Knowledge. The punishment delivered to Frankenstein is a strange kind of black-and-white morality, as it is the price paid for transgressing Natural Law through science. One could call it “natural retribution” in absence of the divine. Here, the Keeper of Knowledge is simply Nature itself.
Above, Honvera rebukes Alfor’s caution: “The ancients thought that lightning was shot from the bows of the gods until science proved otherwise. We must always push into dangerous territory in pursuit of knowledge.”
In VLD, Honerva’s Frankenstein-like obsession with quintessence, and her willingness to push further—to break natural boundaries in pursuit of knowledge—is her undoing. Honerva’s tragedy does not stop with herself and her family, as the price of knowledge gained is paid for by the entire universe for 10,000 years.
Part II: The Quest for Secret & Sacred Knowledge In Space.
In Season 5 of VLD, the basic template of a Quest for Secret & Sacred Knowledge appears in the form of the journey to Oriande. The same basic quest template also appears in the Prometheus and Alien: Covenant films.
Above, a summary: A pretty, well-spoken, ageless, pale-haired man with a British accent is used-and-emotionally-neglected by his powerful father whom he grows to despise and is treated badly and distrusted by his father’s kind. The father is prideful and has a bit of god complex. After his father’s well-deserved death, the man embarks upon a Quest of Secret & Sacred Knowledge held in a far-off utopia guarded and/or inhabited by Ancient Keepers of Knowledge. His companion to this utopia is his love interest, a petite and well-spoken woman with a British accent who is stronger than she looks, and is instrumental to finding the star map that initiates the quest to begin with. The sought-after secret knowledge has themes of life and creation. These secrets are yielded through life sacrifice and prove to be dangerous in the wrong hands.
I’m not saying that VLD ripped off Prometheus and Alien: Covenant but here we are…
who fulfills galra ideal so zarkon isnt much focused and resentful at Lotor and is okay with him being spy/ druid support/marriage bait.
Well with the line of succession being decided by who’s the strongest warrior, who is to say that Zarkon and Haggar would not have arranged for Lotor to be married off to said warrior. Since we’re on the topic of said tropes, it’s interesting that the faux action trope, where the badass girl needs to be saved in the fight and has her plans fail no matter how much the narrative says she’s awesome, applies to Lotor.
Lost his fight against Zarkon until the paladins came to his rescue, plus the messy hair and position on the floor. My whole childhood is plagued by images of women in my cartoons looking like this. Heck even LoK is guilty of this.
Rescued by Keith and practically princess carried out of the way in the middle of his fight with Sendak
This image is powerful to me. I think we all know and recall how this is always gender inverted in mainstream media. We have suffered through many scenes of the reverse. I’m not saying Lotor is fully incompetent, but it is refreshing to see these tropes played with with not just any male character, but one who had rather unfortunate origins in the 80s.
This is not including how Lotor is depicted in show. At first, we’re introduced to a very competent Lotor. In the first 5 episodes of season 3, the paladins are no match for his tactics.
But come “Tailing a Comet,” the paladins, particularly Keith, school him and his plans. And specifically it was when Lotor himself got involved in the battle between the mecha. Beforehand, Acxa was leading the team just fine and arguably won fight against Team Voltron one-on-one. It was Lotor’s involvement and direction that costed them that victory (even if he blames Acxa for it).
And this continues in s4. There just as Lotor believes he’s at a good spot after duping his parents, Haggar causes shit by spying on hm. She tells Zarkon of the comet and they rush to attack Lotor and Lotor cut down Narti and split the team. And in s4ep5, the girls were more than willing to trade him in for their lives.
And in s5, we have all the good content. Lotor wins against Zarkon, but at great personal cost to him – the same with the Galra throne. In the Oriande arc, Lotor doesn’t succeed in getting the blessing, and again ruins it for himself.
What’s the common denominator? Lotor’s competence waivers a lot on this show – as did for many female characters in the past. Despite the initial presentation of competence, Lotor almost always lose when it matters to him – or his victories are not easily won. These sort of tropes are very commonly given to female characters.
And it’s also quite interesting that Lotor’s own failures are mainly a result of his own actions.
Let’s take it a step further. The way he is constantly treated as an object by everyone around him. A bargaining ship twice now in a hero version of I have your daughter, and a possessive father who treats him like property.
The way he’s tossed around also reminds me of all of my childhood heroines
There’s also his earlier interactions with Zarkon. They depended on him putting up a submissive facade in order to get what he wants.
Yes I picked the daddy edit. There’s also this shot
Which again, child me suffered so much seeing this shit over and over again with women. And finally, he gets the threat all of my childhood heroines got that even Lauren hated with OG Lotor.
In short Lotor is faux action girl/Strong Female Character that Lauren and we suffered through in childhood.
There is just, so much more. Right off the colony we have Lotor’s true colors revealed, in which he’s in trouble after he’s knocked out on the floor. He is rescued/kidnapped by Haggar and the generals then snagged up like a rag doll
Kuron being the gentlemen he is ofc keeps his hands off the goods and even sits him up while the unconscious Lotor is dragged away mid action, something again, typical to female characters in action movies
In which case ends up with Lotor captured yet again and with the constant objectifying ways of referring to him that I mentioned before. But there’s one more tidbit I like to bring up with Lotor that I mentioned above in how Zarkon grabbed him. What TVTropes calls the standard female grab area. Lotor is constantly either clutching his wrist close to his chest in nervousness/fear or is grabbed by his arm, the trope mentioned above.
To the point where I expected him to be grabbed by the hair at that rate. He dodged a bullet there in terms of tropes at least. I’ll just never be over the subtle gender inversion of the Badass Strong Dark Chick tropes all being given to Lotor from controlling and possessive parents/authority to the way he’s treated by the narrative.
One element of vld that I lowkey find interesting is how overall in the show, the majority of the heroes seem to either ignore or otherwise forget bout Haggar? Even Shiro, who by all means should be focusing on Haggar and what damage she can do considering that not only did she take his arm but also his autonomy? And yet, for the majority of the series, it just, never happens.
A part of the reason is it’s cause of Haggar’s own nature to plot behind a puppet or in the shadows. She’s content with letting people like Zarkon or Sendak get the glory just as long as she’s able to do her thing. And when she does that, that’s when she’s at her most dangerous. Think back to s2ep13, it wasn’t Zarkon who was the most dangerous in that battle. No, it was Haggar with the Komar. Cause even if Voltron managed to defeat Zarkon, without Allura destroying the komar then they would’ve been fucked. Cause literally, Haggar nearly killed them not once, but twice.
And that’s the thing, Haggar let Zarkon get front and center, but really, she’s the one pulling the strings. She was the one making all the robeasts in the first arc too, and yet no one on team Voltron really made a big deal bout that.
We see this too, in the second arc. Lotor is only able to succeed at what he set out to do cause of Haggar’s manipulations. Had she not made the clone give him the bayard for example, he would of been wrecked by Zarkon early on in the fight. Or how she took him out of the castle ship by activating the clone and sending the generals to pick him and the ships up.
That was all her doing. She’s the mastermind behind the throne. And yet, none of the male protagonists seem concerned bout it. Even Keith, with all his screaming bout not trusting Lotor, never once considers that it all is Haggar’s doing in the end.
The only hero, and I mean only, that ever brings up Haggar as a possible threat is Allura. She fought Haggar at the komar, so she knows what she’s talking bout. But really, every time any one points out the suspicion bout something Altean, it was always her that suggested Haggar. Think back to Lotor’s plan with the teleduv piece in s3ep6. I know it was cause then, she didn’t know Lotor was half-Altean, but I think it’s interesting to see how she immediately jumped to “Oh it’s Haggar.”
Or how in s6ep5, while everyone was shocked at the wormhole, Allura already knew it had to be Haggar, no one else. She knew not how Haggar got the powers, but she understood Haggar’s expertise in magic enough to connect that it couldn’t be anyone else but her.
This carries over into arc 3 as well, when everyone is questioning Macidus bout the events of the past 3 years, Allura is the only one to bring up Haggar.
It’s not just Allura either. Haggar is also fully aware of Allura and how much of a threat she is. We see this in s2, where Haggar tried to convince Zarkon to attack Allura instead of attempting for the Black Lion. Haggar understood that Allura was the bigger threat, even if she did not fully comprehend the depths of Allura’s actual power.
All of these things are interesting nods in of themselves but ultimately play into how Allura and Haggar are each others’ rivals. VLD overall is very big on the rival archetype, as i’ve explained before with Acxa and Keith, and Haggar and Allura are no different. They’ve always been matched against each other – two Altean magic alchemists dating from the ancient Altea with strong ties to magic and knowledge. It makes sense that the show’s building up to that final battle being one where Allura and Haggar face off. Which, by the way, is what all these little moments where Allura and Haggar are aware of one another are meant to represent. It’s all buildup to when they meet face to face again in s8, a rematch of s2. And I honestly can’t wait for it.
Oh Anon. Bless you. You have no idea what you’ve just asked of me.
I’ve been sitting on a few drafts of “Every Robotech/Macross Reference in VLD” meta post for awhile now, and S7 really gave up the goods (end of S6 too…). The references are many, and what follows just barely scratches the surface, but are the most relevant to that mysterious blond officer. I’ve posted about a few of them in the past too.
The blond officer in E1S1 is an Easter Egg of Roy Fokker from Robotech (whom the EPs are big fans of).
Roy Fokker is the ace pilot and leader of the Skull Squadron. He is the mentor and big brother character to the main protagonist, Rick Hunter (Hikaru Ichijo). In other words—She/ith aside—Roy is to Rick as Shiro is to Keith. Seriously.
Roy is one of my all-time favorite anime characters, and his relationship with Claudia (my actual favorite character from Robotech) was the first time that I ever saw an interracial romance in a cartoon (e.g. 1985). That’s a big deal. Macross (and thus Robotech) was ahead of its time. Serious feels for these two.
Roy tragically dies during a big battle against the Zentraedi, and Rick goes on to lead the Skull Squadron. I am 100% convinced that in the original draft for VLD, the decision to introduce Shiro as a mentor and big brother character to Keith in addition to the original plans to have Shiro die at the end of S2 were informed by Roy’s death in Farewell Big Brother.
Worth noting, that the Zentraedi are the blue-to-gray-to-purple war-like aliens who come to Earth to find the SDF-1 and the Protoculture Matrix. In Robotech, Protoculture is basically Quintessence. In VLD S7, the IGS-Atlas is an homage to the SDF-1, which can transform into a giant robot (in addition to having its own fleet of transforming jet fighters, aka the Veritechs/Valkyries).
As for Rick Hunter, well, I can’t post about Roy without posting about Rick at the same time.
Rick is a pretty standard shōnen protagonist. Wears red, has a mullet, can be a little hot-headed, is introduced on the young side, and his prodigy-like piloting skills have him leading a squadron of his own in no time. Sound familiar? He glows up over the course of the series too.
In subsequent Robotech sequels, Rick goes on to lead the SDF-3. His most recent incarnation is seen in Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles, where he’s now an older man (54), has all white hair and has acquired a curious scar along his left right cheek and jaw.
ミ(✿ʘ ᴗʘ)っ Remember how Keith was originally supposed to have white hair?
Finally, in the Robotech/Voltron cross-over, Rick is lead by the ghost of King Alfor to find and pilot the White Lion. This the only time in the Voltron mythos that the White Lion appeared as an actual mecha (we’ll see if S8 brings us one but I kind of doubt it).
Can all the misinformed Americans and Brits pipe down for a second? I’m rolling out the historical carpet from the perspective of someone who’s actually grown up in the Middle East and why none of this matters.
I heard Aladdin or as I knew it, as ‘The Magic Lamp of Alaa el-Din’. It is one of the most popular tales from the region, next to Sindbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and but guess what?
It’s a trainwreck of a tale, so is Disney’s adaptation. Why? Because it makes no sense, culturally or historically. Why? It’s not authentic. It’s not actually a real part of the stories Schehrezade/Shahrazad told to King Shahrayar in One Thousand and One Nights.
It was added in by a European translator, Antoine Galland, then later accepted as part of canon.
BRIEF HISTORY LESSON:
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of folktales presented in a story-within-a-story context. King Shahrayar of Persia’s wife cheated on him, he then had her and her lover put to death, but her infidelity drove him mad with paranoia. He decided to marry every virgin in the kingdom them put her to death come morning so she wouldn’t have the chance to cheat on him.
Alas, he ran out of virgins, all except for his grand-vizier’s daughter Shahrazad. She agreed to marry the king, assuring her father she had a plan. After their wedding night, Shahrazad began the distraction plot to end all plots. She asked the king if he wanted to hear a story and spent the whole night entertaining him with it, making sure to end with the start of another tale. Once he’s ask “What happened?” she’d tell him, “Wait for tomorrow,” and restart the same process.
She kept him on the episodic hook for a thousand and one nights, spinning so many tales and retelling many until she finally ran out. But, by the time she did, they had developed a good relationship, had children, and he no longer cared about his kill-come-sunrise rule, and they lived happily ever after.
So, why is Aladdin a trainwreck? For starters, it’s set in CHINA. And China is for some reason ruled by a sultan. Sultans are the titles of Ottoman kings, as in Turks. Aladdin is recruited by a sorcerer/Jafar from the Maghreb, which is typically used to refer to Morocco (literally called El Maghreb in Arabic) or all of NA sans Egypt. The Princess is called Badroulbadour not Jasmine, and while she has an Old Arabic name ‘badr al badour / full moon of full moons’, she is described as being from the FAR EAST. She was never an Arab, neither was Aladdin!
Can you tell this was made up by a confused foreigner?
So, we have a Turkish king in China, Aladdin is Chinese, Jafar is Moroccan and Jasmine is Japanese. It’s the same in the Disney movie. The style of the characters and background in Disney’s Aladdin is unmistakably an Persian-Indian fusion with some Ottoman sprinkled in. The concept of a genie/djinni is literally the only Arab part of the tale.
1. Jasmine’s headpiece/tiara, appearance, and pet tiger point to Indian. But she wears harem pants/şalvar, which are Turkish (Indian version shalwar).
Actually, she’s a toned-down version of a belly-dancer. Belly dancing is practiced from Egypt to Lebanon to Persia and India, it was spread by the Ottomans.
2. The Sultan is styled like a merge between a Sikh maharajah (Indian) and a sultan (Turkish).
3. The magic carpet is also an Indian concept (Prince Husain, son of the Sultan of the Indies in OTaON retrieves a magic carpet from India.)
4. The sultan’s palace is based on the Taj Mahal
5. The Genie/djinni is the lone Arabic concept.
Here’s what lots of Westerners don’t get. All of these cultures have bled on one another. From the Maghreb to Egypt, to the Levant, to Turkey, to the Arabian Peninsula, to Iraq, to Persia and India we all share so many traits because of trade, history or, you guessed it, invasion. Cultural exchange is pretty common, I grew up with a lot of Persian stories, Indian products and Bollywood movies in theatres, leftover Turkish culture and food from Ottomans, Arab culture from prior invasions, interaction and language, and so, so many Lebanese pop stars.
It’s actually pretty smart to amass a cast from different parts of the Near, Middle and South East, so to include everyone who likely grew up with Shahrazad and her many, many tales.
If there’s anyone you should have a problem with, it’s Will Smith as the genie. It’s pretty transparent how you all ignored how this is the second time a black man plays the genie (first on Once Upon A Time) but sling hate at Naomi Scott for being Indian.
Oh, and Disney fucked up by blaring Arabian Nights at the start and end of the movie, because One Thousand and One Nights is NOT called Arabian Nights. It’s called Alf Leyla w Leyla – literally ‘A Thousand Nights and One’.
It’s a collection of Persian, Indian, Egyptian, Arabic, Mesopotamian and Jewish folklore that was compiled in Arabic.
Aladdin is being played by the Egyptian Mena Massoud, Jasmine is by the Indian Naomi Scott and the rest of the cultures involved should be cast.
Oh, and to all people saying Naomi is ‘too light’ and ‘half-whitewashing’. Take your racial purity and stick it up your nose. Middle Eastern, Indian and North African girls come in all shades, even if both sets of grandparents are native to the region.
PS. Avan Jogia is seriously out there saying him playing Aladdin would have ‘been wrong’ because ‘he should be Middle Eastern’ but he had no problem playing King Tut, who is EGYPTIAN? As in Middle Eastern??
Quit your virtue-signaling, Rami Malek is still the only Egyptian to ever play one in Western media.
Anyway, POINT MADE.
Since the Aladdin trailer dropped, you all need to read this.
Capitalizing on entrenched and easily exploitable anti-sex policies by internet giant payment processors and a new internet sex panic ushered in by FOSTA, 8chan trolls have started a campaign to mass-report attractive women who make ASMR videos. Listing names of women making these sound-effect videos in a forum thread called “PayPal lowering the hammer on ASMRtits” they’ve declared war by posting links to report pages for PayPal, and called upon fellow haters to get the women kicked off YouTube and Patreon as well. They’re laughing at the women’s anguish over creating nonsexual content and losing their revenue streams, saying things like “another whore for the deep-freeze” — in between posting anti-Semitic and Pepe the frog images, of course.
If you’re unfamiliar with ASMR, it’s essentially a genre of videos where the creator makes sound effects in a variety of scenarios that are geared toward evoking a sense-memory of tingling sensations from the back of the head. If anyone ever played with your hair and you felt a funny but calming shiver, you get the idea. The performance artists in these videos do things to create sounds like playing with hair, brushing microphones with makeup brushes, chewing ice and lots of other things that evoke a feeling for viewers. Not everyone tunes into the sensations, but those who do find it very beneficial.
It may sound weird, but it’s quite popular — especially with people combating anxiety and insomnia. University research has found that these sound effects and their resultant physical trigger, ASMR (“autonomous sensory meridian response”), actually work. In June this year, the University of Sheffield’s department of psychology found that people who “use” ASMR showed significant reductions in heart rates, as well as lowering of stress and anxiety, and feelings of social connectivity.
“The study found that those who experience ASMR showed significantly greater reductions in their heart rates when watching ASMR videos (an average decrease of 3.14 beats per minute) compared to those who do not,” wrote the researchers. “They also showed significant increases in positive emotions including relaxation and feelings of social connection.”
Interesting facts about ASMR aside, what’s happening to women who make these videos is ugly, disturbing and harrowing. The systems in which ASMR videos are made possible and distributed (YouTube, PayPal, Reddit, Patreon and others) are still a dream come true for men who want to harm women. Conservative social media policing mores naturally conflate sexuality with women and LGBT people, while relying on discriminatory and anti-sex automation. It deepens the wound of trying to be a female or LGBT creator in a system that categorically doesn’t believe you or trust you.
Am I the only one hoping that the Altean found inside that mech at the end of Season 7 turns out to be a volunteer? It’s one of those situations where it would be so much easier for Haggar to manipulate the remaining Alteans into laying down their lives against Voltron willingly, rather than to go through the effort to hold them all prisoner.
Let me explain, back in Season 6, Romelle told us that she kept quiet about what happened to her brother, because none of the other Alteans would have believed her if she told them Lotor, the savior of the Altean, race was secretly draining some of them of their life force.
Lotor was a saint like savior to the Alteans of the colony. When their home planet was lost, when they were being slowly and methodically hunted to extinction across the universe. He came to them and took them to a paradise, where they could live out in the open, free of fear.
Everything the Alteans of the colony have, including the preservation of their culture, they owe to Lotor’s actions, and that creates the sort of life long fanaticism that won’t just disappear because someone tells them that Lotor was actually killing the people who left the colony. They’d need to see it with their own eyes, and even then, you’d probably have a non-insignificant amount that thinks the evidence is faked.
So you have this colony full of Altean Lotor fanatics, and then Voltron goes and kills their savior. It wide spread knowledge across the universe, Lotor’s dead and Voltron is the one who did it.
Also on top of that, the only witnesses to what Lotor was doing to the Alteans are all stuck in a time freeze or Haggar. All anyone else can know is either Voltron just randomly turned on their ally, or if someone intercepted any of their transmissions, that Lotor wanted to wipe out all the Galra and rebuild the Altean Empire. So either random murder or well deserved justice/revenge from an Altean colonist perspective. Neither will endear Voltron to the colonists.
Then who should show up on the colony’s doorstep? Why it’s Honerva, the beloved mother of their savior, who Lotor refuses to accept suggestions was the same the same person as Haggar. Honerva is wielding ancient Altean magic that only the worthy can learn. Honerva is opposed to Voltron. Honerva gets to tell the story of how the Altean’s savior died with no one to contradict her, and Honerva has a means that those colonists can take revenge against his murderer.
Why turn them into slaves, when they will happily help her build her weapons against Voltron and pilot them with righteous fury in their veins? What they are doing is justice, and who is there to tell them differently? Voltron? That’s Lotor’s murderers. Romelle? She’s no more trustworthy now than she was back then. The BOM? Galra scum. Perfect allies and not a single lock needed to keep them in.
Just how long is Runaan’s hair because when his hair is tidy from the front it’s tied up to reach his shoulders
But undone it reaches his chest
From the back it goes past his hips
But his hair is braided so we know it’s even longer than that, perhaps reaching his knees or past them at this point. Who ever gave him Rapunzel hair deserves a reward.
Speaking of characters being the inverses of each other, you know one aspect of Acxa’s character no one discusses bout that’s so clearly an inverse of Keith’s? How Acxa embodies fully the ideology of “the mission over the individual.”
Think bout it. Keith despite some moments, is very much bout the people he cares bout. When Shiro was an evil clone, he followed him to the facility and got his ass handed to him fighting him in an attempt to save him. When Regris, a teammate of his, was lost, Keith went back to save him at the near cost of his life. Kolivan admonishes him for it. Keith fully embodies the idea that one’s morals do not come at the cost of other peoples’ lives.
Acxa is not like that at all. Acxa is all about her morality, and her sense of duty. She focuses solely on the mission, everyone else be damned. Think back to how in s4 with the whole Narti scenario. Even though Acxa shot Lotor in the back for doing that to poor Narti (I’m certain this was unplanned, look at Lotor’s face there he wasn’t expecting to betrayed with a near literal knife in his back.)
she still went on and did what Lotor mandated she did. That is, she went and did the trade with Sam Holt, and kept the whole thing a secret from Ezor and Zethrid. That tells us that while Acxa does have a code of honor, she follows her plans absolutely, even at the cost of her vision. She is the definition of a lawful neutral – Keith would bend the rules to see his vision fit. Acxa lost sight of her way cause she put the mission over the individual(s).
That’s what costed her her friendships with the other generals. Cause she rather focus on what she think is needed to be done, she loses sight of the people who care for her. It’s why even when they were her friends at one point, Acxa still goes on fights them regardless in s7ep3 cause the mission to save the paladins was more important than the individual (herself and her feelings regarding the subject. We know she was hurt at Ezor’s jabs, look at her face when Zethrid had the “aww it’s true” love thing. It looks hurt).
Heck one could argue that’s why she shows up at the grave scene in s7ep13. She doesn’t consider how this is an important private moment for Keith and Krolia. She has to give her support to the Coalition and rebuilding Earth even if it means intruding in on people’s private lives.
So yeah, while Acxa learned bout the whole thing with Lotor and how he was a bad person, I still think that her major vice, her narrow-minded focus on her duties at the cost of herself and her relationships to others, she hasn’t learn from it. Or at least, it’s something that she’s definitely still working at. Maybe s8 addresses it if she becomes a Blade and in particular Krolia’s apprentice. I bet it’ll bother Krolia a heck ton that Acxa solely focuses on the Blade missions at the cost of herself and their allies perhaps.
anyways tl;dr: Acxa’s not evil, she’s just a bit of selfish narrow-minded bitch.
superheroladies 