Discussion YMMV / VoltronLegendaryDefender

As far as I can tell from looking around, no. If it's dispute over the sources, I deliberately tried to go for mainstream entries as opposed to the myriad negative reviews that are basically the lunatic ravings of vengeful Shiro shippers or character stans in disguise. The Geekdad one is pushing it as they've since put out a bunch of hilariously skewed articles on the subject that lean into that second category, but this particular article manages to stay enough on the professional and analytical side of things for me to keep it.

I'd also like to do something about migrating the Allura entry under the now-deleted Internet Backdraft to Unfortunate Implications for this reason, but every article I can find that discusses it comes from Allura stans and shippers who use the issue of race as a concern troll (or it comes in parcel with something ridiculous like crying about blatant subjectives like why Keith/Lance or Shiro/Keith should've been canon or why Lotor should've been redeemed), rather than people who can articulate the problems with its handling or execution in a properly professional manner.

The dearth of good articles on that matter does make me lean towards viewing the whole SJ angle to the complaints about Allura as a case of poorly thought out slacktivism slapped on to make the intensity of their outrage over what is otherwise a mundane criticism of bad writing seem more legitimate, and thus not worthy of troping.

Probably. The entry itself points out that it's a weakly regarded season, even by the standards of the other ones included on the entry. For that matter season 7 might not be a good fit either as it's considered more polarizing than outright average. People tend to either Love It or Hate It in equal measure, or they might love one half of 7 while hating the other. So I'd move that entry to Broken Base.

4 is the only one I'd say properly qualifies, as the only contingent of the Unpleasable Fanbase that have really strong feelings on it are rabid Keith stans who despise it, while the rest are at a consensus on it being neither particularly great nor bad.

I would agree. I'd even argue about 8 fitting into Broken Base, since I can't, from the top of my head, remember anyone who'd at least like that one, but there's a very large legion of people (even very reasonable people) spitting on its grave. While 8 tends to immediately spark very harsh negative reactions even from very mellow fans (the 5% rating is hardly a product of a handful of vocal individuals), 4 is often viewed as the "oh, right, that also was a thing", thus fitting this trope.

7, I'd say, is a mite more contentious. It seems to have gotten a lot of flak in retrospect with the premiere of 8, due to the fact that it's tonally similar to it (status quo being a lot more galactic-alliance oriented than the original 5/6 Paladins and Coran against the galra). Can't say how much is just this troper's particular social bubble, but the opinion seems to have shifted from "yeah, okay, that wasn't bad, but lets hope the finale's better" to "okay, when we rewatch the show, maybe just end at 6 and pretend 7 and 8 never happened."

I've seen a lot of people argue that for its various problems 7 would've also been a good place to end the show and it's an opinion I personally concur with. For every person I've seen who claimed 7 and 8 were just as bad, I've also seen another whose opinion of 7 improved due to 8 being worse, so IMO 7 is definitely some kind of Broken Base material even if it's not over any one single flashpoint like the trope usually dictates.

The only people I've seen expressing love for 8 are people with Creator Worship who represent a small minority. Even the people who are annoyed by the shippers' overreactions still think that while 8 wasn't as bad as some people make it out as, it certainly wasn't good either. With the comment about season 6 in mind, I wonder if 8 qualifies for some strange form of Ending Fatigue, despite feeling rushed.

Sounds like a Vocal Minority of burned fans/shippers. Having been shown a couple of them I can confirm for a fact that some of them indeed are, complete with Epileptic Trees about how their ship was totally going to be canon and how much better the show would've been if the writers were allowed to make it happen.

Off the top of my head: Allura allowing herself to become vengeful and possessed by the Entity after several seasons of learning to let go of the past and of vengeance. Made of Iron Determinator Shiro and the crew of the Atlas allowing the Alteans to storm the Atlas and overtake the crystal, potentially destroying all reality, without putting up a proper fight. And in general, the team letting Allura sacrifice herself without trying to find another way, even though they're True Companions and several of them had major scenes dedicated to their refusal to abandon another no matter what (including Allura in Shiro's case). Though that last one might constitute more of a Broken Aesop.

Those didn't really stick out as Grossly Wildly Out Of Character, since Allura's struggle with dealing with the past has been a constant with her character and because she viewed the Entity as a necessity to stop Honerva (which extends to Allura choosing to sacrifice her). Likewise, Shiro and crew did try something, Shiro got thrown, and failed no more than him and Lance getting caught in season 1. While I'm not big on all these events, these are more issues with writing rather than characters suddenly acting differently than they have in the past. That's YMMV, though, so mostly feel more examples are needed instead of a blanket "characters were OOC".

The problem is that the characters are too inconsistent too often to pin down what "out of character" means. Shiro swings between saviour and damsel in distress throughout the series. Keith alternates between loner and leader, complaining cynic and supportive pep-talker, depending on how they want him to further the plot, while playful and romantic Lance spent the whole last season looking as if the sky was going to fall on his head despite dating the girl of his dreams. In most shows, these would count, but the showrunners would probably claim character development.

Speaking of Broken Aesop, btw, the entry about the series being about "the whole is stronger than the sum of its parts" then showing that success ultimately came down to one person's actions/decisions was removed for being too vague. Given the events of the finale, where Voltron itself was barely involved and saving reality came down to Allura alone, should that go back in?

Broken Aesop definitely. And those points about Keith and Lance stood out to me in a bad way in season 8. I'd argue they're somewhat out of character, given Keith still had a hard time controlling his temper and Lance still had some of his goofiness in the previous season. I'll forgive Shiro since it's at least consistent.

I think the fact it's difficult to define whether these character actions it's character development or writing issues or so on means it'd just be easier to take the OOC complaints out for now. However, I think Broken Aesop fits.

Go take it up in the Forum thread for such things first.

You can - I wrote it, but it's open to discussion. Looking at the story overall thought, those are reasonable conclusions: Team Voltron was last a cohesive unit in S2. Since then, it's been a constant shuffle, and the team have really fallen down when it comes to looking out for each other (Allura ignoring the other Paladins to go off with Lotor, Pidge and Hunk demoting Lance to third wheel, Kuron's problems going largely unchallenged). Meanwhile, Pidge's find-my-family arc has largely concluded, leaving her more grounded and stable, while Keith apparently learned leadership not by actually leading the team but by going whale-hopping with a biological mom he's not seen in almost two decades. There's quite a good analysis of it somewhere; if I find it, I'll post the link. Still, Family-Unfriendly Aesop is YMMV for a reason. As for "the show's not finished yet!" we can delete this and put it under An Aesop if the problem is acknowledged, addressed and resolved.

The biggest issue was with Keith; he was already a good leader. If you go back and WATCH those early episodes, it’s fairly obvious. He just lacked the confidence because he had a lot of issues he needed working out. It’s not a broken Aesop, it’s Character Development. On top of that, I never got the implication that “biological family solves your issues”, just that it was specific to his character.

As for everything else, it’s far too early to really draw conclusions about their respective character arcs, because as I’ve pointed out, the show’s not over yet. I’m well aware that the show’s got flaws, but it’s also got these arcs going. Lance isn’t turning into a third wheel, he’s developing into someone who supports his friends.

If this was the final season, you’d have a point. But you jumped the gun, hence why the entry should be deleted, or at least balanced out. Because it has obvious Flame Bait material.

This page is YMMV: I've given the reasoning, and other people have commented on this. The nature of this page is that not everyone will see it the same way. These pages are dynamic: if, at any point, Keith or anyone else says "We've kind of been sucking at looking after each other, guys, let's get back to basics and fix it," then it warrants an update. However, the entry specifies Series 4-6, for the reasons outlined.

I'm curious to know where the Flame Bait is: an area of disagreement isn't automatically flame bait. Perhaps you could point out what you find antagonistic so we could fix it? I have watched the series, and there is a massive jump between S4 Keith ("I'm not a leader, I should just leave") and S6 ("Hand me the Black Lion, I'm here to save everything"), and in the interim we are not shown him developing this skill at all. In early seasons, we saw him work well in solo roles or in partnership, but not in a command role. Again, if you've noticed something I've forgotten, by all means point it out.

I think it’s flame bait because of the conclusions you drew and because you’re misinterpreting what canon has already shown to rant about something you don’t like. And because things haven’t changed. Could it be done better? Absolutely. But did they break the Aesop or undermine it? No.

Your whole argument falls apart when you look at their individual character arcs; for Pidge it’s to bring closure, and for Keith it’s Quest for Identity. And again, this all hinges on whether the show’s over, and it’s not.

And the fact that we’re arguing over this has already proven my point that it’s Flame Bait, at least in my opinion.

Actually, strike the last paragraph in the post, since you pointed out arguing over this isn’t Flame Bait per se.

As I said: YMMV. However, I think I've provided enough evidence to demonstrate why people could interpret the Aesop that way. Team Voltron has really not been bonding much at all for at least three seasons (they barely even mention Keith when he leaves), while reunited biological family isn't shown to have many problems reconnecting at all (Keith's arc handwaves any totally justifiable angst he might feel at being abandoned with "now he's seen his mother's story via quantum zone, he know she loves him").

A negative observation is not a rant. Ranting is "The writers are playing favourites and screwing over (insert favourite character here)!" The only reason that the entries are long is that evidence is given. Suggest we leave it in with your addition for now, and if the story addresses it, we change it and you get to say "told you so!"?

(Apologies for the backslashes - no idea what on earth is going on there...)

The problem with your assertions is that they read like a very bad Tumblr post which can either take a shallow look at the subject manner, or looks too deep into something that’s not.

And since you’ve already had one entry removed, I don’t think you’ve got the best grasp of what canon’s been showing.

At the very least, add some caveats like I did. Just mention that those were already part of their arcs, and that it doesn’t exactly invalidate the Aesop. The entry is WAY too negatively unbalanced.

And the show’s also about blood family bonds, not just found family.

Forgive me for pointing this out, but this sounds more personal attack than constructive discussion. If everyone who'd had an entry moved or deleted was barred from posting, we wouldn't have a wiki. It's a cartoon - it's not worth losing your temper over.

I already asked what you found so antagonistic and what you would recommend changing. The entry does not bash the writers or claim to show is bad. Right now, all you're doing is being insulting and complaining that you don't agree (again: YMMV). If you want to argue, message me. If you want to reach an agreement, suggest solutions. You have already edited the entry, so I suggest leaving it here until we see what next season brings.

Wait, what is the Aesop supposed to be here?

It is on the page under Family-Unfriendly Aesop, but for an abridged version : Found Family is unstable and somewhat unreliable. However, biological family will immediately bond and present few to no problems, no matter the length of time spent apart.

(This is not meant to sound pretentious - I am just trying to avoid apostrophes!)

This page makes me sad.

...You mean the YMMV page, or *this* page? Cause if the latter... sorry.

The YMMV page.

I really like the series but looking at the page you'd think it's a tawdry yaoi doujinshi.

Reminds me of Gundam Wing, actually.

I feel that. It's about how Avatar got for me by the end.

But... I guess it's inevitable when the series is neigh-universally praised, and the most noteworthy "audience reactions" are the Usual Suspects complaining about the last reboot getting the shaft, the Other Usual Suspects coming to blows over a woman pretending to be a man, and ship-fighting.

Might try to add something later though.

Can I just say that the conclusions reached under Family-Unfriendly Aesop makes absolutely no sense and falls apart when you actually watch the show? And that the show’s not over yet?

If you're talking about my entries, most of the edits I've made regarding Klance are about providing context, and I've always made clear it's about the extremists and pro-harassment side of that fandom. I've also toned down gushing and elaborated on or added to entries critical of Sheith and other ship fandoms as well. I don't really care about shipping for this show, but the thing I won't stand for is harassment against the staff, especially since there's concrete evidence to support it, so if I seem biased against that kind of behavior and some of the naked hypocrisy that leads to it, then so be it.

As for my deleting the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character Lance entry, I explained already in the edit reasons section why I don't think he qualifies. He absolutely gets quite a lot of screentime and focus, and has the most consistent character development of all the characters. Maybe some people aren't happy with what they did with him (and if they are really adamant on keeping that, it would better fit the Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot) but he's not lacking for screentime outside of Season 2. I do feel like some of the Keith and Lotor entries could be trimmed, but I'm not as close of a follower for fans of those two characters so I don't know what I'd rewrite them to be.

If you're talking about other people's edits, I haven't really noticed them as much.

Hmm... I see your point about unacceptable behaviour, but those entries are getting extremely long (and are often just rephrasing the point that was already made - like the whole "now Keith is three years older than Lance!" edit).

I take the point about They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character and shifted it to the Plot equivalent.

Perhaps, I do feel like I have a tendency to be verbose.

For the record, I originally added the Shiro/Keith thing under Abandon Shipping because of a lot of what I’ve seen on Tumblr. Why it got accused of being the words of a salty Klance fan I don’t understand. Especially since I don’t ship Keith and Lance.

Speaking of, I’d also like to add the Sheith thing under Broken Base, because it feels as if the gap between the fans who ship it romantically and are adverse to it has grown.

Biased vibes "these days"?!?

Frankly, this page has been pretty useless since S1.

Sheith fans get very defensive because Klantis (and Shallurantis, when they were still a thing) have been violently hostile towards them, moreso than they originally were towards Klance fans until the Josh Keaton incident, for incredibly petty reasons, since the very beginning.

Specifically, the nonsense with ages (which now requires deliberately ignoring stated information to perpetuate in the case of Sheith) and the idea that Keith and Shiro are "brothers" (argued by said antis to be literal, often via assumptions that are quite racist in nature) are the most common lines of attack against Sheith fans. So I completely understand why they're that way, and I sympathize to a certain extent, having seen some of the cruelty perpetrated by antis firsthand, but at the same time it doesn't justify their paranoia.

At the same time I don't know if I'd put it under Broken Base. Unless the people who dropped it because of Season 6's line are now actively opposed to people shipping the way antis have been, it probably doesn't count. It's a three camp thing: people who are pro-Sheith, people who don't care or no longer care (probably where a lot of ex-Sheith fans reside), and the people who are anti-Sheith, in which case it's likely better off as a nonspecific Shaladin entry, even if various shipping and fandom analysts have identified the whole Shaladin debate as a proxy war for Klance shippers versus Sheith shippers.

I'm probably one of the people who's been adding/rewriting a lot of the entries about Keith. I try to stay neutral and objective, and base my additions on what I've seen people in the fandom say about him. A lot of the entries that I add are simply myself cataloguing my various observations of the fandoms' behavior with what I hope is a more objective lens, and if a lot of the fandom's reactions are negative, then so will a lot of my entries.

I can say that he does indeed seem to be one of the less popular characters among laypeople and many of the forumgoers on this site for various reasons. other people on these forums, and for what it's worth I don't particularly love him, and agree with a lot of the more reasoned criticisms of his writing. But I also don't really hate him either, and find a lot of the harsher takes on him a little too extreme, or often rooted in baseless things like Ship-to-Ship Combat rather than more sincere writing-based issues.

If you're worried about the tone, maybe you can point out some of the entries you think sound too harsh, and I can see if I can reword them or at least explain why I wrote them the way I did if it's one of mine.

The Base-Breaking Character and Vanilla Protagonist entries in the page seem to be the harshest. I agree he can rub people the wrong way, but saying he's a Vanilla Protagonist might be pushing it. Again, this is my bias (and why we have a YMMV page, so :P ).

But this passage might be super harsh: "those who find him to be a painfully generic Vanilla Protagonist who isn't worth hogging screentime from the rest of the more compelling Ensemble Cast, and who is still too moronic and jerkish to deserve leadership of Voltron over the more universally popular Shiro despite the show Character Shilling him as such." Maybe changing the wording so it's less harsh on him could help.

Also putting him under an Unintentionally Unsympathetic entry comes across as one-sided. Perhaps adding a Character Derailment (with the caveat that Yeun was busy with other projects) or Unintentionally Sympathetic entry for him. And maybe the Blade under Unintentially Unsympathetic for their treatment of him. These are just suggestions, and I admit that I've wanted to add these entries to balance things out in Keith's favor.

(Edit: Aaaaaaaaaand, I jumped the gun)

I agree that the Vanilla Protagonist might need to go for technical reasons. Keith may not be popular, and many may consider him bland, but he has too many defined character traits even if I feel they are often told rather than shown to qualify, when a Vanilla Protagonist is explicitly supposed to be a "blank" kind of protagonist. It was bothering me for a while so I will probably delete it.

As for Base-Breaking Character, I was the one who added that entry, and I'll admit that while some of these opinions are indeed shared by me, the "moronic and jerkish" part as well as other portions are simply common opinions that I included for the purposes of documenting fan reaction, rather than me trying to push negativity onto Keith, so I'm probably going to leave it for now.

Since you didn't delete it, I decided to add Shiro to Vanilla Protagonist. Arguably, he's a bigger one than Keith, since there isn't much to his character besides his professionalism and mentorship. Josh Keaton is a great actor, but that might be the only saving grace at this moment.

Maybe you might personally think so, but it's not a very common view among the overall fandom the way it is for Keith (and that's what I consider to be more important when adding and removing entries), so I'd question that. I forgot to delete it so I'm going to now, but if you think I purposefully left that entry alone as a personal dig against Keith, it's not. This page is not the place for character defense wars. Its mention under Base-Breaking Character however will stay, as that entry is about describing popular opinion towards him, whether one thinks it's true or not.

If you don't believe me, look at the VLD thread in these forums where lots of people have listed their complaints about the handling of Keith and mentioned that even if they think Shiro has problems, they still find his execution more compelling for them than Keith.

Like I said, I might be my bias. But on tumblr at least, i’ve run into users who think that Shiro is bland.

That being said, I’m happy that the entry has been removed and I won’t complain much else. However, I hope everyone keeps the Arc Fatigue entry.

I agree with you that while "dissipated" it's not necessarily a fully resolved debate, however it's more that the new qualifications for Broken Base point out that it needs a relatively small number of sustained acute opinions with few in-betweens among the fandom to qualify. Better to trim the fat now before someone more draconian comes in and slashes-and-burns the entire page, as has happened for other works. If not for the rules change I would've left those entries alone.

While fandom opinions might've qualified for that before season 3, the events of season 4 have caused the nature of the debate to change. As you said, things are very complicated. You have some people saying one thing, some people saying another, some saying a third opinion, others having a fourth, etc. There aren't any really obvious binary or ternary camps to divide the fanbase into either, so much as a fragmentation where it's become more of an "everyone has their own opinion of varying intensities on this matter" situation, including a lot of people who think "wait and see". I hope that makes sense.

If the lion debate does end up settling into a small number of semi-permanent major camps, then I'm totally for a new entry on it. Another reason I nuked the previous ones was because they were really convoluted; originally I was going to rewrite them to be more concise but I couldn't get to it before season 4.

As for the second question, I've seen it used in regards to characters who went from very divisive to overall well liked, and the trope description says it can be used intentionally to make a Jerkass character become nicer, so I guess there's some trope flexibility there. The part where his detractors have generally softened on him or become newer fans of his must count for something.

Good points - duly noted. I need to update myself on which tropes have had their definition shuffled. Thanks!

No problem! Glad we were able to resolve that. Anyway for clarity's sake this is what the Broken Base page now states:

I lean on the side of wanting to be flexible with this trope but some people get pretty fussy about handling that kind of thing, to the point it's got a long term cleanup thread nowadays.

You can probably just create a new article over at Voltron: Legendary Defender.

Eh, I don't think we need it for the time being. Most of the major incidents have already been catalogued so far so I don't foresee it getting significantly larger for the time being. And if it does it's probably because of heavy Shipping Goggles and therefore deleteworthy. If the next season creates a slew of new entries then maybe.

I should also add that as the person who originally added the entry that I saw the original post linked above a while ago, followed by some rumbling within the Voltron fandom because of how absurd it sounded, then it really picked up after a Moral Guardian blog created a list of supposedly problematic Voltron fans, and that seems to be the point at which it became an actual meme that seems to have spread all over the website.

I should also note that the people I found it among who were outside the Voltron fandom^note specifically, TF 2, Overwatch, Star Wars 7, and MCU fans who are not new to that kind of drama were not anti-SJW types but "regular" people or shippers who've been on the receiving end of Ship-to-Ship Combat-motivated hate and usually reblog pro-SJ or anti-anti-SJW posts. Maybe it picked up secondary steam among the anti-SJW community, but like the Racist Pepe meme they're definitely not the first or only ones to use it, and it absolutely did originate from Voltron.