#although also the idea that lauren's known one ep return last season was like. will This be an unfriendly ex gf/employee using insider info

[unproduciblesmackdown]

as "let's see if will roland's birthday prompts any billions production clues from posts castmates may make about it" continues to yield "no one's posting about it, while some castmates post about other people's birthdays," already having more thoughts abt [i'm sure he'll show up in at least one episode even if only to be written out] type things like:

a) would be insulting if winston is fired to serve a subplot about philip and taylor having some difficulty in finding their footing re: working together as coheads, like, we're good at anticassandraing things and have gone "lol what if philip & taylor disagreed abt quants in that philip preferred winston. which he feasibly could," so what if instead it's philip arguing that winston should be fired to streamline things or because everyone who's not taylor will want him gone b/c they dislike him, and in learning how to successfully work together, taylor's like well alright. like, don't pit these elements against each other the insult is instead just Anyone, higher ups or lower downs, wanting winston gone b/c they dislike him, so he's fired

b) winston getting bullied by anyone or everyone is seen as him distracting them &/or provoking it with his presence, so he's fired winston being friends w/tuk is seen as a bad influence of loserdom on the latter (or distraction, or annoying, or w/e) so he's fired some Problem that needs solving or otherwise some need to fire Some people that really doesn't have much to do with him gets him fired anyways. like 5x05 all over again, isn't it always. or even if he's particularly involved in some problem you know it'd be something other people could get away with just fine. see:

c) what's even "a problem" like that despite everyone being in a hostile workplace, winston is especially, and we're so graced with dollar bill back on the premises who has already harassed and threatened and assaulted him (not only limiting the lattermost to something like "did he hit you, and like, closed fist, and i mean pretty hard. well that's just what he's like, you're fine." or the way like sabotaging a toilet is just epic pranks and only a problem if something looks bad to theoretical investors and we should talk about what tmc people might be doing to deserve it) while rian has been holding down the fort bullying and using winston. perfectly in line with everything if this kind of thing prompting any hostility in turn is like, nobody blinks at the other stuff, wherein if anything everyone keeps trying to fix dollar bill's feelings for him and talk about how who he's being awful to needs to appease him asap, and rian simply Wanting to use winston as a chew toy is just taken in stride while separately people have already been motivated by theoretically looking out for her / supporting her in various ways as well. whereas if winston Acts like he regards her as a hostile party, which she is, rather than seeming to operate in good faith that they can have regular constructive basic respect interactions, which he does while those decent interactions seem to come through rarely and unreliably, then i'm sure he'd be seen as mean / starting shit / out of line / etc, especially when it seems him Disrespecting the Rules & Social Hierarchy that should disallow him from like, speaking unless it's to self-flagellate, means people see him as aggressive or whatever. basically the classic scenario like, kid's bullied at school, they're supposed to just ignore it or it's otherwise "not that bad" / stuff gotten away with, even if supposedly it's like well just tell an authority figure here, that won't/doesn't work, any resulting obvious tension/dislike between the kid and whoever is like "uh oh, a Both Sides problem" at best, same if there's a physical fight or something or else it's like well That was unacceptable and if it was initiated by Your reaction to all other kinds of terrible treatment for however long, you're the problem. not that i expect winston to throw a punch about it, but, figuratively / parallel to this scenario

d) winston is sick of his deluxe hostile environment, doesn't actually like whatever coheading changes, sick of rian and/or dollar bill specifically, and/or doesn't appreciate some other goings-on, like one that results in him even being threatened with firing, and gets to just quit as has regularly seemed like something he might want to do anyways since 4x11 and intermittently on

e) not really another Way to imagine they kick him out but was thinking how like, Is a reason we're shown that taylor and rian hugging in the middle of an office was seen by i guess winston alone gonna be further relevant at all and about him making anything of it, which, he really couldn't possibly be wrong about any inferences. but going :/ at the taylor and rian dynamic just as a spontaneous, contained event would be self-explanatory too. but had the thought of like, maybe it's all "well taylor's been here 5 seasons and is in a more prominent position than last season, throw a PR problem at them for the first time for real, just as a shakeup / something that throws them off" wherein like winston wouldn't even have to be there to be cited in something like yeah i was fired or quit or whatever else and my former boss is dating an employee i think. or seems to have a real personal preference for them if not personal somethingship. which is true lmfao like? even if winston ""wrongly"" assumes they're dating like "oh sorry these claims are ridiculous, i only proposed as much to this employee who i already was informally mentoring and do favor such that she was promoted offscreen after like half a season to be able to make trades and this only came up when her using that capacity to do some shit she could've been fired for had me like 'but i'll take the heat for it' b/c any feeling that i'd wanna fire you is worth working through as a personal problem, and that employee turned me down not only just b/c apparently dating through work is too much (but not hooking up through work) but because she's afraid of how much she could love me, and now we're further personal somethings or who even knows what's ever been going on and so who can say if we were supposed to have fully closed the door on dating or not, even." wherein like....someone then doing further research consulting with every named tmc employee, in this hypothetical (and ignoring any hypothetical new, named/dialogued hires) scenario all now Former employees except rian who clearly won't have been firedor quit at the start of season 7, b/c yknow god forbid lmao....like, oh i'm taylor's best friend so no comment except that when i'm mad at them i'll apparently say that i always thought they inhumanly don't have feelings and all, very helpful. then there's like, oh yeah i was taylor's employee and dated them until business misalignments lead to a less than ideal breakup, and then kind of an aftershock of that for fun i guess. and then yeah i was also taylor's employee and knew they were dating another employee and i disapproved if only b/c i told them it could look bad but then also one of the reasons leading up to my quitting was having difficulty getting in touch with them while the other employee lived with them at least part of the time and i didn't seem to be a fan of that bonus access re: discussing business getting in the way of the formal structure / chain of command or whatever at work as well which is part of what i was already there to file a complaint over, so....even just the "it does look bad / people do think you leverage status for access to sex through employees" like no but that's My boss though. but also just that yeah taylor has at least tried to date employees twice, and their personal preference does affect professional matters, though that's also just like, pick any place of work and any slice of it, may not be a meritocracy after all versus how much it matters that some people are popular and/or liked by the right people while others can be recognized as Good Employees on paper but be left where they are or antagonized by peers or higher ups b/c of "failing" at the popularity contest aspect. and this could just be some new Kind of problem for taylor, and/or their just having to question themself more. or else go "ugh leave it to winston" and shrug it off once whatever's smoothed over.

f) winston isn't fully written off but rather it's something zany like, the twist is dollar bill coming back (god forbid he didn't either) while mafee, who evidently sees taylor outside work despite it all, is like eh we'll get dinners sometimes too, and does not likewise return despite saying he's the one who'd consider it. winston, being fired, or having quit, or just being unhappy w/things enough to consider it, is like well you're kind of regular at me sometimes and can't yell at me abt loyalty to taylor if neither of us work for them and you have weird confusing ideas about how they should be loyal to you if anything, and i can do the work of 50 phds, and i know you don't know shit abt the math and quanting but if you just leave it up to me entirely, that's pretty much been my work experience thus far anyways. then he'd be filming on different sets, possibly more rarely, and also dan soder has been likewise elusive but is also on site on the two even vaguely or implicitly [s7 production] related pics will's turned up in.

g) idk billions feel free to prank us where once again between seasons we worry winston could be written off but then he isn't, but elusivity paired with suddenly now castmates w/no mention of him for [march 5th] and [we are doing any bday acknowledgments] overlaps that otherwise get posts, especially. weird even if he Was written out in ep one but okay then

#winston billions #maybe he'd feel petty after being disposed of; maybe someone's doing really specific investigative journalism lol.... #although also the idea that lauren's known one ep return last season was like. will This be an unfriendly ex gf/employee using insider info #and if winston were to be fired or quit; no matter the specific reason behind that it's like. how would he have only the fondest memories #he's been here for taylor & i imagine it can be inferred he hopes his Skills being valued are a shot at also being valued as a person #but if it seems like he was only ever begrudgingly kept around & given that [useful tool] status while other employees got more personal & #preferential treatment; which like everyone save sara kinda but she at least got to have substantial & frequent enough exchanges w/taylor #while here's a quant peer he even likes & does keep trying to be amicable with but she also regards & treats him as usable & disposable #while taylor at least ignores & allows this while v much preferring & Would Be dating this employee like. probably could be pissed abt that #and just to go off the shits lol like oh Petty Ex Employee behavior But....add in tayston fwb history lmaooo Like. oof #with some end of s3 into s4 timeline especially like where maybe winston wants a personal somethingship w/them as well but instead the #whole fwbship (& any undiscussed / not directly acknowledged somethingship along with it) was dropped when taylor dated lauren #like yes add in nonzero petty ex something as well lol. or Wish i could be a petty ex but got burned by the implication that like #no taylor doesn't not date employees as a rule nor even seem to worry abt it much personally; On Paper especially re propositioning rian #but also combining [dated lauren] and [dated oscar] stats it's like yeah they Ought to consider winston a romantic candidate as well lol #he Does get [autistic character] different negative / diminishing treatment all round from all elements so like. grievances lol #and of course taylor could choose to be petty ex employer/something as well like great so we're fighting now #and if winston's sharing the other trivia he's not sharing His personal history w/them. and taylor could threaten to but isn't gonna share #that b/c it'd make them look worse too (i am aware of the gfy proximity at this point yes lmfao girl help) but Can throw it in his face #can go after knowing he had that personal somethingship with them; the closest gfy esque thing here would be if taylor was also a bit too #clueless like well that is just hypocritical of you to take issue w/it Or take advantage of it when it suits you....w/o realizing that #element of like yeah i'm jealous actually?? remember when you dumped me to date someone else when [why didn't you date Me].... #or be Aware like well you're jealous actually. and winston can be like Yeah? I Am? lmao. we both know why we're fighting.... #impossible to tell if taylor didn't infer winston might like rian or else just ignored it but they could throw that at him too #i don't really imagine winston still Likes rian crushwise by the end of s6 for sure but. might also be annoyed they even get an affinity #like man don't worry their dynamic really isn't convincingly that good or enjoyable b/w them....missing out on what. #then the most gfy similar thing to do would be like don't take it out on me just b/c nobody would wanna date you #a move that could range from [merely laughably stock pettiness] to [surprisingly genuinely cutting] depending on specific execution ig #anyways whether he's still filming or not; if any cast members were to remember will exists & give us Any info w/acknowledgments we might #expect based on precedent. that it's Axe; Dollar Bill; and Rian who are most firmly established as [will be present] via ppl's posts. Great

[raiyakun]

Questions about the Blue Lion

Okay, so after two seasons, I’m still a little fuzzy on how the Blue Lion’s qualities are known in canon. (The info on the website does not qualify: we’ve learned many things about the other lions in canon, and I do not believe the writers are willing to just spoonfeed info like that to us, not when they’ve left many questions unanswered beyond Blue.) So, I decided to do a quick rewatch and ended up with a list of the questions about Blue that have been haunting me, one of which leads me to what’s probably a veryyyyyyy far-reaching theory of who (or at least what alien race) could her previous paladin have been and the possibility that one of the other paladins could be descended from this race. Some of you may have answers to some of them, or some of you might want to figure some of them out on your own, but I’m basically just throwing all these out there hoping someone helps me understand.

1) How was Blue able to project images into all of the paladins’ heads?

(Edit: This meta has previously raised and explored this same question, although I’m putting some additional and partly different theories in relation to Blue’s one-time connection with all the paladins.)

Remember when the paladins all found her? When Lance knocks against her barrier, Blue awakens and the camera zooms into Lance, and then we get this entire montage of Voltron and the other lions. Afterwards, we find out that all five had the same vision, which could only mean that Blue had mentally communicated to all of them at the same time. Now, this feels important, because so far we have only seen the other lions communicate exclusively with their respective paladins. But here Blue connected for a few moments with all of them. Was this due to her paladin, Lance, being present and being the anchor to her connecting with everyone? Or is Blue capable to some extent of connecting with all the paladins?

Going on that second point, I have to wonder now if Keith feeling that energy early on is Blue making a very shallow link to him: Here was a paladin candidate, the one who has managed to get physically close to her, and like the way she dove into all their minds to show them Voltron, she grasps at what little she could reach from him.   

And I’ve seen a theory before (which I cannot find at the moment) about the paladin assignments having been done through Blue and Lance’s knowledge of the others. If we’re going off the idea that Blue is capable of communicating with people other than her own paladin, could she have fed the information to Allura then? (If you consider, at this point, all the other lions are still “asleep” and could not have really spoken to Allura, if they could in the first place, about which person in this group was the one they chose as their paladin.)

2) Why was Blue able to create a wormhole? 

This has been bugging me for the longest time, especially after S2 expounded on the pseudo-science of teludavs and wormholes. In S1, we get Blue presumably creating a wormhole to Arus to go to the Castle of Lions. We have not seen any other lion do this, nor do we see Blue able to do it again. If we are to go on a theory that the each of the lions have some sort of emergency wormhole capacity, then think back to the beginning of S2 and Pidge trying to contact the castleship—that should have been the chance for Green to activate that emergency ability, if it existed. 

And we learn later on too that Allura among the main team is the only one capable of creating the wormholes due to her energy. After the S2 reveal (spoilers?) we can chalk up Zarkon’s wormholing (?) capability probably to Haggar too (which begs the question: is operating teludavs/wormholes an Altean capability, or strictly a royal Altean capability? And what does that leave us with Haggar if its the second?)

In S1 though, we get the concept that wormholes can still be created on Allura’s residual energy. Did Blue, then, create that wormhole on residual Altean energy? If so, how does she have it in the first place? (Take note because this would lead to question 4, but for now…)

3) How was she able to activate the castle?

Is the capacity of activating the 10,000-year dormant castle something that all the lions can do? At this point, we’ve seen a huge amount of independence from Blue—Lance says it’s like she’s on autopilot when he first pilots her, presumably most of the wild running and flying around the first time her way of being happy to be able to move again. Again, to go back to q2, is the “castle activation” something built into all of the lions, or just Blue in particular? We see her activate the castle two times: first from afar, where her eyes glow and the four “legs” of the castle glow as well, and second when she growls at the gate to open it. If Alfor was keeping the castle housing his daughter and the Black Lion from Zarkon, then I’m betting he’s put heavy security for them. But again: was this purposely programmed by Alfor, or is the Blue Lion possessing something in particular that allowed it to open the castle?

4) Could the Blue Lion’s previous paladin have been Altean? And could one of the current paladins have been their descendant?

Okay, disclaimer: I believe Alfor was the previous yellow paladin. There’s too much yellow on his armor to see otherwise. But who’s saying another previous paladin could not have been Altean?

Remember when everyone first entered the castle? Identity scan. Like I said above, if Alfor’s plan hinged on hiding his daughter and the Black Lion away from Zarkon and it’s worked for 10,000 years, then it should definitely have been due to very stringent security. Now, the hypothesis could be that “identity scan” meant “quintessence scan” and Alfor programmed the castle to react to the five paladins by quintessence, but remember that “lion’s quintessence matches its paladin,” and Zarkon was the Black Paladin. So if it’d been programmed that way, I’m assuming Alfor would have a safeguard against someone (Shiro) having similar quintessence to Zarkon. But of course we know that Zarkon and Shiro are different, but nevertheless Black accepted both of them at different times as her paladin.

So just what type of identity imprint did this scan pick up that it literally led these five to Allura and Coran (even to the point of revealing their pods and releasing them as if this imprint meant they were in safe/trustworthy hands)? Could this identity scan have been rigged to read someone’s DNA? If so, whose? 

My assumption is the identity being searched for here is likely Altean (if not Alfor’s specifically, but I don’t have enough proof on that—although I have heard Lauren Montgomery in a recent podcast offhandedly mentioning something about siblings). It probably could not be, but if we connect it to the previous speculation about the Blue Lion’s ability to create a wormhole/activate the castle stemming from the fact that it bears residual (potentially royal) Altean energy, then it’s not too far to speculate that the scan picked up Altean DNA from the group (one of whom could be the descendant of an Altean who piloted Blue to earth and thus bears Altean DNA), and that’s why it dared to lead them directly to Allura and Coran.   

Note also that this control panel even activates in their presence and deactivates once Allura is out.

Only to be activated again specifically by Allura.

(Edit: Note how the “w”-shaped symbol does not appear again even after Allura activates the panel.)

Now the Galra Keith reveal and how it’s been hinted heavily with Keith putting his hand on that Galra panel in the Balmera has made me not think lightly of how panels are activated in VLD. I’m quite sure this could only mean that the panel could be activated or programmed by Alteans. It might be too much of a reach to assume the presence of one of the paladins activated it remotely, but I could at least speculate the last one to use it had been Alfor, after putting Allura and Coran to sleep. This would tie up again to Alfor purposefully programming the castle’s activation and particularly Allura’s and Coran’s release from their pods, and I bet he wouldn’t let the castle lead just anyone to where his sleeping (presumed dead by Zarkon at this point) daughter lies. 

I think I moved too far, so let me bring us back on track again: the speculation here is that whoever piloted the Blue Lion to earth could have been a (royal) Altean, who left residues of their energy with Blue that allowed her to form a wormhole to Arus and, possibly, activate the castle. This Altean potentially has a descendant among the five paladins, if we go by the hypothesis that the castle picked up their DNA/energy or traces of their identity through a scan of the five and automatically activated itself as if it was assured that the beings that entered it were trustworthy/allies. (If we take it a step further, imagine if Alfor had programmed the castle to react only to a specific person’s energy/DNA as a fail safe.)

This could mean nothing or me misreading, but I am also a little curious about Haggar’s wording here: “The Blue Lion has returned, and now I feel a resurgence of Altean energy.” Before this, the Galran commander who fought the team in Blue directly contacted Zarkon, so to have Haggar be the one to announce that Blue “returned” seems redundant, unless this was to imply that she sensed Blue the way she sensed the “resurgence of Altean energy.” (It was Zarkon who speculated it was Allura, but Haggar did not specify.) I might be able to expound on this part later, but for now I’m including this here just in case. 

5) How was Blue able to get back online so quickly in The Depths?

But Raiya, someone hisses at me, it’s because she’s in her element, DUH! I know. My question here is: How did Blue draw energy from the water, and is she the only one capable of this?

For the first 2 eps of s2, the other paladins had to wait for their lions to go back online on their own, which took a considerable amount of time. Blue is the only lion who managed to jump back barely minutes after getting thrown out of the corrupted wormhole and with all systems blaring red. If this is indeed due to Blue somehow drawing energy/quintessence from the water, how is she able to do this? And is she the only lion who can do it independently?  (Would, for example, the Green Lion have been able to revive itself with quintessence from the surrounding trees?)

By independently, I mean without needing anybody actively feeding them quintessence or energy and the lions drawing the quintessence of their own accord. In Greening the Cube, for example, we see the Green Lion being revived by the Olkari presumably with quintessence. But this is still the Olkari supplying the quintessence, as opposed to the Blue Lion reviving on its own potentially from getting the quintenssence/energy it needed from the water. In a sense, then, even after going offline/”unconscious,” Blue still had some measure of capability to restock her own energy in a short amount of time from the water surrounding her. 

And I think there’s something important to note in relation to Defenders of the Universe here. In DotU, the Blue Lion was outright stated to be the fusion energy source of Voltron (see eps 31–32). Haggar even instructed Lotor to focus a robeast’s fire on the Blue Lion to take it down, and afterward, he was confident enough to have damaged the Blue Lion beyond repair and that it meant Voltron wasn’t going to be formed again.  

I’m not sure how far VLD takes from DotU, but if they were to retain this, I’d assume the Blue Lion’s capability to draw its own energy from the water so quickly could be to ensure that Voltron’s power source has as much energy as possible. (And also, I greatly fear for Lance, because in DotU, showing the Blue Lion’s importance as the power source by damaging it also meant its pilot—Allura—was quite heavily injured.) 

This got pretty long, and I’ll probably have more questions later (?), but I’m getting dizzy from so much info so I’m gonna stop here. Please feel free to point things out or expound on something as I really would appreciate exploring all these things about the Blue Lion and why it’s being kept quite mysterious in the show.

#vld meta #blue lion #lance mcclain #lance (vld) #voltron #vld #raiyakun!! rambles #geez this got long #i put it in the lance tags because there might be things that could greatly concern him #Raiyakun!! Meta