Lance hates being alone for several reason, the two biggest ones being that he needs physical touch as much as he needs air and the second being that when he鈥檚 with people, he鈥檚 not with his thoughts. The issues comes with his team not being as tactile and valuing personal time. Lance gets it, he does like to be alone, but not lonely and certainly not all the time. It doesn鈥檛 help that the castle is huge and everyone has their own space within it that Lance, while he desperately wants to, refuses to invade without good reason. Dios forbid he be an nuisance. This longing for touch and pleasure of another鈥檚 weight, like his twin sister or baby cousin, plagues him for long enough that his beloved Blue notices. She conformed him through his mind and their bond, which helps to fill the ache but never cancels it out. It鈥檚 after a rough nightmare that he goes to his Blue to sit in the cockpit and imagine the armrest are his mothers warm embrace that Blue has enough. She knows it鈥檚 risky due to it taking so much energy, but she can鈥檛 handle seeing her cub so down. So, with Black warning her that she must be sure, she refuses to let Lance in and ignores his hurt in favour of shifting the form she holds to something new. The organic flesh of a Lion feels odd to her, but she can only hope she looks like the ones Lance showed her through their bond, though she defiantly got the size wrong by a few dozen feet. Lance is shocked but doesn鈥檛 argue when Blue crawls into her stomach and shoved her face into his body, him just being able to reach both her ears and pulling her closer. She wraps him up in his giant paws and reset her giant head on his torso while he rest. Lance sons for a long while before falling asleep. When the rest of them get upset with Lance for not showing up to training they go looking for him and find him in the lions hanger, curled into the body of a giant blue furred lion. Blues sisters are happy she trust her cub so much, but the others want the same thing and as far as they can all tell, they haven鈥檛 bonded nearly enough and lack trust.
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If they had spread out finding the lions, I have a proposal, of the lions and their element being relevant to the planet they find the lion on and to each paladin and the inhabitants values.
Lance's lion, is on Earth arguably one of the planets we saw the most water on, but when it was a initially discovered and hidden by Krolia, she notes it'd been found on that Mermaid planet and that episode shows evidence of the galra having been there, and of the lions previous presence there. Also seeing that sort of Sci fi generalisation of human (and now cause of having the lions original hiding place be their planet) the mermaids of being social, connected, maybe a little obnoxious but adaptable
Then Hunks lion, we find on the Balmera, and him deciding to prioritise helping the Balmerans ends up being one of the ways that the Yellow lion decides it wants him as its paladin. The balmera and balmerans benefitting from mutalism being something that is also key yo Hunk as a character
We take the episode greening the cube, we rejig it, and that's the episode we have Pidge discover and pilot the Green Lion. Having the Olkarions be the ones that thousands of years ago helped the green lion build up a plant tech maze around itself and them valuing both the blending of tech and nature, but also specifically curiosity
We then have the hint of Keith being Galra when we have them infiltrate the Galra ship to get to the Red Lion because we establish that each place and inhabitant we find the lions around says and reflects something about the valued each lion wants from a pilot. This is also where we establish the existence of the Blade of Marmora, make their values the thing that the red lion stuck around for and recognise Keith when he impulsively before he even thinks to check they're definitely on his side, intuites that helping them is the right thing to do, and does the whole reckless, launching the droids into space, his lion saves him.
And then obviously the Black Lion reflecting the values of the mostly long gone Alteans, and rallying the others to help unlock the key to freeing the black lion, Shiro having been involved someway or another in encouraging and rallying the others to find their lion.
(Also I think the idea of the red lion reflecting ideal or valued traits of galra and the black reflecting alteans could be interesting characterisation got Zarkon and Alfor later down the line with Alfor being in the red lion and zarkon in the Black lion if this was how it'd gone)
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Just over 7 years after the show debuted, I think I've figured out what the Blue Lion's purpose in the team is.
While at first glance, Voltron seems to follow the five man band trope (Leader, Lancer, Smart Guy, Stong Guy, Heart) pretty closely, color-coded and all.
Black is the leader: cool under pressure, and always able to see reason and the best course of action, and Shiro fits this perfectly.
Red is the Lancer: the leader's right hand man, the one to challenge them, the one who is almost as good as them, and the character foil for them. Keith matches up with this as well.
Green is the Smart Guy: the one with knowledge specialized to the setting, the one the team always looks to when they need something niche, and Pidge/Katie definitely fits here, with her extremely broad and extensive knowledge of technology.
Yellow is the Strong Guy/Tank: the team's hard hard hitter, the one who can take the most damage, and generally stereotyped as super loyal, and Hunk checks all of these boxes (his name even fits!)
Generally next in the list would be the Heart: the emotional center of the team, the one who keeps everyone together, the one always ready to give a pep talk, the one who makes sure no one is left behind. As the pattern follows, you would think this would go to blue (and so Lance), but it isn't. Allura is actually the one to fill this role.
Then where does that leave Lance? He clearly struggles with this question himself, saying he feels like a 7th wheel, like he's just an extra person. He struggles to find his worth on the team, surrounded by amazing people. This internal conflict over self-worth is what makes him so relatable and lovable to the audience, along with his humor. And here, I think is where we find his purpose.
Lance fills the role that I am going to call the diplomat in this variation of the five man band trope. He is the one that makes the team feel like it's not just the most amazing, perfect people out there that we could never compare ourselves to. He feels down-to-earth (pun intended), he's someone a lot of people can see themselves in. He's an extrovert who's great with people and longs for companionship. He's funny, and can make light of a situation, but when he needs to be serious, he is. Overall, Lance is a people person.
And to think of this in context of the show's universe, I think that position is quite important. Imagine if Voltron was real, and was what was protecting you and your home planet. Voltron is a great weapon, but it's larger than life. Even if it's protecting you, you'd probably still be at least a little scared of it, especially if the people piloting it were the best of the best. That's really intimidating. To have one of the pilots be someone you can see yourself in, it makes it feel more real, and less like it's something beyond your comprehension.
It's also important to have the diplomat for, well, diplomatic purposes. To charm those you want to make an alliance with, to mediate arguments, and to have someone the people of each civilization love. This part of the job is why Allura is able to pilot blue in the absence of Shiro.
However, she doesn't really fill Blue's role, and niether do any of the others. Allura is great, but she suffers from the same thing Shiro does in this regard, they're just too amazing. They're paragons of themselves. Allura is one of the last of the mythical Alteans, and she can perform the practically lost art of Altean Alchemy. Shiro is a perfect leader, he's handsome, and that makes him a little intimidating. Hunk is great in the way that he's loyal, but he's more focused on the people he cares about than anything else, and also just doesn't have the charisma that Lance has. Pidge is not the easiest to talk to, and you can find yourself getting lost in all the science lingo she throws around, and her long tangents that don't quite have all the context you need to understand them. Coran Keith speaks for himself, our little asocial emo boy. To be clear, this is not to bash the other characters, it's just to show why they don't really fill the role.
All in all, Voltron is a deviant of the five man band trope, not the poster perfect example it seems to be. Furthermore, Lance is far from the worthless misfit he sees himself as, he is the true charmer of the team.
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