#fjfnjfncd enjoy if you can get through all of it i guess

[catfishofoldin99colours]

I’ve seen a fair amount of critique in the fandom of the way lance is treated as a character, particularly with respect to the large fixation on la/ngst. A lot of these are well thought out and make a lot of good points that i agree with, but lately something just rubs me the wrong way about them.

recently i saw one which described lance as 'the everyman' character, as a way to explain why so many people love him - they relate to him, since he's probably one of the most normal and relatable of all the main characters. this makes a lot of sense to me - lance is very much a character that I personally relate to, and just observing the fandom will show that a lot of people also feel a similar way about him - and why wouldn't they? he's a student who's feeling just a little out of place with his whole situation, trying to make it through this crazy adventure he never expected himself to be in, all while missing his life and family and the normalcy of his home. he tries to cover things up sometimes with goofy jokes, and loves his friends and tries to be there for them no matter what. he's got worries about himself and what everyone thinks about him and his place in the universe, but gives everything he's got because damn if he's not gonna fight to the end. not to mention he's got an adorable sense of humour and the way he flirts with everyone like wow same

he's a relatable character, whether he was written to be that way or not. lots of people love him, I think, for just being such a marker of what an average teenager would be like in his situation, and being able to relate to that. maybe his expression isn't universal, but to a large extent I think that's primarily what lance and hunk are there for - to explore how teenagers from a very normal background, with almost no pre-existing ties to the situation they end up in, would be like, and develop that. also him and hunk are adorable so

he's a character a lot of people can see themselves in, aside from hunk, because he kind of brings a light to a very normal sense of inferiority that I think a lot of people feel in their everyday lives. in this age where more and more people can easily become famous on almost any social media platform in existence, and seemingly by chance, coupled with the growing access to the internet, and the worldwide connections that bring, it can be hard to feel like your existence has any impact on anyone or anything that will be largely recognized, especially if you're part of a large social identity group, like fandoms. 

not to say that if you're not socially recognised you're not important - but I know from experience it can be very hard to convince yourself that you have worth and value when you feel like no one outside your IRL social circle knows who you are. 

lance, I think, brings light to that in a way that hits home very clearly to anyone who feels this way, particularly people who are very expressively emotional, like he is shown to be. 

think about it - he's an average guy living an average life with an average family (as far as we know). he's at a school for training space-pilots, which looks to be almost militaristic in nature and therefore hard to get into, yet he's not the top in his class - and yes he may be second-best, but there's a thing about being second-best that's just irritating at best, and downright esteem-destroying at worst. I know, I've lived it for the past two years (highly academic high school program with a cohort that all seemed to be smarter than me). he's probably the most unlikely person he'd ever pick to pilot a gigantic sentient spaceship from another goddamn planet - and then he is. out of seemingly nowhere, blue lion chooses him to be her pilot, and takes him on this amazingly wild ride into the far corners of outer space, further than he ever could have gone with the Garrison, where he gets tasked with an amazingly important mission that will have repercussions throughout the galaxy. 

I know people have probably talked about this already, but I think it bears repeating: lance and his insecurities about himself are relatable, I think because they're something so many of us feel in this day and age. he's literally the most average guy in the world, and suddenly he's got to take up a huge mantle and hold a great responsibility, with a bunch of super-cool people who at first glance seem so much more qualified to do it than him. of course as time goes on we learn they're all just faking it till they make it one way or another, but at the beginning it's a very daunting prospect, and can lead to a lot of self-doubt about your own abilities, and self-confidence is a very hard thing to build up when you've got to adjust to a new situation quick. 

so that's why people relate to lance, I think. but what about the fixation on la/ngst?

look, I get why it's annoying, and it frustrates me too. there's not much more that’s annoying than someone who victimizes themselves whenever trouble happens, and lance is by far not one of these people. it annoys me to see him being portrayed this way, not least because it reminds me of much weaker times when I wasn't doing so well mentally. also, making him suffer constantly? while I understand the reasons behind it (causing him pain so comfort can happen as a way of coping with emotional distress by projecting onto him), it gets to a point where it just becomes non-helpful to the person involved, especially if it focuses on not actually doing anything to heal or get better from that place of distress, or solve whatever problem was causing it. 

all of this is annoying, and frustrating, especially for people who's already lived through this kind of emotional turmoil and don't want to see it again.  but I also think there's a fixation on it because it allows for a kind of emotional exploration that the kind of people who relate heavily to lance might not find in their everyday lives. yes, that's basically projecting, but I know for me especially, fair amounts of la/ngst-based indulgences helped me work through several emotional issues I had. it by no means solved them, and I would never recommend just that to get through shit. but it certainly helped me understand myself a bit better, and figure out how to tackle the problem in a way that would actually solve it.

so maybe that's where a lot of la/ngst stems from. of course people in fandoms tend to fixate on things to a strangely obsessive degree, myself included, so things get blown out of proportion, and things like this happen - often we need to be reminded how the characters actually work and what they're actually like after our speculation gets a little wild. but I think everyone's guilty of it at some point.

in particular, something I saw about lance and fixating on him bugged me - namely how lance stans tend to give him positions from other characters, such as black paladin lance or focusing on Lance's idea of the galra Keith reveal (which to be fair was robbed from us completely in every respect). while demonizing the other characters to make lance seem better by comparison is not something I agree with ever, I can understand focusing on him in certain situations that are central to the plot - particularly the black paladin one. lance hasn't exactly been heavily focused on yet, not to the degree that we definitely know heaps about him. he's grown and has a firm character base that's easily recognizable, yes, but to a degree it feels like we've seen bits of his development from a far-off view, not exploring him a heck of a lot like we've done other characters. it feels a little bit like we've been cheated on him, and this adds to the feeling of normal inferiority he gives as a character. naturally, from this the desire to see him be focused on arises, and if that means putting him in situations where he'd have to drastically adapt and be in the spotlight of development, so be it. (if the show won't do it then we will, so to speak). so, black paladin Lance comes about. ideas about what lance thought of Keith being galra happen. this is nothing short of the normal character speculation I've seen in other fandoms - I just think it gets blown out of proportion, for a few reasons (one being lance stans tend to be rather loud in what we do XD). 

it's not wrong or bad to want lance in the spotlight of the show. he's a very relatable character, and one we want to see develop more, on a more personal basis than what we have. he's already a good character, yes, that much is clear, and we already love him for everything he is - but because he strikes such a deep chord with so many people (and like I said, a lot of whom I think are emotionally expressive like him), we want to see him be focused on in a way that makes us feel satisfied and cared about, in relation to the show's writing. 

look, la/ngst can be annoying and unhelpful to actual coping mechanisms for mental illness, and demonizing characters to make him better rather than focusing on what he's already got as a character is not good. but there's nothing wrong with wanting to give him a bit of a personal window, or putting him into a place where he has to grow and change or do something out of his comfort zone to manage (hell, Shiro and Keith have done that already, why can't lance manage it, being the guardian of water and being adatable and all that?).  not to mention, angst isn't necessarily a bad thing to have in a story. too much just gets annoying and boring, but probably one of the biggest ways people grow is how they react to adversity. and with lance being such a people-oriented person, it kinda makes sense to relate to how he might change and adapt to bad situations, especially considering the very normal life he's led up till now.  that, and people like different things in their stories. my friend loves putting angst in nearly everything she writes, and sometimes it drives me crazy how often she does it - but if by the end she's got a good set of well-developed, individual characters? who am I to say its a bad idea!

look, all of this is mostly emotional rambling and rather hypocritical - but I think it's important to remember that people like different things, especially in this fandom. it just happens to be that lance fans find a lot of commonalities amongst us, and we fixate on certain things because of that.  I’m by no means trying to condone the unhelpful things fandom does, but sometimes it helps to remember that things happen as a way to explore ourselves. its a fine line but its possible to be a lance stan and not be the annoying pricks a lot of people know us for, i think???

#catfish speaks #lance #analysis #meta #long post #hfnjjfjlgfjefijjigd mostly this is for myself #i've had a long hard emotional day and this helped me feel better. #hhhhh that last bit sounded agreesive #*flips table* OH WELL #fjfnjfncd enjoy if you can get through all of it i guess #voltron