#its going to be keith pov and start with some pre-canon background | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sol1056 · 6 years

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followup on shiro

following up on my post about stereotypes, and now to talk specifically about Shiro... First off, he’s got too many unusual elements to be a stereotype. My suspicion is the problem you’re asking about has its roots in the EPs/writers thinking it’d be slick to play with story conventions, and didn’t realize their mistake until too late. It’s the most likely reason for their bewilderment that a not-insignificant chunk of the fandom assumed the story would be Lance-centric.

It’s not stereotypes. It’s more like a movie’s opening shots making you think it’s a Dracula movie, and you’re like, cool, except halfway through the movie forgets about Draclua to focus on his valet. You’re gonna be mighty pissed if you’d settled in for Dracula and suddenly you’re forced to watch some tertiary character mend buttonholes or press a dinner jacket until the credits roll.

Ultimately, what I think we have here is a conflict between conventions. The part of the audience brand-new to the story seems to also be the part using a pro-fic (published, original works) lens. The part of the audience who remembers some/most/all of the original story seems to be using a fanfic (derived works) lens. There’s a fundamental disconnect between the two, though, and both require seeing Shiro as expendable.

It’s a huge risk to mess with convention -- especially if your intended audience is less-savvy/younger. It takes seeing/reading a wide range of stories to roll with reversals and subversions. Kids just haven’t had the exposure. But all you really need is a viewer most comfortable with conventional storytelling patterns, and you’ll have a viewer who’ll feel betrayed when the show doesn’t meet those unspoken expectations.

Behind the cut: the conventions of prologues and character introductions, S1 with Lance as implied protagonist, S1 with Keith as expected protagonist, and why neither works with Shiro in the frame.

the conventions of prologues and character introductions

Basic rule of stories: introduce the core POV first. Although most often also the main character and the protagonist, that’s not necessarily so -- but it should be the character who’ll provide our ‘view’ of the story. It’s also the character who’ll go through the biggest arc, as a result of their experiences. Frex: Watson as core POV, while Holmes is main character; Aang is the hero but Katara’s arc as core POV is far larger.

A prologue bypasses this ‘first introduced’ assumption. If we get a series of quick scenes (or a cold opening) and then a jump to seemingly-unrelated location, a significant timeskip, or whole new characters, we’re going to think ‘prologue’ and start over.

VLD gives us prologue as background; the three characters are roughly equal. Sam speaks first, Matt is named first, Shiro has the bulk of screentime post-kidnapping. POV is mostly balanced between them. We’re given every reason to think them one-shot characters sacrificed to demonstrate the bad guys are really bad, and thus, our protagonist isn’t among them. So when we see the time/location stamp, we adjust and assume the story begins in earnest, here.

Rewatch the opening ten minutes or so. Here’s how we’d categorize the characters, based on when and how they’re introduced:

First to speak and be seen: Lance, protagonist/core POV.

Next to speak and be seen will be secondary characters. Either sidekicks like Hunk, or contagonists (signaled by mysterious agenda and/or low-key antagonism) like Pidge and later, Keith.

After that, antagonists like Iverson, and mentors/guides.

Since Shiro is narratively identified as the same guy from the prologue, his return means he’s someone experienced with the monomyth’s underworld setting. That makes Shiro the guide who delivers the call to adventure. If your knowledge of story structure is relatively conventional, the combination of Shiro’s return and his positioning in the introduction-order means you could freely write him off as a plot device, existing solely to gets the hero (and the rest) involved.

Except that’s not at all how it works out.

profic lens: Lance as implied protagonist

For most of S1, you could watch and assume the categories I listed above, without having your expectations challenged. There’s contagonist development (Pidge’s family vs Voltron), with Lance getting some shiny moments (protecting Coran, shooting Sendak). Sidekick development for Hunk and the Balmera; again, Lance stays in the foreground: flirting with Nyma, coming up with a non-psycho way to deal with the sentries in the Balmera. One could reasonably write these off as minor arcs befitting secondary characters, and that this story’s chosen to front-load those rather than show them later.

Meanwhile, Keith only surfaces as a foil (racing the lions, getting needled), and Shiro can be seen as a placeholder leader. Given Lance’s introduction, we could expect a predictable arc: he starts as less-competent or less-valued, and by story-end he’ll be a capable, valuable, leader. In this light, Shiro represents the stasis that’ll get broken when Lance moves into true hero position.

It wouldn’t have been hard to take this route: give Shiro a reason to stay with the rest when they infiltrate the space base, and have Lance go with Allura, instead. That would’ve put Lance at the emotional forefront, as the one she rescued. Follow that with Lance using Blue to break the station’s hull, and it’d close the circle with him rescuing Allura in turn. He’d move from core POV into main protagonist. Obvious next step is for Shiro to step down, the story would contrive for Lance to slide into place, and the remainder would focus on his growth.

fanfic lens: Keith as expected protagonist

Let’s circle back to the fact that of our core five, Keith is introduced last. This is a sharp break with profic convention but totally in line with fanfic convention. Fanfic doesn’t need to waste time introducing and establishing a protagonist when readers already know who it is from canon. As a result, fanfic frequently delays the main character’s appearance while the story introduces the side characters who’ll be playing roles in the story.

From this perspective, allotting time to Pidge and Hunk makes sense. Both have been greatly to moderately rewritten for this new version, so they get mini-arcs to showcase those changes. Viewers familiar with the original Voltron already have a ‘protagonist’ in their minds. They were probably confident that once that was of the way, that pre-existing protagonist would come to the forefront.

Those viewers were expecting Keith to become a plot-driver by the end of S1, which he does, somewhat. He’s the one who discovers the druids and quintessence plot point, after all, and he does it solo. The rest work jointly, which is common for secondary characters.

Note that once again, the obvious next step is for Shiro to step down, and the story should contrive for Keith to slide into place. Since the story’s also established a strong emotional bond between Keith and Shiro, it’s possible Shiro might stick around as a mentor. But still, if Keith’s going to claim the protagonist’s leadership position (per the source material), then Shiro’s got to vacate that slot.

the real problem: Shiro doesn’t fit either lens

If they’d taken the profic lens, we’d have Lance in Black by now. If they’d taken the fanfic lens, we’d have Keith in Black... which we did, but now we don’t, again. For either convention, the Ulaz arc should’ve happened in S1, as another two-parter. By its conclusion, Shiro would’ve been gone completely, or at least relegated to the background as a mentor.

But not only does Shiro never segue into that mentor-only role, he takes the lead, and holds it (and takes it back, too). And while he’s older than the rest by some amount (never fully defined, for inexplicable and frankly stupid reasons on the part of the EPs), he’s still not the seasoned adult; Coran fills that role. Shiro’s also visibly damaged inside and out, between his prosthetic and his struggles with PTSD -- and instead of returning with knowledge to impart per a guide, he returns with mostly questions and fuzzy guesses. On top of that, the narrative is quick to pit Shiro against Zarkon (although this is muddied by Keith taking on Zarkon solo, in the S1 finale).

And then in S2, Shiro provides almost all the plot movement. He remembers Ulaz, which sets off a chain of events (complicated by Zarkon, as much as that blunt-force character can complicate anything) that leads directly to the Marmora, the team’s first allies of note. The S2 finale pivots on Shiro, too; his recovery of Black’s bayard provides the last piece needed for the team to defeat Zarkon.

Shiro’s disappearance at the end of S2 comes late, relatively speaking, but still, here we finally have a vacancy for the protagonist to fill. Except not: the lack of finality -- the disappearance, rather than death -- means there’s no closure. (For a good example of this, see Gurren Lagann, where a main character’s death-speech grants closure and thus doubles the emotional gut-punch.) That means questions linger, shadowing anyone who fills the empty spot, and those questions effectively make Shiro even more central, despite his absence.

Any way you slice it, Shiro gets way too much noise for a secondary character. Especially if he’s meant to be a character that -- by conventional standards -- exists solely to validate, and give way to, the real protagonist’s leadership.

This went on too long, but of course now I have thoughts on what prompted the story structure to end up like this. Another followup coming soon, stay tuned.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron meta #writing #storytelling

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