Voltron Info

The Voltron Info Page

Welcome. I'm horrible at introducing pages (as you may have already noticed) so let's just jump right in here and get things started. This page is to bring you up-to-date (kind of) on the anime series known as "Voltron: Defender of the Universe" which is, basically, a rip-off by World Events Production of an older Japanese show known as "Golion" (copyright Toei Animation). Quite frankly, I'm not sure which title is worse. It's important to note that Golion (as many other '80's shows were) has a tie in to the idea of five elements: Earth, Fire, Water, Wood and Metal. As such, each lion represented each element and only when all the elements were in harmony would Voltron (the savior) come into being. Basically, Voltron was all about drilling into peoples heads the idea of becoming one with the Way (which is the purpose of Taoism). And you thought cartoons weren't educational. Now, I place a caveat on the information given here because this was a show that first aired in the early-ish 1980's . I was barely out of diapers in the early '80's (which may give you an idea as to how young I am) and my parents were of the misguided belief that television rots the brain, so most of those wonderful '80's shows such as Transformers, Voltron, and Thundercats, I have only a passing recollection. All of my current knowledge of Voltron has been gleaned from reruns shown on Toonami and other fan-sites. Also, this is excluding anything that has to do with "Voltron: The Third Dimension" because, in my world, that show doesn't exist. Never happened. Hell, as most of you who do remember Voltron can tell, in my fics it's practically like the original show never existed. Anyway, what I'm leading up to is that this is not the definitive Voltron informational page. In fact, this page is basically me rambling about the Voltron characters and how I would like to portray them. These are the thoughts that go through my mind when I'm writing fics. Also the less-than-main characters like Nanny, Coran, Haggar and Zarkon aren't going to get a little write up. Any actual information is entirely accidental.
Here's a basic run down of the series. In the world which this show inhabits, there are two major players in the inter-galactic politics of the known universe. There's the Galaxy Alliance which is a group of consolidated planets somewhat like the United Nations (only with more power than the UN). This Alliance has its own military force known as the Galaxy Garrison (GG), which apparently makes up 95% of the Alliance work force. The other major player is the Drule Empire, which doesn't particularly concern us. Rather, we're more concerned with an off-shoot of the Drule empire known as Planet Doom, which is basically a planet populated by robots/cyborgs who are trying to take over the universe. Yes, I know this is starting to sound like a bad rip-off of Star Trek. Anyway, there are these five (male) space explorers sent by the GG to planet Arus in response to a distress signal (though lord knows if the GG was actually trying to help Arus they'd send something other than five boys in an unarmed space shuttle). The boys get captured by forces of Doom, then they escape, crash on Arus, find out about Voltron, Defender of the Universe (though how you can defend an infinite space, I'm not entirely sure) from Allura, who is the Princess of Arus and the only surviving member of the Arusian royalty. Now it's important to note at this time that Voltron has only one real attack, and that's the Blazing Sword. Which is basically a sword made out of thin air that reduces robeasts to atomic slag. Why they don't whip that bad boy out at the beginning of the battle is somewhat beyond me. And that's about it. Doom, which is 'governed' (and I use that term loosely) by King Zarkon (who looks like a lizard), his son Lotor (who doesn't look like a lizard) and Haggar, a witch (who is basically a cowl with eyes and a voice. Wizard of Oz, much?) sends Robeasts (magically enhanced biped mechs with more knick-knacks than a swiss army knife) to attack Arus, the Voltron Force (VF) forms Voltron, kicks ass and says some cheesy lines that roll right off the mind like water off of a duck's back. And now that you're been indoctrinated into the world of Voltron, let's meet the cast.
Keith Keith is the leader of the Voltron Force, and given the rank of Captain by convention. Basically, he has black hair, black eyes, is, probably, of average height, and kind of on the skinny side. He's the token hot lead male. Generally, he's said to come from Earth, usually of Japanese descent, but I like to fight this convention. It's a slow, hard, subversive fight, and one which isn't making much progress, but I'm going to keep slugging away by golly! The show sets up an implied romantic relationship between Allura and Keith, but you can see just how closely I follow that piece of canon. Canon? Pff. Canon's for losers (well, actually, canon's for people who actually have some form of long term memory, but I like to think of my canon violations as premeditated things). In the Golion series, Keith was a named Kogane Akira (last name, first). His age in that series was given as 16. Anyway, Keith pilots Black Lion, which is the largest (I believe) Voltron lion, as well as the body/head of Voltron. Black Lion is associated with Metal, though you wouldn't really know it from the cartoon (looks more like it's associated with the Sky/stars like Touma from Ronin Warriors, or Electricity--y'know, needs that jolt of lighting to get moving). You know, I've always wondered if Keith can take manual control of the lions, because I'd imagine that it'd be damned hard to pilot Voltron when everybody is doing their own thing. I mean, imagine if Lance and Pidge had a fight (Lance and Pidge are the pilots of the lions who make up Voltron's arms) and instead of forming the Blazing Sword, they start arguing. What's Keith going to do? Be all: "If you two kids don't stop bickering right now I'm going to turn this robot around!"? Anyway, I like to place Keith's age range in the mid-teenage (I think the youngest I've ever made him is sixteen) to mid-to-late twenty's (twenty-five plus). I think the max age I could give him would be thirty-five-ish, give or take a year or two. I don't think he'll ever be older than forty and that would be pushing it. I write Keith as a very introverted character (but I think most people do). Sure, he can be fun and loud (and obnoxious), but I think of him as a person who keeps his own counsel, and doesn't open up about what he considers his personal business (and defends that privacy like a tiger). I like to think that he has incredible problems expressing emotions--which leads to lovely angst for everyone. I like to think of him not as cold-hearted, but passionless (at least about some things). I (usually) write him as the consummate captain/leader: The team comes first. Their needs, and the needs of the many, before the needs of Keith and the needs of the few/the one. He also has blind spots and I think I may have turned him into a masochist. He's a perfectionist through and through, mostly because he's seeking approval of some form or another. I like to think he has a guilt complex the size of everest. But he mistrusts approval and praise, and hates drawing attention to himself. He's definitely not an idealist (or at least, most of the time he isn't), more like a pragmatist or even a fatalist. I think I may have killed him off one too many times. He lives by very few moral rules, but they're inflexible. Not to say that Keith can't have his fun. Being the introvert that he is, Keith tends to play low-key jokes, and his pranks tend to be very subliminal. I think about Keith a lot, about what he would do, how he acts and reacts. As such, he's the character most likely to throw in his own little comments into everything (as I'm sure you've noticed). Keith is also my personal stress reliever. Finals got you down? Give Keith a drug addiction! Can't cope with the roommates? Kill Keith off! Got writer's block? Make Keith an abuse victim! Feeling good about life? Give Keith a drug addiction, some form of a horrible disease, and then slash the love of his life with someone else! Keith is also the o-neg of the Voltron slash, at least in my mind. He goes with everyone. Oh, sure, you could slash all of these boys with each other, but I think it works best with Keith. See, with Keith you have these wonderful relationships to play off of. Slash him with Lance to relieve the sexual tension that causes them to argue so much. Slash him with Sven and it's all about control. Slash him with Hunk when he needs to feel like a child. Slash him with Pidge when he needs to be looked up to. Slash him with Lotor to end the war. Hell, I could probably even slash him with Zarkon and Coran and make it work. Although because of this, I think Keith has actually become something of the team slut. Anyway, my biggest association with Keith is Taoism. I think that Keith is a follower of the Tao, or a follower of Zen Buddhism. Of course, I don't know too much about either philosophy, so I could be totally wrong, of course, but that's what I think. Black Lion
Lance Lance is the second-in-command by convention. He pilots the Red Lion, which is associated with Fire and makes up the right arm of Voltron. In the Golion series he's named Kurogane Isamu and placed at 17 years of age. He is the mischief maker of the group in the cartoon and generally the source of constant aggravation for Keith. He's impulsive, hot-headed, hot-tempered, and one of the best pilots (I believe). Convention puts him as Keith's oldest/best friend, perhaps as a means of explaining away the liberties he takes with Keith. He looks vaguely anorexic to me, and every time I look at him, I think maffia Don. Lance is on par in age with Keith--in fact the two are almost equal in everything except personality. With Lance, I tend to agree with the canon. I write him as loud and obnoxious and impulsive. He acts before thinking, speaks before thinking, lives before thinking. But I like to see him as loyal as well, and just as private a person as Keith. Except instead of being defensive about his privacy like Keith, Lance takes the offense and lets the world know the superficial doings of his psyche. He has a hot temper, and is prone to passionate outbursts. I think that he falls in lust very easily, but never love. I think he could be very possessive. He's fickle and chaotic in my mind, working for the moment and not the overall plan. But I think that he is an idealist. He has a loose moral code, but he does have a moral code and I think that when push comes to shove over his heartfelt beliefs, he doesn't give ground. If it's something that he truly believes in, he will sacrifice everything that is secondary to that belief. I write Lance so that he uses humor to ease any situation. He doesn't deal well with serious issues, or with serious subjects, and can't stand tension. He doesn't hold a grudge well. Like Keith, he doesn't trust praise or compliments, and tends to laugh them off; he also has a huge guilt complex, but not one quite as large as Keith's. I think that he can be romantic, but he isn't that way very often. He fucks instead of "makes love" and I don't think he would give his partners cute nicknames. He wouldn't call someone baby in a romantic sense, or love, or really refer to his partners as lovers or boyfriends. He's very casual about his relationships, at least on the surface. But when he attaches to someone, he's like a lamprey. In the end, he's always looking out for himself, and it would take an apocalyptic even to get him to change that outlook. He'll die for his cause/belief/person (and yeah I know that's contradictory), but the cause has to be something so integral to himself and his make up that he couldn't live if that cause/belief/person died. I like Lance. I like him a lot. And it's not because he owns a kick-ass leather jacket. As such, Lance has gotten away light. He hasn't been tortured physically yet, and he doesn't really have to deal with as much angst as everyone else. Lance is hard to slash. I mean, I could force him into a pairing with any of the guys, but he's kind of finicky who he sleeps with. Mostly, it's him and Keith (and aren't they a lovely pair). He is fire and heat and passion, but he's all this with a mind to back that passion up. He's smart, he's devious, he's and idealist (but not an optimist) and he's all about the carnal pleasures. He lives in this world, the world of the now and the present and the human. I think that he's the yin to Keith's yang, personally. I associate the sign of Gemini with him (and the myth of Gemini too). Red Lion
Pidge Canon wise, Pidge is usually represented as a younger boy, say twelve-ish. He's a computer whiz, from the now-destroyed planet Balto, has one brother (Chip of the Vehicle Voltron), and can communicate with the Space Mice. No, I will not be doing a profile of the Space Mice. Pidge is a science whiz, and adventuresome in that little-boy fashion. He pilots the Green Lion, Voltron's left arm, which is associated with Wood. In Golion he is known as Suzuishi Hiroshi and placed at age 12. This fact is not particularly conducive to slash. Personally, I detest Canon-Pidge. Absolute hatred. Can't stand the boy. Which is why the Pidge I write is only passingly related to Canon-Pidge. There are several differences, mainly my Pidge is at least fifteen, preferably eighteen. True, there are times when he's a little younger (fourteen's the youngest I believe), but he's never slashed then. I agree with WEP that Pidge should be younger than the other boys but twelve is pushing it. Anyway, the other big difference is personality. My Pidge is rarely a child. He is devious and vaguely evil. He is a slave to logic, and okay, yes, a computer whiz. But you've gotta have someone who's good with computers. Pidge is a complex character for me. On the one hand, I like having someone who is a bit innocent, and who can act as the child, but Pidge is definitely not a child. There is no such thing as an innocent soldier, and Pidge (as they all are) is a soldier. I would like to write Pidge as stubborn and linear. Things are either ones or zeros, on or off, black or white. He doesn't really think in fuzzy terms, because he's too young/inexperienced to think in anything other than absolutes. Pidge isn't really a character I write, though, so he isn't as developed as I would like him to be. Mostly, I think he's the one who consistently acts like a teenager. Keith is the adult, Lance is the between-stages character (sometimes a teenager, sometimes an adult) and Pidge is the teenager. I think he's self-absorbed, and he's big on self-pity. I think if I wrote him more there would emerge a character who clings to childish behavior partially because it's forced on him by the others, but also because he doesn't want to be an adult, not really. He wants to be just like all the other boys his age, be normal, even though he can never be a 'normal' boy. He's very tragic, but he's aware of this tragedy. On the other hand, he's also playful and inquisitive, and decidedly adventuresome. He's devious in a good fashion, and curious--and he has the skills to put that curiosity to work. He'll face danger with many complaints, but he'll face it. He also models himself after Keith in a fashion. He'll let people in, but only a very few people. And when he's in real pain he keeps silent. He's disillusioned and cynical, but also heart-breakingly naive. I think Pidge and Sven are wonderful together. I know the convention is to slash Pidge with Hunk, and I've done it, but I think Pidge and Sven are best together. I don't know why. I associate Pidge with hacking and computers. Ones and zeros. Green Lion
Hunk Hunk is the pilot of the Yellow Lion, which is voltron's left foot. In Golion, he is named Seidou Tsuyoshi and associated with Earth. He's placed at 18. Convention dictates that he comes from Earth as well. I think the trend now is that Hunk became friends with Keith, Lance and Sven in the Academy (the GG training facility). He's best friends with Pidge, and seems to have become the baby-sitter for the various and assorted village children that show up every so often in the series. In Voltron, he's the mechanic, the comic relief, the bottom-less pit, the slob, and the big cuddly bear. Basically, he's supposed to be the big-strong-dumb guy. Were he a deadly sin, he'd be a tie between gluttony and sloth. If you know other anime/manga series, he's like Genma from Ranma 1/2, except much more likeable and about ten times less devious. Again, I don't like this guy (ie, canon-Hunk). Really, I don't. There is so much more to Hunk, there really is. Hunk, as I write him, hovers around omniscience. I think of him as the Big Picture guy, because he's the one who sees everybody's place in relationship to everybody else. He's the one who really knows whats going on with everyone. This is because he is the guy you go to if you want comfort. Yeah, okay, so I like to think of him as a big cuddly bear. He is easy to get along with, and easy to talk to, and he doesn't judge. That's the big thing. He doesn't judge. Everyone else, they judge. But Hunk doesn't. I like to think that he belongs to a large family (lots of brothers and sisters) and, while he wasn't the oldest, he was near the top of the age ladder. He's used to settling disputes, and used to picking up on the tensions of those around him. Were any of these boys to have empathic powers, I think Hunk would have them. He is like the earth in my mind, slow to anger but deadly once enraged--and sudden too. His anger comes without warning. But he isn't Zen Master. He's earthy and I mean that in every way--he tells dirty jokes, he can be a slob, he doesn't do to much higher thinking. He's not one to ponder the meaning of life. And he can be a glutton, and he can be lazy, and he is very, very, very human. He doesn't try to be anything but human. He shows his emotions openly, lets everyone know what he's thinking. He's expressive and doesn't keep many things a secret--unless those things would disrupt the harmony of the team. Then he keeps secrets. The other big thing I like to do with Hunk his give him artificial augmentations (re: make him a cyborg). Yeah. I find mechs sexy. Don't you? Anyway, yeah, Hunk is sexy. And Hunk in pain is sexy. It's easy to hurt him, to twist his emotions, to use his character against him. I think that he's one of those rare exceptions to war. No matter what he sees, no matter what he does, he will still be the same guy who went into that battle. He will still be open about his emotions and motives, and he'll always wear his heart on his sleeve. He isn't innocent--definitely not an innocent. And he isn't an optimist. But he believes in the inherent goodness of others, and it hurts him to see that belief belied. He's a trusting soul, and this is what inspires others to trust him. I place him older than the Golion people, usually. He's definitely older than Keith and Lance. And he's content with who he is and what he is. He doesn't strive to be something else, or conform to what others think about him. He knows that he isn't the smartest person in the world, and he knows that he isn't the best pilot or the best human being. He knows he has faults and he accepts that, generally. He knows what he's good at (mechanics) and he'll know that no matter what happens. As I said earlier, convention dictates that Hunk and Pidge should be slashed. I don't like that pairing too much. Sure, it works, but most pairings with Hunk work. The only one that I think the hardest to pull off would be Hunk and Lance, because they don't jive in my mind. Hunk would probably get really annoyed with Lance's flippant attitude towards relationships. My favorite Hunk pairing is Hunk and Keith--especially angsty Hunk and Keith. Have I mentioned just how sexy it is to see these boys suffering from emotional pain? I don't know what I associate Hunk with. Probably spring time, when entropy is pushed back in favor of life. Yellow Lion
Sven This is where what's left of the canon gets voted off the island. See, in Golion, Sven (or rather, Shirogane Takashi) dies. He gets chopped down in cold-blood by Haggar (who was going after Lance, and Sven comes in and saves him and wow but that's loaded with innuendo) in the beginning-ish of the 1st season. Voltron, being TV-Y7, however, can't kill an actual person so instead he's 'gravely wounded' and rushed off to a medical planet to recover. Makes you wonder if it's really worth having a Doctor on Arus (Dr. Gorma) at all. But, Sven comes back (though in Golion it's actually his younger brother), after living in the Pit-of-Skulls for a while. He gets an implied relationship with Romelle, Allura's cousin and doppelg�nger, who's the princess of Pollux. Anyway, before Sven gets the axe we get to meet this cool, suave, dark-haired, dark-eyed Swede (and we know he's Swedish because he's got a really heavy Swedish accent). Seriously, Sven acts and looks like he should be the one in charge, not Keith. He pilots the Blue Lion (which is associated with Water) up until he gets killed, and Golion puts him around age 16. Yeah. Almost none of this applies to the Sven in my stories. Well, okay, some of it does. The very basics (Sven gets almost killed, lives in the Pit-of-Skulls) are the same, but that's it. Romelle? Romelle who? The way I see Sven is not the same as the suave man who should have been in charge had it not been for that nasty incident with a sword. Rather, Sven normally appears as a severely disturbed often-times homicidal maniac who would rather shoot you first, and then shoot your dog, and quite possibly your wife and kids before he even thinks about asking questions. Of course there's the nice, happy, sane side to Sven but that side doesn't get to come out and play as much as Psycho!Sven. But Sven isn't psychotic all the time. Actually, I see Sven as being an amalgamation of the other members of the VF. With an added hint of homicidal tendencies, of course. Anyway, Sven had no moral code, basically. He's like, oh, a chaotic good character (come on, don't tell me you've never played Dungeons and Dragons!). He'll do anything to uphold what he sees as the right thing. His sense of ethics is flexible to the extreme. He'll sacrifice his friend's without a moments hesitation. He'll kill, rape, plunder, burn, pirate and seduce his way through life without hesitation and without guilt. He doesn't really have a conscious. He'll do what he's told to do, if it agrees with what he sees as the right thing to do. But I think he can also be fairly loving and kind, so long as the situation is right. He too is an introvert, but not a tragic introvert like Keith. More like a brooding, thinking superior thoughts type introvert. He's good at casual relationships, and I think so long as his partner has the same ideology as him, he'd be great in a long term relationship. He's logical and linear like Pidge, and he's a hell of a seducer. He's smart too, probably too smart for his own good at times. But I don't think he's arrogant. He knows that he's good and he accepts it, like a fact of life. He is both passionate and passionless. He works with a dry, empirical view but he's driven by his desire to uphold the right thing. He is capable of love, but only in a sort of theoretical fashion. He works well with other people, and can persuade them to do what he wants, but he's not really part of the ebb and flow of humanity. He doesn't understand people like Lance and Keith (though Lance is more alien than Keith), who work and fret and sweat about a thousand insecurities, and yet he understands their psyches so well that he can pull their strings and make them dance. He works in his own way from his own angles. He understands his reasons, even if no one else does. He is transparent in his actions, but horrendously hidden in his motivations. He is a beautiful puzzle, an ice sculpture pretending to be human but with a core of fire. His depths are a puzzle even to me, and I'm writing him! Sven is hard to slash for me because of all these things. He's just so cool, so calm. He knows how to handle himself and I don't know quite how to write that. Oh, sure, Psycho!Sven is easy as hell to write, but writing Sven in a sympathetic light is much, much, much harder. I think of diamonds when I think of Sven. Beautiful, hard, and full of fragmented light. Blue Lion
Allura Now before you all start screaming about sacrilege and whatnot because I'm including Allura on a slash informational page, let me first explain why she's here. Like it or not, Allura is a member of the VF. And I do use her in fics. So, I figure I should write something for her. This'll be short and painless, I promise. So, Allura flies the Blue Lion (she took over for Sven), and is the Queen-to-be of Arus. She's also an irresponsible ditz, but I think that may be a requirement for inheriting the throne of Arus. Anyway, I believe that there's more to Allura than meets the eye. At least, I hope there's more to her. Working on that hope, the Allura in my fics tends to be less of a blond idiot and more of an intelligent, capable young woman. She's going to run a planet, so she might as well act like it. I'm going to make her as lawyer/politician like in mind set as I possibly can. She's turned vaguely homicidal underneath my hands, though. At least, she has when it comes to chibis. I think Allura suffers from the same problems as Pidge: she wants to be treated as an adult, but because of her war-torn life she also wants to remain a child for as long as she can. There. That wasn't so bad, now was it? Blue Lion, part deux
Lotor Last but not least, we have everyone's favorite blue-skinned baddie. Isn't he handsome? Unfortunately, Lotor has an ego the size of, well, I'm not sure what there is exactly that's big enough to describe Lotor's ego. Our favorite prince is arrogant as hell, and prone to losing when it comes to fighting Voltron. But, hey, that's what you get when you use robeasts instead of, say, a big-ass laser. Or maybe the entire Doom Armada. Voltron's good, but he's not that good. Lotor is not a character that I use with any particularly regularity. I try to maintain his dignity as much as possible, which tends to narrow the slash field, because the first thing to go with all the other characters is dignity. Keith and Sven are the only characters who don't mind having to share a bed with Lotor's ego. But Lotor isn't all ego. Sure, he's mostly ego, but the little bit that's left is filled with problems. If you've read my fics you know how much I like to make Keith an abuse victim of some form or another. Well, Lotor's already got all that abuse built in. I don't have to (potentially) violate canon to make him all angsty like. Unfortunately, even if he is hotter than the sun I can't think of too many conceivable ways to write him in a non-AU slash fic that doesn't have a plot hole the size of New Jersey and doesn't end in a lemon. So, for now, Lotor has been sitting on the side lines or playing the token bad guy or occasional plot hole. Hopefully, that'll change soon. I'm not quite sure how yet, but it'll happen. I have faith in Lotor's ego and libido. To see more pics you could check out the Wall of Shame which as the bonus of added commentary. Voltron

The Voltron Info Page

Welcome. I'm horrible at introducing pages (as you may have already noticed) so let's just jump right in here and get things started. This page is to bring you up-to-date (kind of) on the anime series known as "Voltron: Defender of the Universe" which is, basically, a rip-off by World Events Production of an older Japanese show known as "Golion" (copyright Toei Animation). Quite frankly, I'm not sure which title is worse. It's important to note that Golion (as many other '80's shows were) has a tie in to the idea of five elements: Earth, Fire, Water, Wood and Metal. As such, each lion represented each element and only when all the elements were in harmony would Voltron (the savior) come into being. Basically, Voltron was all about drilling into peoples heads the idea of becoming one with the Way (which is the purpose of Taoism). And you thought cartoons weren't educational.

Now, I place a caveat on the information given here because this was a show that first aired in the early-ish 1980's . I was barely out of diapers in the early '80's (which may give you an idea as to how young I am) and my parents were of the misguided belief that television rots the brain, so most of those wonderful '80's shows such as Transformers, Voltron, and Thundercats, I have only a passing recollection. All of my current knowledge of Voltron has been gleaned from reruns shown on Toonami and other fan-sites. Also, this is excluding anything that has to do with "Voltron: The Third Dimension" because, in my world, that show doesn't exist. Never happened. Hell, as most of you who do remember Voltron can tell, in my fics it's practically like the original show never existed.

Anyway, what I'm leading up to is that this is not the definitive Voltron informational page. In fact, this page is basically me rambling about the Voltron characters and how I would like to portray them. These are the thoughts that go through my mind when I'm writing fics. Also the less-than-main characters like Nanny, Coran, Haggar and Zarkon aren't going to get a little write up. Any actual information is entirely accidental.

Here's a basic run down of the series. In the world which this show inhabits, there are two major players in the inter-galactic politics of the known universe. There's the Galaxy Alliance which is a group of consolidated planets somewhat like the United Nations (only with more power than the UN). This Alliance has its own military force known as the Galaxy Garrison (GG), which apparently makes up 95% of the Alliance work force. The other major player is the Drule Empire, which doesn't particularly concern us. Rather, we're more concerned with an off-shoot of the Drule empire known as Planet Doom, which is basically a planet populated by robots/cyborgs who are trying to take over the universe. Yes, I know this is starting to sound like a bad rip-off of Star Trek.

Anyway, there are these five (male) space explorers sent by the GG to planet Arus in response to a distress signal (though lord knows if the GG was actually trying to help Arus they'd send something other than five boys in an unarmed space shuttle). The boys get captured by forces of Doom, then they escape, crash on Arus, find out about Voltron, Defender of the Universe (though how you can defend an infinite space, I'm not entirely sure) from Allura, who is the Princess of Arus and the only surviving member of the Arusian royalty.

Now it's important to note at this time that Voltron has only one real attack, and that's the Blazing Sword. Which is basically a sword made out of thin air that reduces robeasts to atomic slag. Why they don't whip that bad boy out at the beginning of the battle is somewhat beyond me.

And that's about it. Doom, which is 'governed' (and I use that term loosely) by King Zarkon (who looks like a lizard), his son Lotor (who doesn't look like a lizard) and Haggar, a witch (who is basically a cowl with eyes and a voice. Wizard of Oz, much?) sends Robeasts (magically enhanced biped mechs with more knick-knacks than a swiss army knife) to attack Arus, the Voltron Force (VF) forms Voltron, kicks ass and says some cheesy lines that roll right off the mind like water off of a duck's back. And now that you're been indoctrinated into the world of Voltron, let's meet the cast.

Keith

Keith is the leader of the Voltron Force, and given the rank of Captain by convention. Basically, he has black hair, black eyes, is, probably, of average height, and kind of on the skinny side. He's the token hot lead male. Generally, he's said to come from Earth, usually of Japanese descent, but I like to fight this convention. It's a slow, hard, subversive fight, and one which isn't making much progress, but I'm going to keep slugging away by golly! The show sets up an implied romantic relationship between Allura and Keith, but you can see just how closely I follow that piece of canon. Canon? Pff. Canon's for losers (well, actually, canon's for people who actually have some form of long term memory, but I like to think of my canon violations as premeditated things). In the Golion series, Keith was a named Kogane Akira (last name, first). His age in that series was given as 16. Anyway, Keith pilots Black Lion, which is the largest (I believe) Voltron lion, as well as the body/head of Voltron. Black Lion is associated with Metal, though you wouldn't really know it from the cartoon (looks more like it's associated with the Sky/stars like Touma from Ronin Warriors, or Electricity--y'know, needs that jolt of lighting to get moving). You know, I've always wondered if Keith can take manual control of the lions, because I'd imagine that it'd be damned hard to pilot Voltron when everybody is doing their own thing. I mean, imagine if Lance and Pidge had a fight (Lance and Pidge are the pilots of the lions who make up Voltron's arms) and instead of forming the Blazing Sword, they start arguing. What's Keith going to do? Be all: "If you two kids don't stop bickering right now I'm going to turn this robot around!"?

Anyway, I like to place Keith's age range in the mid-teenage (I think the youngest I've ever made him is sixteen) to mid-to-late twenty's (twenty-five plus). I think the max age I could give him would be thirty-five-ish, give or take a year or two. I don't think he'll ever be older than forty and that would be pushing it. I write Keith as a very introverted character (but I think most people do). Sure, he can be fun and loud (and obnoxious), but I think of him as a person who keeps his own counsel, and doesn't open up about what he considers his personal business (and defends that privacy like a tiger). I like to think that he has incredible problems expressing emotions--which leads to lovely angst for everyone. I like to think of him not as cold-hearted, but passionless (at least about some things). I (usually) write him as the consummate captain/leader: The team comes first. Their needs, and the needs of the many, before the needs of Keith and the needs of the few/the one. He also has blind spots and I think I may have turned him into a masochist. He's a perfectionist through and through, mostly because he's seeking approval of some form or another. I like to think he has a guilt complex the size of everest. But he mistrusts approval and praise, and hates drawing attention to himself. He's definitely not an idealist (or at least, most of the time he isn't), more like a pragmatist or even a fatalist. I think I may have killed him off one too many times. He lives by very few moral rules, but they're inflexible. Not to say that Keith can't have his fun. Being the introvert that he is, Keith tends to play low-key jokes, and his pranks tend to be very subliminal. I think about Keith a lot, about what he would do, how he acts and reacts. As such, he's the character most likely to throw in his own little comments into everything (as I'm sure you've noticed). Keith is also my personal stress reliever. Finals got you down? Give Keith a drug addiction! Can't cope with the roommates? Kill Keith off! Got writer's block? Make Keith an abuse victim! Feeling good about life? Give Keith a drug addiction, some form of a horrible disease, and then slash the love of his life with someone else!

Keith is also the o-neg of the Voltron slash, at least in my mind. He goes with everyone. Oh, sure, you could slash all of these boys with each other, but I think it works best with Keith. See, with Keith you have these wonderful relationships to play off of. Slash him with Lance to relieve the sexual tension that causes them to argue so much. Slash him with Sven and it's all about control. Slash him with Hunk when he needs to feel like a child. Slash him with Pidge when he needs to be looked up to. Slash him with Lotor to end the war. Hell, I could probably even slash him with Zarkon and Coran and make it work. Although because of this, I think Keith has actually become something of the team slut. Anyway, my biggest association with Keith is Taoism. I think that Keith is a follower of the Tao, or a follower of Zen Buddhism. Of course, I don't know too much about either philosophy, so I could be totally wrong, of course, but that's what I think.

Black Lion

Lance

Lance is the second-in-command by convention. He pilots the Red Lion, which is associated with Fire and makes up the right arm of Voltron. In the Golion series he's named Kurogane Isamu and placed at 17 years of age. He is the mischief maker of the group in the cartoon and generally the source of constant aggravation for Keith. He's impulsive, hot-headed, hot-tempered, and one of the best pilots (I believe). Convention puts him as Keith's oldest/best friend, perhaps as a means of explaining away the liberties he takes with Keith. He looks vaguely anorexic to me, and every time I look at him, I think maffia Don.

Lance is on par in age with Keith--in fact the two are almost equal in everything except personality. With Lance, I tend to agree with the canon. I write him as loud and obnoxious and impulsive. He acts before thinking, speaks before thinking, lives before thinking. But I like to see him as loyal as well, and just as private a person as Keith. Except instead of being defensive about his privacy like Keith, Lance takes the offense and lets the world know the superficial doings of his psyche. He has a hot temper, and is prone to passionate outbursts. I think that he falls in lust very easily, but never love. I think he could be very possessive. He's fickle and chaotic in my mind, working for the moment and not the overall plan. But I think that he is an idealist. He has a loose moral code, but he does have a moral code and I think that when push comes to shove over his heartfelt beliefs, he doesn't give ground. If it's something that he truly believes in, he will sacrifice everything that is secondary to that belief. I write Lance so that he uses humor to ease any situation. He doesn't deal well with serious issues, or with serious subjects, and can't stand tension. He doesn't hold a grudge well. Like Keith, he doesn't trust praise or compliments, and tends to laugh them off; he also has a huge guilt complex, but not one quite as large as Keith's. I think that he can be romantic, but he isn't that way very often. He fucks instead of "makes love" and I don't think he would give his partners cute nicknames. He wouldn't call someone baby in a romantic sense, or love, or really refer to his partners as lovers or boyfriends. He's very casual about his relationships, at least on the surface. But when he attaches to someone, he's like a lamprey. In the end, he's always looking out for himself, and it would take an apocalyptic even to get him to change that outlook. He'll die for his cause/belief/person (and yeah I know that's contradictory), but the cause has to be something so integral to himself and his make up that he couldn't live if that cause/belief/person died. I like Lance. I like him a lot. And it's not because he owns a kick-ass leather jacket. As such, Lance has gotten away light. He hasn't been tortured physically yet, and he doesn't really have to deal with as much angst as everyone else.

Lance is hard to slash. I mean, I could force him into a pairing with any of the guys, but he's kind of finicky who he sleeps with. Mostly, it's him and Keith (and aren't they a lovely pair). He is fire and heat and passion, but he's all this with a mind to back that passion up. He's smart, he's devious, he's and idealist (but not an optimist) and he's all about the carnal pleasures. He lives in this world, the world of the now and the present and the human. I think that he's the yin to Keith's yang, personally. I associate the sign of Gemini with him (and the myth of Gemini too).

Red Lion

Pidge

Canon wise, Pidge is usually represented as a younger boy, say twelve-ish. He's a computer whiz, from the now-destroyed planet Balto, has one brother (Chip of the Vehicle Voltron), and can communicate with the Space Mice. No, I will not be doing a profile of the Space Mice. Pidge is a science whiz, and adventuresome in that little-boy fashion. He pilots the Green Lion, Voltron's left arm, which is associated with Wood. In Golion he is known as Suzuishi Hiroshi and placed at age 12. This fact is not particularly conducive to slash.

Personally, I detest Canon-Pidge. Absolute hatred. Can't stand the boy. Which is why the Pidge I write is only passingly related to Canon-Pidge. There are several differences, mainly my Pidge is at least fifteen, preferably eighteen. True, there are times when he's a little younger (fourteen's the youngest I believe), but he's never slashed then. I agree with WEP that Pidge should be younger than the other boys but twelve is pushing it. Anyway, the other big difference is personality. My Pidge is rarely a child. He is devious and vaguely evil. He is a slave to logic, and okay, yes, a computer whiz. But you've gotta have someone who's good with computers. Pidge is a complex character for me. On the one hand, I like having someone who is a bit innocent, and who can act as the child, but Pidge is definitely not a child. There is no such thing as an innocent soldier, and Pidge (as they all are) is a soldier. I would like to write Pidge as stubborn and linear. Things are either ones or zeros, on or off, black or white. He doesn't really think in fuzzy terms, because he's too young/inexperienced to think in anything other than absolutes. Pidge isn't really a character I write, though, so he isn't as developed as I would like him to be. Mostly, I think he's the one who consistently acts like a teenager. Keith is the adult, Lance is the between-stages character (sometimes a teenager, sometimes an adult) and Pidge is the teenager. I think he's self-absorbed, and he's big on self-pity. I think if I wrote him more there would emerge a character who clings to childish behavior partially because it's forced on him by the others, but also because he doesn't want to be an adult, not really. He wants to be just like all the other boys his age, be normal, even though he can never be a 'normal' boy. He's very tragic, but he's aware of this tragedy. On the other hand, he's also playful and inquisitive, and decidedly adventuresome. He's devious in a good fashion, and curious--and he has the skills to put that curiosity to work. He'll face danger with many complaints, but he'll face it. He also models himself after Keith in a fashion. He'll let people in, but only a very few people. And when he's in real pain he keeps silent. He's disillusioned and cynical, but also heart-breakingly naive.

I think Pidge and Sven are wonderful together. I know the convention is to slash Pidge with Hunk, and I've done it, but I think Pidge and Sven are best together. I don't know why. I associate Pidge with hacking and computers. Ones and zeros.

Green Lion

Hunk

Hunk is the pilot of the Yellow Lion, which is voltron's left foot. In Golion, he is named Seidou Tsuyoshi and associated with Earth. He's placed at 18. Convention dictates that he comes from Earth as well. I think the trend now is that Hunk became friends with Keith, Lance and Sven in the Academy (the GG training facility). He's best friends with Pidge, and seems to have become the baby-sitter for the various and assorted village children that show up every so often in the series. In Voltron, he's the mechanic, the comic relief, the bottom-less pit, the slob, and the big cuddly bear. Basically, he's supposed to be the big-strong-dumb guy. Were he a deadly sin, he'd be a tie between gluttony and sloth. If you know other anime/manga series, he's like Genma from Ranma 1/2, except much more likeable and about ten times less devious.

Again, I don't like this guy (ie, canon-Hunk). Really, I don't. There is so much more to Hunk, there really is. Hunk, as I write him, hovers around omniscience. I think of him as the Big Picture guy, because he's the one who sees everybody's place in relationship to everybody else. He's the one who really knows whats going on with everyone. This is because he is the guy you go to if you want comfort. Yeah, okay, so I like to think of him as a big cuddly bear. He is easy to get along with, and easy to talk to, and he doesn't judge. That's the big thing. He doesn't judge. Everyone else, they judge. But Hunk doesn't. I like to think that he belongs to a large family (lots of brothers and sisters) and, while he wasn't the oldest, he was near the top of the age ladder. He's used to settling disputes, and used to picking up on the tensions of those around him. Were any of these boys to have empathic powers, I think Hunk would have them. He is like the earth in my mind, slow to anger but deadly once enraged--and sudden too. His anger comes without warning. But he isn't Zen Master. He's earthy and I mean that in every way--he tells dirty jokes, he can be a slob, he doesn't do to much higher thinking. He's not one to ponder the meaning of life. And he can be a glutton, and he can be lazy, and he is very, very, very human. He doesn't try to be anything but human. He shows his emotions openly, lets everyone know what he's thinking. He's expressive and doesn't keep many things a secret--unless those things would disrupt the harmony of the team. Then he keeps secrets. The other big thing I like to do with Hunk his give him artificial augmentations (re: make him a cyborg). Yeah. I find mechs sexy. Don't you? Anyway, yeah, Hunk is sexy. And Hunk in pain is sexy. It's easy to hurt him, to twist his emotions, to use his character against him. I think that he's one of those rare exceptions to war. No matter what he sees, no matter what he does, he will still be the same guy who went into that battle. He will still be open about his emotions and motives, and he'll always wear his heart on his sleeve. He isn't innocent--definitely not an innocent. And he isn't an optimist. But he believes in the inherent goodness of others, and it hurts him to see that belief belied. He's a trusting soul, and this is what inspires others to trust him. I place him older than the Golion people, usually. He's definitely older than Keith and Lance. And he's content with who he is and what he is. He doesn't strive to be something else, or conform to what others think about him. He knows that he isn't the smartest person in the world, and he knows that he isn't the best pilot or the best human being. He knows he has faults and he accepts that, generally. He knows what he's good at (mechanics) and he'll know that no matter what happens.

As I said earlier, convention dictates that Hunk and Pidge should be slashed. I don't like that pairing too much. Sure, it works, but most pairings with Hunk work. The only one that I think the hardest to pull off would be Hunk and Lance, because they don't jive in my mind. Hunk would probably get really annoyed with Lance's flippant attitude towards relationships. My favorite Hunk pairing is Hunk and Keith--especially angsty Hunk and Keith. Have I mentioned just how sexy it is to see these boys suffering from emotional pain? I don't know what I associate Hunk with. Probably spring time, when entropy is pushed back in favor of life.

Yellow Lion

Sven

This is where what's left of the canon gets voted off the island. See, in Golion, Sven (or rather, Shirogane Takashi) dies. He gets chopped down in cold-blood by Haggar (who was going after Lance, and Sven comes in and saves him and wow but that's loaded with innuendo) in the beginning-ish of the 1st season. Voltron, being TV-Y7, however, can't kill an actual person so instead he's 'gravely wounded' and rushed off to a medical planet to recover. Makes you wonder if it's really worth having a Doctor on Arus (Dr. Gorma) at all. But, Sven comes back (though in Golion it's actually his younger brother), after living in the Pit-of-Skulls for a while. He gets an implied relationship with Romelle, Allura's cousin and doppelg�nger, who's the princess of Pollux. Anyway, before Sven gets the axe we get to meet this cool, suave, dark-haired, dark-eyed Swede (and we know he's Swedish because he's got a really heavy Swedish accent). Seriously, Sven acts and looks like he should be the one in charge, not Keith. He pilots the Blue Lion (which is associated with Water) up until he gets killed, and Golion puts him around age 16.

Yeah. Almost none of this applies to the Sven in my stories. Well, okay, some of it does. The very basics (Sven gets almost killed, lives in the Pit-of-Skulls) are the same, but that's it. Romelle? Romelle who? The way I see Sven is not the same as the suave man who should have been in charge had it not been for that nasty incident with a sword. Rather, Sven normally appears as a severely disturbed often-times homicidal maniac who would rather shoot you first, and then shoot your dog, and quite possibly your wife and kids before he even thinks about asking questions. Of course there's the nice, happy, sane side to Sven but that side doesn't get to come out and play as much as Psycho!Sven. But Sven isn't psychotic all the time. Actually, I see Sven as being an amalgamation of the other members of the VF. With an added hint of homicidal tendencies, of course. Anyway, Sven had no moral code, basically. He's like, oh, a chaotic good character (come on, don't tell me you've never played Dungeons and Dragons!). He'll do anything to uphold what he sees as the right thing. His sense of ethics is flexible to the extreme. He'll sacrifice his friend's without a moments hesitation. He'll kill, rape, plunder, burn, pirate and seduce his way through life without hesitation and without guilt. He doesn't really have a conscious. He'll do what he's told to do, if it agrees with what he sees as the right thing to do. But I think he can also be fairly loving and kind, so long as the situation is right. He too is an introvert, but not a tragic introvert like Keith. More like a brooding, thinking superior thoughts type introvert. He's good at casual relationships, and I think so long as his partner has the same ideology as him, he'd be great in a long term relationship. He's logical and linear like Pidge, and he's a hell of a seducer. He's smart too, probably too smart for his own good at times. But I don't think he's arrogant. He knows that he's good and he accepts it, like a fact of life. He is both passionate and passionless. He works with a dry, empirical view but he's driven by his desire to uphold the right thing. He is capable of love, but only in a sort of theoretical fashion. He works well with other people, and can persuade them to do what he wants, but he's not really part of the ebb and flow of humanity. He doesn't understand people like Lance and Keith (though Lance is more alien than Keith), who work and fret and sweat about a thousand insecurities, and yet he understands their psyches so well that he can pull their strings and make them dance. He works in his own way from his own angles. He understands his reasons, even if no one else does. He is transparent in his actions, but horrendously hidden in his motivations. He is a beautiful puzzle, an ice sculpture pretending to be human but with a core of fire. His depths are a puzzle even to me, and I'm writing him!

Sven is hard to slash for me because of all these things. He's just so cool, so calm. He knows how to handle himself and I don't know quite how to write that. Oh, sure, Psycho!Sven is easy as hell to write, but writing Sven in a sympathetic light is much, much, much harder. I think of diamonds when I think of Sven. Beautiful, hard, and full of fragmented light.

Blue Lion

Allura

Now before you all start screaming about sacrilege and whatnot because I'm including Allura on a slash informational page, let me first explain why she's here. Like it or not, Allura is a member of the VF. And I do use her in fics. So, I figure I should write something for her. This'll be short and painless, I promise.

So, Allura flies the Blue Lion (she took over for Sven), and is the Queen-to-be of Arus. She's also an irresponsible ditz, but I think that may be a requirement for inheriting the throne of Arus. Anyway, I believe that there's more to Allura than meets the eye. At least, I hope there's more to her. Working on that hope, the Allura in my fics tends to be less of a blond idiot and more of an intelligent, capable young woman. She's going to run a planet, so she might as well act like it. I'm going to make her as lawyer/politician like in mind set as I possibly can. She's turned vaguely homicidal underneath my hands, though. At least, she has when it comes to chibis. I think Allura suffers from the same problems as Pidge: she wants to be treated as an adult, but because of her war-torn life she also wants to remain a child for as long as she can.

There. That wasn't so bad, now was it?

Blue Lion, part deux

Lotor

Last but not least, we have everyone's favorite blue-skinned baddie. Isn't he handsome? Unfortunately, Lotor has an ego the size of, well, I'm not sure what there is exactly that's big enough to describe Lotor's ego. Our favorite prince is arrogant as hell, and prone to losing when it comes to fighting Voltron. But, hey, that's what you get when you use robeasts instead of, say, a big-ass laser. Or maybe the entire Doom Armada. Voltron's good, but he's not that good.

Lotor is not a character that I use with any particularly regularity. I try to maintain his dignity as much as possible, which tends to narrow the slash field, because the first thing to go with all the other characters is dignity. Keith and Sven are the only characters who don't mind having to share a bed with Lotor's ego. But Lotor isn't all ego. Sure, he's mostly ego, but the little bit that's left is filled with problems. If you've read my fics you know how much I like to make Keith an abuse victim of some form or another. Well, Lotor's already got all that abuse built in. I don't have to (potentially) violate canon to make him all angsty like. Unfortunately, even if he is hotter than the sun I can't think of too many conceivable ways to write him in a non-AU slash fic that doesn't have a plot hole the size of New Jersey and doesn't end in a lemon. So, for now, Lotor has been sitting on the side lines or playing the token bad guy or occasional plot hole. Hopefully, that'll change soon. I'm not quite sure how yet, but it'll happen. I have faith in Lotor's ego and libido.

To see more pics you could check out the Wall of Shame which as the bonus of added commentary.
Voltron