the tl;cr meme

[leicesters]

the tl;dr character relationships meme

It's exactly what it sounds like! tl;dr about your character and their current relationships with others in game, or use it as a sounding board to talk about how potential cr might go down in future.

steps:
1. leave a toplevel with your character's name
2. comment to others' toplevels with the character relationship(s) you'd like them to tl;dr about
3. reply to their response with your own characters' thoughts on the cr!
4. gush/commiserate/poke fun at/meme on all our dumb characters and their dumb interactions idk
5. feel free to use the responses to throw together a cr chart, or link one if you already have one!

Comments

Princess Allura | Voltron: Legendary Defender

[patchricide]

[heartlessswordsman]

/sneaks this in at work heyoooooooo

[patchricide]

The more we get into their CR, the more I like it, and not just because playing off any of your characters is always rad.

With the whole war setup, Voltron's major players are all very clearly marked as "good guys" and "bad guys" — and as a result, Allura in particular tends to surround herself with a lot of righteous types. (Like, I think the most unlawful one is Pidge, and outside of stealing snacks a lot of her actions still come across as justified for some reason or another.) Zelgadis, on the other hand, is someone who clearly doesn't fit into that dichotomy, and I think that confuses Allura. But, like, in a healthy way.

Her mindset is way more black and white than she realizes, and it can give her a cruelty that doesn't match the rest of her character — something touched on briefly in her canon when she was 100% ready to disown Keith after learning he had some Galra blood. And yeah, it eventually resolved on its own because racism is bad and friendship is good, but the fact that it was so easy for Keith to be 'tainted' in her eyes speaks to that lack of grays in her worldview. And it goes the other way, too — it's one of the reasons she was easily duped by Lotor as soon as he put a pause in his war crimes and started acting like he was a good boy all along. And it affects more than her relationships: It sometimes gives her actions shades of "the ends justify the means", like when she let an eldritch entity nest in her head for the sake of intel.

So yeah, interacting with Zel, who is refusing to stay on either side of the line? It's weird to her. It might seem like Allura's opinion of him is going to keep bouncing up and down, based mostly on whatever he did last, almost like she's only working off short-term memory. But he's earned her respect — and I hope he keeps it, because it's going to help her learn how to be on good terms with someone even when you disagree with what they're doing.

[forgeabettertomorrow]

[patchricide]

Where to even start?

So, first and foremost: Yeah, by this point Allura has a thing for him. Because he's very attractive when he tries to be, both in terms of looks and personality, but more than that... he's shown he has a good and heroic heart, whether or not he actually believes it. And that's the most attractive thing about him, the substance behind the surface appeal, and the loveable part that still shines through even at his worst.

If he were actively pursuing her, then honestly, they would probably be in a relationship by now. But he's not, and she's not even considering the possibility on her own side. Honestly, she probably judges herself for being interested in him at this point, since it seems more superficial than it ought to be — it wasn't that long ago that they would clash over everything, was it? — and thus doesn't fit into her expectations for herself in the slightest. Right now, that's the biggest thing that keeps her from being completely comfortable around him.

It's not the only thing, though. As much as I love to rag on Allura for her reckless martyrdom, standing on the battlefield and helping others is actually when she's feeling her best and self-actualized — and it's off the battlefield, when she should be recovering, that she feels like she's not doing enough and starts pushing herself in unhealthy ways. So, ironically, when Darin tells her "hey stop doing so much and take care of yourself," part of her feels as though it must be because she's still not good enough, that she should be strong enough that others won't need to worry about her... and she starts feeling like she ought to be doing more.

She'll get better, I promise. A big part of it will be focusing less on her actions, and more on the feelings that have been driving them.