Red and Blue make Purple

scrawlers

I want to make a long post on this, but I’m not sure I can phrase everything coherently at the moment, so for right now I’m going to make a short post and say this:

For Lotor, “victory or death” means something different than it means to most everyone else in the Empire.

For pretty much everyone in the Empire, “victory or death” is a battle cry. It pumps them up. It motivates them. It comes from a place of honor, pride, and aggression. For them, “victory or death” means that victory is worth dying for, that they would rather die than face failure.

For Lotor, “victory or death” is a survival mantra. He has spent pretty much his entire life being persecuted and threatened by everyone, including and especially his own parents. He has spent his life with his back against the wall. We’ve seen marked hypervigilance in him as a result of this (how he not only checks, but double checks to see if he’s being tracked), and we’ve also seen how he listens to Empire transmissions from fighters that are actively trying to hunt him down and murder him with the same calm resignation that one would have when listening to an evening news report. By this point in his life, Lotor has learned that if a fight does not end on his terms, then it will end in his death. If he wins, then he sets the terms. He can decide who lives and who dies (and if you look at his canonical track record, he usually lets everyone live, even if he banishes them to a worthless outpost in the Ulippa System because they’re backstabbing, racist fucks). But if he loses, that choice is taken from him. If he loses—

—he dies.

(Yes, he ended up surviving and winning this one, once the Paladins intervened. But before they did, he had lost, and Zarkon was going to kill him, and he knew this, even though he tried to talk his way out of it.)

For Lotor, “victory or death” is a survival mantra. He tells himself that he has to win because if he does not, he will die. It’s not that victory is worth dying for. It’s that victory is the only thing keeping him alive. Even if he wins by the skin of his teeth, barely escaping and only managing because he flies along the surface of a sun, a win is a win. He’s still alive to fight another day. That is good enough for him.

The White Lion attacked him. Repeatedly. It attacked him immediately upon his arrival, and he was thrown clear across the battlefield not unlike when he fought Zarkon. It attacked him a second time—pinned him, actually—and still Lotor did not draw a weapon, he just held the jaws apart so he wouldn’t be mauled and said that he wouldn’t yield, that he sought the Lion’s secrets. Once again he was thrown back, and once again the Lion attacked, and seeing that the Lion was going to keep attacking, that this was a fight, that he had to win somehow or else he would die, Lotor’s survival instinct kicked in, and he opted to not die by winning the fight instead. Was it the right answer? No. This particular bout had a different win condition. But Lotor, who has spent his entire life being persecuted by pretty much everyone, fell back on a survival mantra that has kept him alive—even if just barely at times—for all these years.

Yes, he shouted “victory or death.” But it doesn’t mean to him what it means to the rest of those in the Empire, because they haven’t lived the kind of life he has.

It’s something I think is worth thinking about.

(Note: Not a single word of Lotor hate will be tolerated on this post. If you feel the need to hate Lotor for whatever godforsaken reason, do so on your own, separate post, not on this one, or I’ll just block you straight up, thanks.)

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.