ANIMATED INSIGHTS BY SHANNON MUIR – now called SHANNON MUIR’S ANIMATED INSIGHTS – takes you inside Shannon’s latest reflections on her passion for animation as a medium, and other animated insights about life. To catch up on all posts, check out the Animated Insights portion of the website!
I know it has a been a while since I posted. This summer and fall of 2024 have been extremely active, not only with school but with many things of a personal nature. One of the biggest involved my father moving out of the family home that had been ours for 39 years, in the town where our family lived for 40 years. Coming there is about the same time period that I became interested in animation more than something I watched after school. As someone reminded me, middle school was the age where people tended to get teased or ostracized at that age if this was still an area of interest, back then anyway. I tend to forget that because of how my life turned out, but in the beginning, it was very much like that. Actually, I wasn’t popular as far back as elementary school (when we lived elsewhere), to the point where somehow it considered acceptable to call on me on stage at the 6th grade graduation assembly and but a well-decorated paper bag over my head when I was considered Shyest in the grade. So, when I first I moved, getting treated the same way didn’t surprise me.
However, something happened to me that would change that. My sister had some creative ideas for an animated show we both liked called VOLTRON, and I would collaborate with her, among those creations a character who embodied all the traits I wish I had – the confidence and compassion primarily. Like me, she had dark hair and eyes. Her outfit of a brown pullover hooded sweater, blue t-shirt, blue pants, and tall white boots was modeled after clothes in my own closet (the white boots were some of my mother’s old boots I pulled out of the closet). I wish I’d had a picture of that, because it is the closest I’ve ever come to cosplay in my life. I was my own model for the drawings we would send along to World Events Productions because we found out others had (but I would never in my life call myself an artist).
I’ve told parts of the story elsewhere – and in depth at this year’s VOLTCON in a solo panel – of what the impact of sending that writing and the drawings was on my life professionally. What I have never really discussed is how it changed my life personally. Once people knew that Marc Handler had written back to me (something I occasionally had to prove by sharing the letter; my lesson to share here is to get permission before you do something like that), how I was treated by other students changed. It didn’t make me popular, but people stopped giving me a hard time. It put me on the road that would have me attending Eastern Washington University half-time in my senior year of high school, and ultimately my professional path.
That’s not to say it was all an improvement. What happened after VOLTRON had some unanticipated side effects. As I was slowly finding confidence on my own, there were some instructors taking credit for my success. I did have to deal with the fallout of disappointment when I wasn’t doing what was expected of me. What I learned from this is that sometimes your idols can disappoint you.
Bear in mind everything I am describing to you was before I turned 18 years old.
I did a panel at VOLTCON 2024 called “VOLTRON HISTORY FROM THE ARCHIVES”. Using press from the time quoting Executive Producer Peter Keefe, intertwined with the work my sister and I had done as a supporting example of the fan submissions Peter Keefe would have received at the time, I did my best to lay out a series of facts for people to consider and determine the answers. I did not want to interject my own opinions aloud in order to minimize bias; total removal of bias in this situation I think is impossible. Mentally, though I’d gone through various scenarios for that speech in my head, I hadn’t anticipated how emotional it would be. As soon I was talking about the first version of the now well-known Starmap collaboration between myself and World Events Productions and the sentence “I made it for her” came out of my mouth, I knew I would end up talking both logic and emotion and struggle to keep the balance .To be completely honest, that’s the only moment I still remember with clarity. It was recorded for me, but I have not seen it as I am writing this, and I am glad I haven’t yet. I hope to do so at some point.
One question that was raised (but has no clear answer despite asking around of surviving production personnel) by the panel is if a character in the 1985 episode “The Traitor” was influenced in any way by the character description, drawing, and scenario that my sister and I sent in much earlier that year. I am saying now, as I did then, that there is no clear answer. Marc Handler was directed by the now-deceased Peter Keefe. There is also no telling what was directly shared with the overseas animation team.
And for myself personally, there is only one reason it matters, and in some ways bothers me now that I will never know.
As I said, the character I created was very heavily modeled on myself physically, and embodied who I wanted to be.
Getting feedback from Marc Handler that was positive on those stories inspired me to become better at a craft I enjoyed, possibly subconsciously motivated that maybe someday the chance would come to do what I had not been able to do years earlier, especially when my life would keep intersecting with the VOLTRON property even when I didn’t seek it out (WEP contacting me about the Starmap, the LET’S VOLTRON PODCAST reaching out to me).
But what if that part of me was chasing something that had been there the whole time… Omnia?
That suddenly dumps the nearly last forty years on its head.
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a bit of sadness about not reaching this particular dream, even after so long. That’s not to say I didn’t have others in that period of time that didn’t happen. But for this specific instance, the impact is long lived. However, I have gotten by in life believing in the slimmest of chances.
I guess I feel more free to talk about it now for several reasons. The large changes in the animation industry is part of that. However, I think the largest is that the VOLTRON vision is taking its place in the zeitgeist on the live-action stage. This will be the way a whole new generation knows the deep resonating themes of teamwork that have survived the last forty years.
I don’t know my place in this new world of the fandom. As I said at VOLTCON, I thought the doors closed once before in 2011. It was the LET’S VOLTRON PODCAST that gave me a second chance at being involved, and I have been grateful for every second. I did my panel this year not only because of it being a series anniversary year, but because the time finally felt right with things moving over to the live-action film, more a reality now than it has ever been.
Again, I remain grateful for all the experiences I have had and all the people I have gotten to know on this path… and hoping it does not end here, though I don’t know what comes next up ahead.