So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.
So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.
So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.
This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner.
So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.
The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.
The next time a guy says, “What? You don't want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.
Where does this notion that Zarkon and Honerva were "good" before they went into the rift come from? Like, Zarkon is always talking about power and I think glory for the Galra empire, and Honerva was already obsessed with getting everything she could out of the rift. Like, yeah coming back as quintessence zombies probably does stuff to you, but I don't get this idea that things were fine with them before they died like you don't seem to?
I guess part of it is maybe the fact that so much of s3e7 was a love story? Genuine, reciprocated love and devotion is… a weird thing we’re not used to seeing in villains since it’s all too common in works of fiction to go “This person is a bad person so they’re not allowed to have any wholesome or seemingly wholesome relationships.”
But I mean… Zarkon and Honerva so easily come to adore each other because, frankly, they’re both very ambitious people who never really had that many restraints about getting what they wanted. That strength of will, that hunger for power, and the fact that they had so much to offer each other- Zarkon’s resources and powerful political standing, Honerva’s bleeding-edge research and brilliant mind- drew them together.
They bonded the way people tend to bond- over finding common ground. And it just sorta comes back to, they enabled each other in incredibly dangerous ways.
Every time Alfor goes “hey, maybe this is bad, I don’t know if we should be pushing quite so far with this research, there are obvious consequences”- he talks to Honerva, but Zarkon intercedes- he either goes to stand behind his wife, or shouts Alfor down.
And part of it is how we hear people like Coran discussing it- how, I think everyone wants to kind of ameliorate their personal guilt that they didn’t see Zarkon and Honerva for bad apples before everything went too far. They want to separate the people they used to call friends, that Alfor presented his infant daughter to, that Allura may have known like a surrogate uncle for most of her life, from who they became, even when the seeds of that person were always there.
They were always ambitious. They were always cold. And in Zarkon’s case… he was never a person who could actually let go of people. We see it with Alfor, we see it with Honerva, we see it with the Black Lion.
Zarkon was not a white knight in shining armor who was consumed by darkness. He was a deeply flawed antihero and when met with someone who was his match in every way, the two of them spiraled downward, fast.
And I personally kinda resent the quintessence being framed as a scapegoat, especially when the writers have said that it more amplifies what’s already inside of you- and we see nothing corrupting about Voltron, that’s pure energy itself, and another entity born of the rift.
Especially because Honerva may have been overexposed, but Zarkon? Zarkon wasn’t exposed until his helmet broke in the rift. Every step he took down that path was his own. The only part you can possibly contest- his behavior after death- is consistent with who he was before.
keith being so scared to break is the most heartbreaking thing to me. notice the way he hides his face with his hand when he’s about to crumble. how after his outburst and apologies he avoids direct eye contact with the camera on and off throughout the rest of the video. he’s trying so hard to stay composed. this is the same boy who fought countless members of the BOM and didn’t cry once, but being alone and talking himself into a corner, unwrapping himself even though it’s just for him… it’s too much for him. and that tbh.. speaks volumes for his character
me before keith's vlog:
man i hope we get to meet keith's mom soon so we can see how cool and badass she is
me after keith's vlog:
man i hope we get to meet keith's mom soon so wE CAN SQUARE TF UP!! WTH WHY DID YOU HURT MY BOY LIKE THAT NOT IN THIS GALAXY YOU DON'T HE'S MY SON NOW
Towards the end of Lance’s vlog Lance is gonna slip up and reveal he does remember the bonding moment and we’re just gonna hear Keith in the background yell “I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU DIDNT REMEMBER” at which point the camera falls over as Lance runs away
Advice to young fans and young fandoms: You don’t have to let creator Q&A reveals of “canon” spoil your fun with fanfic and fan art. You’ll be a lot happier in the long run if you don’t give in to the idea that you have to retcon all your fan works and tear down blog posts about your headcanons every time a creator lets slip some “fact” online or at a convention.
Creator reveals aren’t canon unless they happen in the actual work. “Word of God” and “Canon” are separate categories.
(And I say this as someone whose actual religious tradition involves venerating both of those things and still considering them separate categories.)
It doesn’t count until it sees print/is given official screen time.
I would take it one step further and say even if it does happen in canon, it doesn’t have to ruin your fun. If you really care, mark your fic as canon AU. But there are few enough works that the canon itself stays consistent for its entire run; you don’t have to commit to the most recent version.
Don’t think of canon as the foundation you build on, that can be knocked out from under you. It’s the soil you’re planting in, and once your garden is growing, you can afford to throw away some of the rocks getting in the way of what you’re creating.
