listen…listen…why are we all fighting about ships? there’s more that connects us than tears us apart. we are, all of us in the voltron fandom, rooting for the aliens to bang the humans and life gets that much better when we’re all able to acknowledge that.
“Her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders … A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy’s eyes.”
A while ago I ran a poll on which LOTR scene I should make a print of, and this was the result! Thanks to everyone who voted <3
for your hospital story: keith being the last one to wake up, and shiro being d i s t r a u t. (also: keith being the last one to be FOUND, and shiro being d e s p e r a t e) ((also also: bless you and everything you do for this fandom <3))
Shiro doesn’t find out
about the Lions until later, until Atlas is detransformed and parked and that
turns out to be an ordeal all its own, one that occupies him for hours.
Piloting Atlas takes as much from him as the Black Lion did—more, in some ways,
but it gives, too. By the time they’re back on solid ground, Shiro is exhausted
down to his bones and alive like he hasn’t been in years.
He needs it. That
energy, that faith, that confidence are all that get him through the next two
days. That’s how long it takes them to dig Keith out of his Lion.
i’m getting a little weary of seeing posts talking about how it’s homophobic that shiro has suffered in the show, because i feel like y’all really aren’t seeing the big picture here. this is not the example of “bury or torture your gays” that you guys believe it to be.
for one, i think it’s really important to remember that shiro is not the only character that has suffered. he is not the only character who has been ‘brutalized’ as so many posts have described it. have his issues been more overt lately? yes, of course. because that was a plot arc. but remember that the others have suffered, even if perhaps not AS MUCH as shiro.
allura has lost her entire civilization, her father died at the hands of a former friend, she literally woke up from a 10,000 year sleep still reaching out for him. she thought she had found an ally and companion in lotor, only to realize that he had brutalized what few remained of her people for CENTURIES.
coran lost everyone he loved, he watched a family he’d loved perish, he watched as the sole surviving daughter suffered that loss. he has suffered and stayed strong through it all.
keith has lived a life of solitude without his family, losing his father at a young age (and as someone who lost their father at about the same age as keith, i can tell you that this is absolutely emotionally brutal). he believed his mother had abandoned him. and he’s had to see the person he cares for and loves most suffer through a war. he literally had to fight the person he cares for and loves most in hand to hand combat. he literally accepted that he was going to die too if shiro was going to die, and was okay with that. if that isn’t suffering, i don’t know what is.
they’ve come near death - lance practically died until allura brought him back (as she did for shiro as well!).
pidge lost her father and brother for years, and was the only person who believed they were alive. also she’s a CHILD in the middle of a fucking intergalactic war. sam and matt holt SUFFERED at the hands of the galra too. they were brutalized too. matt became a rebel fighter, in tons of dangerous situations, because of this. but we don’t see as much of the suffering because they aren’t our protags.
hunk’s family too! hunk’s family was imprisoned by the galra, and he couldn’t do anything about it! he came home, and his family was gone. he came home expecting to see them, and they weren’t there because his enemy had gotten to them first. that’s suffering.
look, i get it, the last couple seasons have had a lot of focus on shiro and what he has gone through, but that is mostly because it’s been relevant to the primary plot.
you guys are also so focused on the fact that adam died that you can’t see the bigger picture. adam died along side tons of other fighters, straight, lgbt, or otherwise. but adam was never meant to be the rep. it was shiro. shiro is the rep. and before you scream at me that well, he’s gay and he’s suffered, i want you to remember what that suffering means in the bigger context of the show. it’s not pointless suffering, and he’s not the only one suffering.
has shiro suffered? of course. as have all the paladins. but you know what shiro has also done that is literally REVOLUTIONARY to LGBT characters in mainstream media? HE HAS SURVIVED. just last week, happy posts were going around about how there should be a reversal of the ‘bury your gays’ post, where a gay character is just impossible to kill, and shiro was always mentioned. because YES. that’s IT. he’s literally flipped ‘bury your gays’ on its head! why are y’all forgetting that now??
he has suffered and he has made it through EVERY FUCKING TIME. he has endured trials and tribulations, while always coming through those trials, always surviving, always coming out stronger, always excelling.
y’all are so so focused on his hardships that you forget that they have written him, not to suffer, but to SURVIVE.
this is not “bury your gays”, this is “your gays will not be fucking stopped”
i really had to get that off my chest. thanks for coming to my ted talk.
When Shiro rounds the corner of one of the garrison’s
winding corridors, Keith is waiting for him.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Keith tells him, leaning against
the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Shiro gets the sense Keith was
aiming for casual but there’s a tension in his frame that Shiro recognizes instantly.
“Want to tell me why?”
And that was Keith, wasn’t it. Straight to the point.
“Keith,” Shiro sighs and runs a hand over the back of his
neck. He’s tired. It’s been a long day, meeting after meeting with the other
leaders, trying to make sense of how they were going to fight back. He doesn’t want
to get into this now. “It’s late.”
“So?” Keith unpeels himself from the wall and stalks towards
him. The glint in his eye makes Shiro wary.
“So, I’m tired and I want to get some sleep.”
A flicker of concern crosses Keith’s face and Shiro feels vaguely
guilty for playing on it. He knows Keith’s been watching him like a hawk since
Allura had placed his essence back into this body. He’s mostly recovered now,
but he’s still tired. And Keith is right,
Shiro has been avoiding him.
“You okay?” Keith finally asks him. He’s taken his hands
away from his chest and shoved them in his pockets instead. His shoulders hunch
a little.
“Fine,” Shiro rushes to assure him, to brush it off. “Just
tired like I said. It’s been a long day.”
He starts walking again, down the quiet halls towards his
quarters and Keith falls into step beside him. He slides Keith a glance.
“Shouldn’t you be getting some rest too? You have that mission tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” Keith shrugs. They walk in silence for a few
moments longer, until the door to Shiro’s assigned quarters loom ahead. “Is that the only reason you’re avoiding me?”
He doesn’t quite recognize the tendril that curls around
Keith’s words. It sounds faintly like hurt, or maybe a quiet resignation and it
hits Shiro hard. It’s hard to reconcile, he doesn’t know what to make of it,
and as much as he wants to take Keith and scrub it away… Well, what can they do
anyway? There’s a war to fight and it wasn’t about them.
“I’m not avoiding you,” Shiro says mildly but even he can
hear the lie in his voice. He busies himself by fishing his access card out of
his uniform pocket and swiping it across the door panel. The door swipes open with a low hiss and
Keith follows him inside without breaking his stride.
“Yes. You are,” Keith says once they’re sealed inside. The barracks
are underground in this portion of the base, dimly lit and stuffy but it’s painfully
familiar. Keith hovers by the doorway. “Are
you… is this about Black? Are you mad at us-“
“What? No. No, of course not.”
Silence falls between them.
“Then what?” Keith demands. He doesn’t move from his position
at the doorway, ready to make a hasty retreat… or maybe to block Shiro’s own
exit. Shiro feels a bit like he wants to
run right now. He’s not ready for this. He’s not ready to face the way his
feelings for Keith have changed. He’s not ready to admit how only sadness and
regret remained when he stood at the memorial and traced his fingers over
Adam’s face. He’d loved Adam, he truly did once, but the memory of that love
feels pale and soft under the sheer raw emotion that he feels for Keith now.
And what could they even do about it? With Sendak lurking in
orbit, fighting for their lives, for their planet’s very existence, what could
confessing his feelings really achieve but serve as a distraction for Keith.
Shiro wasn’t going to put that on him.
