kittyrossa:

sometimes, fandom plays a game of telephone: fanon characterizations become so widespread that canon characterizations get lost in the chaos. this only increases when there are half-year gaps between new seasons, as that allows a lot of time for fanon to overshadow canon.

canon!keith is super overshadowed by fanon!keith. i’m going to clarify that, because i know some people may misread it as “yet another keith stan who can’t handle fandom talking about keith’s flaws.” that’s not what’s happening here. there is a difference between “let’s talk about keith’s flaws as they actually are in canon!” and “let’s act like fanon interpretations are 100% canon.”

keith is, without a doubt, one of the more guarded characters, which means he’s bound to be misinterpreted not only by fandom, but by the other characters! and that results in people taking those misinterpretations as fact instead of trying to unpack keith on their own. this skyrocketed after S2, because people had expected the galra!keith reveal to involve every character’s reaction. and when that didn’t happen, people were disappointed, because that’s what they’d been most looking forward to from the storyline.

and that’s fine! i’m not saying you can’t still want to see those reactions. but again, when there’s so much interest in How People Interpret Keith, there’s less interest in Interpreting Actual Keith.

since S2, fanon has watered keith down to a hotheaded emo who:

• doesn’t care about being a team
• doesn’t care about his teammates
• only cares about himself and maybe shiro and is only ever out for himself and maybe shiro, ironically painting keith as the unfeeling monster all of that fanon galra!keith stuff argued against

it’s — frustrating. so if you’re up for it, i want to delve into keith’s canon characterizations in S1 and S2, and why S2 is literally about how much he cares for others + wants to connect to them and protect them! keith’s flaw is that he doesn’t always communicate that in ways that everyone understands, and that’s 100% something he’s going to have to work on. but S2 does show him willing to put in that work, even if there’s still more work to be done. and if you’re interpreting him from the baseline that he doesn’t care at all, you’re already missing half of his development.

i’m taking a detour back to S1 because some of the anti-S2!keith sentiment is like “S1!keith would never, i don’t know S2!keith, i only know S1!keith” when S1 actually sets up everything that S2!keith is and then has S2 challenge him on it, strengthen it, and hone it. in other words, it’s a basic character arc.

keith is Super Serious about being a paladin of voltron and has been from day one!

• in the first ever episode, the team argues about whether they should stay and face sendak, or leave via wormhole. hunk and lance are on Team We’re Leaving and pidge and keith are on Team We’re Staying; pidge, specifically, says that the galra will capture more prisoners if they don’t stop them, and the audience and the characters eventually learn that she’s thinking of her own imprisoned family. keith does not have a comparable personal motive, which is made very clear when pidge shifts to Team I’m Leaving (to Find My Family) a few episodes later:

keith: you can’t leave!

pidge: you can’t tell me what to do!

keith: if you leave — we can’t form voltron. and that means we can’t defend the universe against zarkon. you’re not the only one with a family! all these arusians have families, everyone in the universe has families … you’re putting the lives of two people over the lives of everyone else in the entire galaxy —

shiro: keith! that’s not how a team works. people have to want to be a part of it, they can’t be forced.

• shiro understands that this isn’t keith being an unfeeling monster: it’s keith wanting his teammates to be equally determined about their mission, and therefore not wanting the team to break apart. when pidge later realizes that she sees team voltron as a potential new family — that she wants to work together and “stop zarkon for all of our families” — keith smiles and says, genuinely, “good to have you back on the team.” hunk simultaneously realizes that he no longer wants to leave; that he wants to return to the balmera and save shay and her people. the fact that hunk and pidge need these personal motives to fully embody the mission doesn’t make them less noble than keith, nor does it make keith heartless. it just means that keith doesn’t need to literally see/bond with zarkon’s victims to be motivated to do the right thing. you can absolutely argue that shiro’s trauma gives keith that extra edge — extra determination to seek justice for what’s been done to someone so important to him — but keith is still motivated by the greater good itself.
• (if you’re sitting there thinking “lmao but buddy, that’s probably going to change when shiro goes missing” — i am very aware of that risk, and it will be discussed in this post + my keith and shiro post! but for keith’s priorities to be tested, they have to start from a different place to begin with, right? and that’s what this scene with pidge sets up: that to begin with, keith is able to prioritize the greater good over personal motives and feelings. we’ll see what happens when he’s in pidge’s position!)

i know i just said it, but since this is where fanon loses its grasp on him, i feel like i REALLY need to stress that being motivated by the greater good does not make keith heartless. keith can prioritize the greater good and STILL care about people. in fact, he’s pretty openly into bonding with them, whether they’re teammates or the allies they meet along the way (and these are just S1 examples):

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