allawander:

allawander:

Okay, YES. THIS.

They’re acting like he went AWOL, but he was obviously off on another mission doing important things, even if it was as a Marmora agent rather than a paladin. The only reason I can think of that would justify them being upset is if Keith went off without telling them?

I’d have to rewatch the episode to see if they say “He’s with the Blades on a mission.” or “Maybe he’s with the Blades on a mission.” or something else that would indicate that.

But oh man… The entire first episode made me hurt for Keith so bad. You had this constant back-and-forth between the happy, silly Voltron airshow stuff and Keith’s dangerous, gritty spy gig. It made the work Team Voltron was doing seem so frivolous compared to the Marmora work.

From a political standpoint, the PR events make sense. It’s a good way to drum up support and get peoples’ emotions whipped up so they’re willing to put their lives on the line when the time comes. But Keith is someone who has trouble understanding other peoples’ emotions, so these events probably seemed doubly frivolous and time-wastey to him.

So he’s out on the front lines risking his life and watching his new friends die while his old friends get pissy at him for missing promotional events. I mean… ouch. Just ouch.

Adding onto this, because I realize I got off-topic…

I feel like a lot of the reason no one got mad at Pidge was because she was doing a job no one else would or could. No one else was going to find her brother. But, as Allura pointed out to Keith, the Blades had been getting by for thousands of years without him.

Of course, this overlooks the fact that the Blades were stretched thin and their intelligence-gathering missions could turn the tide of the war, while Pidge’s mission was very much personal in nature.

Maybe the other paladins were mad because, in their minds, Keith was abandoning a post that only he could fill for one that other people could fill for him.

But, of course, it was more complicated than that. Keith never felt like the Black Lion was his. In his mind, he was just keeping the seat warm for Shiro. And god damn, Blade missions are hard! There are very few people who could have done what Keith and the other Blades had to do.

Basically, the other paladins failed to understand Keith’s perspective on the situation, and they may have been so caught up in their own mission and their own perspective that they didn’t try very hard in the first place.