arahir:

the-wenzel:

I didn’t post anything new! I just saw @cherryandsisters‘ post and was like Big Mood before I saw it a little while later with hundreds of notes. I’ve been mostly keeping mum about my feelings because I didn’t want to seem like I was one of those fans. But now that I know it isn’t just me, I’m going bitch lmao

It really feels like most of Team Voltron are just… not Keith’s friends. Like, they tolerate him as a Paladin and because he’s close to Shiro? But Lance’s attitude towards Keith has really poisoned relations with most of the others. Hunk seems to have thought ‘asshole’ in regards to Keith until that S2 mission together, and even then, some of the stuff he said was, at best, impolitic. Don’t get me wrong: I like Hunk. But he’s not a friend of Keith’s. More of an acquaintance, one that doesn’t rein in his friend whatsoever.

Pidge is a little badass but she’s got away with a lot while Keith constantly gets accused of being aggressive/a jerk/etc for saying or doing the similar (but FAR more mild) things. Pidge can be snappy and rude and aggressive, but everyone just sort of shrugs it off and thinks it’s fine. Keith snaps at Lance after being hounded about a rivalry he never wanted? Oh, he’s a hothead who’s rude. And it just leaves me going 8^) in frustration. She’s a kid and she should have some grace because of it. But Keith can point out a problem in a plan and suddenly he’s a meanie uwu despite being 1) objectively correct and 2) having done it in a way that was blunt but not cruel.

Allura and Coran don’t seem to know him? Keith has long stretches of the show where he has basically nothing to say or do, and I suspect I could count on one hand the number of times him and Coran have talked. Allura is probably the best out of the entirety of non-Shiro part of Team Voltron, imo. She talks to him about important things and they seem to understand each other, but you can tell Keith isn’t in her top ten priorities as a person. As a Paladin? Definitely! But Keith Kogane? IMO, not really.

And Lance……… It is not good. This isn’t to stop people from shipping K/L, but Lance genuinely doesn’t like Keith, and Keith genuinely doesn’t like Lance. Lance sees Keith as this big bully and rival that he pushes on to other people: Hunk and Pidge have known Keith from the start as that. The show looked like in S2 that it might challenge that narrative, but it’s been mostly forgotten in the past several seasons. Keith is pretty much constantly second-guessed, accused of things he isn’t doing (ex. making up that Shiro wanted him as a successor), and generally made fun of. If Keith’s social situation was transplanted on to any other character, the fandom would be up in arms.

RIP Keith. I will always stan, but I really hope the show actually engages with the social shithole they’ve dropped him in.

god ok sorry for tacking on but hard agree. and then in season 3, when keith is obviously bereft over shiro’s loss, pidge calls him a loner and lance says he would be “the worst leader” and that he wouldn’t follow him anywhere. like god, keith is clearly in mourning and they shit on him for it. even later. he never agrees to be the pilot of the black lion. he’s not comforted by their words. they call shiro a hero and they miss the point entirely: to keith, shiro wasn’t a hero. he was his only friend. they even go out of their way to animate keith looking like this:

sucks dude. he’s really unhappy and they’re not his friends. berating him into a role he’s uncomfortable with isn’t friendship. getting mad at him for taking on missions he has permission to go on and finds morally fulfilling isn’t friendship. waiting for him as a group so they can all ball him out when he literally did nothing wrong but risk his life for a cause isn’t friendship. it made me like the team less and i don’t know how they’re going to fix that. and if they do end up addressing his almost-sacrifice by having the team ball him out for that too… fucking yikes.