#a cis straight couple had a kid? groundbreaking…

[maladaptivewriting]

i don’t not ship jily because of jegulus

i don’t ship jily because the most interesting thing james and lily ever did together was die

[shiroallura]

Given how VLD’s lgbt rep was pretty much non exsistent, a thought occurred to me. Is it possible the eps were not planning on putting lgbt rep to begin with, and only did so due to pressure from fans? If they weren’t....I’d honestly be fine with that. I’d rather have no rep than bad rep. Plus, I understand it doesn’t need to be in everything.

here’s the thing: as poorly as shiro’s character is treated, as much as i detest voltron for their treatment of him particularly when it comes to ableism, as much as they mishandled queer rep every single step of the way and used it to only distance him from the team—

i’m not going to pretend they would have treated shiro any better if he hadn’t been queer. he might not have had anyone on earth, point blank, not just someone who was dead. he wouldn’t have gotten more screentime. he wouldn’t have gotten his lion. yes, him being queer makes what they’ve done to him all the more abhorrent, however,

kids, some of whom may be unaware of narrative or ableism, or anything else, will still see a man they think is cool and has cool powers and ‘is happy’ (again, what they’re perceiving) at the end of war, has his final scene be kissing his husband at his wedding. is it sloppy? yes. do we deserve better? yes. but vld’s lgbtq+ rep will be the first time some kids are introduced to someone being gay. if and when adam goes over kids’ heads (because i’m sure he did, for some) the wedding at the end will be jarring. they’ll look it up online and see, oh, shiro likes other boys.

and then that creeping thought will be planted: maybe i can like the same gender too.

i know as a child i still remember the first show i ever saw queer rep in. it was 6teen, and it went over my head. i didn’t quite understand it, but the ways the characters all reacted—positively—stuck with me. was it actually good rep? i don’t know. from what i remember, as it’s been a long time since i’ve watched the show, it was alright. not harmful (so not like voltron) but it wasn’t groundbreaking; it wasn’t any of the main cast.

so yes, bad rep is shitty. voltron had what, 12 couples that were canon and/or shipteased, and only three were queer. all were last minute additions with little to no actual buildup or development, before being quickly sidelined (or again, added on last minute). 

but a long time ago, bad rep was all we had. the tv show “house” shits all over asexuality, and it’s damaging and insulting. however, it still says the word asexual. it still might lead to people looking up the term and realizing that the show was wrong, that this is an actual Thing.

and honestly? i don’t know why the writers chose shiro to be the queer one. maybe they thought it’d get back at kl@nce, maybe they wanted to tease out sheef fans even longer, or crush all hope of sh@llura, maybe that was truly how LM and JDS saw him for a long time and didn’t realize how damaging their treatment of him would be all the moreso. animation is also scheduled so far ahead of time that it couldn’t be solely due to fan pressure. i do think that one of the reasons that shiro was chosen to be queer was, like the ATLAS, a consolation prize to point to “like look, we care about this character!!” even while continually stripping away everything he loved and sidelining him completely.

but again, that being said: canonly queer shiro is one of the few good things VLD ever did even if their execution of it was poor and harmful (like just about everything in the series). 

because yes, lgbtq+ rep does need to be, and should be, in everything. because lgbtq+ people are just people. and we deserve to be included in everything on screen that we are included in in real life, and more. i deserve to walk into a movie theatre, to any movie, and know that i’m going to see myself or others like me represented just as much as cis straight people are able to do so.

and eventually, when we are included in everything, it won’t just be as punching bags for the plot or brownie points.