#i guess we can't expect VLD to be the savior but i guess it's working its way towards better rep

[crazycookiemaniac]

This isn’t about ships or the show itself at all. “Bury your gays” and “evil gays” is such a tired trope with a long and homophobic history, and VLD should have known better. I don’t care about how “little control” the writers have over Dreamworks and Netflix. THEY are the creators of this media. If they truly cared about LGBT+ representation, they would have done more than shrug and say “what can you do?” and tell people to shut up because it’s better than nothing. It’s not okay.

Pt.2: Oh, and to the anon who said Shiro is “impossible to kill”? It’s not like they haven’t tried. He’s been tortured, killed, revived, and apparently isn’t even the pilot of the black lion anymore. And while the rest of the crew is surrounded by family back on Earth, Shiro has no one. Maybe they can’t kill him, but they sure as hell abuse the shit out of him.——Well, as far as I’ve seen, none of the creators told fans to shut up and accept it for what it is. They have all said that people should criticize by all means, as long as it’s not targeted harrassment (which is what has been happening lately), as well as they gave their own opinion about it (more specifically, Bex. She’s been pretty active in the fandom discourse). Both Joaquim dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery have addressed the matter on their twitter. They are the creators of the media, yes, but they have no control over marketing and they can’t really be blamed for something that’s out of their control. They created this Voltron reboot, but they do not own the entirity of it. If they could do exactly what they wanted to do with the show, i’m sure we’d have had a completely different product.

Also yeah, Zethrid and Ezor were gay and evil. They threatened to torture a 15 year old kid, but the most that was shown on screen was Ezor grabbing Pidge by the collar. There have been explicit torture scenes throughout the entire show that nobody has addressed to just beacuse the characters weren’t LGBT+. There have been countless tortured good Galra members that were later off killed (such as Thace and Ulaz, for example) that no one cares about just because they aren’t LGBT. See, I get where you’re coming from and I’m not saying that this is an okay thing to do by all means, but it’s not like the show has made this exclusive to LGBT people only. Zethrid and Ezor were shown to like torturing prisoners even before they were hinted at being in a romantic relationship. What the creators are trying to do is just make the fact that they are gay another aspect of their personality, and not let that define them. And while I do get that media has villainized queer characters throughout its entire history and that the occasions in which they are healthily represented are extremely rare, being gay does not make you a saint, especially in war.It wasn’t only Shiro who died, by the way. Lance also died and was brought back to life, and the moment wasn’t as significant as Shiro’s were because Lance isn’t LBGT (as of now). A lot of the characters were abused, both physically and emotionally. Of course, Shiro is the one who’s been through the most shit until now, but that doesn’t make what the other characters have been through any less worse. Still on the subject of Lance dying, his life was the most at risk back in season 1 when the castle was haunted. He was nearly killed twice, thrice if you count the time the entire team was in danger in the end. In season seven, he got in a car accident, and when he woke up was immediately attacked by the galra. Shortly after he and the team got blown with the canons Sendak fired and was unconscious for an hour. That’s Some Shit^TM he’s been through that nobody seems to care about nearly as much, and these are only a few examples of what’s happened to him throughout the show. And just Lance. I can’t see why people want 100% healthy characters in a show that’s about war. 

Adam wasn’t the only one who died, either. Lance’s grandma is nowhere in the picture, and neither are Hunk’s siblings. Pidge is pretty much the only one who has her family intact. Everyone’s lost something. Sure, Shiro has no one to come back to, but at this point team Voltron is his family, so it’s not like he’s alone. Not to mention that Voltron has a lot of plot twists, and there is still one season left. I blame the marketing team for queerbaiting, not the showrunners. And if they don’t throw away all the development and work they’ve put onto Keith and Lance’s relationship, I still think there’s a chance to have a good, explicit LGBT representation, whether they end up together or not. And if it does work out, they’ll still have a gay character piloting the black lion.

Welp, that’s my take on this. There are several ways this whole situation can be interpreted, and I personally don’t like just looking at one side of the story (although I am by no means disregarding it. I get why you and everybody else are so angry with this whole thing and you’re not wrong). Thanks for sharing your opinion!