I had been thinking about this for awhile now and well, here’s the thing; vld did actually include lots of kinds of people and handles them rather well in some cases. However, my mind kept drifting to a piece of art LM had done where the paladins are in sets of two holding a sign. I had seen some say “remember when LM did this and confirmed that Lance and Shiro were LGBT”, but the truth is she didn’t. Take a stroll with me for a moment and venture to look at this another way.
So here is the art piece I am referring to (credit again to Lauren Montgomery). Yes I can see where people could see that both characters are representing said banner/sign, but in terms of narrative I can see something else unfolding here.
See the signs represent the thing that is stated on said banner; one person is the thing and the other helps them with the situation in some way.
Let’s start with Pidge and Allura; Pidge is female who is hiding the fact she is a girl early on and the only one to know her secret is Shiro and the mice. The mice then tell Allura and Allura finds herself wanting Pidge to be honest with who she is and that it’s more than okay that she is a girl. Though it wasn’t until an episode later where Pidge came clean about it, Allura still wanted to help her.
Then we have Keith and Hunk with the Race sign. Though Hunk is a PoC, the VLD narrative gave us the reveal that Keith is half Galra. So in this case, Keith is the one who is the thing and Hunk is the one who helps. In “Enter the Weblum” it’s Hunk and Keith who take the mission to the Weblum not long after Keith’s Galra reveal and Hunk is genuinely curious about Keith’s heritage. He’s never mean or rude about it; awkward sure, but never cruel. This was the show’s way of displaying that his other friends didn’t have a problem with his bloodline and still accepted him for who he is no matter what. Keep in mind it was also Hunk who wanted to learn more about the Galra (or at least what Verpit Sa meant) and I can honestly see him sharing that knowledge later with Keith.
So now we reach the final one with Shiro and Lance. I had seen a lot of stuff back after Shiro’s reveal that people thought Shiro was going to help Lance with discovering he was bisexual and more or less that follows a little bit with what I had said about the first two, accept Lance was never revealed to be bisexual in the show. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the hc of bi Lance, but Shiro is the LGBT rep. Thus we have Shiro is the thing and it’s Lance who is to help somehow. Sadly this is where this falls apart in actual cannon because we never see Lance help Shiro with this, which is a question in of itself; how would you help someone LGBT in a narrative that has nothing to do with the stereotype/cliche of coming out of the closet? Well it’s not about Shiro’s sexuality as a label, but about who he loves and love is what it comes down to.
For sake of argument I am using Sheith as the example here. With how season 8 ended, minus the epilogue cards, we are left with a mourning Lance after Allura had sacrificed herself. “Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all” or so they say. He understands heartbreak, but he also knows he would have regretted it if he had never confessed to Allura how he felt. So the best advice he can give to someone, in this case Shiro; who is pining and afraid he’ll mess something up, would be to not overthink it, to go for it and not waste any more time because you never know when it could be your last moment with them. Shiro’s behavior of being distant in the final season could then be explained a way due to fear of losing someone close; i.e. Keith.
It’s an interesting way to look at this piece and think about it a little differently than what is directly in front of you. Nothing is ever black and white and it’s okay to view things differently, but ultimately we all just need to respect each other.
annaxmalina
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
titsay
romaincrisis
