y’all wanna hear about uhhhhhh gay keith and why it’s extremely inherently heternormative to ship him with awkshuh???
disclaimer: i’m an Em El Em and legally allowed to make this post my lawyer told me. also i’m not saying vld should be praised for this and the looming idea of klance, because they very clearly baited us.
anyway, so gay keith. we all loved him. despite keith’s attitude in season 7, i still love and see him as a very interesting character. but i wanna talk specifically about his gay coding and why most of us gay/bi dudes are finding a big, thinly veiled homophobic issue with not only the “homophobic straight keith!!” jokes, but also the kaxca posts and its respective shippers.
let’s start with season 1: the blessed timeline. back when keith was actually kind of bearable and fun. in episode 6, which is, coincidentally, also the bonding moment episode, we very…blatantly see keith checking out rolo:
this is a juxtaposition to lance’s clear attraction for nyma. there was absolutely no reason for keith to be included in this frame unless there were other intentions at work. he’s relaxed, he’s smiling–he looks flirty. we could’ve 100% seen keith react negatively to lance going with nyma if the goal was to pin them against each other as rivals going after the same girls. that didn’t happen tho! keith showed undoubtedly no interest whatsoever in the pretty alien rebel girl–instead, he flocked very blatantly towards rolo. it’s also important to note this episode displays a lot of that colour theory, such as klance against a purple background, the bi flag embedded in scenes and multiple rainbows. Very Inch Resting.
now, i’m not saying that shipping keith with women or headcanoning him as multiple gender attraction is homophobic, bc it’s really not! he’s not really…canonically obviously represented as a gay man, so it’s definitely not malicious or ill intent to dump your sexuality on a character you relate to.
i wanna go back to keith’s flirty attitude. the only times we’ve seen keith that relaxed and at ease as he was with rolo is in scenes with his male teammates. i’m just gonna….put this here:
there’s like……………so many more i can include, but i won’t because this is already getting too long. but uh…yeah….let’s compare and contrast, shall we?
that’s all i’ll say on that matter.
edit: as i was revising this, i remembered the whole “galra heith mini arc” thing that happened in season 2. there’s clear foreshadowing and metaphors to draw from hunk literally telling him “i think turning galra has made you a better human.” to my knowledge, keith replies with something along the lines of “i didn’t turn galra!”
lastly, let’s dive into and address why shipping keith with acxa is just so….blatantly heteronormative. keith meets acxa extremely early on, in the weblum in season 2. we don’t see them interact until season 3, when keith literally almost murdered acxa for hurting lance. the reason i see so many of you hold the clear assumption that kacxa is endgame is because of their interactions in season 7 which is……….really actually pretty sad. i went back and counted and they literally say 2-3 lines to each other. i’m not joking. there’s absolutely no chemistry there whatsoever. keith didn’t even blush or smile at her when ezor was teasing them. hell, he showed more interesting in fucking hunk than that girl!
tldr; keith is very heavily coded as a gay man, and a lot of the assumption that kaxca is being set up as romantic is just people panicking and assuming the worst. i personally don’t know jack shit about the endgame pairings, just like everyone else. i don’t know if this post could be wrong–i really don’t. but in the mean time, here’s something to soothe your fear. please stop freaking out about kaxca and hetero keith. please stop embarrassing yourself by shipping them when they said 2 lines to each other and keith protected her in battle like literally….any paladin of voltron would do.
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