A veterans point of view on season seven.
George S. Patton, American soldier
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”
Shadam. So I’m going to discuss why from an old veterans point of view why I never had high hopes for it coming to light as far as the logical aspect.
I am an LGBT Veteran myself, in a similar age bracket to Shiro and Adam. Ironically I’m actually disabled as well because of an injury I received in the service.
Now. Some backstory. My ex actually gave me an ultimatum when I was trying to go to Germany almost identical to what Adam gave Shiro about going on the Kerberos mission. We had been together 8 years at that point. Basically it came between my dream and him. Now. Lemme say this. There is nothing worse than that feeling. Nothing worse than when you are a dream driven person being given that me or yourself feeling. That kind of choice is an ultimatum. And honestly a fairly negative one. It ended up being one of our biggest fights I ever had, and ended up being part of the end of our overall healthy relationship. It became toxic to me, I couldn’t live with the idea of me we being able to follow my dreams. And we’ll. Needless to say, I left. I still CARED about him, and wouldn’t want something to happen to him. But that relationship came to a close.
While it may be very hard for some younger people to understand; when you are in a relationship that come to that, either that fight will happen again and again to you, or end. And it’s OKAY. You’re first relationship, dosent have to be your last. And you can love someone, but the situation not be good for you. Realistically, once you’re an adult love dosent conquer all. And staying together with someone when you disagree on certian life altering choices either you stay together and one of you is absolutely miserable and soul crushed, or you seperate, heal, and move on. You can still think of the other person but it’s a fairly common thing to happen to adults.
You can leave someone and still be in love with them, and have no intentions of getting back together with them because it’s not good for you. Even if you didn’t fight alot, even if your relationship was healthy for the most part. There are some things that are complete deal breakers. Often times ultimatums are it. Usually of an ultimatum is issued to one person, truthfully even if you love them, the trust is broken and it never feels the same. And so it closes.
also another thing to notice, as far as military relationships, there is something called service before self. And it literally means that you put your job your duty and your responsibilities, above your emotional and personal needs. You don’t have those, and good military leaders do not acknowledge their personal beliefs if they affect their job. And that is beaten into you, quite literally.
Now onto why I’m not too surprised Adam is dead.
This show is about war. Not love and war. War. Friendship and WAR. Love can happen, but let’s go over the logical aspect.
I one hundred percent have to say, It dosent make sense to think a serviceman of high capacity trained in combat would be immune to war. This is the reality of the war. In the military you gain an almost acceptance that this could happen, to your friends, your roommates, and dozens of other people you know. Adam was trained for a combat arms field, he trained and specialized knowing he could die in that job. As did Shiro, Keith and Lance as fighter pilots.
I’ve buried people. Cargo pilots who had accidents. I’ve seen what happens while people are on the front lines. They don’t come back of there sent into some places.
While sad and heartbeaking, it was inevitable with his militant position. All able bodied fighters died. Everyone who went against one of those galra ships was killed. Essentially they went into a gunfight with muskets against machine guns. It would not have made logical sense in war with the kinds of weapons they had for them to survive. As we see even some of voltron’s weapons were ineffective against some of the current technology used later on in the drones. The technology had to be adapted and upgraded.
Shiro is a wonderful representation of a strong military leader, and he is still gay he’s not just going to not be gay because a man he broke up with YEARS ago isn’t there.
Estimated time after the breakup
1 year on the Kerberos mission
1 year enslaved
1year in the coalition
1year? From then they rescued prof Holt
1.5 years back to earth.
So it’s been at least around five years give or take for Shiro on his end, possible more possibly less. But at LEAST a few years.
And even longer for Adam because of the time skip. So add 2-3 years onto that for Adam.
Now back onto my ex, with a significant other, I still think of him once in awhile, and I am fond of those good memories, and I would be sad if something happened to him. But after even two or three years I had completely moved on. After 7 or more, I most likely would have not considered it. I might be willing to talk to my ex and kind of mull things over, but the idea of getting back together, one would not cross my mind. Even if we patched things up, we would have moved on. There is a pretty good chance that Adam not only had moved on, but like my ex had a family, especially if he thought Shiro was DEAD.
We’ve seen Shiro cry, and he didn’t seem to outwardly effected, and some people had issue with that, and that he didn’t have time to mourn.
Well, you’re conditioned by the time training is over to not cry much. They beat it the fuck into you. If you’re too emotional it can be a combat liability. You have to be ready for someone to die. Someone you love. I still worry bout some of my active duty friends at times. And I’d be sad, but I’ve been exposed to so much death and trained so well, I might tear up. But there would not be bawling. You don’t have TIME to cry in combat zones, especially not if you’re the person in charge. The idea that Shiro would have the response or time to loose his mind over his ex that he broke up with half a decade ago, after everything he’s been too, and the THOUSANDS of deaths he’s been exposed to fighting in Voltron, is….just not realistic for a soilder of his calibre. Lance maybe, hunk and pidge. But Shiro has always been very controlled in his emotions, he is a perfect soilder, and a good trait of a great soilder, is the emotional expression of a teaspoon when sad. It’s called military bearing, and they literally train you to be unresponsive when duty calls. With rubber chickens.
When your buddy dies in combat, you fight HARDER. You don’t let there sacrifice go in vain. You come together closer.
Most people are looking at this like civilians NOT servicemen. That’s NOT how war works.
You literally spend months, day in day out, getting harassed, insulted, SCREAMED AT told how worthless you are. You don’t even have a NAME until you earn it. You are ‘trainiee, female, male, cadet ect’. Shiro goes by shiro. Which is NOT his first name. While that may be a Japanese culture thing, it is actually also a military thing. You use your last name. Almost exclusively. People like shiro THRIVE in this environment. They THRIVE in this hard rough repetitive stressed environment and GOOD LUCK TAKING THEM OUT OF IT WILLINGLY. So what if you’re only known by your last. You don’t care.
So please stop hating on people. Stop getting mad about things, as far as War goes, this is a fairly good representation of how it feels. Of what happens. Do you know how much it means to me to see a disabled military man on the screen whose also LGBT and acts LIKE A MILITARY MAN? It means ALOT. I have a bum leg. It don’t work well. I’m fairly open about it. Shiro is a fantastic representative of LGBTQ and military rolled into a smoothed out well written individual. Leave it at that. Season seven isn’t the end of things. It’s the beginning. Don’t forget season seven and eight go hand in hand, AND even though the TV series is coming to an end, they ARE planning on comics and novels.
Truth be told, I can’t see Shiro getting in a relationship so long as this war is going on. Feelings aside. After it’s over or he retires MAYBE but he’s too good of a soilder to consider it so long as he’s needed. He’s a soilder first, a person second. A relationship would hinder his duty AT THIS TIME. When this is all said and done, maybe he will. But ain’t no soilder worth his salt getting in a relationship while in the combat zone, gay, straight, otherwise. Have hope for the end, when they win this war, that when we will see something happen.