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kosmo-mckogane · 2 years

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listen, we're all aware that shiro suffered in pretty much every way possible with his treatment in the show, but i wanted to talk about some of the stuff that i rarely see touched upon within the fandom, and that is the inherent and blatant ableism that pushed so many major decisions when it came to his character.

we all remember the shit that went down with adam - but i want to focus on how shiro is treated in terms of autonomy here.

take a look at the garrison's immediate reaction to shiro wanting to go on the kerberos mission.

"[Sanda] Absolutely not!"

"[Holt] What? Why not? He's cleared all his physicals."

"[Sanda] I don't care what the doctor says. This man is sick and he shouldn't be sent on another mission"

and see, that right there - shiro has literally been given the all clear by a doctor stating that he's fit for this mission. at this point, there's absolutely no valid or logical reason these random people to decide what he is or isn't capable of doing.

and to me, the biggest insult was that they had this as his literal only interaction with adam.

"[Adam] Well, maybe he's right. Maybe you shouldn't go on the mission. You'll only be putting yourself at risk." [...]

"[Shiro] Don't start that again, Adam. You don't need to protect me."

and this is the fucking problem. the idea that disabled people need to be coddled and have decisions for their own health made for them, that they are inherently less capable. and yes, in some ways, it's true that shiro will have certain limitations that other people wouldn't, but he is very much aware of those limitations. here, he is portrayed as unnecessarily angry and irrational simply for wanting to make his own decisions.

the fact that they killed off adam while shiro was away on this mission just sets that idea in stone. here, the message they are conveying is that shiro should have obeyed adam and the garrison when they told him not to go on the kerberos mission, because having and practicing autonomy as a person with muscular dystrophy cost him the person he loved.

"Adam... I'm sorry."

that, to me, makes everything to do with adam a hundred times more insulting.

and the thing is, this wasn't something that just cropped up in the later seasons - the decision to push shiro aside, discard him for his flaws and strip him of everything that made him who he was, had been made long before they even decided he was gay.

shiro feared he'd been turned into a monster by his time as a prisoner, and that he couldn't be trusted to lead voltron due to his trauma and ptsd.

"Do you really think a monster like you could be a Voltron Paladin?"

by removing him as black paladin and leaving him without a real place on the team, these fears of his seem to be confirmed.

we know this was set up early on, with all the brief hints at keith's leadership in season 2 leading up to shiro's disappearance.

"If you're going to be a leader, you've got to get your head on straight."

ultimately, the journey shiro goes on as a character is one of loss and regression, being seen as "broken" and incapable and pushed out of a role that he seems to be made for in favour of someone who is in all regards completely unsuited for it. by the end, he's lost everything that made him him, and he's been stripped of any autonomy, importance and relevance. and to see him going from one of the most promising and intriguing characters to that? yeah, it really pisses me off.

#voltron #takashi shirogane #adashi #vld critical #later seasons #leo inspired this btw ^^#i dont want to proofread bc im a lil lazy but feel free to correct me or add on!! x

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