#ttsr

I strayed from my point a little but I’m trying to say that Keith perhaps relies on anger a little too much, whether it’s genetic or not, and sometimes I think compartmentalizing looks like him being angry all the time because he won’t interact with any of his other feelings.

THE EXCEPTION TO THIS of course, is with Shiro! There are so many moments of him and Shiro where he’s vulnerable and soft in a way he doesn’t show to other characters! And I think it’s easy to overlook this when we watch with shipping goggles—of course we ARE SEEING IT because we’re shipping it lmao but it’s easy to forget that he doesn’t show this to anybody else.

So anyway I’ve been very intentional in this fic to try to write Keith as obsessively compartmentalizing and trying to keep a hold on all of his emotions and have control over the way other people perceive him. I’ve ranted & raved about this before but I read Keith as a person who makes himself deliberately unpleasant so that he can control when people come & go from his life, rather than ever trusting anyone or relying on them or having his feelings hurt when he inevitably gets abandoned again.

I often struggle in this fic with the line between showing and not telling because I am very aware that a lot of the text IS telling, but this is intentional! Keith obsesses over every feeling, every interaction with Shiro, he questions everything he says and does and worries about it for days! This is part of his anxiety around the whole situation and not knowing if he’s behaving correctly! He doesn’t want to compromise his relationship with Shiro, because it’s the ONLY meaningful relationship in his life AND Shiro is the ONLY person he has the stomach to trust, but on top of that he simply does not understand how he’s supposed to act. So every interaction between them is this huge puzzle for him to figure out and he’s stressed out as fuck!

And this fic is about him trying to compartmentalize all these human emotions and needs, like, his need to have sex, his need for companionship, maybe even his need for love? And he has the drive to want these things. (Does his growing and uncontrollable horniness have anything to do with same non-human half that dictates his temper? We shall see. 😏)  But how does he navigate “I am horny and want to get off” vs “I need the companionship of my best friend” alongside “having sex with someone is actually very intimate” and in the end "sexual intimacy makes me uncomfortable because in some ways this thing with Shiro is everything that I want, but if I admit that and lose it I will be destroyed” ?? How can these things coalesce for him???

The idea for this fic was me trying to subvert some tropes I was seeing all the time in Sheith fic and the main one is like, we have a habit of making them such soulmates and making it so seamless! WHICH IS FINE AND GOOD, I LOVE THOSE FICS TOO LOL, but I wanted to ask like, what if it was messy, what if they were just fucking? And I think part of me wanted to keep the illusion going for longer, when I was first planning the fic, and it wound up like growing a life of its own and taking me to a lot of places I didn’t intend to go. And I say that because, where we are right now in the story, I don’t think either of them are denial about their feelings, or withholding on purpose. I think Keith is compartmentalizing, and I tried to get at this a little bit when he has the conversation with Pidge about what love means. He loves Shiro, he already loved Shiro. He will love Shiro regardless, as a friend. And he’s also fucking Shiro. And he’s keeping these two things separate. And I don’t write it as if he’s pining and WANTS more (just yet) as much as he’s just found himself in a tricky emotional space and doesn’t know where his boundaries are.

The complication of the perhaps-alien-half dictating his libido trying to co-pilot with his very human half that is demisexual is a problem, too. Like he asks Pidge in Chapter 8: . “If you love someone as a friend, but you’re fucking them. When does it become, like. I don’t know. Romantic?”

He doesn’t know! We don’t know! Let’s keep going and see what happens lol.

SHIRO ON THE OTHER HAND.

What makes him such a great character (for me lol) is that like, he could so easily be such a 2D character and just, the fearless leader who is always chill and nice to everybody, and we DO get that to an extent, but they were generous in making him so multifaceted. He has PTSD. He struggles with his disability. He even loses his temper sometimes! When he gets back (as Kuron) he has a lil depression cave sesh in his bedroom in his PJs. Like he’s a very well rounded character and it makes him extremely realistic and human to me!

I don’t think it’s as fair to say that he compartmentalizes the way that Keith does, except what we can glean from his canon timeline. Meaning: He fights for the Kerberos mission despite his disability, he makes it up there only to be abducted, he survives the arena, he escapes to lead Voltron. And ALSO him being canonically queer; I think this starts getting into headcanon territory because I don’t think we get any clues in canon that they’re navigating homophobia in their universe, but we absolutely still see ableism and sexism. (Put a pin in the racism conversation as well when it comes to like, alien species and systems of oppression because there’s a lot to unpack and I’m trying to focus LOL.) So like, we do know that their world isn’t perfect, and Shiro is someone who had to work his ass off and fight for his rank and for his career. He’s someone who can put his feelings aside and focus on the task at hand, and we know this because he’s NOT perfect, he does occasionally lose his temper, and he has PTSD!

Basically, I think we have to assume he compartmentalizes to function, because he comes out of a year of INTENSE trauma to immediately lead a team, and lead them with kindness and patience, and the writing tells us that it’s not a matter of him being Perfect Cartoon Man, because he’s not a perfect person and he’s traumatized as fuck.

Because the fic is Keith’s POV I’ve tried to communicate this by Keith noticing that Shiro wears “masks”, or uses different voices. Sometimes it’s even about his clothes, like as they become more intimate and Keith starts seeing more of Shiro’s scars, and how Shiro is self-conscious about them. But it’s also moments like in Chapter 7 when Shiro is crying.

I feel that Keith and Shiro have some like sort of equal-opposite relationships to trauma and grief that balance each other in the end. Like, Keith lost his dad at a young age and had a horrific childhood, but that’s been his reality for most of his life and he’s learned how to carry it day-to-day.  Even though he’s a messier and more immature person, he’s used to shouldering it and it’s sort of baked into his personality at this point. But Shiro’s trauma is SO new. Shiro’s is a ton of shit ALL AT ONCE, vs. Keith’s 10+ years of grief and disappointment, and it’s so recent!  Even though Shiro is, on paper, a more mature and emotionally intelligent person, this is very new to him!

So Shiro in this fic also has some feelings he’s juggling, like, “I am touch starved and have physical needs” and “my mentee grew up kinda hot” and “I have to be very careful with him and his feelings”. He sees Keith for the mess that he is, and he’s patient, and he can wait for Keith, and take Keith’s lead.

I don’t feel that Shiro is pining necessarily, either—I think he’s a lot more grounded and realistic, and their encounters aren’t causing him the same level of anxiety because he can read Keith so clearly, even when Keith can’t read him back. But I think, he is pining a LITTLE lol. I think because he’s smart enough to know where this is heading, and he’s being patient, but he’d speed it along if it were up to him. They’re both so sensitive in different ways and I think they’re both so vulnerable to hurting each other’s feelings!!!! And Shiro is trying so so hard not to crush Keith like a little egg!!!!!!!!!!!

😊

Anyway !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!