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kcwcommentary · 6 years ago

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VLD7x01 – “A Little Adventure”

7x01 – “A Little Adventure”

It was the news of this episode that caused me to arrange a weekend marathon, first catching up watching seasons three through six and then the new season seven. One weekend, 39 episodes. I was so excited to learn that the show was revealing not just that Shiro was gay but also that he had had a same-sex “significant other,” to use executive producer Lauren Montgomery’s words. I didn’t avoid spoilers about this episode, which had been shown at San Diego Comic Con, so I knew that the only content in this episode was the flashback scene of Adam breaking up with Shiro. But given how much LM and Joaquim Dos Santos were applauding themselves during the two weeks between SDCC and the season seven release, I thought for sure that there would be more interaction between them in the season than this one scene.

I did not expect Shiro and Adam to get back together, but because their breakup was told in a flashback, I thought there would be at least one scene of them talking to each other when Shiro got back to Earth to resolve the emotional content of the flashback scene. Scenes like this flashback serve a specific narrative function: to set up something more. This show failed to provide anything more. Between the Friday release of season seven and my starting my marathon on Saturday afternoon, the news that this one flashback scene was all there was, that Adam was killed off almost instantly the next time we see him after this episode, that once again a show had used the bury your gays trope, it was all being discussed online. I became furious.

JDS and LM had been going around for two weeks acting like they had accomplished something major, and then I find out that the queer inclusion was blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. For me, it felt more hurtful than if they had just not had any inclusion whatsoever. I’m used to most stories ignoring the existence of queer people. What JDS and LM did was manipulate us. They used queer identity as nothing more than a means to promote the season. This is why JDS and LM were accused of queerbaiting the audience, not because of any long period of the show suggesting Shiro was gay without ever confirming it, but because JDS and LM used their many interviews between SDCC and the release of season seven to significantly hype the reveal about Shiro. That promise of inclusion through Shiro’s relationship with Adam was the bait they used to get people to watch season seven, but this one, short flashback scene of the breakup in this episode is the entirety of that relationship.

The anger of the fandom was significant enough that JDS and LM posted apologies online a few days later. Those apologies did not help.

JDS said they had to kill Adam because “we knew seeing a familiar face bravely make the sacrifice along with the squadron he led (and countless others) would help get across the gravity of this invasion.” The only reason Adam was a “familiar face” is because of the two weeks they spent hyping him up, not because of the show itself. Before his death scene, he’s only ever in the flashback scene in this episode. If a viewer was relying exclusively on the show itself, it is easy for that viewer to watch Adam’s death and to have completely forgotten who he was.

JDS said, “We were aware of the ‘bury your gays’ trope but hoped against hope that our struggle to confirm Shiro’s orientation would take center stage here.” They knew that they were using the bury your gays trope, they just hoped people wouldn’t notice.

JDS said, “We had not intended for Adam to be interpreted as a recurring character or someone that would come back into Shiro’s life.” You don’t do a flashback scene like the one in this episode if you don’t plan on resolving it by later having the two characters meet again. Also, JDS has since contradicted this statement in interviews saying that they had wanted to have Adam return with Veronica, but that they didn’t have time to change it back to that supposed original intention because they had changed it to have Adam killed before they were told they could reveal Shiro as gay. Because of instances of public contradiction like this, I don’t trust anything really that JDS and LM say to be the total truth.

JDS said, “We knew people would be affected by the loss of Adam we just could not have predicted how profound that loss would be.” I do not know how he and the rest of his crew could have been this ignorant and oblivious. They are not the first show to employ the bury your gays trope. They weren’t even the first show to do so in the year season seven was released. Audience anger at the use of that trope is not new, so I can only conclude that JDS and his crew just didn’t care to know the history of queer characters in stories to realize why bury your gays is so offensive. Also, this statement and the “familiar face” statement reveal that JDS and LM’s decision to kill Adam was yet another instance of their purposefully trying to manipulate the audience. All writing is a choice. They could have chosen to kill another character instead, but they specifically chose Adam. They wanted people to experience some form of shock in watching Adam be killed, and they thought the best way to produce that shock was to kill a character whose sole characteristic is that he’s gay.

On to the episode. This was a pivotal episode for me, so I have a lot to say.

The episode is credited as written by May Chan and Mitch Iverson. It’s my understanding that May Chan is given a writing credit here, despite not having any credits since 3x02 “Red Paladin,” because she’s the one who wrote this episode’s flashback scenes. I have seen some reference in the fandom to how the content of these flashbacks were originally going to have been included early in season two when Shiro and Keith were trying to survive on that planet in 2x01 “Across the Universe.” So, if JDS and LM are telling the truth when they say that Shiro being gay has been a part of his character from really early on, and these flashbacks were originally written for season two, and JDS and LM wanted to kill Shiro at the end of season two, then they wanted to use the bury your gays trope in killing Shiro too. They wanted to kill the gay character to promote the emotional development of a straight character (Keith). Their approach to including queer characters in the show has always been problematic, at best.

The episode opens at a school – I think Keith is supposed to be something like 12 or 13 years old here. Shiro is there to give a school talk and promote the Galaxy Garrison. The teacher introduces Shiro, saying, “I’m sure you all recognize him. He’s the youngest pilot to ever lead a mission into space.” So, Shiro is a celebrity due to his piloting achievements. This helps give some scope to why Lance has described Shiro as being a role model for him. Every kid in the classroom seems excited, except for Keith, who is just staring out the window. It makes me feel sad seeing Keith so disengaged like this. Shiro clearly notices that Keith is mentally distant. I love when characters (and people in real life) demonstrate significant interpersonal insight like this.

Shiro has brought with him a mobile flight simulator for these students to be tested on. James, who we first saw sitting several seats from Keith outside an office at the Galaxy Garrison during a flashback in 6x05 “The Black Paladins” (a scene that’s repeated in this episode) and will see again as a pilot later this season, is up front, the most eager to use the flight simulator. The visuals of the simulator are ridiculous. It seems like it’s relying on the mistaken belief that the asteroid belt is more dense than it is. The show can’t hide behind a fictional location for the content of this simulation because this scene takes place in a time at which no one on Earth had been outside of our solar system, so this simulation has to be of our asteroid belt. A pilot navigating through our asteroid belt would not have to be dodging asteroids like this because the asteroid belt is nowhere near this dense. Also, anyone having a reaction speed as fast as depicted here, let alone kids, is not realistic. But whatever.

There’s a montage of various kids eventually crashing into asteroids and failing the simulation, including James. Keith sits alone, away from everyone, just looking at the ground. The emotion of Keith’s loneliness is tangible for me. Shiro has let Keith sit off to himself until everyone else has had their turn with the simulator, and then he finally turns to Keith. Keith’s reaction almost makes me think he was surprised that Shiro even noticed him. Not surprising, Keith is really good. “That emo kid’s doing it,” one miscellaneous student says. It’s frustrating that the show, with that line of dialog and with so many others prior to this, is so reductive of Keith’s character to derogatorily label him as “emo,” as if Keith’s emotions aren’t valid. He never knew his mother (until season six) and his father died when he was young, resulting in his being put in an orphanage. His emotionality seems totally justifiable to me.

James is antagonistic toward Keith, saying the simulator must be broken for Keith to have made it past level 5. James’s behavior here is very reminiscent of Lance’s and his perceived rivalry with Keith, so much so that I don’t know why, if they wanted a character to react to Keith like this here, they didn’t just have this be Lance instead of James. With characterization so sparse in this show, why take one of the few characteristics of Lance and give it to another character?

The teacher gives Shiro a list of students she thinks are best suited for the Garrison, and Shiro wants Keith on the list. The teacher then engages in seriously unethical behavior. Clearly able to be heard by both Keith and all the other students, she is dismissive of Keith to Shiro, saying, “He’s a bit of a discipline case. I don’t think he’d necessarily fit in with the rigid Garrison culture.” Even if a student is a frequent discipline problem, no teacher should be having this kind of administration-level discussion in front of the whole class. No wonder Keith is angry, adults like this teacher publicly degrade him given the chance. She then tries to hype up James Griffin, and the show, in giving James a last name, does something it never does for most of its main characters. The show expects us to like James and all the other pilots later in the season, but this introduction to James does not make me like him one bit. The teacher explicitly dismisses Keith and promotes James in a juxtaposition. The show writing James’s introduction this way instantly positions James as an antagonist to Keith.

As soon as the teacher speaks dismissively of Keith and praises James nearly in the same breath, Keith purposefully fails the simulator. He steals Shiro’s transport and drives off. Cut to later, Shiro is getting Keith out of a Juvenile Detention Center. Keith expresses surprise that Shiro would not only not be mad but also help him after that. Keith has clearly had little support in his life. Shiro wants Keith as part of the Garrison and gives him an address to report to. It is a little odd that Shiro drives off, leaving Keith standing in the Juvenile Detention Center’s parking lot, instead of driving Keith home though.

I’m going to say this now and I will say it again in this commentary: I love the music of this episode.

Meanwhile in the main story (I take it that all the non-flashback scenes are the writing of Mitch Iverson), the Paladins are still on that planet like they were at the end of season six. Shiro, now in the clone’s body, is being kept in the healing pod. Allura says, “Only time will tell if this body will accept Shiro’s consciousness.” This statement is a reminder that this body belonged to someone else and the Paladins took it from him to give to Shiro. If the clone is supposed to somehow be an empty body, then there should be no chance of the body rejecting Shiro’s spirit. But if there’s supposed to be a conflict between the clone and Shiro, then the show needed to actually show that. Also, how could Allura have been so confident in taking Shiro’s spirit from the Black Lion and putting it in the clone’s body at the end of last episode and then now have worries about if the process is viable? Shouldn’t she have discussed that with everyone prior to doing it last episode? This whole moment feels really contrived just so the episode can threaten Shiro’s wellbeing.

Pidge says that she’s tried contacting the Voltron Coalition to ask for help, but that she can’t get through to anyone. Hunk says the Lions need their energy systems recharged. Allura says, “If we had the Castle of Lions, we could recharge them.” Uh, since when did they ever use the Castle to charge the energy systems of the Lions? Why would they even need to? In 3x07 “The Legend Begins,” Alfor says that he made the Lions “from the quintessence-infused ore of the comet, which provides them with an endless supply of power.” In other words, the show has established that the power systems of the Lions are self-sustaining. They never would need to be hooked up to the Castle of Lions to recharge. The show now acts like the Lions need an external source of power, whereas the show has previously established that their power is inherent. So, this energy depletion is a contrived situation that is inconsistent with what the show has already established about how the Lions function.

Coran suggests a potential course of action, that they could use some fictional substance to do something. None of it is important. Keith tells everyone to go get what they need, that he’ll stay with Shiro. Krolia steps up beside Keith, and Allura says she’ll stay too.

And then Romelle speaks. I actually think Romelle’s dialog here is important. She says, “Wait. You just fought Lotor, defeated him, stopped an explosion that could have destroyed reality, took your friend’s consciousness from the Black Lion of Voltron and put it inside his clone, and now we’re simply moving on?” Hunk replies, “Trust me, I’m always saying the exact same thing, but these guys like to move on.” This totally lampshades the show’s plot. By employing lampshading this blatant, the writers are demonstrating that they know the show’s story is badly written, and they are effectively asking the audience to ignore it. This is the second instance of lampshading used recently, the other being in Ezor’s dialog in 6x06 “All Good Things.” If an audience has a net-positive reaction to a story, lampshading confusing or senseless parts of a plot can even read as humorous. But this show has burned the audience at this point, so this moment of lampshading with Romelle feels more offensive. This is the writers saying that they don’t want to have to do the necessary work of following up on the trauma inherent in the situation Shiro and the clone have gone through. The show wants us to “move on.” I even kind of wonder if the dialog being specifically phrased “but these guys like to move on” is even some subtle reference, Hunk standing in for the episode’s writer and the “these guys” being a reference to the executive producers. I have nothing to substantiate that idea, but I do kind of wonder what the creative relationship between the writers, at least the non-Tim Hedrick and non-Joshua Hamilton writers, and the EPs were like. For a long time now, I’ve suspected that the work environment for this show had a disruptive level of toxicity to it, and I’d be curious to know for sure what it was truly like.

We flashback again (so, supposedly back to May Chan’s writing). Keith is looking at a ship that Shiro identifies as “the Calypso, the first ship to carry astronauts to the moons of Jupiter.” Keith demonstrates knowledge of space exploration history by following up with a statement that “it took them three years to get there, longest voyage of its kind.” Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery have called Shiro “boring,” but I don’t know how anyone could watch Shiro in this scene and think he was a boring character. He says, “Reading about that mission is what made me want to be a pilot. Those astronauts braved the unknown. People can accomplish incredible things if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.” This shows that Shiro is a curious, dedicated person. He is someone who aspires. Some stories just use space as a setting, and they can be fun stories too, but I love the portrayal of the sense of wonder that space causes those who seek to explore it to feel. What Shiro says here is at the heart of his character’s motivation. His character is also revealed, not just through his personal aspiration, but also through his ability to inspire others to want to achieve too. He speaks very supportively to Keith here.

Back to the now of Coran, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, and Romelle looking for whatever they’re looking for. Honestly, given how emotional the Shiro-Keith flashback scenes are, I don’t care for this Coran and crew plot whatsoever. It’s not exactly a bad story, but juxtaposed to such significant, quality, character-driven storytelling like the flashback scenes, the Coran and crew plot is meaningless and just takes up time. There is some humor in it. Coran licking yelmore spray off of flowers and his yelmore animal call make me laugh. I also laugh at a small moment between Pidge and Romelle. Romelle asks, “Are all ancient Alteans like this?” and Pidge responds, “Well, we only know two.” Things go awry and they all get sprayed by some other animal, and the spray instantly shrinks them. Thus, this plot turns weird and feels tonally unlike anything this show has done before.

Back to the flashback scenes. A group of Galaxy Garrison cadets are working collectively in simulators. The process is so easy for Keith that he yawns. Also involved in this group simulation are Hunk, Lance, and James. Of course, the show has Hunk’s contribution to the scene be only his queasy stomach. Keith feels unchallenged by the current simulation and “test[s his] controls.” First Lance, then James, then the no-name others glare at Keith. In the simulation, Keith jets away from the rest. Afterward, Colonel Iverson yells at everyone, saying that because of Keith the whole group will have to spend several weekends running drills in the simulator.

James again demonstrates that his place in the story is that of being an antagonist, further making his switch-flip turn into a protagonist later in the season annoying. He says to Keith, “We all know the only reason you’re here is because of Shiro.” Keith retorts, “I can out-fly anyone in this building.” James reaches a peak of antagonism then by mockingly saying, “Oh yeah, is that what mommy and daddy told you before—” and he doesn’t get to finish before Keith punches him, knocks him to the ground, jumps on him, and starts to beat him up. To go on a tangent briefly, this is something that infuriates me about our society, and I think this episode accurately depicts this reality: In schools, kids are allowed to bully other kids the way James does to Keith here. Depending on the situation, teachers are either too overworked to notice or they just don’t care and let it happen. The instant that a kid who is bullied fights back, the kid who’s bullied gets in trouble. The conclusion is that kids who are bullied are expected to endure the onslaught of the bullying while our institutional authorities allow the bullying to happen.

We cut to the scene that was in the flashback in 6x05 “The Black Paladins.” Keith and James are sitting outside the, presumably, principal’s office. Shiro is inside speaking on Keith’s behalf. Keith clearly has a very low sense of self-worth, telling Shiro, “You should just send me back to the home already.” These flashbacks do so much character work, revealing to us how much Keith needs to feel wanted by others, and it breaks my heart. I love how supportive Shiro is.

Back to Coran and crew, and I’m still not interested.

Back to the flashbacks. I love the music of this scene so much. Shiro and Keith are flying around on hovercrafts, showing some of how Keith developed his hovercraft piloting skills that he used in rescuing Shiro in 1x01 “The New Alliance,” including jumping laterally across a chasm from one ledge to another. Shiro is clearly having fun racing with Keith here. Like Keith in “The New Alliance,” Shiro dives forward off a cliff (I think it’s supposed to be the exact same cliff). Keith, here, however is too hesitant, so he stops at the cliff’s edge. Keith eventually catches up to Shiro, who’s parked. They watch the sunset together.

I love the music of the sunset so much, more than I can ever describe. I have very strong emotional reactions to sunsets. They have a way of instantly evoking a sensation of nostalgia, wistfulness, and peace. And this music perfectly manifests those emotions. I totally love this moment. (And it annoys me that this music is again used for a sunset scene between Keith and Lance in season eight. Using it there for the two of them feels like a violation of the beauty of this scene and the emotional bond between Shiro and Keith.)

The two of them discuss Shiro’s dive off the cliff. He explains how he did it, and Keith wonders if he is “ready to try that.” Shiro playfully turns the question back on Keith, saying, “What do you think?” and Keith, thoughtfully, answers, “Maybe I should be patient and keep focusing on the basics first.” Shiro asks, and Keith confirms, that Keith grew up in this rocky desert. Keith lived here with his dad, who was a fireman. Keith thinks of his dad as a hero because his father ran back into a burning building, supposedly being the event that killed him.

And then the show hints at Shiro being sick with his using “electro-stimulators to keep [his] muscles loose.” Keith picks up on something benig wrong with Shiro, but Shiro casually dismisses it and says, “It’s just what happens when you get to be an old-timer.”

Back to Coran and crew, and I’m still not interested.

Back to the flashback, where Admiral Sanda is telling Sam Holt that Shiro, despite having cleared all his physicals, “is sick and shouldn’t be sent on another mission, especially as far away as Kerberos.” Sam Holt stands up for Shiro, saying he won’t go on the mission if Shiro doesn’t. Keith is in the hallway and can overhear the argument through the open door.

Then we get the infamous scene between Shiro and Adam. Despite how supposedly close the two of them are, you couldn’t tell it from this scene. The staging does not feel like they’re a couple, keeping them instead across the room from one another. They barely look at one another. The scene ends up not feeling like Shiro and his significant other, and instead feels more like the end of a relationship that was really over a long time before this. This scene gives no sense of these two characters being in love. Shiro is upset because Colonel Iverson called in Admiral Sanda to try to keep Shiro off the Kerberos mission. That Iverson was involved makes Shiro joking with Sam Holt in in a way that suggests friendship between Shiro and Iverson in 5x05 “Bloodlines” even more baffling.

Adam sides with Iverson, citing the mission as a risk to Shiro’s health. Shiro reaffirms how exploration of space is important to him. Adam wants Shiro to view their relationship as more important that Shiro’s desire to explore space. Adam is worried that the mission could result in Shiro’s death. As I said in my commentary for 1x07 “Tears of the Balmera,” the addition of Adam’s worry about Shiro’s health regarding the Kerberos mission in this episode adds a new dimension of emotional pain the revelation in “Tears of the Balmera” that the Galaxy Garrison publicly blamed the destruction of the Kerberos mission on Shiro, saying that it was pilot error. I imagine Adam would have been heartbroken hearing that news, thinking he was right that Shiro’s illness caused him to lose his life. That the show kills Adam, him never learning that Shiro did not die, that Shiro was not at fault for the Kerberos mission, well, it pisses me off. It contributes to how it feels like the EPs and writers of this show wanted to hurt Shiro, and it also makes it seem like they wanted to hurt queer characters.

Adam reduces Shiro’s desire to go on this mission down to the idea that Shiro’s trying to prove something, but we know it’s not about proving anything. It’s about Shiro wanting this experience. He wants to explore space. He likes the way it feels to do this work. He doesn’t pursue this work because he’s competing with anyone, even if he has broken flight records. It is hurtful that Adam doesn’t seem to understand that. It’s realistic though that two people in a relationship would break up because they have different things they want to get out of life.

Adam says, “But I won’t go through this again.” What does that mean? Does he just mean Shiro being away on a mission? Does that mean Adam hasn’t actually been supportive of Shiro’s work even though he says he has? Whatever this is supposed to be referencing, it’s important context, suggesting this is a long-term argument between the two of them. We never get any details as to what has happened before that would result in Adam saying “again” here. I think this line in particular is why this scene feels like this is the end of a slow-process breakup.

I’m okay with Adam feeling like they’re on diverging paths, wanting different things in life, and breaking up over it. I’m not okay with him seemingly not understanding why working space missions are important to Shiro. Adam can claim he’s supportive of Shiro, but with this breakup, it does not feel like he is or really ever has been.

And by having Adam break up with Shiro, it feels like it’s just another instance of the show writing everything to hurt Shiro. And since this is the episode and the scene that reveals Shiro is gay, with Shiro never seeing Adam again, never resolving the tension this scene ends on, it feels like the show is only willing to include gay characters if the story makes them and keeps them unhappy and rejected.

Lauren Montgomery, now infamously, posted a sketch dated November 8, 2016. Hunk and Keith holding a placard with the word Race on it, Allura and Pidge with one with the word Gender on it, and Shiro and Lance with one with the word LGBT on it. At the bottom is a caption: “You are deserving of respect!!!” The show in revealing Shiro is gay, inflicting emotional pain on him in the process, through having the reveal come from Adam breaking up with him, and the show having the rest of the season and the next one having Shiro alone, isolated from the Paladins, no one ever speaking to him as a friend, does not put Montgomery’s claim that LGBT people are deserving of respect into practice. When viewers complained about how the show never lets Shiro have anything that makes him happy, JDS and LM seem to have interpreted that solely through a reductive perspective that viewers were saying Shiro needed to end the story in a relationship, thus the emergency epilogue being added to the end of the last episode having Shiro marrying Curtis. Of course, we fans of Shiro are not against the idea of Shiro ending the show in a relationship, but our criticism is bigger than Shiro having a same-sex relationship. That JDS and LM responded to criticism how season seven handles Shiro being gay and Adam’s death by thinking the solution was to just fling an empty same-sex marriage at us shows that they did not understand why people were so furious over seasons seven. In the end, they could not see Shiro as anything but gay. Respect would have been writing Shiro to be a whole person, with being gay as just a fundamental and important part.

Shiro is an explorer, a pilot, a teacher, a leader, a friend, a fighter, a good man, and a gay man. But with the revelation that he’s a gay man in this episode, the show now begins its process of sidelining Shiro. Being Black Paladin is taken from him. He fought for the Black Lion in seasons one and two. Like here in these flashbacks, we see that Shiro fought to be allowed to pilot space exploration missions. With the EPs taking being the Black Paladin from Shiro, it makes them feel like Colonel Iverson and Admiral Sanda wanting to take being a pilot away from Shiro. They write him increasingly separated and isolated from the other Paladins, his supposed friends. Even with the depiction in seasons one through six and especially in this episode of how close Shiro and Keith are and how important their relationship is for both of them, the next two seasons take that away from Shiro too, leaving the two of them to only ever speak in the most perfunctory ways in season eight. It feels like with the revelation that Shiro is gay, the show decided that he couldn’t be allowed to have a relationship, including friendship, with anyone.

Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wanted to kill Shiro from the beginning of the show. They did kill him at the end of season two. Imagine May Chan’s flashback scenes from this episode but instead set during Shiro and Keith’s time crashed on that planet in 2x01 “Across the Universe.” Imagine the revelation of Shiro’s illness as set-up for Shiro pushing Keith to become the team leader. In that context, Shiro encouraged Keith to see himself as leader because Shiro thought his illness would eventually kill him. It’s insulting that the EPs and writers thought this was a respectful way to write Shiro’s character.

And what about this illness? The show never confirms that Shiro no longer has to worry about the illness. JDS said the disease is no longer a problem in an extratextual interview, but no one respected Shiro’s character enough to resolve this illness plot in the actual show. This episode introduces the illness and then it is forgotten hereafter. That’s how much respect the EPs and writers have, that they just threw a life-debilitating, potentially life-ending illness on Shiro and didn’t bother any textual revelation that he’s now free of it. It makes the inclusion of the illness in the story absolutely cheap, and it pisses me off.

Back to Coran and crew, and I’m still not interested.

Back to the flashback scenes. Shiro is working on the systems of a hovercraft. Keith walks up, upset, asking him “When were you going to tell me?” He tells Shiro he overheard the argument with Sanda. Shiro explains, “I have a disease, and it’s getting worse. I’ll only be able to maintain my peak condition for a couple more years, after that—The Garrison doesn’t want me up there, neither does Adam.” While whatever disease that Shiro has is not HIV, I cannot escape the distasteful way that the show reveals a character to be gay and to have a disease in the same episode. It feels like the reductionism that a lot of people engage in when they equate being gay with being sick. Our society has gotten better at not doing so, but I’m roughly the same age as Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, so I’m quite acquainted with when our society did mostly equate being gay with having a disease. I can’t help but to be uncomfortable with the implications of this episode simultaneously revealing Shiro to be gay and to have this disease.

Keith asks Shiro, “So, what are you going to do?” And Shiro, looking down, gets an expression of determination and says, “I’m going on the mission.”

Back to Coran and crew, and I’m still not interested. They have made their way onto a yelmore and ride it to a spot. It digs, some bubbles float out of the dirt, it hollers, and other yelmores come running. The yelmores link ears and dig up more of the bubbles. The shrunk Paladins jump off the yelmore and somehow all luckily fall into the bubbles. Doing so causes them to return to their normal size. It makes little-to-no sense. It’s all just a giant whatever.

Back with Shiro in the healing pod. Allura says, “I’m afraid the clone body has rejected Shiro’s consciousness.” I can still feel JDS and LM’s desire to kill Shiro in this moment.

Keith slams the pod with his fist in frustration. Keith’s voice acting is good. “Shiro, please. Fight. You can’t do this to me again.” The ache in Keith’s voice hurts. The pod’s display then indicates Shiro’s vitals improving. Keith opens the pod, saying Shiro’s name.

Shiro, with more really good voice acting, looks at Keith and says, “I was dreaming. Keith, you saved me.” Keith hugs Shiro and replies, “We saved each other.” It is so emotional. It still makes me cry watching it.

I love the music during this moment. It affects me in similar ways to the music during the sunset scene. This music evokes something that feels pure to me. It contributes to why the relationship between Shiro and Keith is the most important and interesting thing to me in this entire series.

Coran and crew return. Lance relates their absurd experience, and Shiro just laughs and says, “It’s good to be back.”

I was so excited to learn that the show was revealing Shiro to be gay. He was my favorite character. He was the lead character, at least in seasons one and two. He was strong, brave, supportive, calm, a leader. It meant something to think that this show was going to make a statement by having such a character be revealed as gay. But then, the how of they did it was a huge disappointment. Realizing how JDS and LM were totally manipulative of the audience during the two weeks between SDCC and the season seven release made me feel totally deceived and used. I did not feel respected. Their attempts at justification in their apology were offensive.

I’m not a big mecha fan (maybe I just haven’t seen the right mecha stories yet), but I am a big science fiction fan, especially space science fiction. I’ve loved space since I was a really little kid. I also love animation because I think it allows for a way of expression and storytelling that’s different from film. Having a space-based science fiction animated story revealing my favorite character to be a gay man was important to me. It was hurtful to then see, through how the show treated Shiro, how little respect the EPs and writers actually had for LGBT people. How little they understood the importance and implications of how they handled the whole situation.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 7 #vld 7x01 #commentary

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consciousowl · 7 years ago

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Isn’t It About Time for Evolution to Evolve?

I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar With angels bless’d; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.

-Jalalludin Rumi

Do you believe in evolution? Or do you find it an extremely useful organizing tool for examining life and thinking about our origins, as well as that of the plants and animals that make Earth our home? Why must we have faith in evolution, as if it were a fact? Charles Darwin conceived of one of the most far-reaching ideas in human history, and provided us highly convincing evidence. Yet, unless we can travel back in time hundreds of millions of years, we can’t be absolutely sure. Have you ever asked yourself whether the very idea of evolution, itself, might evolve? Is it possible that we might just go beyond that idea, and put both God and the monkey together?

Evolution vs. Creationism: Why Does It Matter?

Evolution and creationism matter if you care about such questions as, “Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going?”. If life as we know it is totally a result of random mutations in genes, and there was neither design nor designer, what does that make us? Random flukes in a meaningless universe that couldn’t care less about us. If creationism is true in any way, then we can safely claim to be made in the image of God. We have a divine spark within us; better yet, we are inherently divine! Even if Adam and Eve in the Garden is a poetic story, it hides a deep truth. Humans may be the first creatures on earth conscious of being conscious, life forms who celebrate the supreme Source of consciousness. For 150 years, this debate has raged, long before the Scopes Monkey trial in Tennessee that made creationists seem like a joke, and long after. Nothing has really changed. Some people can’t get with the idea that this is all by accident and totally meaningless. Can you blame them?

Why Darwinian Evolution Is Out of Date

The Darwinian Theory of Evolution is way out of date, like a vacuum-tubed mainframe from the 1950’s. It was conceived in the middle of the 19th Century during the early phase of industrialization that had children work 12-hour days in factories. It was developed during a period when England and France gained ascendency over most of Africa and Asia, and systematically pillaged resources from both continents to supply their factories with the raw materials necessary for continuous output. Darwin carefully observed fascinating phenomena in the Galapagos Islands that showed the inherent competition among living systems for life-giving energy and water. He called it “survival of the fittest,” popularly known as the “law of the jungle”: kill, or be killed. While the fossil evidence to support Darwin has become undeniable, his interpretation of that evidence leads something to be desired. He lived in an industrial era, and so thought in primarily mechanical terms. His concept of God was of a remote deity somewhere “out there” wholly disinterested in human affairs. We might wonder if he ever encountered the God within.

Is the Universe Really So Stupid?

One of the tragic limitations of the early form of evolution was the assumption that the Universe was stupid. It was the era of the steam engine. Everything was thought of in terms of processes. The French Enlightenment had advanced the idea of “the system of nature.” The world was a giant system that could be examined without any reference to God, or even to ourselves. Every child is filled with wonder. I can still remember how brilliant the Christmas tree bulbs were when I was four-years old. When I look at Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon, or a pristine forest or an alluring tropical island, I am stunned by the exquisite beauty. Beauty is inherent in creation. What is accidental about that? We no longer think of the world that way, thanks to such scientists as James Lovelock, who developed the Gaia Theory that earth functions as a giant living organism. Even when human beings set about to damage the ecosystem, it has a way of healing itself that no one could have predicted.

Could Spacetime be a Mental Construct

Albert Einstein, in his later years, wrestled with an inadmissible question: Is the universe really out there? Could both time and space actually be a mental invention, the software by which we make sense of our experience? An irreplaceable interface to our playing the game full out in this simulation? With quantum physics, the notion of an “objective” universe “out there” came tumbling down. You can’t make an observation without the observer. The observer, herself, is a participant in it. However you cut it, the universe is inseparable from consciousness. Not only that, nonlocality was experimentally demonstrated such that particles can communicate with each other faster than the speed of light, even when on opposite sides of the universe. Increasingly, this world came to resemble an immense hologram. Could it be that our world is inside US? Whenever you have a single perception, idea, thought, memory or dream, YOU are the one with that perception, idea, thought, memory or dream. It is only an assumption that they are totally independent of you.

Contrasting Ecosystems: Competition vs. Cooperation

Dr. Elisabeth Sahtouris is an evolutionary biologist with a deep love for life, who continually asks the big questions, having been deeply influenced by the ecology movement of the 1970’s. She will never make the mistake of seeing the tree for the forest. She has distinguished two different kinds of evolution, one preceding the other.

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Early evolution is, indeed, highly competitive, a true competition among the genes for precious sunlight and water. It starts at the bacteria level, then goes to simple one-celled creatures and then multi-celled plants and animals. This is the evolution that haunted Charles Darwin. Dr. Sahtouris points out that the Soviets honored Peter Kropotkin, who focused on mutual aid and anticipated the environmental revolution. Kropotkin concentrated on mature ecosystems where mutual cooperation is the norm, not the exception. Organisms finally wise up and realize that helping one another is more cost-effective in terms of energy that devouring one another. According to Dr. Sahtouris, both early and mature evolution are true. Any profound contemporary theory of evolution must honor both.

Evolution the DNA of Silicon Valley

Having worked in Silicon Valley for over 20 years, I have had the chance to see generation after generation of computer technology evolve, not organically, but by design. Gordon Moore predicted that computers would double their power and cut their cost by half every couple years. That trend has held true for over 50 years! A human cell evolves from a single fertilized cell to an intricately complex adult with over 10 trillion cells in just 50 divisions. In every cell, a set of instructions allow the total organism to completely fulfill its life cycle. Cracking the human genome revealed that these instructions can be coded as on-off signals into binary language.

By designing advanced technology, we can gain amazing insight into our own genetic makeup. It is now possible to play “creator” with our own genome. However, we have to ask many questions about our relative wisdom before we embark upon such an endeavor. Can we evolve our consciousness the same way we have evolved our bodies?

What’s Next in Evolution?

Whatever one accepts about biological evolution, social and cultural evolution is hard to deny. Despite the fanaticism of our contemporaries on the world stage, we have grown a lot more humane in the last couple hundred years. Legal slavery is no more. The average lifespan has more than doubled. Literacy worldwide is at the highest ever. While international conflict stubbornly persists, the number of people dying from wars has dramatically dropped. Dr. Deepak Chopra spoke about “metabiological evolution.” It is less and less about changing our bodies and more and more about transforming our heads and our hearts. If we except the Hindu notion of God as “Being, Consciousness and Bliss,” then expanding our consciousness is the most effective way to evolve. Consciousness expansion begins by losing all attachment to our egoistic definition of ourselves. We shift from foreground to background. We are not so much the players on the stage as the stage, itself. We are the context out of which the content of our lives occurs. As the great Jesuit paleontologist put it: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

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