Look, don’t get me wrong at all, I am so excited for actual LGBT representation in Voltron and I’m so glad that they chose a beloved character like Shiro to be that representation–I am absolutely not ungrateful and you will never catch me whining that it wasn’t any of the other characters such as Lance. This is a great thing! Absolutely!

But I’m still a literary critic at heart. And I still can’t turn off the part of my brain that goes “Who is writing this stuff???”

Because like, getting representation is great, but well-plotted representation would have been… you know… even better?

I’m not going to comment at all about the building of Shiro and Adam’s relationship; I haven’t seen the whole SDCC episode and I don’t know what other flashbacks they have planned for season 7/8. Maybe it will unfold on-screen in such a charming, convincing, and well-written way that we will all be writing home to tell our parents how beautiful their relationship was. I’m not especially hopeful, but I can withhold judgment.

What bugs me, what really irritates me as a writer, is the lack of foreshadowing. The second thing that went through my head after getting hit with all the spoilers was “Did this show really need another new character?” In a show that can’t even handle the number of characters it currently has, the idea that there will be time to sufficiently flesh out YET ANOTHER background character enough to make me deeply care about them is just… not heartening. We have so many characters already who aren’t getting the screen time and attention they deserve, and now I’m supposed to find room in my heart and attention span for another? Yet another character who will exist in the spotlight for the one or two episodes he’s necessary for and then will be relegated to the background forever–if we ever even see him again outside of flashbacks?

There just isn’t time in this series for new people so close to the end. Hell, there wasn’t time for new people after about the end of season two! When I think of all the characters who were introduced and then criminally underused by the writers, the exhaustion I feel at the thought of having to weigh whether or not I should tentatively extend my investment into yet another character is crippling.

I’m just worn down, man. I don’t want another character. I don’t want another person paraded on screen to do his touching flashback scenes and then shuttled off to the corner to make room for big explosions and pretty space set pieces.

It didn’t have to be like this, and that’s what bugs me. If there had been any amount of reasonable foreshadowing for this character, the audience would have been clued in in advance, and we could have braced ourselves for another person coming in now, in the final arc. We could have been building anticipation to meet this character all the way up to this moment, so that by the time he arrived, we’d have been chomping at the bit to finally see him. The groundwork for an emotional connection between this character and the audience could have been laid out so far in advance that his finally appearing would have been like a bomb going off in the crowd…

And it wouldn’t have even been hard? Tiny throwaway moments could have done this–have Shiro mention Adam in any of his Champion/captured by the Galra flashbacks. Have Shiro mention someone back home when they were all visualizing the things they missed from Earth in season one. Have Kuron reminisce about Adam as he was flashing back while escaping from the clone facility. Have Kuron ask Sam to take a message to Adam on his way back to Earth. Have Kuron name his Monsters and Mana character Adam instead because of how much his ex still means to him or something.

Like… anything? Even a single mention of the name before now?

I’m supposed to believe that Shiro was almost married to this guy, had a tragic break-up right before leaving on a mission that his boyfriend explicitly warned him against going on because it might claim his life, and apparently still thinks of this guy fondly… BUT only when it’s plot convenient to do so???

Writers. PLEASE. Throw your audience a bone! We WANT to be emotionally invested in your characters. Why won’t you give us the means to do that?

I know some people might say “Dreamworks wasn’t settled on giving representation until late in the game”–but that doesn’t mean that Adam couldn’t have at least EXISTED before now. They could have passed him off as just Shiro’s best friend, his flight partner whom he was ride or die with thanks to being Garrison partners with so long… No one would have batted an eyelash at the idea that Shiro had–god forbid–A GOOD FRIEND back home.

This character could have been foreshadowed to build expectation and make the audience feel connected to him before his appearance, which would have more smoothly integrated him into the story and made for a significantly higher emotional impact upon revealing his relationship to Shiro. But like so many other things in this show, that degree of planning just wasn’t present.

Exhausting.

And of course, this just leaves aside the whole other point that introducing a brand new character to be Shiro’s boyfriend is actually MORE complicated than at least one alternative they could have chosen. Because I mean, hello? MATT IS RIGHT THERE. BEING CRIMINALLY UNDERUSED.

It would have been significantly easier, plot-wise, to give Adam’s role to Matt, who has been part of the plot since episode 1, was at least briefly implied to have good rapport with Shiro in season 1, whom Shiro is shown on-screen risking his life for, and who came crashing back in in season 4 to ascend to a fan favorite by virtue of a) being a great big bro in flashbacks, b) being hilarious and c) having taken a level in badass, creating a–at least by Voltron standards–fairly well-rounded and very interesting character that the fans were clamoring to see more of.

And then… the writers just dropped the ball on him completely, like they had no idea why he was even in the show in the first place. Is he even there with Team Voltron when they’re all shown going back to Earth? WHERE IS MATT?

Why did they bring him back into the plot, make him cool and funny, tease us with the idea of him being an awesome support for the Green Lion, and then let that all completely fizzle out?

If they really had nothing else exciting for him to do in the plot, they could have at least kept him relevant to the story by making him Shiro’s romance arc. That would have been a two birds with one stone situation where we both get the long-awaited LGBT representation and get to keep a cool character like Matt involved in main events instead of painfully shunted off to the side.

I’m getting a headache just thinking about the thought process behind Matt’s story line. Like which writer invested enough time to make this character that lovable to the audience and then agreed to just let him disappear?

And if, again, it was a matter of not having approval for the representation until season 7, why not just make it so that Matt was suspicious of Kuron and kept his distance from day 1? Then we get a situation in which Kuron being a different person than Shiro would have at least had an impact on the plot, Matt would have looked super in love with Shiro by virtue of being able to tell something was wrong with him without the writers having to do any real work, they could have had a real reunion at the beginning of season 7, and Matt could have helped to build a new arm for Shiro as a touching, symbolic way of repaying him for sacrificing himself to the Galra arena to save Matt in season 1…

I’m so tired, my dudes. 

Yes, yes, you’re welcome to tell me I’m just unpleasable and nit-picking, but I’m not trying to trash on this show because I’m irrationally throwing shade, personally hate the creators, or some bullshit about Klance isn’t canon king–I’m just the kind of person who really, really appreciates good writing, and yes, secretly, I get really, really salty when I see people getting paid to make bad writing choices.

I love that we got LGBT representation in Voltron! But I hate that, like almost every other notable plot point in this show, it–so far!–appears to have been done without any attention to building up strong audience expectations in advance and more carefully investing in character development over time.

And seriously, if it turns out that Shiro and Adam don’t even ever reunite, and all we get of their story is Lauren’s off-screen comments about their “beautiful relationship,” I will not be surprised be so done with this nonsense.