Voltron: Legendary Offender
The Voltron Fandom and their faux pas
When it comes to unsavory Fandoms, Voltron is pretty high on the list.
In 2016, Dreamworks decided to reboot the beloved 80’s show, Voltron.
This reboot gained a large fan base that took over websites like Tumblr and Twitter. The most infamous aspect of this fandom was the “ship wars”.
Shipping, of course, is when fans imagine two or more characters in a relationship with one another.
The ships Klance and Sheith were the focus of the Voltron ship wars:
Klance imagines a relationship between the characters Keith and Lance, who for the most part have a semi-antagonistic relationship, which is catnip for shipping fangirls.
Sheith, however, is a ship between the characters Keith and Shiro, who have a mentor-mentee relationship.
The Voltron fandom took shipping to an extreme level, doxing and threating shippers in opposition to them, and some fans even took it so far as to threaten the creators of the show.
One fan took a tour of the Studio Mir, the company that animated the show, and took pictures while there. Not knowing that they took pictures of classified information, they posted them online.
These photos spread like wild-fire and by the time they took the pictures down, it was too late. The studio released statements asking fan accounts to taken down the shared photos, but one fan refused, stating:
Studio Mir was under pressure from Dreamworks and could’ve faced legal consequences if the pictures weren’t taken down, so the incident was of importance.
The harassment didn’t stop there though.
Many writers and cast members on the show reported receiving death threats and Bex Taylor-Klaus, the voice actor for the Character Pidge, released a statement saying:
It’s sad to see a fandom turn against the people who made the media they enjoy possible in the first place. Though Voltron isn’t the only fandom to participate in these actions, the examples of harassment and entitlement stemming from this fandom are nearly endless.
When it comes to fandom interaction, it’s important to know when to take a step back and recognize toxic behaviors. As an outside observer of fandoms, it’s also important to take everything you read with a grain of salt.
During the peak of the Voltron fandom, there were rumors of a “Glass cupcake” incident, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Supposedly, a furious Klance shipper, who was clearly inspired by such icons as: Snow Whites evil stepmother and those guys who really wanted Rasputin dead, created dangerous confectionary treats and sent them to one of the Voltron writers.
Now that I’ve actually tried to research the incident, I found out that there wasn't any evidence of this happening, and this video was one of the only mentions of the incident I could find:
When I first heard this story, I fully believed it. However, as I’ve aged, I’ve come to realize that the story probably wasn’t true.
In my defense, I was a naive middle schooler when I leaned about the incident, but we’re all a bit smarter than that now. Things read on the internet shouldn’t be taken at face value.