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#65: The Voltron: Legendary Defender Shipping Controversy

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Can't we all get along?

The Netflix cartoon Voltron: Legendary Defender came out in 2016, as a revival of the classic Voltron IP. Though largely seen as an excellent action cartoon and a great update of the original material (with the exception of the show's controversial final season), it was no stranger to controversy over the course of its run, perhaps none greater than the shipping debate between the pairings of Shiro/Keith and Keith/Lance, also known as Sheith and Klance amongst the fandom. There had been countless ship wars before, many of which saw flame wars and fandom stupidity, but the Sheith vs. Klance debate took things to a whole new level of toxic fan-dumb behavior, thanks in large part to the role that communities like Tumblr now played in fandom discourse. Over the course of the series, both the Sheith and Klance pairings had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of devotees. Klance proved to be slightly more popular, but Sheith had a large following of its own, and fans didn't know which, if either, would become canon. Ultimately, Klance fans, seeing Sheith as an existential threat, began fusing the language of social justice with their arguments. Instead of saying Sheith was "stupid" and "had no chance of ever happening, so nyah", now they began to argue that Sheith was "incest" due to the two having a "brother-coded" relationship, or "pedophilia", because Keith knew Shiro before Shiro had turned 18. These arguments turned the ship war from a matter of simple preference to a matter of morality, and using these arguments, Klance fans began attacking Sheith fans with vicious threats, doxxing, hate mail, and suicide baiting. When Shiro's voice actor Josh Keaton defended people's right to ship what they want, he was sent death threats, as was Pidge's voice actor Bex Taylor-Klaus. Leaked art of the show was posted online, and the leaker refused to remove it unless Klance was made canon. Ultimately, Shiro hooked up with another guy entirely, and Lance and Keith didn't hook up with anyone, so the whole ship debate was a moot point, but the damage was done. The proship vs. anti discourse that roils online communities to this day, with daily death threats, harassment, and doxxing toward artists, writers, and shippers, is a phenomenon largely confined to the past few years, and the Voltron shipping debate is one of the most likely candidates for Patient Zero. If it's possible to identify a single point where modern fandom became the complete trainwreck it is today, one can point at this show.