Ten long years. It still hurts. Some wounds just don't heal with time, who knew?
Voltron: Legendary Defender started out as a thing of beauty. It was a throwback to ancient mythology - good vs. evil, and the struggle of unexpected heroes to discover themselves and each other, and the followers they befriended on their journey. The characters emitted a distinct humanity, and the plot guided the audience through a gauntlet of emotions. Each scene held the viewer's hand, leading them through an unknown and often unnerving out-of-the-body experience. The series gave my generation something to hope for. And then suddenly, it... didn't.
You know something? I wanted to write a retrospective detailing my experiences with the programme, but I just couldn't do it. The whole thing is just too demoralising. It ended any hope I may have had for humanity. There were no heroes on any side of this battle. Not the showrunners, not the people who actually gave a damn about the show, and absolutely not the people who ruined it for the rest.
However, it would be wrong of me to deny it had its great moments, because of course it did. But those moments were severely undermined by things that happened outside. In retrospect, the warning signs were there from the very beginning. Like some gigantic anti-matter black hole, its gravitational pull was so strong that not even any future fans are likely to escape it at all.
Overall, the Voltron saga is a horrifying example of how easily a fandom spins out of control. While I do mean to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this programme, the whole story deserves to be seen in all its corruption, suspense, pain, terror, and agony. I can't give you that whole story. However, there is one chapter I care about, which I'll print here.
5. Airing Its Dirty Laundry
Ah yes, "Dirty Laundry". The defining fanfic of the Klance clan. Of course, it wasn't this which made me a Klance believer – it was a completely different one, "The Notebook on the Bed", which was the first part of an unfinished saga. There was also "Call Me, Beep Me", where Lance messages the wrong number and things kind of snowball from there. But this is "Dirty Laundry" - or was.
Taking place in the world of today, the gang are at college, and Lance is going home to Arizona (a famously Republican state) with a boyfriend? He calls on Keith to be his wingman-cum-boyfriend, and cuts a deal with him: he'll do his laundry for two months in return for his cooperation, hence the title, "Dirty Laundry" (which also refers to embarrassing private matters that one would prefer not be made public - something which I'm very familiar with!).
The Sanchez family lives in a large farm with a business in the town. Josie and Mateo are the youngest, then there's Daniel, his wife Rachel, and their daughter Isabella. Then there's Cleo and Benji, and of course the mother, Rosa, and father, Jaime. And a dog called Terminator. And an iguana named Greedo. The older sister, Sophia, has gone AWOL. It's not all sunshine and roses in this house. Rosa and Jaime argue over Lance's bisexuality, because Jaime can't accept that Lance isn't choosing one gender over the other. Benji had leukaemia when he was 13, and needed a kidney transplant. Lance gave him his one of his own, strengthening the bond between them. Sophia suddenly reappears on their doorstep with her son, Alexi, who has autism (it's mentioned in one scene). And then Abuela comes along and oh! It's alright at first, but it all culminates in a massive fight at the dinner table. On Christmas Day, no less. Lance pushes Keith away, but they quickly get back together again when the dust settles - this time for real.
The story was written by Gibslythe, who I believe was only 17 at the time. She has the honour of writing the number one most Kudos'd male-on-male fic in Archive of Our Own's history, and the fifth most Kudos'd fic overall, at least at the time. Moreover, the Tumblr blog Fandometrics made reference to the Klance fandom "airing its dirty laundry". It invited a lot of Klancers to the comments section of the video for Gasolina, a 2010 reggaeton song. I, too, wanted to get in on this massive popularity, and attempted to turn the story into a stageplay. While I never got round to finishing it, Gibslythe did say she liked what I did at that point, so that was something.
These are already fine accolades for a writer at this age. So, of course, along come the super-censoring Church Ladies to mess it all up!
With the publication of chapter four, there was not only accusations of a stereotypical portrayal of autism (where? I'm autistic and I see no problem with it!), but more importantly, allegations of racism, particularly against Mexican Americans, at a time when an evil demagogue was promising to build a wall on the Mexico-America border, among other things. Some Latino people took license at Gibslythe adding "Gasolina" in, as well as "La chancla", which is a joke in which a mother beats her child with a shoe. They took license to this all because Gibslythe was white. It's just another form of racism.
Gibslythe made an apology, of course. She admitted that she was in the wrong. She said she'd like to face the consequences. But what she got was too much! I don't care to repeat what some of them said, only that most of it boiled down to "DELETE YOUR STORY, MOTHERFUCKER!"
Long story short, she eventually did. Replaced it with the script to Bee Movie, a far inferior story in my opinion. I just can't believe that people speaking for an entire ethnicity would beat a teenager down to a point where writing becomes emotionally and mentally taxing! Like, what the hell is wrong with you people?!
Looking through the Fanlore page, you can see why writing this retrospective is draining on me. The most popular fanfic on AO3 was suppressed for no other reason than cultural appropriation. The vocal minority always wins.
I will never, ever, ever forgive them for this.
Some wounds just don't heal with time, who knew? Especially when the source of your wounds disappears entirely. VLD was removed from Netflix at the end of 2024, after the expiry of their license agreement, effectively turning it into lost media. Events like this can be especially difficult when one's relationship with the medium is weak. Sometimes we get angry because the programme has disappeared before giving us the chance to resolve our past differences. As far as I'm concerned, these characters, this story, this universe, now exist only in my memory.
Well okay, some people managed to download the episodes before they went.
Maybe in another ten years I'll have mellowed out more and be able to talk about how one guy caused the whole fandom to implode. But for right now, I'm really in no mood.
