#oli.msg

for makig the show about keith because hes “east asian” SHOW ME WHERE. listen id love if keith was east asian (the only thing better than 1 asian character is 2 asian characters) but theres literally no canonical evidence that keith is asian. heck, i didnt even know keith was “”“asian coded”“” until interacting with fandom. casual voltron fans probably think keith is white. every keith stan pats themselves on the back for being “"progressive”“ and a ”“champion of diversity”“ for liking keith (2)

all while ignoring the ACTUAL, CANONICALLY CONFIRMED east asian character. the voltron fandom is so transparent, they dont care about asian rep at all. this fandom has made me, an asian, absolutely despise the asian keith hc. amd you know what? im pretty sure the voltron writers will never confirm keith ethnicity and ill have to live with ”“keith is asian coded so its perfectly okay to sideline confirmed characters of colour like lance, hunk, and allura for him!” till this show ends.(3)

also shiro doesnt get sidelined in the show, but his treatment in fandom is nowhere near as good keiths. keith joined the bom and everyones crying over their “"poor baby keith uwu”“ while ignoring the fact that shiro got tortured for a year and has possibly bee n cloned. and ive seen so much hate for shiro, because he was ”“"mean”“”. just say you hate asians! stop using my ethnicity to defend liking and hating all other characters for a (possibly, and very likely) white boy! (4)

OKAY so much of this ask is just… pure mood like… you hit so many nails on the head!! like keith being asian would be great but to just anyone watching? unless they suspect broganes being canon on their own, KEITH IS SOOO WHITE???  a fandom wide headcanon being largely accepted doesnt make it canon. i got into voltron because i was sick of fandoms that prioritized and glorified white boys and voltron was largely advertised by fans as having a nonwhite cast (aside from pidge) and i was like well…. no white boys lets go take a look!!! and for a long time despite no canon confirmation i really just assumed keith was ofc nonwhite when…. we don’t know, and where other characters have clearly been shown/coded their races, we all act like keith is a mystery when to the average viewer he… really isnt. like its insane. in the exact same damn situation!!!! in another fandom that prioritizes and glorifies a white boy!! pointing at keith and collectively saying “hes asian” doesnt make it canon anymore so than putting a shirt and shoes on a dog makes it a human. we’ve done so much work for advertising voltron to other like minded people looking for diversity its insane lmaooooo….

and youre so right abt people being so much more upset abt keith being gone than shiro!!! finding just regular shiro stans is so hard bc most of them are weirdos that either ship him with kids or just straight up fetishize and abuse him and its so awful… everyone acts like you have to ship him w someone to like him and thinking of him as a character is halted beyond that. 

 anon, lemme tell you, that i used to be the BIGGEST r76 shipper. like if you look through my blog, the VERY first post on my blog is r76. ive even written some fics for them, though i dont share my ao3 atm. i starting shipping it around the same time i got the game, aka, july of last year. i was attracted to the ship mostly because of gabriel, i’ll admit-- i interpret him as afrolatinx and as a black person, i latched onto him the same way i’ve latched onto lucio and black widow.

i hate the ship because it took until about halloween for the racists in the fandom to drive me out. 

i loved the ship SO much that i’d check the ao3 for it every single night, and that was the literal downfall. i checked it every night and so i PERSONALLY watched as more and more racist, stereotyping fics appeared, over and over-- fics that fetishized gabrel and his race, fics that made gabriel larger and meaner and scarier than jack, fics that made gabriel out to BE an abuser towards jack, or fics where gabriel was a dog that existed just to make jack happy. fics where gabriel had no characterization other than being jacks happiness or misery-- fics that portrayed jack as immediately likeable (because hes white) and fics that portrayed gabriel as immediately intimidating (because hes brown). fics that waxed poetry about jacks pale skin and cornflower blue eyes, but only mentioned gabriels looks to point out his thick thighs or massive cock. fics where gabriel straight up kidnapped jack and raped him. im not making any of these up. these are all fics i saw in the tag that distressed me, over and over again, because i was just a black kid that wanted nice content of a ship with a character i could personally relate to. 

i looked on tumblr, and lo and behold, i saw the same thing! gabriel towering over jack (when theyre the same height), gabriel being scary, gabriel being accused and abused and demonized, “sexy thighs” gabriel and nothing else, meta (i used to love reading meta-- now i cant stand overwatch meta regarding the old soldiers at all) that sympathized with jack and portrayed gabriel as a jealous demon who deserved to die and is obsessed with jack. i followed blogs, and was immediately bombarded with white washed art, and then excusing of the whitewashing. 

i was fresh out of anime fandom-- overwatch is the first gaming fandom ive ever been in and also my first fandom where there’s so many poc. i think r76 was one of my (if not the first) interracial ships where one of the characters was darker skinned. i became more and more jaded, every single time i opened ao3 or went into the tag. i know it sound silly, because its not real, but there was a time when i genuinely broke down into tears because i couldnt stand how gabriel was treated. id seen the “kinky yaoi” dynamic with mlm ships before, and this was WHOLLY magnified. 

its not just because its “a white guy with a hispanic guy”. thats not my issue at all? i used to really love jack, too? i wrote aus and rped r76 with my friends? and its not just that mixing races is bad, because a black man and an afrolatinx man is an interracial ship too? completely ignoring all of my other interracial ships?

i hate r76 because very few people could bother to treat gabriel with even ONE shred of the respect they afforded to jack. i hate it because i was literally driven away by the blatant, overreaching racism. i hate it because of all the times gabriel was “the dark man” or “the latino” in fics because you’d NEVER call jack “the pale man” or “the caucasian”. i hate it because yall motherfuckers dont know how to act.   

can i say that every r76 shipper is bad? no, of course not. but until the r76 community puts itself together and addresses the racists and harmful stereotypes that it harbors, then yeah, i fucking hate it. and no, im not gonna say, “not all r76 shippers”. this is the last time im answering an ask like this and if you wanna try to change my mind or genuinely talk to me about it, then you better PM me or message me off anon. 

OKAY i know ive taken a long time to answer that but thats just because this is the BEST gencio ask ive ever gotten and ive just been like. going to my inbox and staring at it dopily from time to time because i honest to god love this its so fuckin cute

ok cONSDIER 

I also really fucking hate these new headcanons that are coming up from some blogger I forget their name, but saying how Gabe wouldn't like being Strike Commander if he got it, or how he'd be bad at public speaking. We've been shown nothing but good humor, mild passive-aggressiveness but he gets straight to the point of things when talking with people. Is he hard around the edges? Of course he was in the damn Army, that's to be expected at this point. cont1-

Cont2-Or basically saying he wouldn't be good @political meetings because he would"get frustrated too easily" Not saying he can't be aggressive, but even during the Omnic Event, he was commanding but not in a way that would panic you, but more like "You got this, we're soldiers in arms." If anything he had better speech skills than Jack did. I jus hate people who assume he wouldn't change a bit, since obvs certain job positions always affect the way you act and speak towards others.

first of all, i agree with ALL of this!! when we first got our jack lore, we were told that jack got the strike commander position because he “brought the team together” moreso than gabriel did (which is a shit reason anyways, The Power Of Friendship doesnt make you the leader of a global peacekeeping corps) but as time goes on, that just seems... more and more glaringly false. from the halloween comic to the uprising one, gabriel is the more steady, friendly, and certain between the two of them. even as reaper, he doesnt lose cool when your team is losing, in comparison to jack “i cant get a point across without yelling” morrison. even in ana’s Legacy comic jack just... doesn’t seem like he has it under control LOL. so i totally agree: gabriel would have made a better strike commander. that’s almost certain. i mean, i wouldn’t be surprised if the lore was heading that way-- chu is practically rewriting/retconning overwatch as he goes, so why not? 

 and like... that blogger whomever they are is. really willingly ignorant im thinking because theres NOTHING to suggest gabriel would be like that in any way. if anything, JACK is the one who seems like he’d have trouble talking to other authority figures in a tense situation and would get frustrated... he had to keep on twiddling his thumbs until tracer, a new recruit, came and basically pushed him into making that decision. meanwhile gabe had jesse on the ground from the get go and seemed to know exactly what he was doing. but from the beginning of this fandom, people have gone out of their way to demoralize, demonize and scorn gabriel in their dumb ass meta so im really not surprised. i remember one blogger saying gabriel being jealous of jack would have shown his “true colors” as if jealousy isnt a regular human emotion?