#also people often trivialize voltron’s messiness down to ‘ship wars’ and they were ship wars. but there was a very moralized element to it.

[klanced]

Man ty for popping up on my dashboard. I miss voltron, but whenever I try to check what's up I get reaaally bad flashbacks as to how the fandom was. It's kinda worse when u accidentally triggered a community of a popular ship (its not kl@nce) :')))) hnghjgn idk how u do it

voltron is just. such a funny phenomenon. the show was like a C+ at BEST but we all stuck around anyway clinging to the hope that things would eventually improve and then they NEVER did. & so we all had to make do with literal scraps and we were RESOURCEFUL!!! 😭 I have honestly never seen a fandom where the fan content was so divorced from the actual source material like 💀💀💀 and i think this scarcity of good content forced people to be extra creative, which is why the voltron fandom was 1) so genuinely hilarious and 2) full of content producing MACHINES

Literally all we could do was just talk to each other. we were forced to survive off each other’s kindness & it made everyone super co-dependent. it really was a bunch of high schoolers forming parasocial relationships with other high schoolers; of course it got messy!!

also this is such a minor detail in the grand scheme of things but voltron hit tumblr at like the exact time social media became more accessible to people under 13 years old. and like. conflict and discourse is an inevitable part of fandom. but the end result was we had college students picking fights with LITERAL middle schoolers. and I genuinely cannot believe we all thought this was normal behavior!!!!!

#I genuinely get sad when I hear people talk about how voltron caused them so much stress. and then they mention that they’re not even 18 yet #like… wow #god I hope emma does not become an active and involved member of a fandom it’s just. it’s not very moderated. #also people often trivialize voltron’s messiness down to ‘ship wars’ and they were ship wars. but there was a very moralized element to it. #and people were heavily invested in fighting over this. not just because muh ships but people were also very much coming at this #from a place of personal trauma or experience. and in hindsight were just retraumatizing themselves. #ugh. idk fandom kind of sucks. but tumblr in 2012-2015 was such a fun time for me & it was a formative experience #and then I hear people say that voltron turned them off from fandom forever when they were 14 and I go :( #sigh. I’m very tired and on mobile where I can’t really see or edit my tags lol so I apologize for the mess #anyway to answer your last question anon I think that people who were 16+ in 2016 (like me) #had an easier time coping with voltron during + after simply by virtue of having been alive a little longer and therefore #having had more time to establish a solid sense of self/identity. if that makes sense. #ask #anonymous