#like I only liked sheith

[holysheithyall]

very quick boxer vanessa bc i had a vision

[autisticlancemcclain]

Could you explain your position on Shallura? Since Allura was established as a teenager when she started dating Lance and Shiro was very clearly an adult. I can understand the bi shiro headcannon but the shallura thing worries me

i am going to remind yall that i have been in this fandom since 2016. and in the early seasons, allura was not established as a teenager. in fact she was coded as older, as closer to shiro's age -- there was a specific divide between her and the younger paladins that she did not have with shiro. they made her younger (both explicitly and in mannerisms) as the show went on. and i do not give a fuck about voltron like...post s4 and i didn't even watch s7-8. so like. especially with older fics, im going to enjoy shallura.

[cushfuddled]

I've been rewatching Voltron

[beaulesbian]

sorry sorry, it's just how it looks

[zehecatl]

some people will literally look at THE most gay shit imaginable, and go ‘oh what a lovely father and son :)’

[magicofthepiper]

It's a little bit wild to think back on the shipping wankery that went on in the VLD fanbase, and how deeply it affected today's fandom culture.

A common consensus I see is that the definition of aoc goes by California's penal code 261.5. Therefore, the minimum is 18, and without room for Romeo and Juliet law unless married. It's a strictly age-based moral standard.

However, it was clearly Klance shippers that that were the most vocally anti Shaladin. Eventually, they would label themselves 'antis' as a badge of moral righteousness. Meanwhile, it was Sheith shippers who were the face of the anti-anti or proship side of the wankery.

Much of this was due to ambiguous wording describing the cast as teenagers and whether that applied to Shiro or not. And then came the day that DreamWorks decided to release a publication with the character's ages clearly stated. Shiro was 25, Lance was 17, and Keith.... was 18.

[pan-withnoplan]

No because y'all weren't kidding when you said season 8 was awful

[sunderberry]

thinking about... diluc ships...

[triple--a--threat]

because i hate myself ive started watching voltron. do you wanna see my live reaction to it. can i make money out of it if i stream it on twitch

[cockybusiness]

The first 3 pages + cover of my red thread/soulmate AU comic, "Unbreakable"

An AU where Adam lives (because I like him) and soulmates are a thing. This comic is from his POV.

Warning for all the pairings included: starts prekerb with platonic friendsheith with adam/shiro bits, but then does the timeskip to S7 with endgame sheith AND adam/crewmember.

Patrons of the first tier have access to my sfw PDF files, but if you only want this comic you can get it from

Itchio

Gumroad

[holysheithyall]

my wife 🫶 (+my keith hcs)

————

also the sketch under the cut cuz i like it a lot

[alienboy51]

i feel like people forget when shiro went on the kerberos mission, he was in space for a year. i was trying to figure out when shiro and keith met because i wanted to know how long they've known each other. i saw a couple people saying something like... keith and shiro had only known each other for a year or two before shiro left?? which??? HEY??? MAKES ZERO SENSE??? maybe i'm beating a dead horse but i haven't been in the fandom since 2019 so sue me. i've decided shiro and keith knew each other for at least four years? i was previously under the impression keith and shiro met when keith was 12, but that... wouldn't make much sense. it would put shiro at 19, and i doubt that's old enough for him to be a senior officer or whatever he was. it was high ranking, i know that much. evidently the garrison doesn't accept kids under 15, maybe meaning pidge had to lie about her age to get in? although in the paladin's handbook that came out after season 2, it was stated she was 15. anyway, shiro and keith have a 7 year age gap, because as stated in the previously mentioned handbook, shiro was 25 as of season 2, and keith was 18. this means that in the flashback episode at the beginning of season 7, shiro had to have been at least 20 and that would place keith at 14 or 15. i doubt there's anyone who cares about this, but i couldn't find any information online and i was frankly scared to look very deeply for fear of finding sheith posts. 😟

[larothoughts]

anti-ship adjacent ships: liujiu and qijiu

so there's this weird thing that's happening in svsss of all fandoms that reminds me a lot of voltron's klance and sheith fiasco AKA the formation of what i like to call anti-ship adjacent ships

basically, when someone's favorite ship is more indicative of them being an anti-shipper of another ship.

i've had to start excluding liujiu in my ao3 searches because more often than not, the fics that come up are yqy-bashing and what?? this is svsss, right? mxtx's trashiest, most problematic, harem-bicycle-shen-yuan svsss? what is this moral outrage doing in my degenerate danmei fic space, and why are you mischaracterizing yqy just to make an excuse to hate on him??

i've had a few thoughts on the rising dichotomy of shen jiu sympathizers both validating sj's bad behavior and hating yqy for enabling the same behavior. and then shipping him with lqg because liujiu is 'less toxic.' As an old lady fanfic reader who's trawled through all the godforsaken dead dove ships of the old livejournal kink_meme, i'm writing these out because making sense of things helps me cope and i am too old for this shit

(this is actually more 'why anti-qijiu' word vomit than liujiu specific--it just so happens that so many liujiu fics are bizarrely anti-qijiu.)

narrative reasons for anti-yqy liujiu fic:

aka why an author finds it easier for the plot to bash qi-ge

accepting either romantic or platonic qijiu means trying to fix qijiu. this is hard. yqy and sj already have a proven history of failure, while sj and lqg (aka author's ideal white-knight love interest) would be the perfect do-over. making yqy a clear abusive villain sj must cut off ties with 'for his mental health' solves the problem without having to fix things. it frees the author to write what they thought qi-ge should have done to 'save shen jiu right.'

on the same note, liujiu have nearly no canon crumbs. the author can write them however they want without being constrained by their canon relationship.

why lqg over other possible ships? other than yqy, lqg is one of the few characters with any sort of previous relationship with sj. lqg is canonically hot, has strong (even if negative) feelings towards sj, and has no textual or subtextual canon ship (beyond a one-sided crush on shen yuan, with lbh getting in his way lol.) he is also the same generation as sj and thus avoids any age gap squicks like with sj's other ship partners (looking at you tlj)

yqy is the only person in cang qiong with higher authority than shen jiu. while other peak lords are antagonistic, all are ranked lower and can't get in liujiu's way the same way as yqy can as a sect leader. not even the old palace master has the same power because he's the head of a different sect. so if you really want to write a villain abusing their (implicit) power over shen jiu, yqy is the only one that fits the bill.

lbh, as sj's disciple, does not fit the same abuse of power trope even if he becomes an op demon lord. as for bingjiu, lbh's brand of diabolical stalkerish yandere is so over-the-top it's hard to equate him to any real relationship. it's easier to twist yqy's passivity to villainy because it's closer to reasonable human behavior.

if one is coming from the tgcf fandom, yue qingyuan is the closest junwu-adjacent character in terms of personality and rank (on the surface.) so it's easy to transfer any junwu hate to yqy by giving him all of junwu's worst traits and making him 'junwu-lite'

same thing as above but with mdzs and the lan xichen hate for his inaction regarding his own little meowmeow (jgy).

personal author-reasons for anti-yqy liujiu fic:

aka when the character himself doesn't matter

let's get a silly one out of the way: maybe the author only headcanons top shen jiu and most qijiu has sj being a bottom. lqg gives off better hot twinky bottom energy than submissive-but-still-tops yqy. this does not explain the anti-shipping though.

less silly: an author is projecting either themselves or other people in their real life onto their fic, and changing the character's personalities to match their real life projected counterparts (even if ooc). sj is a clear abuse-survivor insert, which shoe-horns other characters into roles that real people in the author's lives have. i think yqy is often seen as the insert for someone who 'could have helped but didn't.' there are many valid reasons why someone would be more mad at the person who averted their gaze rather than their actual abuser, but that doesn't change the fact that qijiu's relationship in canon is so much more complicated.

(it's easier to hate enablers instead of abusers, because hating abusers and inviting confrontation is dangerous. most of the time, enablers won't hurt you directly. they are the safer person to hate.)

an author thinks they could have saved sj better, that qi-ge had more than enough time to fix things and his failure not to do so must be punished by taking away his sj-simp-card and throwing him into the villain bin. this is similar to the phenomenon where an author hates the wife of canon anime couples b/c the author could clearly wife him better. and then writes a fic bashing said wife.

an author sees a messy relationship and equates messy with abusive. in reality many relationships can be messy but not abusive, messy but still fixable, but due to their personal experiences they see any attempt to do so as toxic. in this scenario yqy is often the abuser-insert and his ooc characterization takes after the author's own abuser.

specifically in fics where lqg has the personality of a cardboard cut-out: using liujiu to tell others they are still pro-ship, when in reality they dislike qijiu for their own reasons (and can't help but write it in their fic). it really reminds me of middle school lol like kids trying to find their identity by hating another identity. the whole 'ew pink is overrated, i hate preps which means i must be a nerdy rebel' and then two years later you realize you're not a nerdy rebel after all, you just based your entire identity on what you thought was the opposite of what you hated.

why i try not to read anti-qijiu liujiu fics:

aka write whatever you want, but sometimes i have to choose not to read

authors can write whatever they want. we're all doing this for free, so it's expected that a lot of fanfic have venting and some self-imposing onto a fictional character. i don't expect authors to NOT put themselves in their fic in some way. at the same time, however, i hope authors are self-aware enough to not bash another character just because that character reminds them of someone irl.

aka i get uncomfortable when i read a fic that has an author's obvious real-person insert. i'm not reading svsss fic anymore, i'm reading the author's version of punishing their abuser using fiction. i love transformative media that adds onto the canon! i love different interpretations even! but i'm here to read svsss? where are the svsss characters??

i'm not into character-bashing in general. i think the point of svsss and all of bingqiu's misunderstandings is the fact that good/evil is not a binary. sy spent the whole series fearing the 'evil' binghe despite the fact that post-abyss binghe was a complex person, causing a chain reaction of disaster. hell, shen jiu is the king of gray characters! he is a scum villain, evil and misunderstood, to be a sj-fan means to understand that no one is entirely good or evil. so it's even more cognitively dissonant when a pro-sj fic is so categorically anti-qijiu, as this often paints sj as good/misunderstood and yqy as bad.

(the only character-bashing i don't care about is the old palace master mxtx clearly wrote him to be bashed so throw him in a fire)

i don't mind liujiu actually, i think the dynamic has potential (see all the sj harem fic i've read lol) but qi-ge is such a big part of sj's character that vilifying/getting rid of him does sj a disservice too? sj has a shit ton of bad coping mechanisms, these aren't going to be magically fixed if yqy gets his limbs chopped off as 'just punishment' (??) for not stopping sj from abusing his own students (????)

in conclusion

there is no point to this rambling, and you don't need to agree with me on anything. these are just thoughts i had when trying to figure out why anti-ship adjacent ships even exist. the moral outrage is giving me war flashbacks of anti-sheith klance fans using their age gap as justification for their own ship, rather than liking klance for... being klance.

(I briefly considered going over all liujiu vs qijiu morality arguments, but if you're an sj fan i feel like morality arguments are pointless. he is an angry feral scum kitten who hits kids, no sj-fan has the moral high ground here.)

it's always unfortunate to see so much anti-shipping spilling into fandom, since by default most of us are living in the fringe minority anyway. further dividing us is just going to sink the whole ocean ala the death of livejournal and chinese ban on ao3. there's no point in ships if there ain't an ocean to sail in! aren't we all here because we are fans of these stories???

bonus

to make up for what must feel like a huge anti liujiu wall of text, here are some of my general thoughts on how their relationship would work. i'm more familiar with sj so most of these are from his pov.

while sj often has schemes upon schemes upon schemes, when it comes to anger/criticism/negativity, he's scathingly honest. lqg, a fellow honest asshole, is often on the same wavelength. once misunderstandings are cleared up and lqg realizes sj will do whatever it takes to protect big bro yqy (and thus the sect), they're able to work together as a ruthless team against cang qiong's enemies.

let's also assume fixing sj's emotional issues stops him from the worst of his scumminess aka whipping his disciples half to death.

teamwork -> enemies to lovers -> only one bed trope???

sj needs someone who will overtly believe in his goodness, and lqg, once he realizes the mistakes in his assumptions, is a loyal wall of support. unlike qi-ge who must always play diplomat, lqg blazes over all social cues. who cares if this looks bad on cang qiong, he'll throw down with anyone if his boo is insulted.

lqg is upfront and honest. there are no hidden plots for sj to be paranoid about in lqg, he's a Good Man through-and-through. if lqg has problems, he'll tell him. if he needs to apologize and sj tells him why, he'll do so. and if sj asks him a question, he'll always do his best to answer.

while lqg knows sj has trauma and a dark past, he will never truly understand what it was like. and that's exactly what sj wants. he likes how lqg knows him more as he is now in the present vs. someone who has lived through the same past. being with him is a reminder that he is now a powerful peak lord, not the starving street rat he once was.

for lqg, sj is like a complex puzzle box. an enigma so outside of his understanding of how the world works, he can't help but be drawn to it. he used to equate scheming with evil, but once he realizes much of sj's scheming was for the good of the sect, he lets himself be impressed by sj's intelligence. the fact that sj became a peak lord from nothing shows a certain type of strength-- and lqg has always appreciated strength.

a big roadblock in their relationship was sj's antagonism towards yqy (their sect leader whom lqg respects.) once qijiu reconcile (or sj stops being so disrespectful to yqy in public) lqg is better able to see him as an ally vs. an enemy.

sj rewards this loyalty by taking care of lqg's hidden enemies, because straightforward brutes are especially susceptible to devious snakes like that. sj would know. whether or not he tells lqg can go either way. he tells lqg if only to stop lqg from hearing it elsewhere and assuming the worst; or he doesn't tell lqg because he knows lqg trusts him and confusing his mind with schemes would just make him grumpy for not understanding.

...even if he's cute when he's grumpy.

[fairyfairchild]

Honestly the one thing I don’t miss at all since I’ve distanced myself from fandoms is this discourse of “proship” and “anti proship” that feels more like stupid standards on both sides like you either are a horrible person or the pure uwu child of god personified and there’s no in between. There’s only WRONG ships and RIGHT ships and god forbid you have nuance. This has been around for a while (I certainly remember being called “problematic” for shipping Sheith in Voltron a couple years ago) but nowadays is absurd and EVERYWHERE. Take One Piece lulaw as an exemple. Law is 26 Luffy is 19 so it’s a WRONG ship cause that’s unacceptable. Or “they are both consenting adults” as if only underaged ships can be abusive. When it’s completing different when you take, let’s say, someone that loves Law as a character, relates to him, also loves Luffy and can understand how Law’s fucked up traumatize ass would fall in devotion for this annoying sun personified OR someone that draws Luffy like he’s a fucking twelve years old. Unless LITERAL CHILDREN are involved, no ship in inherently good or bad and blindly defending either of those statements is stupid. People are good or bad. Behavior is good or bad. Not fucking checklist information of fictional characters.

[komohine]

How are sheith shippers fetishizing gay men. Are you delusional? Misinformed? Lacking IQ?

Keith is not Asian btw, While we're at it, please prove to me all the damage sheith has done to the gay Asian male community.

Ok considering i have sheith shippers/defenders dni in my intro post and I really dont feel like wasting my time today ill try to keep it short and wont be responding to shit like this down the line. Next time save your breath though. Because idk if you knew this but dni stands for Do Not Interact. You are interacting. Stop that.

1) they’re brothers. Sure it’s revealed much later in the seasons, but the point is they have an incredibly strong familial relationship. If you started off shipping sheith when they weren’t explicitly defined as brothers, fine. But after their familial relationship is revealed the choice to continue shipping those two specifically comes off as strange as hell. Even stranger when you consider the multiple other available male characters that are not only more age appropriate but also dont have a familial relationship with them lmao. Also Shiro canonically gets married to a man. So the choice to continue shipping sheith has to go beyond just wanting to guys to kiss. The next common denominator? They’re both asian, so I must conclude that the need to ship them comes from that. The next next common denominator is that they’re related and some of you just have a thing for incest. But i still have faith in humanity so i wont accuse you of that even though i occasionally feel the urge to. I refuse to take “but but they have the most in show relationship development” as a reason because that just means you’re too fucking lazy to think of your own scenarios. Which is not true, because the amount of devious ass sheith shit I unfortunately stumble across means your collective neurons are actively firing away. Just for the wrong thing. You guys really saw the only real developed relationship (i use this word generally and not strictly romantically) between two guys in the show and decided that it must have romantic undertones. Beyond how its harmful to irl men and deters them from emotional maturity out of fear that any non toxic relationship between two men is automatically seen as romantic by some people, it’s just fundamentally mid yaoi because you guys cant fathom that 1) romance isn’t a core part of the show beyond allurance 2) that two guys can talk to eachother while smiling without wanting to fuck. Yall are in the same league as those guys who are addicted to step sister p0rn.

1.5) bcs i know someones gonna ask “why do you think sheith is incest”, its because shiro fulfills the kinship role of “sibling” for keith, or even “parent”. From here-on out simplified as “guardian”. Within anthropology there are numerous kinship systems which determine which family member is called what. Ex. In the hawaiian system, every male family member is called “father” and every female “mother”. No matter if they birthed you or not. In the linear (also known as esk/mo but that’s a word with heavy history) system, your parents are “mom/dad”, siblings are defined as “brother/sister”, and everyone else is “aunt/uncle” or “cousin”. This is the system commonly used in the west. Kinship systems define a lot of things, from inheritance to respect hierarchies. Another key thing they determine is incest taboo. The range of which this taboo applies differs depending on culture, which is why you’ll hear of two people, for example, cousins getting married. In the west that’s considered taboo, but it may not be in another culture. Kinship and its taboos also apply to non blood related relationships. Hence adoptive siblings, etc. And keith quite explicitly refers to shiro as his brother. Given the context of those scenes, it can be deduced that it’s not said in a way that is 1) casual, as the lingo would more likely be “sup bro” or the tone of voice would be significantly more casual, 2) indicative of anything other than a familial relationship, for if keith considered him a brother in arms he would’ve said something more along the lines up “on your feet, brother”. Keith saying “you’re like my brother” AND THEN DOUBLING DOWN TO “You’re my brother,” said in such a sincere tone of voice leaves little to be debated.

Tldr: Shiro fulfills a guardian kinship role for Keith and thus the incest taboo applies to him.

1.6) also like? It’d be weird either way. Going by their canon age diff (season 1, 25-18 = SEVEN YEARS), and considering shiro met keith in middle school, and going by the oldest middle school age (15) bcs im feeling generous, shiro wouldve still been 22. If they just met once and never again till seasom 1, fine. Ship sheith however you want. But the fact is they met and then they formed a bond when shiro was significantly older and in a position of power over keith. Shiro was a mentor and guardian to keith whether you like it or not, and he stayed that way from when keith was young and impressionable until he was an adult. Yk what thats called? Raising a child. Imagine shipping that. Crazy. Imagine a 9 year old being raised by a 17 year old babysitter bcs of his absent parents. Suddenly when the 9 year old turns 18 he starts dating his babysitter. Thats freaky as hell, and i only increased the age gap by 2 years. Literally nothing else changed.

2) now why would they include a non aapi character in the mash up? Also, his source character from the og voltron is named “Keith Akira Kogane”. What non asian person is named that?

3) also the fact you need me to show you damage.. same vibe as “wdym he’s stalking you he’s just being friendly!! Show me how his so called stalking has put your life in danger”. Like imagine needing actual damage before even considering something bad.

[cushfuddled]

Highly recommend doing zines and art/fic exchanges with fandom people in your college years, not only because it’s really fun and you can make great friends but also because in the next decade+ you get to continuously stumble upon those people’s work in the professional world and be like. Hey I know the guy who did that book you like. Yeah we made hurt/comfort Voltron Sheith art together