#shaladin discourse

[alohaasaloevera]

WARNING!! MENTIONS OF VLD DISCOURSE PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!

yo I need y’all’s opinion on the Sheith vs Klantis (or just Klance) discourse way back then??? I personally think Shiro and Keith’s relationship is platonic but I would actually like to hear other people’s view points of Sheith whether they shipped Klance or Sheith or none.

I’m relatively new to this fandom (I started consuming vld media in late 2022), and god even I know the fandom way back then was crazy.. people definitely took it too far.

Also Sheith isn’t incest??? Maybe it’s weird for some people (including me) but c’mon they aren’t even related 😭😭😭

WTF…. People thought Plance was pedophilia?1!1?!1?11! Pidge was like 15 and Lance 17 at the start of the show and the law in the us says an 18 yr old and a 16 yr old can date, just no hopping on the vegetables….

Yooo klantis were crazyyyyy…. Now I understand why klance gives people PTSD

Anyways… just tell me about how you interpret shiro and Keith’s relationship and why

(Also I haven’t watched VLD past season 3 so I don’t know a lot of the lore..)

[lezbianz]

i think one of the symptoms of being extremely online from the age of 10 is that u will one day no longer be the loneliest little girl in the universe who only has fun doing online fandom discourse. and instead you will have real life friends and a girlfriend and career ambitions. but a part of you yearns for the freedom of being 13 with a popular voltron blog or 11 with a popular frozen fanfiction. it’s so strange.

[drinksglue]

I do have gripes with the term "pro-ship" though but not for the same reasons a lot of people do. there's a reason why even though I tag things with pro-ship as well (as it's the more popular term), I refer to my viewpoints as "pro-fiction" out of what I consider a necessity for the term to keep evolving.

I'll probably write more on this on neocities later but my gripe is that "pro-ship" has been treated as the endgame term when it's not the first and should NOT be the last. the conversation has been growing and changing (and not in a good way) and the popular terms people use to communicate to others that they are safe to interact with in fandom have changed over the years.

we had "pro-pewey" and "pro-sheith" back in 2015 because that was the Big Ticket Discourse that year. "pro-sheith" morphed into "pro-shaladin" because the fire spread from just attacking Sheith shippers to anyone shipping any "Shaladin" ship. "Anti-anti" also started cropping up around this time because some people were in both fandoms. But in that same year we also had the Osomatsu-san reboot, which spawned the anti-blmatsu discourse, so we had pro-blmatsu and even more people identifying as anti-anti because they were in multiple fandoms with this brand of discourse.

After that, yes, this caught on to more and more and more fandoms and ships, to the point where pro-ship became a necessary term to use if you wanted to include all these things in all these fandoms, regardless of whether you were in them or not.

but the game has NOT stopped changing since then. People aren't being harassed only for ships. Eventually it got to the point where you can't like Beastars, or Attack on Titan, or Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss. One of the first cases of entire fandoms being targeted was Killing Stalking. And it's not stopping there, either. Now entire authors are off limits. The Boyfriends webcomic is "problematic" but now so is anything else its author makes. You have teen and young adult boys on Tiktok complaining that women are reading Ali Hazelwood and Penelope Douglas and anything else they decry as "porn".

I could go on but it would take forever to list every direction the discourse has spread. This evolved from "shipping drama" a loooooooong fucking time ago. I truly do not believe "pro-ship" is enough and that we need to rebrand again to pro-fiction (or even something else that describes the position even more adequately, if possible) to account for the way the conversation has changed.

[materassassino]

Anti and pro what. The ship discourse terms?? What do you MEAN voltron gave us the silly ship discourse words?

Antishipping and proshipping were literally coined in the Voltron fandom by the people who thought shipping Shiro with the other Paladins was weird. It comes from anti-Shaladin and pro-Shaladin.

Voltron completely changed shipping discourse. It was completely different before Voltron.

[yes-my-paladin]

just saw shaladin discourse on my dash in 2024 UNPROVOKED I-

I thought we were past this yall PLEASE just have a good time I'm begging u 😭😭😭

[brisingr-sword]

i did NOT just see shaladin discourse in the year of our lord 2024 (affirmations) (gaslighting myself)

[werewolf-cuddles]

Every time I see an anti-shipper unironically say “Shiro literally raised Keith”, I want to slam my head against the wall.

Did we even watch the same show?

[huntypastellance]

Yeah, We’re talking about this now.

If you’ve been in the she1thdom for a while now & have followed popular she1th accounts, you’ll have noticed them occasionally posting something.....weird.

Posts vaguely complaining about a certain unnamed person who seems to despise the she1th fandom, use it for profit & doing all sorts of unsavory things behind the scenes in private DMs & discord servers.....

That person is Lee CA (Glossolalia on ao3), writer of those 2 fics that have invaded every she1th fan’s dash at some point in time (”Alien Sex Fiend” & “Picosecond”).

He’s the Cassandra Clare of the VLD fandom if CC had been caught being a creep & not just being a manipulative egotistical plagiarist obsessed with marketing.

Lee CA is about as much of a she1th fan as the infamous anti klanced is -- they ONLY care about it as a tool to boost their own popularity & will spend endless amounts of time bashing she1thers.

There’s a lot of posts about his whole sexual exploitation of naive minors & the whole thing blew up late February of 2019, but We’re here to talk about Lee’s entire history. (Notes: there will be some sources, but a lot of this is really old stuff or stuff only mentioned in private servers, so they’ve been lost to the sands of time or are just things heard through the grapevine.)

To preface all of this: NOBODY saw any of this coming. At worst, Lee was a narcissistic plagiarist high off the fumes of his own success, but his attitude at no point gave off any signs that he would exploit minors in that way. (Exploiting them for profit, though - that’s basically his whole shtick).

Lee was/is a very popular writer in the she1thdom (with fandom picking up the fanon “Shiro calls Keith ‘cherrybomb’” from his fics) & would charge professional rates for his works on his patreon, raking in around $1300 to $1600 PER MONTH for almost 2 YEARS on she1th fics alone (that isn’t counting his commissions either: he charges $125 for a 5000 word fic, $150 for a fic with porn). If he doesn’t hit his goal of $1600 a month, well, that’s clearly YOUR problem for not sponsoring him enough, not his.

Yeah, sure you could save $25 for the porn-free version, but reading a Lee work without any smut is like trying to eat a bowl of nails without any milk in it.

And then he would bitch & moan in DMs to other she1th creators about how “disgustingly underpaid he was”, “how ungrateful [she1th fans] are” or whine in she1th discords until his sympathizers ponied up enough money to pay him for another commission. Hell, he even admitted to MANY she1thers that he didn’t care about she1th, he didn’t like she1th & he was FURIOUS that how DARE not all his she1th fans were eager to throw their money at his original works (which forced him to go back to writing for she1th, even though he literally quit his dayjob to write fanfics full-time).

“Gruelingly underpaid” is apparently “professional rates for writing” so maybe Lee’s making a statement about the writing industry. Or maybe he’s just a dick.

As an ex-supporter of his patreon, We can tell you just how horrible his tiers are. And how tiring his whole gimmick of “I’m that edgy she1th writer! Sex workers! Drugs! Alcoholism! Cheating! Keith & Shiro hating each other but having sex! Christianity is evil & homophobic! -obligatory mention of Gucci because I’m trying to insert subliminal messages in my works to get my readers to buy me stuff!-” quickly got.

Essentially you’d have to pay $10 per month to see anything that wasn’t basically stuff you’d see on his twitter feed or tumblr. (”Pay me $5 a month & I’ll post my notes & let you know what I’m up to!”).

You also had to pay for updates to his she1th fic “Picosecond” if you wanted him to update at a speed faster than “1 chapter every 2-3 months” -- which is already stupid since it’s his fic, but if you’re unlucky & you “didn’t pay him enough”, he’d mention it on the post update that it’s YOUR fault that this chapter wasn’t longer*!

But it’s totally fine, because he said it in a joking tone & so that makes it okay to throw shade at his commissioner like that~!

*minor issue but he artificially inflates his own word count by waxing on about the scenery or filling the chapter with long monologues, so he was ripping people off even more while shilling how “deep” he was

Lee later threw a fit again about how ungrateful, uncaring & cruel the she1thdom was. Why? Because his newest fic about witch!Keith, paladin!Shiro & the cursed tree with crying baby heads for fruit didn’t get over 100 kudos within the span of three days.

And if you were a new fan to she1th & wanted fic recs? He’ll literally just rec his own fics & only his own fics! (Despite having connections to basically every she1th fic writer in the fandom).

Calling Lee a narcissist is a bit of an understatement.

He was also caught plagiarizing another she1ther’s band fic. And, key point here:

The original fic was posted for free on ao3.

Lee’s version was patreon-only until he posted it to ao3 (after ignoring his patreon subscribers who were like “hey what the fuck, i’ve read this before”).

You had to PAY to read Lee’s version (& this is just a personal opinion, but do you think you’d want to pay for a passionless uncaring version of the same fic? His whole disdain towards VLD & She1th leaks out all over his writing, but he’s so good at marketing his stuff that people don’t really notice it - they just think he’s being “dark & edgy”).

He then claimed to have no prior knowledge of the fic only for people to dig up his ao3 account & find out that not only had he bookmarked the original fic, but he had also kudosed it. (Yes, he’s deleted that bookmark by now. Can’t delete the kudos though!)

Lee tried to spin the whole thing as “fighting for the freedom to write whatever you want” just like how he tried to spin his condescending tweets about the Hanakotoba zine’s selection process as “rewarding those who worked hard at their writing” like it wasn’t just a blatant “im only picking me, my friends & popular folks & calling them the best the fandom has to offer” cash grab.

He eventually took down the fic but not before loudly insisting that he was in the right. The other author just wanted the drama to be over with so the entire incident was settled & forgotten without much fanfare.

And then someone spoke up & mentioned that Lee had begged for nudes from underaged fans. And a whole storm of threads poured forth, many of Lee’s whiteknights vanished into the wind & the she1th blogs who had been vaguing about him for years finally gave up on him (you can only avoid someone so much if they’re that popular & basically in every single she1th event promo & whatnot).

Essentially, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Or is it?

In the grand scheme of things, this hasn’t really changed much for Lee. People did write to his publisher, Oni Press, (as Lee was working on Dream Daddy with them) & while there was a response, there hasn’t been much information as to how it concluded.

His patreon follower count did drop quite a bit, but Lee still has many fans who will willingly throw tons of money at him. (Besides, he was already losing followers after VLD ended - tons of people lost interest in both the canon & in fan content).

So yeah, things haven’t really changed that much for Lee other than some people now refusing to support him financially or make art based on his works.

Twitter threads & posts about the whole incident:

http://archive.fo/HxI0H

http://archive.fo/N1thM

http://archive.fo/caVOs

http://archive.fo/YjBA5

http://archive.fo/2GgnG

http://archive.fo/454Ww

http://archive.fo/50f9A

http://archive.fo/EhBIQ

Fail-fandom threads about Lee CA’s attitude towards his own fans & his semi-illegal patreon (illegal in the sense that he never discloses on his account that he’s writing VLD fanfics for money):

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/265625.html?thread=1492373401#cmt1492373401

http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/264405.html?thread=1485573845#cmt1485

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/321513.html?thread=1844915433#cmt1844915433

Lee CA’s plagiarism of another author:

http://archive.fo/TM25C

http://archive.fo/ioMRF

http://archive.fo/3kymS

http://archive.fo/yw6io

[br-dlee]

People bringing up Keith’s and Shiro’s age difference always makes me think of this Parks and Rec quote. 

[just-antithings]

Just Anti Things: and then the whole bus clapped

[legendary-discourse]

Just seeing a tweet that calls Keith a "13 years old" in the 7x01 flashback and people commenting like "oh, I didn't remember that, I forget all episodes Shallie claims as theirs, they ruins everything" and I'm kinda sad because Voltron ended five months ago, can people stop spreading misinformation especially for things they explicity says they don't remember? Sheith isn't canon, you can go and stop with this ridiculous shipwar and start give Keith his age instead of infantilizing him

That’s kinda funny antis are claiming to have forgotten every episode Shallies “claim as theirs”. Maybe we should’ve claimed them all. I even recall an anti saying they didn’t even look at the screen when Lance wasn’t on it.

For real though, I don’t recall any shallies ever claiming episodes as theirs, except maybe that time an anti wore a “Say no to she//ith” shirt to SDCC and some she//ithers commented that it was funny someone wore that to what was essentially the “she//ith episode”.

I really wish the infantilisation of Keith would end. We don’t know what age he was in the flashbacks. To my knowledge, it was never specified, but antis always seem to HC him as very young (and force that HC onto others). 

I’ve literally seen antis telling people outside the fandom that Shiro is 25 and Keith is 10-13, in order to get those people to side with them that she//ith is disgusting. It’s pathetic. Even if Keith was that young in the flashback (and I very much doubt he was) then Shiro definitely wasn’t 25 back then. You can’t just grab ages from different time periods and call that the canon age gap.

But I guess, to them, Shiro is perpetually an adult and Keith is perpetually a small child.

[sven-a-la-mode]

All antis are banned from shipping wlw ships until they appologize to Bex Taylor-Klaus (a nblw)

[wandering-astral-spirit]

Anyways Shance is just as bad as Sheith and equally as bad. Also Shiro took in Keith and raised him and canonically referred to him as brother and even family but all you Shaladins hear is "I love you." How ignorant can you fucking be.

[antiantishaladin]

Antis: Sheith is predatory and its incest! Shipping it is bad and I'm gonna be an asshole to everyone who ships it !!

Me:

[pikabelle]

Antis: You can’t find Shiro attractive!!!! He’s an Asian disabled man with a mental illness!! Finding him sexually appealing is wrong and automatically fetishy!

Shiro:

[captivealter]

Psa: Peaceful Anti's Dont Exist

Those who are peaceful in their beliefs or distaste, are not anti's

To be peaceful with one's NOTP, makes it just a "NOTP"

To simply disagree or feel offended by a ship, doesnt make ya an anti

Ppl who rant, rave and fight over their NOTP or abt the ppl who ship it, no matter the reason, ARE anti's

One is acceptible while the other is destructive