The Cult of Klance

A little while ago, I created a post asking redditors what it is about the Voltron fandom that seems to attract the worst kind of fans. My link to it is right here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Voltron/comments/a9263x/how_did_it_get_so_bad/

I never really found a satisfactory answer, so I decided to narrow my scope a bit.

I'm just gonna come out and say it, the problem with this fandom is Klance.

This is just a fact. Everything bad that's ever happened in this fandom was orchestrated by a Klance shipper. I know it's not right to blame the ship for what the shippers have done but after so much bullshit, Klance isn't even a ship anymore. It's evolved into some kind of Lovecraftian Nightmare God who brainwashes countless victims into committing unspeakable acts in it's name.

Death threats to the VAs and their families, accusations of pedophilia tossed around like candy on Halloween night, incessant harassment of a woman on Twitter over her username, blackmailing a studio to make the ship canon, and quite possibly the worst piece of fanfiction ever written. (Okay, second worst...definitely top ten.) All of these were committed by Klance shippers for the sake of their "sacred" fictional pairing.

For God's sake, they even have their own Bible!

All of this leaves me with just so many questions. Why is this the hill so many people are ready to die on? Where does this cult like devotion come from? Why are so many people desperate to see a relationship that was never, ever, EVER going to happen happen? And that's not just me saying it.

During an interview with LM and JDS, they were asked if Klance was going to be canon and they explicitly said no. Specifically, they stated that to make it canon now would require cancelling the show and rebuilding it from the ground up and that any subtext between Keith and Lance was purely accidental. Meaning that if there was any subtext between them, the people who wrote it didn't notice. Meaning they couldn't see Keith and Lance hooking up as a possibility.

Also, Lance's voice actor, Jeremy Shada, made it very clear in his interview that Lance was straight, he had no interest in boys whatsoever and any chance of Klance being canon was nothing more than a pipe dream. So that should've been it, right? Klance shippers who saw that interview should've realized that that was the last nail in the coffin and they were just going to have to make do with headcanons and fanfiction. But it didn't work! If you check out that video on Youtube, the comments are swarmed with legions of Klance shippers twisting Jeremy's words or just straight up ignoring them to use as proof that Klance was inevitable when it pretty fucking clearly wasn't.

Which brings me to my previous point. Why? Why are so many Klance shippers like this? I know it's not all of them, I know it's the minority, but it's a pretty damn vocal one. So much in fact that it drove several other Voltron fans away to join the Dragon Prince fandom. There was literally nothing saying that they couldn't be part of both, but they chose to leave the Voltron fandom behind and find somewhere else, running away from all the bullshit like they were refugees.

So I'm reaching out to anyone who will listen and asking them how the Cult of Klance was born. How did a ship spiral out of control this badly and ended up leaking its toxicity to the rest of the fandom?

And to the good Klance shippers reading this, I'm sorry for blaming Klance for all that's wrong with Voltron, but you have to admit it's a pretty big part. And if you want to change my mind, I'd be glad to hear it. Type in any stories you have of Klance shippers doing something good, inside the fandom or outside it. It might just be enough for me to look at Klance fan art without immediately feeling disgust.

Everyone else, I like to hear what you think about the Cult of Klance and its Klultists. Who knows, if we work together we might just stop them from ruining another fandom.

Submitted February 25, 2019 at 11:59PM by awesomesauce477 https://ift.tt/2SYUFgJ