siriniel:

zillabean:

joshkeaton:

Re: Shipping

I’m kind of between a rock and a hard place here. Back when I said what I said, there were no canon ages. And when we were recording those episodes in the two years before this all went down, it had always been “five teenagers.”

Obviously as the story has gone on and things have evolved over production, the ages have been established and I do think that the age gap (minor with a 25 year old) at this point in their lives is problematic in canon. But my train of thought was that it would just be another detail that could be changed like anyone would do in their own headcanon. This somehow got misinterpreted as me condoning predatory ships which I’ve said I do not support.

I don’t know what the right answer is here. Will there be people who specifically focus on the gross aspects of canon age shaladin and make their story/art about that? Unfortunately, yes. But should others be bullied or threatened if they use the characters in their own way and reimagine them in a not gross or illegal way? I don’t believe they should.

I don’t know what the limits or boundaries are or what they should be. I’m not the Canon King. My involvement in shipping has been to come up with bad pun names for stuff that was on Tumblr before the show even started airing. I don’t ship anything, yet somehow I’m the patron saint for some shippers, and literally Hitler to others.

I realize that my “learn the definition” remarks were unnecessarily combative and crass. I regret making them. 100%. No excuses, it was a shit thing to say. I don’t condone problematic age gaps or predatory ships and I apologize for my insensitive remarks, and I’m sorry I even inserted myself into this discourse. I realize that there’s nothing I can say that will satisfy everyone and I really just wish everyone would get along.

I’m removing myself from ship talk completely. Threats have been made to myself, my wife, and my young children by anon Tumblr cowards on burner accounts. I realize that they’re extremes and not representative of that ship but some of y’all are exhausting and I hope you find some positivity in your lives. Those who brought this up respectfully on my insta – thanks for your passionate yet respectful messages. I feel I owed you a proper response.

I’m not leaving the fandom. The overwhelming majority of you have been wonderful and I’ll still do plenty of SpaceDad stuff. But ix-nay on the ipping-shay. I’m old and tired.

Edit: If you harassed me, threatened me, or harass/bully other people because of ships, this is not a “win” for you. My apologies are for any CSA survivors I offended with what I said. Not for you.

I generally keep my mouth shut about fandom politics because frankly, it’s like trying to win a 3-legged dog race. But I have to speak up here. When you take it upon yourself to be THIS CRUEL to a person who has shown this fandom NOTHING but genuine passion, genuine affection and support and actual personal LOVE for the character he plays, you are a fucking douchebag, plain and simple. Josh just recently, FOR HIS OWN BIRTHDAY, made an entire music video for us just because he and his VA pals like celebrating the fandom. He plays with the fans on a constant basis because he enjoys us. He stans Shiro as much as we all do. Nobody asked him to participate, he does cuz he cares. And to those of you who seek to tear him down and send fucking DEATHTHREATS to his family, you don’t deserve him, you don’t deserve this show, and you don’t deserve to be a part of the Voltron family. I don’t care personally ship, but I fully support people who DO, and I fully support shipping with kindness and mature respect that not everyone is going to be have the same opinions because that’s what it comes down to. Everyone’s got a smoke screen about their reasons for trashing another person over their ships and it always boils down to being unable to be adult and tolerant enough to hear another’s opinion that differs from your own. To tear down Josh for ANY of this is cruel, horrible, and disgusting. This is a person who has given 200% to the fandom of his own accord and this is how you treat him and the rest of the staff and the fans? You don’t deserve any of it.

Not cool dudes, really not cool. Fandom is gonna is have ship wars no matter what, but under no circumstances should you be doing this, I don’t care what you ship. Crew or fellow fans, nope full-stop, you don’t go threatening them.