While Voltron has its good aspects, this show has been a catastrophic failure that has burned many fans over and over again. It is easy to see this is as hyperbolic overreaction, but in this day and age, ignoring blatant minority erasure, queerbaiting, fatphobia, abuse of poc, and display of inappropriate and frankly traumatizing imagery would be a crime.

With an official rating of Y-7 that was much later (and too late) changed to PG, it is disturbing that they were able to get away with torture, body contortion, multiple major character deaths, and themes of genocide and reverse racism--but not allow substantially explicit LGBT representation. Even ignoring the teenagers/young adults who watch this show outside of the target demographic, people are upset. Parents and kids are appalled by the choices made by Voltron. On commonsensemedia, one parent says that “in later seasons this cartoon becomes too violent and serious for my 7 y/o son. He was terrified by some moments (for example: tortures, Shiro hurting his leg, Pidge crying in front of the grave)”.  The show was made for that age range, and even as a 17 year old, it was disturbing to watch one of the main characters get tortured through electrocution. With the recent and final season (and the most infuriating by far), one twitter user says that it gave their little brother nightmares, another said that that their 9yo brother was infuriated by the poor treatment of their characters, and another is afraid to even bring it up to their sibling that the main character (whose entire race was murdered) dies in the last episode and the corpse of another main character was melted on screen. That is blatantly stepping over a boundary. It’s one thing to write a show that is poorly developed, poorly paced, and poorly written (all of which Voltron is), but it’s another to claim that you can’t do certain things because it’s “just a kids show” when you get away with insensitive things like that.

Rumor has it that the writers fired their sensitivity writers in an attempt to cut down budget costs, and it clearly shows. Much of Season 2 was making a black-coded character seem “racist” for being wary about a race that murdered her entire planet and all of her people. That black female character was then killed for shock value. One of the other biggest characters, Shiro, an LGBT Japanese POC was tortured in detainment and then suffered PTSD that was glossed over, never addressed, and only used as a plot-device to help them when infiltrating the enemy. This character was repeatedly killed off or almost died. It does not matter that he was brought back to life, it is not a good look. Another main character, Lance, was Cuban and had a line “I’m just a boy from Cuba” before literally having his race changed because he kissed a girl. Not intentionally idiotic, but if they had proper sensitivity writers, they could have avoided this. Not to mention that another main character, Hunk, who is a heavier POC rarely ever got to talk, and when he did, his intelligence was overshadowed by jokes about his weight and how he only cares about food. Irresponsible, hurtful, fatphobic writing. He was a master engineer, and was constantly reduced to being a “coward”. Literally every character of color was beaten into the ground when the one white character got at least four or five episodes dedicated to her (Pidge), she got character development, backstory, a full family with their own development, and no one from her family was ever killed off. Speaking of deaths, after announcing that Shiro was gay and he had a boyfriend back on Earth that was going to be shown (and getting all the praise and patting themselves on the back for it), they killed off his boyfriend before they ever got to reunite and barely gave Shiro any time to mourn. They claim it was for the purpose of showing “just how horrible” the war was, but the trend of killing LGBT people (burying your gays) is one of the most harmful and regressive stereotypes in of all media when it comes to minority representation. This is unacceptable for a show that claims to be so socially aware. It sets a prerequisite for minority kids who may watch and think that their life is going to be that difficult, and they won’t be happy while the white, straight characters get all the happiness in the world.

By building up the relationship between Shiro and Adam, saying it was going to be a big plotline, and doing several interviews about how “hard they worked for the LGBT community”, the writers and crew were given endless praise and told they were “so brave” and “did so much for the community”, only to have it never explicitly shown that they were a couple, and then killing 1/2 of them off for good. After the backlash, they quickly animated a wedding where Shiro kisses a man at the end, thinking that it would be enough to “get us back on their side” and enough for us to forgive what they did. When I polled 2,164 people on Twitter who watched Voltron Legendary Defender, 85% of them were LGBT. That is a huge indicator of the demographic, and very representative based on the people in this fandom I have come in contact with. They knew that they had that demographic under their control, so they exploited us for our praise and then barely gave us anything to be happy about when it came to representation. Not to mention Netflix repeatedly used rainbow thumbnails with Shiro, depictions of Shiro/Adam with a rainbow, and put Voltron in their LGBT section. I do not need to explain how horrible this is. 

The elephant in the room is Klance, who was the most (and one of the only) relationships that was substantially developed over the course of the show, hinted at by the writers, crew, voice actors, and pretty much anyone who had a brain, and was the #1 ship on Tumblr for two years straight. This isn’t the most compelling claim I will make, because one may argue that our certainty of their eventual canonization was entirely fabricated by our own minds, but it says a lot that that many people believed in the ship. They knew that so much of their fandom was only there for the ship, and so they never shut it down, knowing that it wasn’t going to happen, and so many kids looking for proper and substantiated LGBT rep were going to be let down. That is bait in itself. They had many opportunities to warn us that we had false hope for putting so much faith into the ship, but they never did. It’s similar to not shutting down a ship between two practically adoptive brothers with a 6 or 7 year age gap. They don’t want to alienate any viewers because they were so desperate for loyal fans. They couldn’t even denounce ships between 15 and 27 year olds. That’s pedophillic, and they practically encouraged the behavior that led to so many shipping wars and so much tension within the fandom.

All this to say, the show was one of the worst that has ever been made with so much potential in the beginning. It is a Netflix original, and there is no doubt in my mind that this show will leave a permanent stain on the reputation of Netflix and Dreamworks. There was insurmountable backlash against this show over the course of its lifetime, and it will come back to haunt them. So many have already boycotted the show and refused to watch Season 8 on Netflix because they didn’t want them to make money. We are all aware that Netflix is a big name corporation that doesn’t have time to listen to marginalized children or take their opinions into account. We are all aware that making profit is more important to Netflix than being socially tolerant. I have no doubt in my mind that they genuinely will not care about the damage this show has done. But it is horrifying that in 2018 we have to deal with this kind of abhorrent treatment on such a large platform. Netflix has been receptive and accommodating of LGBT representation in the past. They have created a platform for many shows to escape from the restraints of cable TV production. It would make such an incredible statement if they had the courage to remove a harmful show like this off of their platform. It would be a good reminder that careless, callous and utter insensitive negligence is not tolerated by Netflix as a company. I’m sure if asked they would stand by that statement. But to put it into action and actually remove Voltron Legendary Defender from their platform would be something else entirely. They make enough money as it is. They don’t care about the little guy, and why should they? They are a multi-million dollar company who will never stop making money and never stop making their own Netflix originals. But they do have influence. And they can make a statement.

Please sign this petition with the hope of maybe bringing this abomination to their attention.

I refuse to be silenced as an LGBT woman, and while I do not speak for the entire community, it is indisputable the damage that has been done.