"FANS ARE GOING TO SEE IT ANY WAY THEY WANT": THE RHETORICS OF THE VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER FANDOM

Renee Ann Drouin

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

May 2021

Committee:

Lee Nickoson, Advisor

Salim A Elwazani Graduate Faculty Representative

Neil Baird

Montana Miller

© 2021

Renee Ann Drouin

All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

Lee Nickoson, Advisor

The following dissertation explores the rhetorics of a contentious online fan community, the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. The fandom is known for its diversity, as most in the fandom were either queer and/or female. Primarily, however, the fandom was infamous for a subsection of fans, antis, who performed online harassment, including blackmailing, stalking, sending death threats and child porn to other fans, and abusing the cast and crew. Their motivation was primarily shipping, the act of wanting two characters to enter a romantic relationship. Those who opposed their chosen ship were targets of harassment, despite their shared identity markers of female and/or queer.

Inspired by ethnographically and autoethnography informed methods, I performed a survey of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom about their experiences with harassment and their feelings over the show’s universally panned conclusion. In implementing my research, I prioritized only using data given to me, a form of ethical consideration on how to best represent the trauma of others. Unfortunately, in performing this research, I became a target of harassment and altered my research trajectory. In response, I collected the various threats against me and used them to analyze online fandom harassment and the motivations of antis.

The primary patterns from the participants in my survey demonstrate a community that was heavily influenced by online harassment from a vocal minority and attacked in both physical and digital spaces, facing slurs, doxxing, death threats, and, primarily, accusations of supporting child pedophilia and incest, as antis falsely claimed characters non-antis favored were related or underage. Further complicating fans’ trauma was the show’s ending, in which the woman of iv color lead was killed, and the queer character marginalized, resulting in a community left questioning if their harassment was worth the levels of trauma from both antis and the show itself.

This dissertation contributes to our understanding of what online harassment looks like, how identity markers shape the rhetorics behind harassment, and what future studies are necessary to better address such harassment. Additionally, through my experiences with harassment, I option several steps future researchers should consider when performing, teaching, and planning research methodologies.

v

To the victims and survivors of online harassment

and, as always,

my Nana, Myra Gallagher Arasimowicz vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are countless people this project and I are indebted to for their trust, support, and faith.

First, I want to thank all my participants who entrusted me with their truths and traumas.

Without you, there would only be an empty page and my lingering frustrations over fandom.

Your willingness to share with me is the only reason I succeed. Many of the participants were or became friends of mine. I want to extend an additional level of affection for the folks of H-

WriteTeen, our old fandom writing group. You were there for me during the worst of the trauma, and I carry you in my heart forever. To my newer friends, your kindness and patience during this process has carried me across the finish line. Thank you, my online neighbors and friends.

To my coheart (Brandie, Bailey, Lena, Brian, and bonus Annie): Thank you for the laughter, love, and kindness. Above all else, thank you for giving me a family in Ohio. There is no group I’d rather be in meetings, conferences, and classrooms with. I want to extend gratitude and affection to my extended BGSU family. Thank you for the past four years and the lessons I will carry with me.

To Lee Nickoson, who deserves a sainthood for helping navigate me through this process. Even when I wavered and faltered, you guided me into finding paths onward. Your support and belief mean the world.

To Neil Baird, who means more to me than Chris Pine and Henry Cavill combined:

Thank you for making research engaging and approachable. The complexities are fun and the bad days are bearable when you’re leading the group. vii

To Montana Miller, the She-Doc Mentor to D-Ruin, who would be my co-star in an ac- tion-ademic adventure movie: Thank you for challenging me to be the best version of myself as an academic and a person.

To Salim Elwazani, for his thoughtful comments as my graduate faculty representative.

Though not related by blood, I have been blessed with best friends who became sisters:

Lindsay, Sam, Stephanie, and Lena. Lindsay, my loyal sister who watched this show with me and was with me every step of the way, even when I really tested your patience. Sam, my persevering, fierce sister who still picks up my phone calls even though it is a guarantee I want to vent about this project. Stephanie, my compassionate sister who dubbed VLD Adult Paw-Patrol and wore matching tiaras with me and kept me out of my head. Lena, my reincarnated Victorian era twin sister who just lets me vibe over everything through powerpoints and hockey complaints. You keep me both grounded and lifted up depending on how dramatic I’ve been.

Even better, at any given time I have a crazy idea, I have someone in my corner not dismissing me but instead saying: let’s do it.

To the countless other friends who inspired me, from Charlotte who battles time zone differences to keep up with my insanity to Ciarra, my first friend and the Piglet to my Pooh. To my forever mentors Miriam and Susan. I cannot emphasize how the community of love and support I am surrounded by has kept me going. I love and admire you all.

To Taylor Swift, for writing and releasing five albums during the process so I had a constant soundtrack reflective of any mood.

To Mozzie, the most beloved dog and bed-hog in the world. Thank you for keeping me company, and for serving as a furry space heater in the winter. viii

My sister, Erin, the other half of my heart and soul, the universal constant in my life: all of the good in me comes from you. Thank you for a lifetime of bickering across a shared bedroom and supporting me at 2 AM because we don’t sleep. There is nothing I cannot survive or accomplish with you in my life. I promise to finally start watching the media you recommended to me.

My Nana, Myra Gallagher Arasimowicz: Thank you for playing school with Erin and I when we were younger and fostering a love of reading in me. You felt we were the smartest kids in the world, and we work every day to prove you right. I wish you were here in more than spirit.

My mom, Janet, who has loved me unconditionally, despite the fact I keep going on about video games and cartoons and superheroes. You always find humor in the worst days, and that skill and your love has kept me going. Thank you and Dad for feeding me as I binge wrote.

And finally, to the world’s best dad, Rene Drouin. 28 years and a forthcoming PhD in rhetoric later, and I still do not have the words to express how much I love you. Thank you for everything. I do it all for you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

CHAPTER I. MY SAFETY WAS OFTEN AT QUESTION”: A RHETORICAL HISTORY OF

HARASSMENT AND FANDOM ...... 1

Introduction ...... 1

Literature Review...... 4

Rhetoric, Technology, and Harassment ...... 4

Fandom Defined...... 12

Shipping ...... 13

Anti-Fans...... 16

Voltron’s Historical Contexts ...... 17

Legend of Korra Walked So Queer Characters on Kids’ TV Could Kiss ...... 17

Audience Expectations for Diverse Representation ...... 19

Queering Lance: How the Sexual Identity of a Supporting Character Led to .

Years of Targeted Harassment and Crime ...... 20

Research Questions ...... 23

Chapter Overview ...... 24

Significance ...... 25

CHAPTER II. “I THINK THERE ARE THINGS TO BE LEARNED FROM HERE ON OUT,

THOUGH”: RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES, METHODS, AND

DEMOGRAPHICS ...... 28

(Auto)Ethnographically Informed Methods ...... 29

Ethnography ...... 29

Ethics ...... 33 x

Queer Origins in Methodologies ...... 36

Autoethnography...... 37

Personal Research Contexts ...... 39

The Communicative Methods and Language of the Voltron: Legendary Defender

Fandom (A Dissertation Research Survey) ...... 41

Participants ...... 42

Recruitment ...... 42

Demographics ...... 44

“i have did but we're all non-binary”: Gender of Participants ...... 45

“you know that shrug text emote?”: Sexualities of Participants ...... 47

“Heinz 57! (im the average mixed american and my ancestors come .

from all over, including native american)”: Ethnicities of

Participants ...... 49

Qualitative Coding to Locate Narrative Patterns ...... 50

Data Reductions and Limitations ...... 53

Conclusion ...... 55

CHAPTER III. “REALLY MEAN AND KIND OF LIKE A CULT”: PEDOPHILIA

ACCUSATIONS TO PHYSICAL CONFRONTATIONS ...... 56

Introduction ...... 56

Defining Antis ...... 56

The Contextualized Anti ...... 60

Antis Defining Themselves...... 67

Anti-Demographic ...... 71 xi

Patterns and Behaviors: Selected Traumas and General Trends of Attack ...... 79

History: Breaking Previous Traditions of Fandom Behavior ...... 81

Conventions: In-Person, Physical Confrontations ...... 83

Doxxing: We Will Find You and Hurt You...... 85

Violent Images/Gore ...... 87

Slurs: Racial and Queer Discrimination ...... 88

Kill the Cast and Crew ...... 89

Range of Pedophilia, Child Porn, and Child Sexual Assault ...... 90

Why Pedophilia and Why Lance/Keith/Shiro...... 90

Child Abuse Survivors/Pedophilia Victims ...... 93

Pedophilia ...... 94

Other Narratives of Harassment ...... 96

Conclusion ...... 102

CHAPTER IV. “IT’S A CRY WOLF SITUATION”: SHOW ENDINGS AND FIGHTING

BACK ...... 104

Introduction ...... 104

“Queerbaiting was an extreme exaggeration”...... 106

“I have never seen a show backtrack on its themes and character development so .....

spectacularly ...... 111

“Signed the petition, tweeted about it”: Fans Fight Back ...... 119

“Olive Branch”...... 123

Auto-Ethnographic Coda: Renee Gets Murdered By Voltron Fans Online ...... 125

The Personal ...... 127 xii

Rhetorical Analysis ...... 139

Conclusion ...... 144

CHAPTER V. “I FEEL LIKE IT BURNED TOO BRIGHTLY AND NOW IT’S ABOUT TO

GUTTER OUT”: CONCLUSIONS, AFERMATHS, AND WHERE WE’VE STILL TO

GO ...... 147

Introduction ...... 147

Tweeting Nearly Two Years Later ...... 148

And Now the Future...... 153

Rhetorical Futures to Consider ...... 154

Ethical Considerations for All ...... 156

Different Populations, Different Tactics? ...... 159

Conclusion ...... 164

WORKS CITED ...... 169

APPENDIX A. IRB APPROVAL LETTER ...... 179

APPENDIX B. SURVEY QUESTIONS ...... 180

APPENDIX C. ETHNICITIES OF SURVEY PARTICIPANTS ...... 185

APPENDIX D. CODES ...... 190

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page

1 Sexuality of Participants ...... 47

2 A stylized meme introduction and example of gallows humor ...... 125

3 Lindsay (right) and I during our Masters, watching Voltron: Legendary Defender ..... 128

4 Stephanie (right) and I in matching Voltron hoodies...... 129

5 A chat exchange between a friend (gray) and I from December 11, 2018...... 130

6 Screenshot from an anti’s survey response ...... 131

7 Screenshot of an anti’s tweets, claiming I made up my harassment. This dismissal of my

experience was a common refrain...... 132

8 Due to having rip in the content, this was the only tweet Twitter took down...... 134

9 An example conversation in which people who circulated my image discussed what days

others would try to find me on campus...... 136

10 Frequently, antis would post about which university I went to and my roles, such as

teacher or graduate student. This was a common source of mockery...... 137

11 Sometimes, antis would confuse me with my sister, who is earning a PhD at Ohio State.

This led to further anxiety, as I had to worry about her harassment risks...... 139

12 Screenshot of language and phrases commonly seen about me on social media...... 140

13 One of the more popular tweets about me; it earned over 3000 likes before deleted. .. 141

14 Antis used asterisk to prevent Twitter bots from removing the tweets...... 142

15 Example of discrediting me...... 143

16 Me and the Voltron: Legendary Defender funkos Stephanie bought me...... 145

xiv

LIST OF TABLES Table Page

1 Most Common Codes in the Data ...... 52 1

CHAPTER I. “MY SAFETY WAS OFTEN AT QUESTION1”: A RHETORICAL HISTORY

OF HARASSMENT AND FANDOM

Introduction

In reflecting on their resilience over remaining online despite harassment, game designer

Zoë Quinn explained, “When people ask me where I’m from, I usually say, “The Internet,” and

I’m only kidding a little bit. This is my home, and I wasn’t about to be driven out of the only place I’ve ever felt like that, even if it was a digital one” (20). Quinn’s understanding of the internet as a version of home is a near universal in the networked society. For some, such as teenagers in rural areas, the internet afforded them a public space of their own to ‘meet up’ and chat, normally prevented by physical geography (boyd). Others, looking for people who shared their interests in media, sports, and/or art, turned to online fandoms. Frequently, fandom became the central home for people as they explored the internet, as fans were united in a shared interest and developed relationships that were guaranteed to have a shared foundation.

Fandoms, a culture developed around shared engagement of an interest, is “not new nor something that emerged simply because of digital technology and Tumblr culture, and many of the digital activities that fans engage in in the digital environment are similar to the analog activities from years past” (Booth 2). Long before the internet, fans met in-person, such as at sporting events or conventions, or using physical practices, such as mail. Networked digital spaces, however, have radicalized and altered fandoms. With social media, such as Tumblr,

1 (Female, Demisexual, White, mid teens/early 20s). Throughout the dissertation, I quote participants of my survey. While their names were not collected, they offered demographic data, which I present to emphasize the diverse range of fans within the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. The identifiers are gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age. Participants filled-out open ended questions about their identities in lieu of selecting from predetermined options. As a result, all spelling and punctuation remains as inputted. The citation will be included within the text of the dissertation, except for titles, in which it will be included as a footnote. 2

Twitter, and YouTube, fans could more easily locate folks sharing their interests and develop a home of their own.

Yet, as Zoë Quinn painfully experienced, home can also be the source of trauma. For most of my life, and the fandoms I engaged with, the rise of in-fighting, harassment, and abuse of fans towards both each other and the creators was either temporary of easily dismissed, such as how people wanted a love triangle to be resolved or the resolution of a particular character arc.

That admittedly idyllic experience disappeared as I joined the Voltron: Legendary Defender

(2016-2018) fandom, a community that became infamous for abusive behaviors. During the show’s two-and-a-half-year run, and in the subsequent years afterwards, the list of abuses by a vocal, impassioned minority of fans (referred to as antis) was exhaustive. Antis blackmailed the studio to ensure their favorite characters entered a romantic relationship, threatened the cast and crew, accused most fans of pedophilia, stalked and harassed other fans both digitally and in- person, filmed themselves explaining child pornography to minors, illegally filmed and shared videos of minors the fans thought resembled characters and advocated for people to pressure them to date in real life, used racial and sexual slurs liberally, created a GoFundMe to send someone to physically assault the show executive producers, burned artwork, sent child porn to others in hopes they could then report them to the police, and successfully pressured the showrunners into changing their planned ending of the show to appease fan pressures. This is a brief, incomplete set of examples of abuses and harassment (Drouin; Sean Z “Toxic”, Ssridar;

HuntyPastelLance). Yet, perhaps ironically, the fandom is one of the most diverse of all time, dominated by female and queer fans, known primarily as victims of harassment in our scholarship, not the perpetrators (straight, white men, or, as Quinn calls them people who look and sound like ‘1950s sitcom dads’). 3

Understanding the demographic wildly differed from the presumed agents of harassment and shaped by my own experiences as a member of the Voltron: Legendary Defender series during its entire run, I spent my time jokingly claiming our insanity deserved documentation, akin to a lost civilization for future people in other fandoms to gawk at. As harassment evolved and the show continued, however, I changed. I questioned if I should explain the rationale and rhetorics of our fandom. If not, the fandom would one day be documented by an outsider, ignorant of the ethos of the community. In October of 2018, the show’s ending leaked a few months prematurely, leading to speculation (later proven accurate) that the showrunners had capitulated to pressure from the antis who harassed them and changed the ending. Harassment prevailed, yet the rhetorical tactics varied from our established narratives, in which men sent death or rape threats to women. This was a cartoon. But, more importantly, this was my home, for better and worse, and therefore my responsibility.

Through this dissertation, I document the rhetorics of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom’s harassment through ethnographically informed methods, specifically a survey in which

560 fans participated and later through autoethnography, documenting how I was harassed for this research. Within this first chapter, I connect the fields of rhetoric, technology, and fandom to explore our current understandings of online harassment. My literature review defines harassment and behaviors that constitute harassment, pairing it with how fandom understands harassment and what motivates people to harass others within fandom. I then segue into the context of Voltron: Legendary Defender’s development as a fandom. I next assert my research questions and offer chapter abstracts before concluding with a justification on the significance of

Voltron: Legendary Defender as a case study. 4

Literature Review

Rhetoric, Technology, and Harassment

Computers were “supposed to circumvent and, indeed, render irrelevant physical markers of race, gender, sexuality, ability, and age that can impede face-to-face communication and the formation of community” (Bury 3). Yet technology, especially computer mediated technology, has been deemed male owned and male used since near inception. Western culture and its workforce perpetuate such damaging possession, demonstrating through hiring and popular culture that computers are best left to male understanding and control (Salter). Admittedly, since the 1990s, women have increasingly performed more computer mediated communication, though many viewed their presence alone as a guarantee, “that women will have equal access to on-line resources and be treated equitably in computer-mediated interactions” (Herring 151). This future never materialized, even as programs and technology diversified. In a review of the early promise of social media, Antunovic acknowledges, “early theorizing about social media platforms, feminist scholars conceptualized the internet as a space where marginalized voices can challenge dominant narratives” (431). Instead, the internet has become a hub of harassment, often unchecked due to the anonymity of social media and the toxic cultures within online video games.

Online harassment is a complex term, with definitions impacted by the contexts in which harassment occurs, the fields defining it, and the target audiences. Uniformly, online harassment is defined as behavior performed to inflict harm, usually on a gender, racial, or sexual basis.

Gruwell characterizes online harassment as, “disparaging, degrading, or threatening internet- based discourse that attempts to silence or otherwise undermine either its intended target and/or 5 bystanders.” To complicate her definition, I turned towards what is considered harassing or abusive behavior, as actions are how our definitions of harassment evolve.

In one of the earliest studies of harassment of women online, Susan Herring documented multiple forms of harassment against women. Within groups of mixed-sex communication, women were viewed the less successful communicators and faced “being ignored, trivialized, vilified, and - if they persist- accused of censoring or silencing male participants” (152). Male participants in these digital conversations employed “more aggressive” tactics in communication, such as inserting themselves into female-only spaces and appearing “threatened” by female friendships, which discouraged male participation and upset the male assumption of power as the dominant participants and originated many acts of harassment against women. When one man saw another acting out against a woman or group of women within the conversation, he joined in, subsequently encouraging and normalizing harassment against women. Additional forms of harassment included sexually harassing messages, insults, and ‘kicking,’ the act of removing someone from the discussion via digital tools, women who fought back out of the group communication channel.

Since Herring’s publication in 1999, many root problems she identified, such as sexual harassment, have remained. Per a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, harassing acts online include sexual harassment, stalking, sustained harassment, physical threats, offensive name- calling, and purposeful embarrassment. Lenhart et al. offer numerous behaviors that fall under the umbrella term of harassment, such as spreading rumors, sharing offensive names, physical threats, encouraging others to harass (physically threaten) someone online, or being sexually harassed (Duggan). Marwick and Caplan note defining harassment can be difficult as, by the

Lenhart et al. definition, “Anything from a single instance of name-calling to serious abuse can 6 constitute harassment. However, defining harassment is difficult since it is a constellation of ever-evolving behaviors” (544-545). While the means of performing online harassment evolve, the gendered expectations of it rarely do, as “gendered harassment is often sexually violent”

(Antunovic 432). For example, in Tang and Fox’s analysis of men’s harassment behavior while playing online video games, they note women were attacked due to their gender, as the involved men felt women did not belong in video game spaces. To harass women, derogatory language and rape threats were utilized.

Online harassment has become increasingly commonplace as a “Pew Research Center survey of 4,248 U.S. adults finds that 41% of Americans have been personally subjected to harassing behavior online, and an even larger share (66%) has witnessed these behaviors directed at others” (“Online Harassment 2017”). Victims of harassment online are predominantly young adults, women, and or/racial minorities, as they are “especially vulnerable” (Gruwell). In Nadim and Fladmoe’s two research surveys, however, they note men experienced equal or more harassment than women, though this harassment was linked to men’s willingness to share their opinions. In contrast, for female participants, they “see that the level of aggressiveness in the messages seems to matter more for women than for men, as there are larger gender differences in the consequences of hateful comments than unpleasant comments. Women also receive proportionally more of the type of harassment that “hurts more,” that is, comments directed toward who they are rather than toward their opinions” (11). While men are attacked for their thoughts, women are harassed for their existence and face more vitriol and violent language.

Perhaps resultantly, female adolescents are shown to be aware of and proactive against online harassment, cognizant that their gender and age indicate they are higher risk targets (Lwin, Li,

Ang). Dana L. Cloud, performing an autoethnographic rhetorical analysis of her own hate male 7 noted that a common theme was her role as queer woman being equated to a traitor of gender and sex, with some hate mail labeling her “gender identity and/or sexual orientation as threatening, deviant, and disgusting” (467). Summarizing the content of the abusive mail, much of it leaned into violence, as writers, “deployed fear, shame, and disgust in ways that resonate with my, and perhaps many women’s experiences of sexism, abuse, and gender-related trauma of various kinds” (466). She is not an isolated incident. In their 2018 special issue of online misogyny,

Debbie Ging and Eugenia Siapera note over one in five women between 18 and 29 have been sexually harassed online. Further emphasizing the harm, “an Amnesty International IPSOS

MORI poll in 2017 reported that women are much more likely to experience adverse psychological effects as a result of online harassment” (515-516).

Our understanding of what constitutes harassment and the victimization that stems from it is contextualized by location. In many cultures, including the westernized one my dissertation resides in, online harassment against women is “a reflection of broader cultural understandings of gender and women’s inferior place in society” (Nadim and Fladmoe 2). Scholars of technology and rhetoric have found similar results in their research on how and why people harass women. Per Lumsden and Morgan’s research, men are trying to silence women and dismiss their voices. To do so, they turn to trolling. Trolls are individuals who post disturbing or insulting content in hopes of provoking a reaction. Lumsden and Morgan believe, “the tactics employed by trolls, including rape threats and death threats, can be viewed as examples of

“silencing strategies” (927). These strategies are clearly based in gender ideology and an assumption that women belong in an inferior place, as male trolls use gendered, violent language against women. If a woman seemingly deviates from submissive expectations or appears too opinionated online, online abuse will often position the women “as sex objects” (928). Other 8 extremes of harassment are used against women, “such as doxing (publishing personal information online), revenge porn (spreading intimate photos beyond their origins), social shaming, and intimidation” (Marwick and Caplan 544).

While revenge porn, for example, is a crime in most states within America, it is also frequently dismissed as trivial or a facet of society. So too is online harassment trivialized, despite the real life and psychological harms victims suffer. People dismiss online harassment as the work of trolls, figures who are threatening just to receive attention and response but have no willingness to follow-up their actions in real life. Such assumptions ignore the real gender discrimination, however (Antunovic; Jane) or that digital harassment lacks geographic limitations, possessing a farther reach than offline harassment (Page et. al). It is only when abuse occurs offline or is significantly amplified that legitimacy is granted to the victims as experiencing true harassment. Attempts to retain and reassert the male status quo have led to harassment campaigns against women, primarily online but sometimes with physical threats that extend to the real world, such as trying to locate, attack, or rape women deemed to vocal or out of place (Salter; Jane). Zoë Quinn and GamerGate are an example of that.

GamerGate is among the most famous and well-known online harassment campaign of all time. While the video game industry has long been mired in hostility towards women as players, creators, and critics, GamerGate itself did not start until summer of 2014. Zoë Quinn created their2 video game, Depression Quest, to much acclaim. In response to their breakup, their ex-boyfriend falsely alleged they cheated on him, abused him, and earned a positive review from a game journalist by sleeping with him (Chess and Shaw; Holmes and Lussos; Quinn; Salter). In their summary of GamerGate, Chess and Shaw described the situation and timeline as:

2 In 2019, Quinn came-out as nonbinary and use of they/them pronouns. During GamerGate, however, Quinn went by she/her. While my writing reflects these changes, I keep the pronouns as used in quotes from sources. 9

Zoe Quinn became harassed by people who publically associated themselves with 4chan

and Anonymous, and her Tumblr account was hacked (Hern, 2014). The attacks on

Quinn were perpetuated in part by a harassment campaign conceived on 4chan (Johnston,

2014). On August 27, the actor Adam Baldwin became the first person to use a hashtag

for the movement (#GamerGate) when he linked to two videos attacking Quinn (Cathode

Debris, 2014). His 190k plus followers quickly helped the hashtag spread, which then

spawned Web sites, reddit subthreads, additional 4chan and then 8chan threads, and a

sustained online movement. Those in the GamerGate movement allege that there is

corruption in video games journalism and that feminists are actively working to

undermine the video game industry. (210)

During this campaign, Quinn was doxxed (publicizing private data of people for malicious motivations, such as sharing home addresses), sent graphic death and rape threats, saw their social media hacked, and had to frequently move to avoid physical threats (Quinn; Chess and

Shaw). It is from GamerGate that we have the most comprehensive accounts of what long-term harassment centered on one subject (a queer non-binary person, though they were female at the time) and what long-scale gendered harassment looks like. Quinn was not alone in harassment.

Game developer Brianna Wu was doxxed and threatened and had to leave their home due to making fun of GamerGate online. Anita Sarkeesian, game critic, “canceled a lecture at Utah

State University after the university received an anonymous threat to commit “the deadliest school shooting in American history” (McDonald, 2014). Actress and gamer Felicity Melange was doxxed and threatened as well (Romano, 2014)” (Holmes and Lussos 122). While the most toxic and prevalent harassment ended by the end of 2015, levels of harassment continue today, as the forums of men who harassed these women are live across the webspace. 10

The statistics of who is being harassed and the acts which constitute harassment are well known. The dominant discourse within scholarship is the narrative of straight men harassing women online. Subsequently, precious little is known of what the rhetorics of harassment are when the abusers are queer and/or female. In a study on teenage cyberbullying, Brody and

Vangelisti discovered both teenaged girls and boys were perpetrators of harassment against their peers, with the primary motivation centering on the romantic relationships individuals have with each other and the sexual proclivities of the girls (Brody and Vangelisti). Similarly, Phillips noted cyberbullying, connected to schools, featured girls harassing their peers, possibly even more so than male counterparts, though students surveyed dismissed the female bullying as

‘drama’. Interestingly, “Discussions varied by gender, with girls more vocal and willing to share opinions and personal experiences and boys very direct and nonchalant about discussions of online harassment and cyberbullying” (235). Within these cases and lines of scholarship, cyberbullying is used in lieu of harassment. While cyberbullying is a form of harassment, the bullying terminology paired with the adolescent subject indicates a juvenile and less serious connotation compared to the rape threats and normalized harassments previously documented.

Yet it is within the ‘dramas’ of adolescents and therefore the idea this type of behavior is temporary and something to be grown out of that the bulk of research on how girls harass appear.

Admittedly, these studies are not the first nor last to address that women and girls are equally capable of harassing others. Yet they join a growing scholarship that overlooks how these rhetorics differ, if at all, from male counterparts. Others, such as Marwick and Caplan, briefly acknowledged that when women fight back, such as one female victim of harassment calling her attacker ‘human garbage’, they are treated with disdain in online forums and suffer continued violent, sexist harassment against them. Herring noted this decades prior, in how 11 women ignoring harassment were therefore accused of silencing male voices. Even scholarship that acknowledges harassment functions differently does not differentiate between harassment rhetorics based upon gender. Nadim and Fladmoe’s work, for example, explores how victims of harassment react and make arguments based on gender and rationale behind the harassment, not on the gender of the harassers.

While online harassment is present throughout all digital spaces, regardless of the gender, race, and sexuality of the audience, there is one topic that dominates the scholarship of harassment in fandom: sports. Kilvington and Price’s research on the digital football (soccer) fandom addresses that the legal system, social media, and sports conglomerates themselves have failed to address racism and other discriminatory language upon learning over 135,000 discriminatory posts were made during a single season, primarily targeting non-white players and perpetuating racism. Radmann, and Hedenborn’s work explores how women felt in digital football fandoms, primarily feeling unwelcome or threatened due to their gender, developing tactics to demonstrate an ethos of credibility, or that the social nature of the sport offers them freedom to transgress assumed gender norms of women, which still implies a level of unwelcome. Similarly, Jones sees female football (soccer) fans “downplay” their genders to emphasize their credibility and identity as fans.

Perhaps ironically, considering the subject of my dissertation, female and queer populated fandom spaces were originally created to avoid harassment. As Rhiannon Bury describes in her historiography of fan cyberspaces, “Facing varying degrees of harassment and denigration on the male dominated forums, many female fans chose to stake out and colonize cyberspaces of their own in the form of private mailing lists” (2). Private mailing lists eventually adapted and changed to preferred social media platforms, web pages, and fanfiction archives, and 12 women alone were not the only demographic welcomed, as queer male or non-binary individuals were similarly welcomed. However, despite the diversity of who is welcomed and networking within such spaces, the presumption of safety from harassment is no longer guaranteed. Before we can address the study of harassment, we first need to discuss what fandom is and the people who are occupying it.

Fandom Defined

Fandom, per Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers, “is, perhaps first and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism, a semistructured space where competing interpretations and evaluations of common texts are proposed, debated, and negotiated and where readers speculate about the nature of the mass media and their own relationship to it” (86). The relationship often influences the identity, especially those questioning or looking for representation, for “Personal readings and identifications of media texts potentially offer audiences new understandings of self and sexual identities. New media fan sites construct discursive arenas, where audiences not only investigate the text but also sense of self may be revealed and explored” (Hanmer 147). A key means of individuals debating and negotiating such texts is through their own writing, whether it be fanfiction or writing to and with other community members. This writing, especially fanfiction, “can provide us with an insight into how digital technologies interact with literacy practices- especially in terms of how these technologies change the ways in which texts are produced, circulated, and received” (Kelley 49). Their writing in blog posts and other social media writing are also important to developing these insights.

Gendered differences in how men and women approached fandom have always existed.

Early on, women worked around the discomfort and alienation of properties catering to male audiences or male focused plots, such as Star Trek. Women specifically were known to learn, via 13 fandom and writing in it, “how to find their own pleasures in stories that reflect the tastes and interests of others, how to shift attention away from the narrative center and onto the periphery, how to reclaim their own interests from the margin and thus how to engage more freely in speculations that push aside the author's voice in favor of their own” (Jenkins 114). Focusing closely on fanfiction itself, a singular type of writing in fandom, Nicolle Lamerichs echoes

Jenkins belief of feminist rhetorics and writing strategies found in fandom spaces, stating “Fan fiction can be understood as a contemporary equivalent of this feminist tradition in which women use derivative writing to create an art and voice of their own” (113). While these sources predominantly focus on a male-female gender divide on how groups interact in fandoms,

LGBTQ voices are now being heard and discussed, especially due to their use of social media to form protests about entertainment or engage with fan spaces. As Erin Waggoner notes, “It is the online fan community that warrants more observation, since their behaviors could contribute to more understanding of how social media works in making social change” (1877-1878). Social change and research around it fall in line with the current research and history of fandom, as it has long been equated with resistance rhetorics (Kelley). Thus, if identity and personal interest are at the root of fandom, it is easy to see how such motivated interest can impact behavior, both inside and outside of fandom. Much of the behavior I focus on now is productive and positive, allowing for close readings and obvious affection for source material to influence identity.

Shipping

A heavily female action and identifier within fandom is shipping, “the practice of rooting for a particular romantic pairing within a storyworld” (McCormick 382). In describing Buffy The

Vampire Slayer, Johnson acknowledged conflict within the fandom came from the act of shipping, as “Within discussions of Buffy, interpretative schism frequently occurred in response 14 to the visibility of “shippers” (short for “relationshippers”), fans whose meta-textual conception of the series advocated the romantic coupling of specific characters and whose ongoing pleasure depended in part upon sustained diegetic potential to spark or preserve those romances” (288).

One group of fans may prefer Angel and Buffy to enter a relationship with another subsection of fans advocate for Spike and Buffy to enter a relationship. Conflict arises between these fans, as each believes their ‘ship’ should become canon (i.e., happens within the show), fans who dislike relationships, and the producers of the show, as both sides cannot be appeased simultaneously.

Within subcultures of the fandom, a fan may become identified via their relationship preferences.

Historically (1980s/1990s), queer fan content has been a ‘dirty little secret’ of fandom, specifically slash fanfiction, the act of male/male character romance, named after how fans of

Star Trek put a slash between character names. In discussing boundaries of research and spaces,

Jenkins acknowledges:

These tensions are still present for fan researchers today as we try to balance representing

the diversity of fan voices and practices while being conscious of the sensitivities of fans

whose interpretations and actions are often questioned or even silenced. This silencing

can occur within fan communities themselves, as fans enact forms of boundary policing

and “shaming” about what is and is not acceptable practice— meaning the voices of

certain fans, often those who are young, female and/or queer, become marginalized even

within fandoms. (131)

While slash is exclusively about male characters, the writers of such gay romance studies are predominantly women. Within Star Trek and other properties, this can be explained by the heavily male cast and the focus on character development of men. Yet slash is also a form of 15 barrier transgression and inspired women’s writing. In connecting slash history with new media,

Coppa asserts:

In slash, the reader is even more aware that these famous characters are performing in

scripts that are (1) different from the usual mass media fare; and (2) of a woman’s

devising. Slash narratives offer us the chance both to watch and to identify with these

men—or in Constance Penley’s (1992) formulation, both to be and to have them (488).

There are endless transmedia adaptations of characters like Sherlock Holmes or Batman,

so it is clearly not appropriation that’s the issue: it is the appropriation by the other—by

women, in this case. (189).

Through slash, women (and queer writers) can adapt normally heterosexual characters and narratives to better assimilate and connect to their identity, fostering both connection to the source material and the community.

Slash fanfiction (and fanfiction itself) is a form of analysis for many, especially writers looking for queer subtext and text within media. Lori Morimoto, documenting slash fans from the television shows Sherlock and Hannibal, writes of fan behaviors:

Certainly it may be nothing more than romantic fantasizing that drives some women fans’

desires to see in‐text same‐sex relationships realized in the media they love, and

questions of the need for ‘serious’ justification of such desires remain. But if we consider

them as at least partly informed or even driven by, for example, the (fan) cultural

experiences of women in a patriarchal world, and see creator resistance to them as

equally culturally driven, we take a critical first step away from the moral dualism of

right/wrong interpretation that seems to characterize clashes between fans and creators.

(265). 16

Such fictions, through female voices and perspectives, can also be a form of cultural resistance and interpretation, especially when arguing against the male writers and showrunners of media who may attempt to discredit or insult such beliefs.

Queer fans have also turned to more female focused representation as narratives have allowed it. In reporting on the television show The 100, Bourdaa explores the passionate fans of a lesbian couple on the show and how it cultivated a community, writing “The social link is strong in The 100 fandom, especially for the Clexa shippers, as there is an issue of representation and identity at stake in the show and in the public space. Fans find each other on Twitter using the hashtag #Clexa, a name created by melting the names Clarke and Lexa” (391). The show became a rallying point in discussions of representation after Lexa was killed off, and represented a “perspective some identity issues (lesbians vs. heterosexual fans)” in what type of couple (straight, queer) fans shipped and how they reacted to Lexa’s death (393). Shipping is not the only major identifier to focus on, however.

Anti-Fans

One such form of identity is the anti-fan. Through this dissertation, I document antis, which, in the context of Voltron: Legendary Defender, stands for anti-pedophilia and anti-incest.

As such, the anti focuses on a behavior and an ideology instead of the previously long- established definition, which saw anti-fans as against the media or artist, not an ideology. Anti- fans are defined by Renee Barnes as “distant readers of the text, never watching the programme, but developing affective relationships with it through paratexts” (39). Their relationships are primarily rooted in harassment and violent threats against fans and creators of the original text

(40). Frequently, there is a gendered divide in anti-behavior, in which men either oppose female focused media and deride it or deride women entering male focused media. In documenting a 17 popular website dedicated to anti fans of the Twilight book series, Jacqueline M. Pinkowitz notes that while the website claims to be against poor literary texts, it is also posed as “An affected performance of scholarship that they hope will prove themselves more rational and tolerant, more educated and high class, than the emotional, uncritical rabids they condemn elsewhere on their site.” With the dominant demographic of Twilight fans being female, such websites feed into the conception of ‘rabid’ fans and overly emotional women who deserve to be mocked due to their gender. But what about examples where the mockery becomes harassment, and from members of your own community?

The Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom is known for its antis, who performed various methods of harassment, ranging from blackmail, physical assaults, stalking, doxxing, verbal abuse, rape threats, and falsely reporting their fellow fans to the FBI. The motivation behind attacking their fellow fan was not gender; as Chapter Two will document, less than 2% of the fandom is a straight, white male. Instead, the motivation was shipping, as antis became consumed with their identity as shipping one pair of characters, doing everything in their power and all their acts of harassment to discourage others from not shipping their favorites together.

To fully understand these motivations and the contexts that shaped the fandom early on (and subsequently the foundational patterns of abuses), we must start before the show was announced.

Voltron’s Historical Contexts

“Legend of Korra Walked So Queer Characters on Kids’ TV Could Kiss”

In 2014, the children’s animated program The Legend of Korra’s fourth and final season concluded with Korra, the female heroine, and her female best friend, Asami, walking off together on a vacation, holding hands and staring at each other, mirroring both the heterosexual wedding earlier in the episode and the finale of The Legend of Korra’s predecessor show, 18

Avatar: The Last Airbender, in which a heterosexual couple embraced. Children’s western animation, up to that point, had flawed, limited, and often problematic queer representation, such as emphasizing the evil nature of queered characters, killing them, or, if translating animation from a different language, removing the queer identity of characters entirely (Millman;

Robinson).

Exploring the ramifications of the show in her 2020 retrospective, Madison Dong was explicit in the legacy of The Legend of Korra as a queer media:

LOK ended on a scene of Korra and Asami holding hands with only the implication of

more. The romantic relationship was later confirmed by the show creators on their

personal Tumblr blogs.

But, even with that subtlety, LOK was a game changer for animated kids shows. In the

years since the series ended, “Adventure Time,” “Steven Universe” and “She-Ra and the

Princesses of Power” all featured characters in same-sex relationships, with moments

such as vocalized love confessions, kissing and a wedding.

“We wouldn’t have a lot of shows if not for Korra,” said Steven Underwood, an essayist

who has written extensively about media representation and sexuality. “That one implied

kiss changed the very landscape of what we can see in cartoons today.”

Among those who worked on The Legend of Korra and were viewed as champions of both queer and racial diversity were storyboard artist and supervising producer Lauren

Montgomery and co-director of season one and co-executive producer for the entire series run,

Joaquin Dos Santos. A year after The Legend of Korra ended, they revealed they were partnering up to serve as executive producers and co-showrunners of the rebooted Voltron franchise. It is 19 this connection with The Legend of Korra, which broke new ground in animation, that established audience expectations of diversity, especially regarding race, gender, and sexuality.

Audience Expectations for Diverse Representation

From the onset of the Voltron reboot announcement, fans anticipated diversity and were quickly rewarded. In the original show and later reboots, the five paladins of Voltron were all male and, depending on the version, presumed either all Asian or all white. Allura, a princess who later becomes a pilot, was always presented as a white female. Married characters were always in heterosexual relationships. These standards were not applied to Voltron: Legendary

Defender. Allura was now a woman of color, a fact which made her African-American voice actress state, “I know this is an alien character, but I welled up with tears when I saw [her]. She’s beautiful, strong, she represents the broader picture. I feel proud to be a part of it, I’m happy to represent” (Francisco). Pidge, a male pilot in previous iterations, was now female and a STEM genius, a predominantly male academic field. Hunk and Lance, other pilots, were Samoan and

Cuban respectively. Shiro, the leader, was Japanese and, as later seasons would show, disabled and queer. These were changes Montgomery and Dos Santos advocated for, explaining in interviews how they worked to ensure people normally not included on-screen had opportunity to be seen. Montgomery explained about Pidge’s gender and later people questioning if her presenting firstly as a boy hinted at a trans identity:

We always had our own intentions of being a little misleading with Pidge but the

reasoning was that we wanted to introduce a character who you would initially recognize

as existing in a space that was masculine, but then you realize that she’s a female

character. The question we always wanted this to make people ask themselves is whether

anything about Pidge’s gender changed what kind of role she plays on the team and the 20

answer was no. We wanted to make a point that gender-specific traits and roles aren’t at

all necessary.

When the trans identification came about and we saw it online, it wasn’t something that

we initially expected, but we appreciate it tremendously because ultimately, Pidge was

there to represent anyone who didn’t fit a norm. She’s a girl who doesn’t fit a norm and

so if the LGBTQ community sees any sort of representation in her, that’s a magnificent

thing that we’re incredibly proud of. (Pulliam-More)

Their advocacy continued on social media, such as when Montgomery drew fanart in response to

Donald Trump’s divisive election in 2016, in which the varied Voltron: Legendary Defender characters held cards reading, “Race,” “Gender,” or “LGBT,” above a caption, “YOU ARE

DESERVING OF RESPECT.”

Queering Lance: How the Sexual Identity of a Supporting Character Led to Years of Targeted

Harassment and Crime

Primarily, fans anticipated queer representation in Voltron: Legendary Defender due to

The Legend of Korra and, within days of the show airing, began speculating when, how, and with who such representation would occur. Assumptions that Pidge was a trans male, as

Montgomery referenced, were just the start of fans expecting queer representation. The characters of Keith and, predominantly, Lance quickly became the focus of a minority of fans, the antis. Keith and Lance mirrored the queer characters of The Legend of Korra due to similar color schemes (Asami/Keith red, Korra/Lance blue), differing personalities, and that they begin as rivals who are forced into allyship against an opposing enemy before developing a friendship.

As a result, they became the presumed representation for many when the show aired its first season. 21

Further complicating expectations of representation was the popularity of Lance, one of the more well-defined characters in the first season. Lance, a Cuban teenager, earned entrance to a prestigious piloting program due to Keith dropping out and subsequently viewed Keith as his rival. Lance idolized another character, Shiro, who graduated from the same school, and was very open in his struggles being in space, such as missing his family and his desire to be a hero.

A group of fans subsequently became devoted to him, becoming “intensely vocal, making every post about Lance. Lance this, Lance that. None is allowed to dislike Lance3” (Female, Ace/pan,

White, mid/late 20s). As one fan explained of those fans, “They sure worship Lance and detest anyone who dislikes him or don't care for him at all” (fluid? non binary? I don't identify as anything but myself, pansexual, hispanic, late teens/early 20s). In describing how fans acted, another described them as, “People who latched onto Lance, creating headcanons around him being ignored in his big family/was a middle child/stuck in his insecurities/ect. and therefore he was the “fandom golden boy who could do no wrong and everyone else was just against him””

(Female, Gay, White, early/mid 20s). Echoing these memories was a fan who noted, of the others, “They seem to believe Lance was the main character, he and Keith were supposed to be together... And that there was hell to pay to those who thought otherwise” (Female,

Heterosexual, Black, early/mid 30s). A frequent sentiment by many fans from my survey was that those focused on Lance and Keith only had, “an interest in Lance and him being bisexual/gay” (Transgender/Genderfluis, Asexual, White, mid/late 20s) and that representation did not matter if Lance was not queer.

Even fans of Lance noticed a difference in how they viewed him versus the anti- subsection of the fandom:

3 As with how participants identified their demographics, quotes will remain as they were input into the survey with no grammar changes, 22

I have been attacked many times about general concepts and ideals of my beliefs for

liking a character. Particularly my love for Lance. Certain fans have put claims on certain

headcanons of this character and made it sound like law, so when I wrote fanfiction, was

attacked for certain aspects of his culture I choose to write. Furthermore, it’s ironic being

that I was attacked for my interrpretation of his Cuban family and their tradition - and I

am a Cuban American born in Miami. I was policed into being told I wrote him

incorrectly based on their misguided ideas, headcanon, and racial stereotypes that became

popular within the fandom. It took me releasing a statement within author’s notes about

my actual heritage for the attacks to stop. I’ve also watched these same Lance fans attack

creators, being disrespectful and insulting all with the bases of their ideals and

headcanons - not facts from the show itself. It made me ashamed to openly state I loved

Lance most because then others would immediately judge me for loving Lance - even

though I never said anything negative about literally nothing else in fandom or canon.

(Cis female, Bi/pan sexual, White - Hispanic (I’m half Cuban/half Colombian and my

race is caucasian, early/mid 30s).

In describing antis, one fan theorized antis placed their own identities on Lance and took any indifference to him as a personal attack, stating, “Antis are mostly hardcore Lance fans who push their ideal onto the Lance character, disregarding his huge character development, and trying to spread hate among the fandom. No one with a different opinion is ever right in their mindset” (I identify as a cis Latinx woman, I identify as heterosexual, Latinx and German, late teens/early

20s).

As these fan testimonials indicate, there are negative connotations to certain fans of

Lance. These fans were the predominant group known for enacting harassment, such as the 23 blackmail of the studio, death threats against the cast and crew, and false allegations and reporting of people possessing child pornography, which they themselves often sent said people.

These fans became known by the nickname ‘Antis.’ Antis, to be further defined in Chapter

Three, are fans opposed the inclusion of incest and pedophilia within Voltron: Legendary

Defender (anti-incest, anti-pedophilia). Claims of incest and pedophilia were primarily used to discourage pairing Keith, who they felt Lance deserved, into a romantic relationship with Keith’s friend, Shiro, a few years older and once claimed to be ‘like a brother’ to Keith. Resultingly, antis accused other fans of being pro-pedophilia and incest if they did not ship Lance and Keith together. Thus, a multi-year campaign of abuses, stemming from shipping and the connection it holds to identity began.

Research Questions

The following questions have guided my research. Primarily, I use Voltron: Legendary

Defender to analyze potential harassment rhetorics of women/queer folk within fandom spaces, a space once developed to be devoid of harassment and safe for diverse experiences. In my final chapter, I contrast this fandom with our scholarship of how harassment appears when utilized by men, our common focus within research. Additionally, my digital case study also asks questions of how harassment feels when digital, in a community where the online nature does not mitigate feelings of harm or upset. I also question how scholars can use their own experiences with harassment to further contemplate research.

• What are the rhetorics of harassment used by queer folk and straight women?

o How do they differ from male patterns of harassment?

• How have online spaces shaped harassment and changed the ramifications of it?

• How can scholars discuss their own experiences with harassment within research? 24

Chapter Overview

Chapter II. “I think there are good things to be learned from here on out, though”: Research

Methodologies, Methods, and Demographics

In the second chapter of my dissertation, I outline the ethnographically informed methodology framework of my project. I blended observation, feminist research practices, and queer approaches to develop a survey and interview questions to collect data on the Voltron:

Legendary Defender fandom that focused on both qualitative and quantitative data. Next, I discuss the rationale behind my survey questions and my mode of distribution through online platforms, such as Tumblr and Twitter. I then briefly summarize the popularity of the survey, the coding selected for analysis due to the overload of data, and the survey’s closure due to harassment against me. I conclude the chapter by establishing the various demographics who participated in the research, documenting their gender, sexuality, age, and ethnic identities.

Chapter III. “Really mean and kind of like a cult”: Pedophilia Accusations to Physical

Confrontations

Chapter Three uses data I collected from the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom via survey. I offer space for the various testimonials from fans on who harassed them, their beliefs in the ideologies of those who harassed them, and what harassment occurred. Examples include survivors of child sexual assault documenting the harms accusations of pedophilia caused them, how fans were threatened in real life locations, and doxxing. These narratives will cover the two years Voltron: Legendary Defender was on air and build patterns about the most prevalent forms of harassment. Data is coded via corpus analysis and thematic coding.

Chapter IV. “It’s a cry wolf situation”: Show Endings and Fighting Back 25

Chapter Four begins with an overview of the show’s ending. I document the initially positive reception to the queer representation late in the show’s run before addressing how fan reactions turned negative, leading to new harassment. Such harassment resulted in a changed ending for the show. I document how fans felt about the changed ending, i.e. that they were punished, seeing their favorite characters marginalized or killed off, in favor of appeasing the louder fans who used threatening tactics. Such feelings inspired this dissertation and why my survey was so popular. I then transition into how my own experiences in harassment mirror those experienced by fellow fans and how the show’s ending influenced such harassment.

Chapter V. “I feel like it burned too brightly and now it’s about to gutter out”: Conclusions,

Aftermaths, and Where We’ve Still to Go

Chapter Five compares how the rhetorics of harassment differ when the abusers are female/queer (my case study) compared to the traditional patterns of male discourse harassment, as explored in my literature review. Ultimately, my conclusion acknowledges there are some patterns, but more differences and offers futures for this type of research. I conclude by addressing what the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom looks like now and the legacy, not of the show, but of the infamous fandom it spawned.

Significance

Netflix, the streaming platform of Voltron: Legendary Defender, is infamous for withholding viewership ratings on its programming. Future developments that indicated popularity, such as a daily listing of the most watched content, were implemented years after

Voltron: Legendary Defender’s conclusion. Occasionally, an article might reference Voltron:

Legendary Defender’s viewer numbers. Business Insider included Voltron: Legendary Defender as one of the seven top ‘in-demand’ shows across all streaming platforms on the eve of its 26

December 2018 finale (Clark). With traditional viewership not available, I put forth quantitative analysis of the frequency of posts on social media to indicate both significance and popularity.

Tumblr is among the most important and popular of fandom websites due to its ability to host videos, gif-sets, text posts, links, and artwork. Many of these content types cannot be hosted on social media like Twitter or Facebook. Subsequently, Tumblr was the central home of

Voltron: Legendary Defender. As a user of Tumblr since 2011, I can speak for how fandom functions on the platform, though more quantifiable data is available as well.

Fandometrics, also known as the shorter name Fandom, is a Tumblr run and staff supported blog that measures the most popular content of the site, creating weekly and yearly lists of what most frequently trended on the website, such as top films, video games, animated shows, ships (relationships between characters), actors, and music. These rankings collected data from hundreds of millions of users over the years. During Voltron Legendary Defender’s run,

Tumblr itself underwent growth. While 269.7 million unique users were measured to be on

Tumblr in late 2015, the number had increased to 409 million in April 2018, three months before

Voltron: Legendary Defender’s sixth season (Dewey; “Cumulative total of Tumblr blogs from

May 2011 to April 2020”).

In 2016, the year Voltron: Legendary Defender aired its first season, the show was the third most popular animated show on Tumblr, evident by the number of posts (including artwork, fanfiction, videos, text posts, and gif sets) created about it. Klance, the relationship name for the characters Lance and Keith, were the sixth most discussed ‘ship’ on the website ranking, which accounts for ships from all types of media, such as video games, live action television, and books. 2017 saw a rise in Voltron: Legendary Defender’s popularity. It became the most discussed animated show of the year. Similarly, Klance was the most discussed ship, and the 27 pairing of Keith and Shiro (Sheith) was ranked twelfth. Voltron: Legendary Defender remained first in the rankings for animated shows in 2018. For ships, Klance stayed in first, Sheith moved to fifth, and other pairings from the show ranked fortieth, forty-third, forty-fifth, fifty-first, and seventy-first. Despite the show ending the year prior, Klance was ranked second in the 2019 ship review and Sheith twenty-ninth. 2020 saw Klance fall to twentieth, impressive despite the show ending a full two years prior (Fandom “Year in Review”). On a website with over 400 million users, Voltron: Legendary Defender surpassed Star Wars, all Japanese programming, Marvel and

DC, sports, and every other television show in how frequently people posted about it.

With the popularity of the show and the diverse demographic of fans, Voltron: Legendary

Defender has quickly become a property and therefore a community in need of analysis and documentation. 28

CHAPTER II. “I THINK THERE ARE THINGS TO BE LEARNED FROM HERE ON OUT,

THOUGH4”: RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES, METHODS, AND DEMOGRAPHICS

When I conceptualized this project in the winter of 2018, I assumed I would complete an ethnography via survey, interview, and artifact analysis. I would then put forth the results of participants, clustered around the rhetorical situations of harassments and the rhetorical concept of social circulation. Only a few dozen fans were anticipated to care about this work. Nothing of myself and my history would be a major facet of this research. As in most projects, especially those with qualitative approaches, my research trajectory and scope transformed wildly over the two years I dedicated to this work. First, I faced significant harassment from certain members of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom, the antis. As I will detail, they disliked the requirement that survey participants needed to be eighteen or older, as this prevented many of the antis, minors, from participating. Due to the harassment, I was unable to complete follow-up interviews, as my safety had been compromised and continuing research would be a liability.

Next, 561 people were survey participants, writing nearly 400,000 words in response to questions in the survey. The survey’s popularity and participant willingness to speak on their experiences led to a massive data overload that could not be completely explored within the confines of this research. Due to my experiences with harassment, I pivoted towards autoethnographically informed methods. I was now a number and a narrative in the patterns of harassment I was trying to explore.

4 (Female, Pansexual, White, early/mid 20s). The full context of the quote is from her response on if she has anything left to add that was not addressed in the survey: I don't think I need to be contacted after this because I feel like I've said my piece and I really don't have much more to add than anyone else has already said before me. I think there are things to be learned from here on out, though. At least for me, as someone who creates original content myself, it has taught me that I'm going to have to take a more hands-off approach to my own stuff. The kindling affection for people who enjoy my work has died thanks to how nasty I have seen people can be first hand with content creators when things don't go their way. Of course, I'll appreciate people, but I won't interact with them. The industry could learn from this trash heap of a fandom: sometimes when you bend, you don't avoid breaking...you end up running your franchise into the ground. 29

Not everything changed. My research methods still prioritize narratives of harassment and ethics. My research questions, slightly edited, still explore the topics that drove my interest in the project:

● What are the rhetorics of harassment used by queer folk and straight women?

● How do they differ from male patterns of harassment?

● How have online spaces shaped harassment and changed the ramifications of it?

● How can scholars discuss their own experiences with harassment within research?

In the following pages, I outline the research methods and frameworks for the project. I begin with an overview of ethnographic, autoethnographic, and ethical methodologies that I blended together to collect qualitative and quantitative data. I then reflect how my own history as an ‘acafan’ (academic fan) shapes the conceptualization of my research. Next, I turn to how the survey was created, the rationale behind the questions, and the popularity of the survey.

Participants and their demographics (gender, sexuality, and ethnicity) are next documented, as it demonstrates who engaged with the survey. The various types of coding are then outlined, as are the rationales for using them. I follow with the limitations of my data collection and research before concluding with a note of how these methods afforded such rich narrative experiences within this dissertation.

(Auto)Ethnographically Informed Methods

Ethnography

The basis of my research methods lies in ethnographic study. In “Ethnography and

Composition: Studying the Language at Home,” Beverly Moss defines ethnography as, “a qualitative research method that allows a researcher to gain a comprehensive view of social interactions, behaviors, and beliefs of a community or social group. In other words, the goal of 30 an ethnographer is to study, explore, and describe a group’s culture” (155). Definitions supplied from scholars such as Beatrice Smith’s “Researching Hybrid Literacies” and Janice M. Lauer and J. William Asher’s Composition Research: Empirical Designs echo the ethnographic definition meaning a process in which the researcher is “examining entire environments, looking for subjects in context” (Lauer and Asher 39). Regardless of location (i.e. in-person or digitally performed), ethnography always possesses the goal of allowing “researchers to construct a comprehensive understanding of the behaviors, social interactions, values, and beliefs of a community or social group” (Smith 130).

Admittedly, my current research is more ethnographically informed than an ethnography itself. The observations of the culture come from my personal embodied experiences rather than carefully documented observations. I am also relying heavily on how others, victims of harassment, describe the behaviors and beliefs of another subculture, their abusers. That said, the foci of my project echo Smith’s ethnography goal definitions in that values and beliefs are paired with behaviors and interactions to make a compelling presentation of the overall culture and rhetorics of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom.

Since the 1980s, researchers within the field of writing studies have performed ethnographic methodology in rising numbers, requiring us to reconsider not only how the research is performed but why, and the affordances and challenges we face in research (Sheridan

73-74). While the selected culture of study dominates the unique content of an ethnography, the unique factors dependent upon where the research occurs must also be addressed. Simply put, there are unique factors in performing online ethnographic research that both shape and complicate the methods I have chosen for my dissertation. For the sake of cohesion throughout my dissertation, I chose to use the term ethnographically informed to explain my research in lieu 31 of other potential terms that connect ethnography and digital research: online ethnography, cyber-ethnography, virtual ethnography, and netnography. Each term risks being misunderstood, as definitions of each differ wildly depending on the research project (Costello, McDermott, and

Wallace). I also emphasize ethnographically informed instead of the more digital nature of other terms because of the physical ramifications and sometimes physical abuses that occur within the community, along with physical situations, such as comic conventions. Forms of communication and behaviors are not solely digital in some contexts.

Though the research I perform is digital and confined within connecting to people through social media, fandom itself is often a hybrid of both digital and physical spaces, meaning the idea of hybrid ethnographic research also informed my decisions. In discussing research methods of hybrid literacies, Beatrice Smith claims, “Because ethnographic approaches traditionally focus on studying bounded social spaces, they are ideally suited for studying offline lives. Online lives disrupt the sense of bounded space” (144). While her selected case studies and research center on in-person or hybrid ethnographies (exploring both in-person and then the digital networks associated with them), I believe her claim of ethnography best functioning in- person fails to consider the benefits of online ethnography or online ethnographically informed research, which I emphasize next.

One of the earliest stages in the ethnographic process is when researchers enter the community they wish to observe. In-person ethnographies may be blocked by hierarchies (such as employees needing to request their boss’ permission) or lack a close enough relationship with an insider who can introduce them to the larger group (Smith; Moss). Online observation in ethnographic research does not always address the difficulty of hierarchies or have it as a situational complication. Users of social media will openly share narratives and content that is 32 not their own but can be used for research purposes. For example, with Voltron: Legendary

Defender, a Tumblr user, huntypastellance, ran a blog titled ‘Anti Hall of Shame,’ where they recapped various dramas and examples of harassment within the fandom. They did not need permission from other users to compile an archive of messages, posts, and examples of harassment. Huntypastellance became a vital source for many in the fandom in navigating the harassment within the community, though much, if not all, of their content likely would not have been posted if they needed permission from the abusers/antis.

Smith acknowledges a basic tenet of all ethnographic scholarship: “A researcher’s knowledge of a site is, of course, always partial and contingent upon access and what participants are willing or able to share” (146). Comparatively, online/digital ethnographies are not necessarily reliant upon what the participant is willing to tell the researcher, for the researcher can observe without permission. This leads to the ethical dilemma of how forthcoming a researcher must be in ethnographic or ethnographically informed research. For some scholars, it is both possible and preferred to perform research without the participants being aware of their presence. Exploring digital spaces through ethnography benefits researchers by assumptions of the reader not being obtrusive, the affordance of studying potentially stigmatized or harmful places without face-to-face contact or risk, collecting and analyzing data not reliant upon the memories of participants (Costello, McDermott, and Wallace). Frequently, researchers of digital ethnography (or as Costello, McDermott, and Wallace prefer, netnography) act as lurkers. Lurkers, per their definition, monitor and study the community without being active participants. Such research risks lacking insider knowledge, however.

As I’ll explain shortly, within the confines of fandom studies is the concept of ‘acafans,’ the academic fan. They often have insider knowledge and a clear passion for the media. Here is 33 where my importance as a fan is central. Like there is no uniform way to be an acafan researcher, there is no uniform way fandoms have reacted in response to research about them. Many examples have seen expressions of exploitation, however, and frustration that the results of the research, use of fandom content, or rationale behind questions were not transparent (Deller;

Fathalla; Pignetti). Such fandom communities can feel belittled, stigmatized, and wary of researchers. Yet, due to my position as a fan, I largely avoided this concern, as participants viewed me as trustworthy and a member of the community who expressed frustrations over issues they cared about, such as the show’s conclusion. Further, as the show had ended and I was distanced from it, I similarly avoided the major concern of acafans, in which they may become upset when others go against their established ideas of the property in question (Deller; Downey et al.).

Ethics

From the onset of my research, my primary goal in selecting a methodological framework was how to best protect and respect fans. This research was inspired by a shared collective trauma and communal grief. As both a fan/member of the community and an academic, respecting these voices and experiences needed to be the priority. Within ethnography/ethnographically informed research, the materials used to build the narrative patterns of the community are vital in addressing the ethics of the research. Traditional in-person materials might include texts (such as a company’s rule book if observing a workforce) granted by the observed culture and the case study notes the ethnographer took during their time observing the subjects. Online ethnographies frequently lack such clear-cut options or materials gifted with permission from the writer’s subject. Instead, determining what materials to read and which parts of the community to observe are difficult ethical considerations for online spaces. 34

Per the National Endowment for the Humanities, all Internet-based text shown online is considered published and therefore content scholars can access and use. Internet archives of the online text are, to some, akin to any archival data, not requiring consent from the creators to observe and write about it. Simply put, if posted online, there is little a subject can do to prevent an ethnographer from observing it, no matter how private the writer deems the text. Some researchers do not announce their presence, leading to the lurker phenomenon mentioned earlier and therefore questions of ethics and credibility (McKee and Porter 166).

Other researchers contend that approaching all texts as freely accessible and knowing published materials is both ethically problematic to the researcher and disingenuous to the original writer, unaware their online posts, whether it be tweets, blogs, or forums, could be considered free for research. In their essay “Rhetorica Online,” Heidi A. McKee and James E.

Porter note, “as numerous researchers have shown, participants in online forums often perceive their posts as private even when those postings are, technically speaking, publicly available on the Web” (157). This perception of privacy is worth consideration in all cases, but especially those of groups including marginalized voices, at risk populations, and individuals typically deemed too young to give consent, such as a thirteen-year-old girl.

Researchers have options to approaching ethnography by their definition of ethical. For example, Bromseth’s study of the Scandanavian listserv saw her approach both the administrators and all members for permission, introducing herself as a member of the queer community (lesbian) and outlining her process. To ensure no harm, she also answered all questions and consulted all members she planned to quote directly, allowing them the opportunity to refuse their words being used in her dissertation. In considering other options for ethical treatment of participants, if believing it unethical to observe and write about participants 35 without their knowledge or consent, McKee and Porter note researchers have options, as

“Seeking alternative, more public, and clearly published sources for information is just one option for researchers. Another option is to secure consent to study and quote online postings.

Even though it may be difficult to obtain permission from individuals in online communities, it is not impossible” (McKee and Porter 159). I argue attempts at obtaining permission within this project are vital, however. Fiesler and Proferes’s large-scale study of social media users shows the majority consider their tweets as their own, private, and should not be used in research without consent. Complicating this is that much of the content explored in my dissertation and used for research is based around trauma and private narratives, meaning even more care with respect and ethical considerations must be applied.

This is where my research fits in. Building upon a history of digital ethnographic concerns in researcher positioning, material analysis, and ethical dilemmas, I offer myself as a potential case study in how the research was built. First, I make no secret of my position in the fan space, as many can look on my social media and find tweets about the show, when it ran.

Hundreds of fans supported my research and remarked about how it fits in with their goals and expectations in having themselves researched. Second, nearly all of the data collected is used with permission. The survey is the foundation of Chapter Three and the first half of Chapter

Four. The only fan content used without permission are death threats and other forms of harassment sent to me, as those are used for a rhetorical analysis of my own harassment.

Identifying markers, such as usernames, have been removed from the included screenshots within the research, however. For my own safety, I cannot ask these posters for permission. As much as possible, I gathered and presented harassment that occurred in comments underneath my social media posts about my research. These are what I call ‘presumed permissive spaces,’ where 36

I make it clear I will be observing and using the data. My attempts at permission, ethical considerations, and what materials I used in an ethnographic study, sufficiently respond to my own beliefs on how research into a traumatized fandom should function.

Queer Origins in Methodologies

My study explores ramifications of harassment as performed by women and/or queer folks in an online space. While my research is completed through ethnographically informed research and autoethnography, it is also influenced by rules and theories from queer research methods. In the original conception of my dissertation, queer and feminist methodologies were how I planned to shape the results, such as via applying social circulation. While I focused more on the results and narrative patterns of trauma in this version of the project, queer methodologies shaped my approach to the survey.

Per my argument, part of what defines queer scholarship is the focus on queer subjects.

Queer work and methods are not universally defined, however. As Banks, Cox, and Dadas note in their introduction to Re/Orienting Writing Studies: Queer Methods, Queer Practice:

Is it the subjects of our research or the contexts in which we conduct research that make

our work queer? Is it the way we collect data or the way we frame our collection

methods? Or does queer work involve a more nuanced understanding of these concepts,

concepts that guide so much of the way our discipline responds to and frames the work

we attempt to do?” (5).

While some scholars push against identifying queer work solely because the subjects are identified as queer, Patterson aligns with an opposing view, as “Queer and trans of color methodologists have critiqued queer theory for creating a bodily and emotional distance from the subjects and people they claim to study” (55). Patterson extends conversations about how this 37 emotional distance can be harmful, especially for the subjects. For example, in creating quantitative surveys, it is imperative to consider how the ‘other’ term in binaries of male-female, straight-gay causes harm. Caring for the queer identifying subjects and emphasizing their agency is the primary means of queered methodologies within my research.

Locating, researching, and theorizing queer rhetorics in online spaces has also become an important touchstone in the fields of rhetoric and composition. We recognize digital spaces have facilitated new modes of communication for those identifying as queer, allowing them to speak with others without barriers, as a participant in Alexander et al.’s “Queerness, Sexuality,

Technology, and Writing” states, “The social barriers... are much lower online, because one can chat without the automatic assumption that one is looking “to trick” for a sex partner for that night” (14). For writers who skew younger, especially adolescents, social media and online writing is foundational in creating supportive communities, protesting anti-queer behavior, or learning new styles of writing (McCracken; Waggoner). Especially regarding fandom, queer people and their writing are influenced by the media and potentialities of blending writing and fandom binary of male-female, straight-gay.

Autoethnography

Adrienne Evans and Mafalda Stasi’s “Desperately Seeking Methodology: New

Directions in Fan Studies Research” acknowledges the pitfalls and potential benefits of autoethnographic research within the field, writing:

Our argument then is that autoethnography may end up focusing too much on the

individual feelings, and risk oversight of the larger cultural structures that are interacting

with those feelings: in short, it can be hard to criticise your own tribe - or indeed yourself.

Digital ethnography provides an opportunity to contextualise individual reflections as 38

part of a broader structural and politicised analysis of the way fandom is networked and

communicated through online practices. It puts into action the organisation and politics of

community, alongside individual and lived experience (16).

First, I want to address the concept of the autoethnographic researcher placing too much of themselves within the work. Evans and Stasi’s caution primarily targets those who do not represent diverse identity markers as, “‘autoethnography’ risks overlooking or reproducing sexism, misogyny, racism and homophobia in research contexts where the aca-fan is not critically reflecting on their own engagement” (15). I work to navigate the complex issue of representation by having my own narrative appear after the diverse fandom’s experiences are shared. Further, instead of contrasting my experiences with theirs, I have instead turned towards exploring how my own harassment, in creating this project, mirrors the daily abuses of the fandom. I am pacing myself in the ‘larger critical structures’ and, unfortunately, doing so puts me, and, largely, my participants, in the position of ‘criticising’ our tribe, as antis are members of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. The digital nature of autoethnography is what appeals to Evans and Stasi, but also myself, as it accomplishes all the goals they lay out in summarizing it.

Admittedly, Chapter Four is not purely digital autoethnography. Rather, it is a personal narrative highly influenced by autoethnography, blending the core concepts of it with rhetorical analysis.

Inspired by Dana Cloud’s rhetorical analysis of her own hate mail, I too wanted to confront the harassment against me from a rhetorical standpoint. That said, I also wanted to contextualize it within the larger community, which I accomplish through autoethnography. I curated my own archive of abuses against me, taken from my police report, personal 39 correspondence over the incidents, social media posts about me, death threats or confrontations within the survey, and the acts I had to take in the aftermath of attacks, such as changing my phone number. Upon writing this digital autoethnographic review of how I fit in the community and my experiences, I then segue into the rhetorical analysis to argue that, despite not being focused on plots in the show and occurring after the show concluded, antis still utilized the same rhetorical strategies in performing harassment.

Personal Research Contexts

In “Rhetorical Moves in Disclosing Fan Identity in Fandom Scholarship” Adrienne E.

Raw opens with a brief biography of her participation in fandom, explaining:

I am a participant in online fandom, and I have been since elementary school: I read and

write fan fiction, maintain a fannish Tumblr, and frequently reblog meta about my

favorite fandoms. But I am also becoming a fan studies scholar, and that has required a

rethinking of my relationships with both fandom and scholarship. As part of this process,

I asked myself the question that I investigate in this article: How do acafans, as fans and

as scholars, negotiate talking about our fan identities in our scholarship about fandom?”

Raw is hardly alone in questioning if, how, and why we negotiate our identities of acafans.

Though Matt Hill cautions fans from emphasizing the personal too much, instead recommending boundaries to prove credibility, Tom Phillips advocates a different approach. Instead, the academic author gains credibility via their history and confession of their placement as a fan.

Within my contexts, the best answer to Raw’s question on negotiating identities falls in line with

Phillips’ approach. To understand my research and recognize the bias, limitations, and strengths of my project, transparency is vital. If not for my fan identity and the rhetorics that shaped my 40 life, I would have not thought this project possible and, later, not known what questions to ask about my fandom.

In acknowledging my history, I want to explore my own bias about Voltron: Legendary

Defender as a research subject and how it positions my acafan stature. I loved Voltron:

Legendary Defender until its controversial end. I wrote about it, blogged about it, and made content for it during the show’s run5. Hundreds of people followed me on social media for my

Voltron: Legendary Defender content, and thousands more interacted with my work. Never before had I made so many friends, both local and across the globe, over one fandom. Much of our interactions were on our shared affections over certain characters, but much was also trauma bonding due to how others in the fandom, antis, harassed. This affection and history shapes every element of my identity as a researcher, from the language I colloquial use, to the questions I developed, to why I chose this fandom, and to the ease in accepting narratives about self-harm, rape, or death threats. As previously noted, and to be explored in more detail in Chapters Three and Four, this was a fandom filled with lovely people but also those who committed horrific acts of harassment.

After years of experience, of a daily life within the fandom, I had trusted assumptions of the demographics who watched the show and discussed it online. Due to my own histories of fandom on Tumblr being female, I presumed the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom was largely female and/or queer as well. Some evidence supported that. People I followed and/or interacted would note pronouns (she/her or they/them) or identity markers (queer, trans, female,

Asian, Latinx) in their social media bios. Many would often post about how the diversity of

Voltron: Legendary Defender was great representation and that they clearly connected to

5 For safety reasons, I created a separate account for Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom interactions. Due to the risk of harassment, I will not include the name of the account within this dissertation. 41 someone on the show. Later, my dissertation survey would show less than 2% of the surveyed fans identified as a cis, white, heterosexual man. As I discussed in Chapter One, most of our scholarship explores the rhetorics and behaviors of heterosexual men (normally white) who harass women. This fandom instead saw the dominant actors of harassment be queer women. My knowledge and experience, i.e. knowing from personal experience that these were diverse demographics, inspired my desire to perform research within the fandom on harassment.

Yet, this was not the only inspiration. As Chapter Four will outline, Voltron: Legendary

Defender ended in controversy and fan outrage. Multiple social media protests, boycotts, and theories circulated afterwards. Fans felt ignored, as they never received a response from the showrunners on why the show ended in what most felt a disappointing way. Here is where my acafan position again becomes important. I was among the tens of thousands who grieved the show’s ending and felt a level of betrayal and upset. Despite my love of Voltron: Legendary

Defender, I have never watched the show since its conclusion years ago. The need for distance away from the property and feelings of upset remains throughout the fandom, over two years later. I pivoted from my planned survey exclusively about harassment within the fandom to instead create a section where fans could share their feelings on the show’s conclusion, such as if people were disappointed in representation, as the only woman of color lead on the show was killed. My survey gave people a space to share their feelings, which likely accounts for the popularity and data overload I faced upon its publication.

The Communicative Methods and Language of the Voltron: Legendary Defender Fandom

(A Dissertation Research Survey)

Data used for my research comes from survey responses from Voltron: Legendary

Defender fans. The survey was open to all who wished to engage with my research, so long as 42 they were 18 or older. Questions were divided into three parts. The first asked fans how they defined ‘antis,’ the informal name of the collection of fans who harassed others, and any experiences or opinions held about them. The next section inquired into feelings about the television show (i.e. the aforementioned upset) and if it impacted the overall feelings for the show itself. The final set of questions were demographic. Questions inquired into age, sexuality, gender, and ethnicity. Demographic questions were to ensure I had quantifiable data to prove the diversity of the fandom. Fans also used these questions to reflect on if the show had given them

‘good’ representation, with the majority feeling disheartened and betrayed by a media property they liked, especially as other fan complaints were listened to. In this section of the survey, fans were also asked to leave their contact information if interested in being an interview subject, as that was the initial plan for a second stage of research. The questions in the survey are included in Appendix B, following Appendix A (IRB approval letter).

Participants

Recruitment

On February 13, 2019, I created two social media posts, one on Tumblr and the other on

Twitter, announcing my dissertation and requesting participants. The only limitation in fan participation was age, as a fan needed to be at least eighteen years of age. The original plan was to create monthly social media posts on each website until January 2020, when data collection was initially planned to conclude.

Within four days, I received 544 responses. Primarily, these fans seemed to locate my project via Twitter, where there were significantly more interactions, as more than half of the participants would retweet and share my original tweet requesting people participate in my survey. The popularity also amplified risk, however, and fans who felt targeted by my questions, 43 specifically antis, made themselves known. Beginning on February 18, 2018 antis used data from my IRB approval form, such as my phone number, school location, and full name, to harass me.

They circulated my data, such as my location, and labelled me a pedophile or a supporter of incest. Attempting to combat this harassment, I cleared my social media of identifying markers, such as my image or full name. Unfortunately, as this was not the first experience with online harassments antis had, they already saved my data and would post my picture and phrases like,

“Don’t worry Renee Ann, we know who you are.” Other threats included sharing where I was on campus or my picture and encouraging others to physically confront me at my university.

As the threats continued, I adapted. I closed it to all participants and set it to invitation only. If fans wanted to contact me for a link, I would give it to them. Antis continued their harassment of me and some, specifically minors who were legally not allowed to participate, began recording videos of themselves typing death threats into my survey, somehow having access to it. In concern for my safety and that of my students, as antis threatened to burn my classroom down, I left social media on February 19, closing the survey.

On March 29, I returned to social media, feeling safer in how I removed my personal information offline and made myself difficult to locate. The semester was more than halfway over, and I was not to be at my home institution due to conferencing and spring break. I assumed it was safe to open the survey again. Within hours, antis, who likely were monitoring my social media, began making comments, including creating a script of content to flood my survey with and a draft of an email to the Bowling Green State University ethical research compliance officer. Fearing again for my life and that of my loved ones, I permanently closed the survey down. 44

By the time I closed the survey, I had received answers from 561 participants, having written nearly 400,000 words (approx. 360,897), and these are the figures I work with today. One caveat is noteworthy, however. The number of participants was originally higher. At the start of my research, before the worst of the harassment, I tended to delete responses that simply read

‘die bitch’ or ‘go kill yourself,’ viewing them as spam and not relevant to the research until the harassment became more prevalent.

Demographics

My personal interests and experiences with the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom indubitably shaped my desire to document it. That said, the fandom would likely not have appealed to me if not for the diversity of voices and representation within it. Though my initial research question explores how gender and sexuality impact the act of harassing others, I also find value in presenting the demographic of the fandom at large to document how encompassing the fandom is and to juxtapose how such demographics compare to those of antis. Demographic data was collected through my survey, with respondents asked: “What gender do you identify as?”; “What sexuality do you identify with?”; and “What ethnicity do you identify as?” Within the survey, I classified these questions as open-ended, allowing respondents to type an answer in lieu of selecting from a set of predetermined options. The open-ended aspect was designed for two reasons. As a heterosexual white woman, I do not have the experience or knowledge to presume I know all gender, racial, or sexual terminologies and their combinations and have learned of many through my time in the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. If using predetermined options, I would certainly neglect to include some option or leave it under the guise of ‘other.’ This act of othering goes against my attempts at inclusive research and queer/feminist methodologies. As G Patterson notes in “Queering and Transing Quantitative 45

Research” queer and trans participants “know firsthand how confining identity categories can be.

While quantitative researchers always risk posing reductive questions because survey design doesn’t allow much space for nuance, those of us committed to queer and trans justice must take extra care to honor the identifications of our participants” (58). In listing predetermined options, many participants are forced to select and therefore prioritize one aspect of their identity, such as a biracial person only being allowed one race. By ensuring participants input their own information, I hoped to circumnavigate the idea of othering or choosing between identities. This was another means of incorporating queer methodologies within my research.

“i have did but we're all non-binary6”: Gender of Participants

360 of the 552 participants (64.9%) who filled out demographic data identified as woman/female. 3 of the participants identified as demigirl, meaning a partial identity to females.

1 participant described gender as ‘complicated’ before ultimately choosing female, and another participant wrote, ‘probably female.’ Though many of the terms used to identify gender were

‘woman’ or ‘female,’ 53 participants clarified they were cis female or cis woman (14.7%), indicating the female gender they were assigned to at birth is the gender they continued to identify with. This is notable because, in comparison to the male demographic, no woman/female labeled themselves as trans.

Male/Man folk represented 67 of the 552 participants (12.1%). Of the 67, 56.7% (38) identified as male/guy/man without other signifiers, such as cis or trans. 4.5% (3) participants clarified they were cis male. While fewer men were participants within the survey, the emphasis on self-description manifested in other ways. 25 of the 67 (37.3%) self-identified as trans men, and a single participant submitted the gender identity of demiboy.

6 (i have did but we're all non-binary, i have did but we're all queer, white, mid/late 20s). 46

Between the two binary genders of male and female, more female participants clarified if their gender represented what had been assigned at birth (53 to 28), but the percentage of men who stated if their gender was assigned at birth was higher (41.8% versus 14.8).

125 participants (22.6%) did not identify within the binary genders of male or female. 22 folk identified as agender, with one noting they were agender but female presenting. 56 folk identified as a form of non-binary. While 39 of the 56 (69.6%) signified non-binary alone, 9 identified as non-binary female/female presenting, 5 as non-binary trans male, and 2 as non- binary agender. While fitting under non-binary, I wanted to briefly highlight that one participant wrote, “Online, I am nonbinary,” signifying how important online spaces are in allowing performance of a preferred gender identity. 4 participants noted they were a form of transgender that did not include a gender, specifically transgender nonbinary and transgender genderfluid. 20 participants labelled themselves as genderfluid, with 6 indicating female leaning genderfluidity and 1 describing themselves as genderfluid agender. 10 participants indicated genderqueer as their identity, with 1 writing genderqueer nonbinary. 2 bigender participants and four participants who labelled questioning/unsure were also demographics within the data.

8 participants submitted responses that placed them outside the binary of gender, but not in any of the previously established categories, though I count them among the 127 participants.

These genders include: Man or nonbinary, it depends; Gender non-conforming transmasc; fluid? non binary? I don't identify as anything but myself; I prefer no labels, but I’ll say non-binary and transitioning; Demigender; Ambiguously genderweird; Mark; and Nonbinary/Trans/Neutrois. 47

“you know that shrug text emote?7”: Sexualities of Participants

544 participants listed answers in response to “What sexuality do you identify with?”

Over 60 different types of sexualities and terms were listed in their responses. In broad terms, I first categorized responses as heterosexual, queer, unsure/questioning, or answers that indicated gender not sexuality. The vast majority of responses (86.4%) fell under the identity of queer, such as pansexual, demisexual, bisexual, asexual, and combinations of the identities, of which

I’ll discuss in greater detail in a later paragraph. 94.9% (56) of participants who identified as heterosexual used the terms straight and/or heterosexual. Of the three who did not, their responses indicated being heterosexual and identifying by their gender that was assigned at birth

(cishet), identifying as straight but open for questioning (Straight.... ish? Lol) and one participant who acknowledged her heterosexuality but juxtaposed it with her location, noting, “Hetero (I'm sorry, I'm from Argentina and here things are not THAT clear)”.

Figure 1: Sexuality of Participants

7 (male, you know that shrug text emote?, white, mid/late 20s). 48

Occasionally participants would fill in answers that indicated gender in lieu of sexuality.

Among the participants, one participant noted ‘woman’, another ‘female’, and a third typed ‘F’, indicating female. The fourth participant wrote ‘cis’, indicating their gender assigned at birth is still the gender they go by. Of the eight who marked unsure or questioning, terms varied, as did the number of people who responded with such terms: unsure (1), confused (1), not sure (1), I don’t know (2), questioning (1), you know that shrug text emote? (1), and confused, questioning, probably gay? (1). Three participants said they had no sexual identity.

Classifications of the different types of queer identities remains difficult due to the shorthand and abbreviations used within the survey. For example, 157 participants (28.9 % of all participants, 33.4% of all queer participants) identified as bisexual. This includes participants who used the terms bisexual, bisex, or bisexual and noted a preference towards men or women.

This does not include the term bi, as used by 21 participants. While bi is a commonly used shortening of the term bisexual, other participants indicated they used bi to mean biromantic, as one participant described themselves as, “Biromantic asexual, usually use “bi” as shorthand.”

Subsequently, use of words such as ‘pan’ could mean pansexual or panromantic or ‘demi’ for demisexual or demiromantic, also led to additional categories being created, as I cannot be use the bi/pansexual person is the same as bisexual/pan or bi/pan people.

While bisexual was the most prevalent queer identity within the survey, pansexual was also frequent, with 58 participants indicating pansexual (12.3% of queer participants) and 9 more indicating pan. Asexual/Ace folk were 55 participants (11.7% of queer participants). Lesbian was used as an identifier for 31 participants (6.6% of queer participants), though two noted they were an asexual lesbian. 25 participants wrote in gay (5.3% of queer participants), and 21 wrote in queer (4.5% of queer participants). Demisexual (11 participants, 2.3%) and homosexual (10 49 participants, 2.1%) were the only other sexualities to include more than 1.5% of the population of queer participants. Of the bisexual, pansexual, asexual, demisexual, lesbian, gay, and homosexual identities documented above, 398 of the 470 (84.7%) of queer participants are located.

“Heinz 57! (im the average mixed american and my ancestors come from all over,

including native american)8”: Ethnicities of Participants

558 participants submitted an answer to the question: What ethnicity do you identify as? Compared to all other demographic questions, this has the most responses, though some of those responses were questions of why I asked this question or refusals to answer (4), likely speaking for the blank submissions on both gender and sexuality. Responses to the question of ethnicity ranged in answers based on skin-tone and geographic location and/or a combination of the two.

White/Caucasian was the majority response in terms of ethnicity. 298 participants identified as white/caucasian (54.4%). Of this 298, 18 of the submissions specified white

European/Canadian, and 3 identified as ‘primarily white.’

59 participants identified as Asian or with Asian heritage from a specific country. 29 participants labelled themselves as Asian, 9 Chinese, 7 Filipino, 2 Vietnamese, 2 Asian

American, 2 East Asian, and one participant each of Japanese/Vietnamese, South East Asian,

Korean, Malaysian, Filipina-Chinese, Chinese American, Indo-Chinese, and Japanese.

Hispanic was a chosen identifier for 32 participants. Latin/Latina/Latino/Latinx was selected for 35 other participants. Latin or Hispanic countries were frequently noted as forming the

8 (Female? (I was born a girl), Ace, Heinz 57! (im the average mixed american and my ancestors come from all over, including native american), early/mid 20s). 50 identity for others. 9 participants labeled themselves as Mexican, an additional 4 as Mexican

American, 4 as white/Latinx/Hispanic, and one final participant as Latin American.

Biracial or ‘mixed’ was also a frequent identifier. 10 participants chose to use the label ‘mixed’ while a single participant offered ‘biracial.’ 22 other participants went into more detail on what races they consider their biracial identity: Black/Hispanic (3), Biracial

Latina (1), Black/Caucasian (4), Latino/White (3), White/Indigenous (1), Cherokee Native and Black (1), White/Asian (7), African American Mixed White and Polynesian (1) and

Afro-Carribbean / Italian (1).

White, biracial/mixed, Asian, and Hispanic/Latinx were 475 of the 558 participant answers (85%). Other participants demographics making up at least 1% of the demographic data include: European (18, 3%) and Black/African American (17, 3%). Though less than 1% of the demographic, multiple participants indicated their ethnicity as Native American (4),

Middle Eastern (4), Slavic (4), Indian (3), and New Zealand Pakeha (3). For a complete list of all listed ethnicities, consult Appendix C.

Qualitative Coding to Locate Narrative Patterns

With the sheer volume of data collected through the survey, it quickly became apparent that a dozen different options of coding could easily fit the content and goals of the data. To select a set of coding options, I first needed to establish the structure of the project. While

Domain and Taxonomic Coding, a type of coding used in ethnographic research to create subcategories and themes, would fit more in looking at the linguistic choices of the fandom, I ultimately wanted to prioritize narratives and needed codes that could be applied to large swaths of data. Though I note I prioritized narratives, I am not looking at narrative language (aside, foreshadowing) so the coding should not be confused with Narrative Coding. 51

The overall coding strategy I used was qualitative, though there are multiple subtypes of coding I then implemented to create patterns in my data. There are three subtypes of coding utilized within my research. The first two, Values Coding and Versus Coding, are primarily applicable in Chapter Three, which establishes the dichotomy between different factions in the fandom and what values were held that inspired abuse. Values Coding is “the application of codes to qualitative data that reflect a participant’s values, attitudes, and beliefs, representing his or her perspectives or worldview” (Saldana 298). Versus Coding “identifies the dichotomous or binary terms the individuals, groups, social systems, organizations, phenomena, processes, concepts, etc. in direct conflict with each other….appropriate for...qualitative data sets that suggest strong conflicts, injustice, power imbalances, or competing goals within, among, and between participants” (298). As conflict is the root of Chapter Three, these two codes pair well in documenting how values led to conflicts among competing fandom factions. It is these conflicts that I highlight as different themes within Chapter Three.

Qualitative Coding primarily featured trauma responses, as I documented all key words that featured in participant narratives of their experiences within the Voltron: Legendary

Defender fandom. A sample of the most common codes is present in the following table: 52

Table 1: Most Common Codes in the Data

Rape Death Threats (We Stalking Self-Harm Slurs- Racial,

will kill you) homophobic

Child Sexual Assault Accusation of Doxing Accusation of Threats

Pedophilia Incest against cast

and crew

Physical Digital stalking Blocking History of Blackmail confrontations trauma/past

experiences

Backlash Poison Hatred Sorrow, Fear Self-image

issues

Delusions/Gaslighting Violent Images or Deleting Inflammatory Abuse,

Gore (fanfiction, comments Harassment

art, online

accounts)

Hide my identity Hesitant/discouraged Fetishizing Silenced Told to kill

selves

Emotion Coding “labels the emotions recalled and/or experienced by the participant or inferred by the researcher about the participant. Appropriate for virtually all qualitative studies, but particularly for those that explore intrapersonal and interpersonal participant experiences and actions” (293). Emotion Coding was present throughout the research. In Chapter Three, which documents various examples of abuse (stalking, death threats), Emotion Coding emphasized that 53 the overall community found such behaviors distressing or unacceptable, which helped build the identity of the community. It was equally valuable in Chapter Four, in the section where I outline fan responses to the show’s ending, as not all had the same emotional reactions. Emotion Coding helped in Theming the Data, which “develop an overarching theme from the data corpus, or an integrative theme that weaves various themes together into a coherent narrative” (297-298). To see all codes applied to the data, consult Appendix D.

Data Reductions and Limitations

As with all projects, various limitations occurred that impacted the research. Primarily, these limitations can be divided into categories of ‘occurred due to harassment,’ ‘inexperience,’ and ‘data overload/time sensitivity.’

In conceptualizing this project, I underestimated the attention it would receive from the fandom. As a result of my inexperience, I was ill-prepared for the harassment that occurred from a research method standpoint. My priority had been so focused upon ethics and participant protection that I did not include, within the methodology, what researcher protection looks like.

This will be a focus in Chapter Five, specifically what future researchers can take from my dissertation to ensure their own safety.

Over 300 participants opted in as future follow-up interview subjects, with many of them indicating an enthusiastic desire, such as outlining their own hopes to do fan studies work and learn from me, gratitude that they were heard, and listing multiple means of contacting them, such as through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Skype, private phone numbers, emails, or Discord.

Some offered materials from their personal lives, such as police reports or correspondence between themselves and other fans (such as if they ran a blog dedicated to Voltron: Legendary

Defender). Unfortunately, collecting more data via interviews was deemed a liability due to the 54 previous harassment. Another ramification of a lack of interviews was that some narrative threads could not be continued or followed-up on. For example, only after my data collection was over did the showrunners confirm many suspicions that fans raised in my survey, such as the ending of the show changing suddenly.

Outside of limitations that occurred due to harassment, data overload and the time sensitive nature of the dissertation are other notable factors. Admittedly, I was fortunate to have an abnormally large amount of time to go through my data, as data collection ended in March

2019, two full years prior to submitting my dissertation. That allowed me ample time to explore and read through an abundance of data. Unfortunately, due to the focus on harassment within my dissertation and how much space I have, many narratives and testimonials were unable to be included. Over 100 different participants are quoted within the dissertation, and all who gave quantitative information are represented. That said, not even 20% of all participants are named or extensively quoted due to space and time constraints, as I finished the dissertation within a year.

Future versions of this project will amplify further voices.

I also want to make note of the difficulty in selecting which narratives to include. Nearly all participants indicated they survived or knew someone who survived traumas, from rape and death threats, accusations of pedophilia and incest, self-harming, physical and emotional abuse, or stalking. My first priority was ensuring I included as many voices as possible. If someone wrote extensively about how they, a former victim of child sexual assault, were impacted by antis and then also wrote about how they reacted to the show as a queer person, I would only include that individual to be quoted once. To decide which aspect of a person to quote or which question, I looked to where they were most passionate, such as in language choice or length. I also wanted to amplify the diversity of voices within the fandom. If ten female, bisexual, white, 55 early/mid 20s participants wrote about being stalked, and a nonbinary, queer, black, early/mid

30s participant also wrote about being stalked, I would include 1-2 of the female bisexual testimonials and pair it with the nonbinary person. Diversity and representing as many testimonials as possible were ultimately the guiding choices in my selection process.

Conclusion

Research is ever shifting, and no amount of careful planning can anticipate all the challenges to come. Prior to my realized research, I had thought myself wildly optimistic in my hopes 50 people would participate between February 2019 and January 2021. Instead, 561 people offered their experiences for me to share. I assumed interviews would follow, but the reality saw me join the narratives of the harassed and therefore the narratives of the researcher who had to adapt. As my forthcoming Chapter Three and Chapter Four discuss, the Voltron:

Legendary Defender fandom is one of unexpected shocks and extreme acts. 56

CHAPTER III. “REALLY MEAN AND KIND OF LIKE A CULT9”: PEDOPHILIA

ACCUSATIONS TO PHYSICAL CONFRONTATIONS

Introduction

The results of my research survey and subsequent analysis are the primary focus of this chapter, documenting the two years Voltron: Legendary Defender ran (June 2016 - December

2018), and the various controversies, harassments, and online presences that shaped it. I begin with an exploration of how fans define antis, fan experiences, and the language practices located within the fandom. Throughout my analysis, I draw upon the personal examples offered to me by participants to explore a range of topics I have coded for, including responses of child sexual assault survivors and fans stalked both digitally and real life. I conclude the chapter with a summary of how the fandom appeared on the eve of the show’s concluding season, the focus of

Chapter Four.

Defining Antis

Antis are an intrinsic part of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom experience. When asked “Do you know what antis are?” only one response of the 56010 participants who submitted an answer claimed no. While 21 (3.75%) indicated maybe, the vast majority (538; 96.1%) understood and recognized the concept of antis. Similarly, participants near universally believed they understood the motivations of shipping. When asked if antis were motivated by shipping, the act of wanting characters to enter romantic relationships (i.e. ‘ships’), most fans indicated yes, they were. On a scale of 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Yes, it’s the major part of their identity), only 4 fans believed antis ranked 1 (Not at all) in regards to being motivated by shipping, or 0.7%. 5 fans ranked anti motivations at 2 (still likely not connected to shipping), 0.9%. 27 participants

9 (Genderqueer, queer, white, late teens/early 20s), describing antis. 10 Not every person of the 561 participants responded to every question. 57 opted for 3, the middle range, equating to 4.8%. Less than 7% of all participants believed anti behaviors were not motivated by shipping. All self-identifying antis who participated in the survey, however, were within this 7%. Most respondents, however, saw a clear correlation between shipping and what motivated antis to act. 87 participants, 15.6% of all answers, submitted 4 as an answer, while the majority, 436 (78%) selected 5, the rank of ‘Yes, it’s

(shipping) the major part of their (anti) identity.’ It is unsurprising that most definitions of antis will include the concept of shipping, though there is nuance in how participants approached the term ‘anti.’

Fans divided the term ‘anti’ into two distinct definitions. One side understands antis as a universal, global phenomenon present in countless fandoms. As explored in Chapter One, the concept of the anti-fan has been debated and analyzed for decades within the field of fan studies.

Gray’s 2003 definition of anti fans as, “What of anti-fans? This is the realm not necessarily of those who are against fandom per se, but of those who strongly dislike a given text or genre, considering it inane, stupid, morally bankrupt and/or aesthetic drivel” (70) fits well with the definitions put forth by some participants in 2019. In fact, many of the participants looked to antis as a tenet of fandom interactions across all spectrums of fandoms, not just a source of harassment.

History and personal experiences clearly shape the idea of the universal anti. While there remains a history of antis predating social media (Gray; Johnson), many fans only experienced it for the first time due to social media. In reflecting on the past, a fan (Cis female, asexual, white, early/mid 30s) recalled, “Antis' emerged as a term widely used to describe 'anti-fans' - I believe that I'm right about the history here, but I believe that the label first started to gain traction based on the Tumblr tagging system and the communities it engendered, and the way that 'anti- 58

[ship/character/fandom]' brought together people whose primary common interest was the hate for something11.” The appearance and use of social media afforded new opportunities of amplification in terms of expressing hate. Hatred is a common phrase, akin to a foundational base, for defining antis, as they hate, “a particular ship (or sometimes an entire piece of media, such as Killing Stalking) so much that their hatred becomes part of their identity. For them, it goes far beyond just having a NOTP (a personal dislike of a ship)--they believe the ship or media is inherently harmful to real people in some way, and they attack fans of it in an attempt to stamp out its very existence ”(Genderqueer, queer, white, mid/late 20s).

Dislike, a concept also raised by Gray, as “for many of us care as deeply (if not more so) about those texts that we dislike as we do about those that we like” (73), appeared in other definitions as well, emphasizing a global aspect to antis, not unique to Voltron: Legendary

Defender. One fan, speaking on her experiences (Currently a cis female, Asexual (panromantic, I have mostly dated women), Caucasian, mid/late 20s) summarized the concept as:

Due to my past interactions with them, I believe them to be individuals of a fandom that

cannot accept that other like what they dislike. They do not simply dislike something:

instead of ignoring and avoiding content they dislike, they actively search and attack

people who do, and use moral excuses to defend their negative behavior. They really do

believe they have this moral and ethical highground, and that because of that they can

force their personal opinions on others as if they were facts.

11 While anti-fans were present before Tumblr, they were primarily located in forums or specialized websites dedicated to feeling derisive towards the chosen media. Such websites could be difficult to locate or quickly disband. With Tumblr, however, people had a dedicated platform and nuanced search and tagging system to locate content. A user would simply need to type ‘Anti-BLANK’ into the search engine and have returned users who frequently posted about being anti-BLANK, popular posts or videos, and the means to create Anti-BLANK content. Tumblr, when this survey was conducted, was the chosen home for antis due to the ease in which content could be located and preserved. For example, Pinkowitz’s efforts in analyzing an Anti-Twilight website, prior to Tumblr’s success in hosting anti-communities, is limited by what materials she could find, as the website and forums she used for her research, are defunct and/or deleted entirely. 59

Her belief that antis ‘believe they have this moral and ethical highground’ is among the most common recurring theme across participants. For example, over 20% of participants who wrote definitions included terms, such as ‘moral’ or ‘ethic’ or ‘superior’ to explain what antis are to them. Further examples of these definitions include:

• “They have no moral code when it comes to harrassment due to lack of education on

personal space or sociability issues and occasionally because they simply don't care. They

invest too much time into their hobby to see a bigger picture and hyperfixate on details

nobody else sees” (Female, Pansexual, White British, mid 30s/late 30s).

• “Basically antis are people who believe that the kind of fiction someone likes defines

them as a person, they try to prove that they're the "morally pure" ones because they

consume as unproblematic content as possible, often going too far at labeling other

content, characters or ships as morally impure even in ways it's not (for example calling

ships between adults with age gaps pedophilia) and with the excuse of "protecting

minors" they attack, harass, call names, doxx and generally make people they don't agree

with feel as unsafe as possible, even people they're supposedly protecting (minors,

trauma or rape survivors, poc)” (Female, Biromantic Asexual, White, late teens/early

20s).

These definitions, however, transcend the original definition of anti, someone who dislikes a piece of media. Instead, as morality is attached to a definition, the context of the Voltron:

Legendary Defender fandom becomes apparent.

60

The Contextualized Anti

Voltron: Legendary Defender’s antis are combative and moralistic. These descriptors are the foundational ethos of anti behavior, per numerous definitions. One I frequently turned to and saw other definitions mirror names anti behavior as a form of ‘social activism’:

antis are poeple who devote their in-fandom time and energy to policie other people's

likes and beliefes. their goal is to purge their fandom (all the internet, really) and they

will use any strategy they could think of, no matter how dangerous it is. root of their

obsession with doing such "social activism" could be disected in 3 main big things: 1.

they don't seem to understand that internet is not supposed to be a safe space 2. they have

twisted perception of what activism is, and therefore consider themselves activists doing

the right thing being the hero amd etc 3. they can't tell the differense between genuine

dangerous things and things that make them uncomfortable. (non-binary, lesbian, im

slavic, late teens/early 20s)

This definition is among the most helpful and nuanced put forth by a participant. At least one of the three key concepts of ‘internet is not safe,’ ‘twisted perception of what activism is,’ and the failure to differentiate between genuine danger and fictional danger are present in over half of the suggested definitions. The dominant thread from this social activism idea is antis assuming their act is just or ‘heroic’ and that they can somehow protect another from a concept they deemed evil, specifically pedophilia or incest.

In attempting to accomplish the anti’s form of social activism, harassment became the primary method to use against others. One fan’s (Non-binary, Asexual spectrum, Pan-romantic,

African American, early/mid 20s) compelling definition explored the relationships between

‘shipping,’ activism, harassment, and the buzzwords used within harassment: 61

Antis, to my understanding, are a group of people who are vehemently and vocally

against something in particular within a fandom (typically a specific hypothesized

relationship between certain fictional characters), some of whom are known to harass,

verbally attack, or even threaten people who do not openly conform to their mindset

(whether those people support the hated ship or not). Antis usually bolster their

arguments with buzzwords such as "incest" or "pedophilia", calling negative attention to

the ship by suggesting it promotes real world abuse, despite the ship being fictional,

despite whether the ship actually qualifies for the term or not, and despite the level of

likelihood that supporting the ship either way would at all sway a person to engage in

these acts in real life. Antis seem to believe that they stand for social justice, and are

protecting others (i.e. minors) from the "harmfulness" of a particular ship by policing the

fandom from "predators" or "pedophiles" or whatever else they choose to coin supporters

of their anti-ship. It's not unusual for the rhetoric to become repetitive, falling back on the

same arguments (whether there is logical basis for that argument or not). It is also not

unusual for some of these people to demonstrate hypocrisy at some point, as they might

have no issue ridiculing someone for what they deem as questionable behavior, while

demonstrating behavior that is similarly questionable according to their own logic. At the

heart of it, antis are bullies who stand for their own cause, and who use real world issues

to not only justify their intense dislike for something, but their mistreatment of fellow

fans, the creators of the fandom's interest, and even people not involved in the interest or

its fan community at all.

While the hypocrisy of claiming to protect others while harassing and threatening people is present in many definitions, this encompassing working definition, put forth by the fan, was 62 selected as well for how it emphasizes the terminology unique to Voltron: Legendary Defender, specifically pedophilia, the most common ‘buzzword’ within the survey responses, more so than terms like ‘harassment’ or ‘moral/morally’ or ‘incest’. Additionally, the target audience of antis is present here, as those harassed by antis encompasses outsiders of the fandom besides the cast, crew, and fellow fans. Amplification, in many ways, was key to anti behavior and how they defined themselves. Though they were entrenched in the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom, they nevertheless had more global implications, as their message on combating self-defined social ills and performing social activism became common to almost all, regardless of what fandom spaces a person interacted with. When surveyed if the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom was known for antis to those outside the fandom, the majority of participants believed, yes. 490 of 560 participants (87.5%) agreed antis defined the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom, compared to 5 (.9%) who believed no, and 65 (11.6%) who indicated maybe the fandom was known for them.

Other fan definitions continued the idea of activism and the widespread attempts at altering fandom experiences within Voltron: Legendary Defender:

I generally view antis as people who view fandom as activism. They try to eliminate all

"problematic" content both fanmade or canon, all without any nuance, and make

aggressive and widespread sweeping judgments of people, often conflating fiction with

reality. They're bullies, in defense of either fictional characters, or in defense of their own

failure to curate their fandom experiences. Antis tend to equate things under vast

umbrellas. If characters are "like siblings" it's suddenly exactly as bad as incest. If

characters have any age difference, regardless of both being adults, it's "pedophilia."

Toxic characters no longer deserve redemption and aren't allowed to be shipped because 63

it's "abusive." They take whatever they don't like and find a way to make it reprehensible,

whether their label actually applies or not (Female, Bisexual, Vietnamese, mid/late 20s).

The commonality of shipping as an attribute of anti definitions from participants cannot be emphasized strongly enough. Though shipping may also be apparent in other case studies, the context of Voltron: Legendary Defender becomes increasingly apparent in this detailed definition, as ‘like siblings’ originates from the character Keith expressing Shiro, another character, is ‘Like a brother to him.” Such phrasing led antis to push the theory they were related, and thus began accusations of supporting incest. Keith and Shiro are legal adults during the entirety of the show, except for a few flashbacks in which they meet when Keith is in his mid- teens. Because they met when Keith was underage, any relationship between the two must be pedophilia. Toxic characters apply to many of the former villains or anti-heroes in the show, many of whom are shipped with heroic characters. This language is prevalent in dozens of definitions and referenced in other ways in countless more.

Occasionally, definitions of antis extend to extremes, such as cults, with real world counterparts. This is not a majority claim within definition, but cults appear across other answers in the survey, such as asking participants about their experiences with antis. For that reason, and the growing attempts at connecting fictional and real-world accounts, I wanted to include the idea of cults here. While some (Genderfluid, (nonbinary and woman shifting), Bisexual, white, early/mid 20s) points to anti fandom as “something bordering on a cult of behavioral child grooming in multiple fandoms,” another fan extends the concept to emphasize on the ideological:

Antis oppose certain specific content in media and are strong proponents of censorship.

This is based on what they personally find "immoral" or "wrong" often with no solid base

or a very specific interpretation of the themes that makes sense to them. Antis use social 64

justice themes and issues as a weapon when they may not necessarily be relevant and rely

on forming groups, activism and propaganda to slander and harass those who they see as

morally inferior, akin to many cults, namely those of ideological and religious nature like

Aryan Nations or the Westboro Baptist Church. (Female, lesbian, Hispanic/Latinx,

early/mid 20s).

Though my focus thus far has been on how antis are defined via their social activism/social justice and the community they are capable of building, I continue now with an emphasis on their language usage and the emphasis on the term pedophilia. Many suggested definitions, pedophilia and shipping were linked, fitting considering most fans believe shipping is what motivates antis; no one except for a self-described anti, who I will discuss soon, argued shipping and pedophilia were not motivated by each other. As one participant explains (Female,

Asexual/Biromantic, White, early/mid 20s), “Antis are people who take ship wars way too far.

They miss use buzz words like pedophilia to the point it’s hard for me to tell if the person they call it is one or just likes a ship that has an age gap that they don’t like. Every thing me I see post like: reblog this if your against pedos!! And I genuinely have to question if they mean actual or if it’s about a ship.” In co-opting the word pedophile, potential harm is being done in how audiences react to the term. In seeing comments on being against pedophilia, other fans, not just this chosen example, documented feeling conflicted in moments they were asked about their stance. Naturally, they label themselves against pedophilia and child porn, but the context of the situation is so radicalized that they cannot immediately disavow the term without knowing who is asking. 65

Other fans believe that antis have adopted rhetorically heavy concepts and terms to use, regardless of if they believe their arguments or not. A fan (Woman, Lesbian, White, mid/late

20s) believes:

Antis often use heavy words in their arguments for why doing something in fandom is

"wrong", for example that it is racist, pedophilic, etc. They may not even believe these

things are actually like that; they just want to use powerful words in order to shut down

any counter-arguments. They don't usually also care about actual survivors of, for

example, childhood sexual abuse, but only use their arguments for their own benefit.12

I selected this quote specifically for the phrase ‘powerful words.’ Also known as ‘loaded terms’

(Non-binary (agender), Asexual, White, mid/late 20s) and ‘complicated terminology without regard for the definitions’ (Female, Queer/pansexual, Mixed white and Hispanic, early/mid 20s), the rhetorical strength of claiming to be against pedophilia is almost peerless. It is rare to see someone claim to be in support of child porn or that children can be sexual partners. In most cultures, pedophilia is considered immoral and illegal. Therefore, pedophilia is a term almost universally desired to not be attributed to a person. Yet antis co-opted the term, ignoring the traditional definition, alongside other concepts, such as incest and, as Chapter Four documents, homophobia. It is due to the rhetorical nature and the simple fact people are inclined against pedophilia that the term likely was adopted and wielded. I conclude this aspect of the definition with one more voice (Female, Pansexual, Black, mid/late 20s) that connects rhetoric, shipping, and what antis truly believe (according to them):

From what I've seen, antis are (mostly teenaged) cyber bullies who use social justice

warrior rhetoric to make their arguments over shipping wars seem more valid. They have

12 Later in the chapter, I will document the reactions of survivors of child sexual assault to antis. They echo the sentiment shared here that their traumas are being used in ways that harm them instead of protect them. 66

no beliefs. Because what they say they hate about one ship, they like in another. It's easier

to say "you can't like this because of all these problematic elements" than it is to say "you

can't like this because I don't". They are hypocrites at their finest. And also think it's

perfectly ok to harass and send death threats to professionals because they won't write

their stories the way antis want.

Her experiences and definition again point towards a majority of how people viewed antis: they dictated how others could approach media by demonizing the original media’s intent and the other fandom participants.

Before I explore how antis define themselves, I conclude with briefer definitions, using words commonly expressed across dozens of potential definitions. While many of the answers were over fifty words and included multiple sentences, the brief, one-word or few word responses also indicated the prevalence of the negative definitions established by fans.

“Bullies” (Cis female, bi aroace spec, Mediterranean white, early/mid 20s).

“Superiority complex” (Trans male, gay, demi, Asian, Vietnamese, late teens/early 20s).

“People who hate loudly” (Woman, woman, Mexican, late teens/early 20s).

“Hatred, insults of other participants.” (Female, bisexual, Russian, early/mid 20s).

“They believe that they are right beyond all recognition of hurt and human emotion”

(Female, demisexual, white, late teens/early 20s).

“Purity police. Its bad if they don't prefer it” (Female, gay, white, early/mid 20s).

“People who use fiction to seem morally superior” (Unsure, gay asexual, white, early/mid

20s).

Any of the definitions I have included here will work within my research; regardless of length, most indicate a negative perception and some form of harassment and/or rhetorical usage 67 of loaded terms/buzz words. Going forward, I offer the following as a simplified, concise definition, building upon the hundreds of examples offered: Antis, who may or may not be actual fans of the Voltron: Legendary Defender, are fans known for harassing others due to shipping policies and/or social justice activism, co-opting loaded terms to emphasize their cause and compel outsiders unaware of context to side with them. The most common examples of this are with pedophilia and incest.

Antis Defining Themselves

The contextualization and politics of the fandom also matter in both how anti is defined and if fans are willing to identify as one. One fan (Female, Bisexual, French-Algerian (half white, half North African), late teens/early 20s) reflects on how she would be considered an anti regarding One Direction, the music band, but would not identify the same within Voltron:

Legendary Defender:

The word is used differently in different fandoms, which I think is important to note. I

would never want to call myself an anti in the vld fandom, but I'm proud to say I am one

in the One Direction fandom (context: antis in the 1d fandom are against the tinhatting

and conspiracy theories regarding the relationships and sexualities of the group members,

which goes as far as saying two of them have fake children lmao) I think funnily enough

there is a lot of similarities between the vld antis and the 1d tinhatters: entitlement to their

'ship' and the belief that their reading of the show/situations is the only correct one,

harrassment of anyone who goes against them (either through words or just by existing)

including ppl working for the show/group, calling homophobic anyone who disagrees

with them while they themselves use extremely homophobic rhetoric, the cult-like way

they operate, thinking ppl withing the show/group communicate with them using signs, 68

etc In short, vld antis believe that certain ships are morally 'wrong' to ship, and shun

anyone who do. Really though, the reasons as to why they're wrong and the ships

themselves have changed so many times that it's easy to see they use shipping morality as

a tool to prop up their preferred ship as the only pure and good one, and any other that

goes against it (and the people that support them) as bad and worthy of hate. Basically,

'we're right and everyone else that enjoys something different or in a different way than

me is wrong, and this is how I justify it.'

A few people identifying as ‘anti’ as defined by the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom participated in my survey. Their answers highlight a desire for wanting to be comfortable in fandom and deriding other fans for preventing them from being so. Additionally, antis were defensive, justifying their behaviors and noting only a small minority are acting out.

In defining antis, one (Trans male, bisexual, white, late teens/early 20s), states they’re,

“Someone who doesn’t like Shiro being shipped with the paladins” and “They don’t like shaladin ships because they’re gross that’s all it’s not that deep.” When asked how they envision antis, he wrote, “I see myself bc I’m an anti.” Comparatively, another fan, who argued in their survey the positive influence of antis, established them as “people in the voltron fandom that are strongly against harmful ship” and “Most of them are minors that feel uncomfortable looking at ships between teenagers and adults” (Man, homosexual, whites, late teens/early 20s). A third fan, also advocating for antis positive value in fandom, defined them as “Against the fetishization of gay men and relationships built on pedophilia and incest” and identified them as “a minor who is uncomfortable with the way adults women respond to criticism of problematic ships” (Female, straight, white early/mid 20s). 69

There is a level of disconnect, however, and distancing from ‘crazy’, with the trans male anti noting, “All the anits I’ve met are pretty chill, yeah sure there are some crazy ones but we’re mostly not as bad as you think we are” and than antis are “ all pretty cool and understanding.”

The other male fan echoed this sentiment, stating, “ Even if some of them can be really rude, a lot actually are nice and try to explain calmly why they think some ship may be harmful.”

Actions they might not necessarily agree with were also dismissed as actions of an extreme minority, such as harassing the cast and crew. Defining the events as ‘some occasions’ the trans anti stated “We don’t associate with those people” while the other male fan wrote, “yes some of them can be rude, but the rude one are actually a minority. A big part of antis actually tend to block cast that they don’t like so they don’t have to deal with think that they wouldn’t like.” The female fan, when asked about the idea that the antis harass the cast and crew believed anti

“feelings are completely valid and the crew has been petty and unprofessional in their responses” leaving no accountability on antis or acknowledgement of what others have deemed harmful behavior. That said, in a separate question, she stated, “Since it is always brought up so

Shaladins can play victim, I do not condone death threats ever, from antis or otherwise.”13

Summarizing antis, the trans participant argued, “Antis aren’t that bad we just don’t like incest” and “The fandom is a mess, but don’t blame every anti for that. 97% of us are really chill and just don’t want to see shaladin stuff since it can be triggering for some people.”

Another participant, who did not submit any demographic information14 similarly justified the behaviors and beliefs of antis. While there are elements of rationalizing their actions

13 There is a chance this condemnation on death threats is in response to my survey temporarily closing down due to them. I was accused of playing the victim within the survey and was repeatedly told, via her answers, that my survey and myself were “biased and unethical.” 14 Though the anti did not include their demographic information, the respondent did use her social media (white, early 20s, female) to share screenshots of her answer and encourage others to both copy/paste her writing and flood the survey and to contact BGSU. 70 via their reading of the show, much of their commentary drifted towards complaint of the research itself:

The fact that this “ethics” survey was approved and is being conducted is extremely

troubling.

Antis are, for the most part, MINORS. Minors who have expressed criticism and disgust

at an unhealthy and problematic ship between two gay men that is very often fetishized

by adult women. And while there has been SOME harassment on the side of antis, there

has also been equal harassment from Shaladins. And you say that Sheith isn’t part of the

survey, but that is the same as conducting a survey on night time without mentioning also

mentioning day time.

...

Perhaps a better research topic would have been on adults invading the spaces of minors

or the normalization of pedophilia and incest in fiction nowadays through the internet. Or

just something that isn’t based on your own biased opinion (Unknown).

Considering the brevity and scarcity of antis partaking in the survey, I cannot draw conclusive arguments on their beliefs and actions from their words alone. That said, many trends appear and, promisingly, connect to ideas established in the non-anti data. First, the definitions argue that their motivations are ship based, specifically the idea of Shiro dating one of the paladins. Yet, all definitions frame this motivation as a concern, worried about incest, pedophilia, and real-life harm to viewers. Antis themselves are defined in terms, such as ‘minor’ and

‘uncomfortable’ and ‘disgust’ which distances themselves from adult consequences and tries to justify actions due to that discomfort. In later questions, most antis acknowledge “SOME” have been ‘rude’ (with no concrete examples of what being rude looks like), but primarily argue this is 71 a minority that does not represent the whole, such as ‘97%’ being chill. While these few examples offer a small sample size of what antis believe, as defined by themselves, and who they are, other members of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom had some assumptions to what demographics antis were compiled of.

Anti-Demographic

An admitted challenge in my research is having non-antis try to identify the demographics of their fellow fans. It can be difficult to determine the identity of others in online spaces, especially on social media platforms like Tumblr and Twitter, where profile images and usernames are predominantly not the real names and faces of those involved. That said, participants of my survey were members of the community, most for years, and therefore understood the demographics of their fandom better than an outsider relying on scoping out various social media accounts.

Interestingly, the question of who antis are was one of the more popular questions, in terms of how many participants attempted to answer it, regardless of how many words they wrote. To begin analysis in this area, I utilize concordance corpus analysis, which documents the frequency of terms. The most prevalent nouns/adjectives of demographic data located in the survey response are: young - 148, antis - 125, female - 104, girls - 94, younger - 79, gender - 74, teens - 73, teenagers - 60. The majority of survey participants put forth a demographic of anti that skews female and younger, though younger is a more complex term, as I’ll soon outline.

Teenagers/teens is one of the most common descriptions. Teenage - 36, teen - 24, and teenager - 20, join the teens - 73 and teenages - 60 to have some form of the term appear 213 times. This does not include the various teenage age ranges. Participants would either put specific ages or age ranges that they attributed to antis, such as 13, 15, 13 - 18, 13 - 19, 14 - 18, 72

13-16, etc. These various potential ages were primarily under 20 and appeared 189 times within participant answers. While teens remain popular as a response, I want to stress these terms were contextualized with adjectives, such as old or older or adult, emphasizing that these younger fans were both learning from their fandom elders and not alone in perpetuating a community of harassment. 20s and Twenties appeared a combined time of 52 times.

Female is the primary gender assigned. Besides the aforementioned female - 104 and girls - 94, other female coded terms included women - 36, girl - 25, and females - 22, for a total of 281 times, compared to male - 10 and men - 6, only appearing for a total of 16 times. Notably, when men did appear, it was sometimes contextualized as formally female, as they were alleged to have been afab (assigned female at birth) - this descriptor appeared more than half the times male/man appeared as a term.

Sexuality and race are included in a minority of demographic beliefs. White, in the context of the adjective of race, appeared 29 times, but, notably, multiple fans, as I’ll include below, believe race was of the least impact in determining the demographic of antis. Race was also contextualized by geographic location. Sexuality, i.e. being queer or straight, was debated, with the clear consensus that both straight and queer people were involved. Cis, as in born female and identifying as straight, appeared 15 times, and the term straight was included 11.

LGBT - 7, queer - 6, sexualities - 4, sexuality - 4, were present, and, in most cases, in the context of noting antis were likely queer.

In attempting to explain their belief in the demographics of antis, numerous fans expressed some level of empathy, despite the harassment, as their view of antis were young girls, immature, inexperienced, and influenced by adults who knew better: 73

Generally I picture younger girls. Fandom, at least where I interact with it, is pretty

female dominated. I think that early to mid teens is when kids start to really figure out

their place in politics and discover feminism on a more personal level. I think it's about

the age where they start to become critical of media - which is excellent. But I think that

they're still young and quick to fall into black and white thinking, so they criticize

everything, including their fandom peers, and start to treat fandom spaces as activism.

They don't have a great scale of nuance yet. And shipwars are eternal, but as social justice

becomes more and more public and a bigger part of teen's lives, they have a whole new

vocabulary to fight them with - one that gives them a sense of morality, which people

generally wouldn't want to fight against (Female, Bisexual, Vietnamese, mid/late 20s).

As the demographic data of the participants indicated, females are a predominant population. Her concept of anti is echoed by hundreds who also believed youth was an indicator, as this was potentially the first major fandom experience many had. Counter to the ‘too young to know any better’ is the complication of who influenced such fans. As multiple participants reported, older fans became consumed with the idea of social activism. One (f, bi, caucasian, early/mid 30s) envisioned “two distinct groups (because these are the ones I have encountered most often): 1) very young (teenage) fans who believe it's gross for adults to be in fandom spaces and ship things, and 2) 20+ "fandom moms" who try to "protect" the youth by imposing their own purity standards on fandom. Most antis I have encountered in either group have been female.” Here we see the concept of a young woman/person attempting to navigate the new social contexts they’re entering without understanding the history that predates them, especially when contextualized by the older fans who view other older fans as predators or want to use their 74 influence to define fandom, without input. Other fans echo these sentiments, defining antis as people who:

For the most part it's accepted that antis are young teens who are easily impressed upon

by their peers, have little concept of what actual relationships (or sibling relationships)

look like, and don't have awareness of how queer coding (re: brothers) has historically

appeared in media. But there are older antis as well who could have any number of

reasons for being antis, but I believe it mainly stems from a certain immaturity and

ignorance that lends to only caring about one's own experiences and gut reactions, and

the need to push and preach their own feelings onto others (Female, Pansexual, White,

mid/late 20s).

Sexuality also appeared among the demographic considerations, yet some participants believe it is the queer minority status that sparked their actions:

The antis I have personally encountered are typically under 18. It's rare for them to be

over the age of 20, and even rarer to be over the age of 25. (I know of one anti in their

late 20s, and only a handful over 20.) By and large, they seem to be young, and often new

to fandom. The vast majority of antis I've run into are American--I can only think of

perhaps two people who were exceptions to that. Antis I have met or seen around are

typically AFAB (I actually can't think of a single one who was AMAB15, though I

assume they're out there somewhere...) but may be ciswomen, transmen, or nonbinary

people. It's common for them to be part of the LGBTQ community. As I'm writing this,

I'm realizing that a common thread among antis is that they're generally part of a

disenfranchised group, whether that's women, trans people, queer people, or even just

15 Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB) and Assigned Male at Birth (AMAB) 75

young people. They feel they are under fire and that their voices are not being heard. I

have spoken with a few antis and a few more ex-antis, and "you need to listen to

[disenfranchised group]" is a common thing they say. I don't know what kind of

connection exists here, if any, because of course I know plenty of people who are part of

one or more of these groups, but who are not antis. Still, I think maybe it feeds into antis'

feelings of rage and desire to tear down the ships/media they feel are harming them in

some way (Genderqueer, Queer, White, mid/late 20s).

The act of feeling agency and ability to affirm and/or discourage is a component of rhetoric and a compelling argument for the rationale behind such anti behaviors. Unfortunately, this line of thought is limited, as the primary goal for most was to document who were the actors, under the basic assumption of shipping as motivation. Yet, among the few potential rationales offered, this is one I continuously return to as a point for future research.

I, and the fan, are not alone in believing the queer identity and minority status has some level of impact. Antis may have stemmed from infighting within the queer community over definitions and identities:

While I’ve seen most antis between the ages of young teen to early twenties, I feel an anti

being a specific type of person is a trap. Antis can be anyone. They can identify as any

race or sexuality or be of any age. Saying that antis are cishet white teenage girls I think

glosses over the situation. Based on another survey, a lot of antis do identify as LGBT+. I

feel the rise of antis may have to do with the infighting that has been escalating in the

LGBT+ community these past few years. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the rise 76

of the anti movement came along just after the great Bisexual Discourse of 2012/13 and

the rise of TERF/SWERF movements16 (Female, Bisexual, White, early/mid 30s).

As the concordance corpus analysis demonstrated, most survey participants attribute a queer identity to antis. Other demographic information, such as a setage, was in more flux. A fan

(Currently a cis female, Asexual (panromantic, I have mostly dated women), Caucasian, mid/late

20s) transferred their past experiences to shape their belief that maturity mattered more than age, as:

It's not as much as the person's biological age as their maturity: I used to think antis were

all teenagers, until in certain fandoms (FFXV and Hannibal, to be more accurate)17 I saw

people in their late 20's- early 30's who claimed to be married and had kids attacking

strangers on the internet. I must admit, though: I envision them as cis women and

trans/nb people. I have never personally had a cis man attack me for these reasons, but I

believe it to be linked to how cis men partake in "fandoms" and not because they are

incapable of such negative behavior.

This quote acknowledges that we, as academics and participants of fandom, are limited in who we are exposed to and our own presumptions. There are individuals in their twenties, thirties, and

16 The fan is seemingly indicating to a period in the early 2010s in which queer people on social media began arguing over who can use the bisexual identity marker (i.e. if you can be bisexual as a woman while only having dated men). They also note the rise of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFS), people who exclude trans individuals from being considered female. 17 FFXV stands for Final Fantasy XV, a popular video game. The audience for the Final Fantasy franchise typically skews older than teenage (the minimum age to purchase the game). Antis fought over ships, as there were four male leads, and over the quality of the story and how it could impact ships, such as cancelled epilogues or downloadable content. Pedophilia was occasionally used; the characters were all in their 20s but met as children and had 3-5 year age gaps. Hannibal refers to the critically acclaimed, M rated NBC reimagining of the Hannibal Lecter mythos. Within the Hannibal fandom, antis took issue with the nearly decade age difference between late 30s aged character Will and the late 40s/early 50s aged Hannibal, as earlier versions of their dynamic could be a form on pedophilia. Due to the animal imagery and symbolism of the show, accusations of zoophilia are increasingly common. 77 older who harassed as antis. The common conception and identified identity, however, remains teenagers and twenty-somethings.

The demographic detail of who is not involved in either fandom or harassment is a stark reminder of the uniqueness of the context and how little of our research focuses on areas in which nonwhite, heterosexual men are not the perpetrators of harassment. The aspect of mirroring how others partake in fandom may have long reaching implications. Though not the focus of my dissertation, there are numerous research opportunities that can follow from this work, comparing and contrasting how harassment in non queer, female heavy spaces compares to Voltron: Legendary Defender’s fandom.

Indeed, an especially relevant detail within the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom is how the majority in other spaces is the unwelcomed minority or, as (Cis-woman, Bisexual,

White, mid/late 20s) puts it, “Antis tend to identify as a cis lesbian, trans men, or other non- binary wlw. I’m sure there are all sorts of sexual orientations and identities, but anything considered “cis, het, and white” is typically considered bad.” This act of stigmatizing the traditionally assumed identity markers of dominant discourses is occasionally referenced, and a home for future potential research. Yet, it is not just the ‘cis, het, white’ who are separated. Older queer fans are othered and attacked as well. In outlining who antis are, (Cis-female, Asexual,

White, early/mid 30s) acknowledges: “I tend to picture 16-22 year old DFAB individuals as the primary demographic. They frequently identify as LGBT as well [which is REALLY unfortunate, because a lot of the shippers that they attack the most virulently are in fact other

DFAB individuals and/or members of the LGBT community, and I feel like they could learn a lot from their elders if they didn't hate us so much].” This commentary also highlights that, regardless of similarity to identity markers, i.e. queerness, other fans are divided into ‘with us’ or 78 against us; in other words, they don’t follow our shipping and therefore their identity as someone

I can relate to as a person will not protect them from criticism about their fandom engagement.

Though not indicated within the corpus analysis or in a sizable sample of responses, many international fans (i.e. not American) expressed the idea that antis were an American product. One such international fan (Female, Bisexual, Mexican, late teens/early 20s) summarized antis as:

Most of the time I see young women (maybe between 16 and 25, but I've seen younger

and older ones). Men don't usually post or comment via internet about things they dislike,

so I don't really imagine them when people say "anti". Other thing I imagine when I think

of antis is their country: antis are usually from the USA, and if you find antis from other

countries you're really lucky, it's a really rare thing. It's not racism, I'm part of english and

spanish forums, and (sadly) english forums tend to become good ways to spread hate.

Spanish fandoms are usually used to spread all kind of memes and we make jokes about

everything that happens, but english forums have more debates, and it has always

attracted people to debate.

Other international fans echoed the sentiment, describing the demographic as, “18 or younger, and always American. I see less antis from other countries, if at all. (I'm from Canada, personally.)” (Agender, Gay, White, mid/late 20s) or “White US Americans between 11 to 24 years old. Often girls, but also guys too. A spectrum of sexualities” (Female, Bi, Malay

(Southeast Asian), mid/late 20s). Even Americans point out their potential culpability, i.e.

“Young, female (though mostly because my fandom spaces are predominately female), probably middle class American and sheltered like I was when I was a fourteen year old convinced I could

Save Fandom From Itself” (Female, bisexual, white, early/mid 20s). 79

In sum, the popular assumption of the anti-demographic is a white female, both teen and adult in 20s/30s, and likely American. They may or may not be queer, but much of the population, if not female, is. Their motivations range depending on the identity marker. Queer antis may use their anti-dom as a form of identity or as a means of asserting control in a space where they wield power, mirroring real-world examples where they were powerless.

Alternatively, especially in the case of younger fans, antis may overcompensate for their newness within fandom and transform that ‘newness’ into an opposition of older people, 20s-

30+, within fandoms. If the older fans are removed, the younger ones can shape and control but also avoid learning the norms of older fandom culture. Within this population, large collection forms and influences each other, creating a hub of support for each other as they perform acts of harassment. These acts are as diverse and ranged as they are, and remain the focus for the next half of my chapter.

Patterns and Behaviors: Selected Traumas and General Trends of Attack

On a global, quantitative level, fans were clear in attributing negative values to antis.

Prior to qualitative, open ended questions, I polled fans on “What type of impact do you believe antis have had on the fandom?” with options of Very Positive, Positive, None, Negative, and

Very Negative. No fans ranked antis as a “Very Positive” influence on the fandom. 4 of 560

(0.71%) indicated they viewed antis had a “Positive” impact. Only 1 participant (.18%) answered

“None.” Over 99% of participants labelled the impact of antis as “Negative” or “Very Negative.”

55 participants (9.82) submitted “Negative” compared to the 500 (89.29%) believing the impact was “Very Negative.” These “Very Negative” impacts manifest in a variety of ways.

On a smaller, more personal scale, I inquired to fans “Have antis negatively impacted your participation in Voltron Fandom?” I used a numerical scale here, ranging from 1 (Not at all) 80 to 5 (Yes in a very concerning way). I believe this scale allowed for more nuance than a binary of yes or no. Like the data on the overall fandom, most individuals indicated their personal enjoyment and participation was negatively altered due to antis. 188 participants (33.57%) answered with the highest indicator of negative impact, the 5 (Yes in a very concerning way).

189 participants (33.75%) opted for a 4, the second highest indicator of negative impact. 108 participants (19.29) opted for a 3 on the scale, middle of the negative impact. Many fans believe there was little to no negative impact, answering with a 2 (44 participants, 7.86%) or 1 (31 participants, 5.54%). Within these no/less negative impacts, the majority of respondents noted antis negatively impacted others, but that they themselves were not victims of harassment. It is worth noting that I did not give a definition to harassment or context to what counts as ‘negative’ within the survey. Due to the open-ended nature of the follow-up qualitative questions, participants would be the ones to define what actions are ‘negative’ to the community.

Physical trauma and confrontations offline, emotional trauma, legal recourse, feelings of depression and anxiety, reminders of child sexual assault and post traumatic stress disorder, concerns of being doxxed, stalked, raped, or physically/emotionally attacked are the narrative trends I will discuss through the rest of this chapter. While there remain other trends in the hundreds of shared experiences, I plan to briefly address them in the conclusion of this chapter and Chapter Five so I can prioritize the most popular (pedophilia, online harassment) or illegal

(child sexual assault, sharing porn of minors). With the parameters of why I focus on these narrative threads, I begin with testimonials, emphasizing the diversity of events and feelings that led to fans feeling harassed. 81

History: Breaking Previous Traditions of Fandom Behavior

Many fans of Voltron: Legendary Defender indicated the experiences within the fandom, specifically with antis, were atypical. Unlike other fandoms “antis are everywhere. they just love starting arguments with people. this is my first fandom with so many antis. they certainly love to ruin other's people fun. more than they love the show” (Cis woman, Bisexual, East Slav, early/mid 20s). For some, antis quickly inspired change. Recounting the early days of the fandom, a participant (Nonbinary, Gay, Native American, early/mid 30s) explains, “As someone who likes to partake and create fandom content, after the first month of antis came around in

2016, I became more reclusive and only spoke about my favorite content with few people I felt comfortable with. I was miserable feeling like I had to hide a fictional ship I liked for fear of public backlash on social media platforms.”

For fans who had years of experience in fandom, antis altered previously established patterns of behavior for, “The involvment of antis has made it incredibly uncomfortable to discuss shipping and characters with fans upon meeting them for the first time” (Male, queer, white, late teens/early 20s). Others worried about being produces of fan content, another form of fan engagement for, “I've been writing fanfiction since 2014 but ever since joining the VLD fandom in 2017 I've been hesitant to write and publish anything, in case I'd be targeted and sent hateful messages/gore spamming. (Woman, bisexual, white/Swedish, early/mid 20s)

Some fans noted that, compared to other fandoms they had previously been involved in,

Voltron: Legendary Defender was the first to inspire fear. As one fan (Non-binary, bisexual,

Black/Hispanic, early/mid 20s) described, “I have participated in internet fandom for over 10+ years, have seen through plenty of petty ship wars, but this is the first fandom where I genuinely felt concern for my safety, over fictional characters. This is the first time I had to take actual 82

WEEKS out of my month to block each individual cluster of antis for the sake of bettering my fandom experience and a reduced chance of harassment en mass.” The response echoes many that assert the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom was the most extreme in how people argued over ships, often to the point participants acknowledged fear for their safety and lives. While I will soon discuss this further, it is worth noting that negative emotions, threats, and wanting to reduce potential harm is at the root of such changes, not just for this fan, but for others, such as

(NB woman, bisexual, white, mid/late 20s) who wrote:

I was actively afraid for my own well being to the point I almost completely stopped

using Tumblr for vld fandom related things. Every time I see a fandom account for

related fandoms (vld, the dragon prince, yoi, She-Ra) I have to make sure that person isn't

an anti. I used to be positive to neutral to the ship klance now whenever I see an image I

feel anxious. If I hadn't found the discord group I'm in I would have likely left the

fandom years ago. VLD is the first fandom I turned off anon comments on my fabrics18.

Older or experienced fans are not the only ones who were shaped by antis. Newer fans developed awareness and habits extending past their time in the fandom. As one (Male, Straight, White, late teens/early 20s) explained, “The VLD fandom was my first fandom I've joined. Although it was for a short time (I started to watch Voltron last October), it gave me such a intense and kinda exhausting experience that made me took the decision to do not get involved with fandoms from other shows I watch.” Worth noting with this fan experience is that his demographic markers

(straight, white, male) are not the norm of harassment victims, emphasizing all could be targets within the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. Ideology (or shipping preferences), not identity

18 Likely a typo and meant to be the word ‘fanfic’ 83 or experience is how victims were located. Regardless of experience, antis impacted a wide swath of diverse fans, permanently altering their behaviors in fandom.

Conventions: In-Person, Physical Confrontations

Conventions (often abbreviated to cons) are large gatherings of fans of geek culture or types of media (anime, comic books, etc.). Though intended to be a safe space for fans to interact over shared interests, Voltron: Legendary Defender fans repeatedly wrote about concerns for their safety and comfort due to antis. Many wrote about how presenting an awareness and interest of the show led to being attacked, quizzed, and treated as a presumed outsider and opponent. One fan wrote, “I am reluctant to cosplay Voltron characters at any kind of comic or anime conventions, because in my experience having done so, this often invites uncomfortable probing questions about any ships I may or may not have. These experiences have made such a bad impression on me, that I often prefer to not discuss Voltron with people I don't know, nor do

I want people to know that I like it” (Female, queer, white, early/mid 20s). Another fan

(Lesbian/genderqueer, white, mid/late 20s), wrote about feeling uncomfortable in conventions and cosplaying due to antis, as they ignored her entirely and pretended someone who cosplayed another character was the one speaking:

In my home, we ship sheith - my fiance (31) and myself (27) cosplayed Shiro and Keith

for the very first time the day after the season 7 information came out that Shiro was gay

(we hadn't planned this I promise!), I had been nervous about cosplaying Keith because

of the antis. The day was insanely rough, basically everyone that interacted with us only

interacted with my fiance - there was one instance where I was actively participating and

adding to the conversation, but the person conversing with us would only talk to my

fiance, and responded to her as if she was saying everything I was saying. We also had so 84

many people asking her how happy she was that Shiro was confirmed gay, and were

pushing that Adam and Shiro were still in a relationship (even though I believe Lauren

Montgomery had said that they for sure were not in a relationship anymore by the

present?). The experience we had made me want to never cosplay Keith again and it was

a struggle to finally agree to do so.

Cosplay was remarked upon repeatedly as an emotional topic, as it is arguably the most physical, personally embodied activity fans participate in. Another fan (Genderfluid, pansexual, Mexican

American, late teens/early 20s), acknowledged both fear and shame, for “I cosplay Keith and because of antis I try not to wear Keith to cons because I feel like they will attack me if they find out I ship sheith or just in general. I also don't want to associate myself with the fandom at cons because of how negative their impact has been in the fandom. At times I feel ashamed of cosplaying Keith.”

These concerns, hardly singular to the emphasized experiences here, focus more on the emotional and social realm, yet other fans remarked on potential physical ramifications at conventions. Some responses indicated preventative actions taken by fans to prevent physical harm, with one noting, “I feel unsafe interacting to VLD fans at conventions due to the possibility of them being an anti. They’re mostly all talk, but there’s some fear that they will make good on their threats of violence of the see a “shallie”” (Female, bi, white, early/mid 20s).

Another fan wrote about fears her friends would be harassed and her actions in warning them, blending past experiences with future concerns, describing her memories as “This was during the first year of the fandom, where the antis were strictly attacking fans with death threats, gore, and

CP. I also warned my friend when she was going to a con that, if she gets me VLD stuff, that she doesn't mention my ships. I didn't want her to get verbally harassed IRL” (Cis female, asexual bi- 85 romantic/pansexual, white, early/mid 20s). Destruction of merchandise and verbal harassment were also repeatedly noted, as one fan noted, “I have a friend who got very awful comments on her art she was selling at a con because an anti who shipped klance didn't like sheith” (Cis woman, pansexuality, Latina, mid/late 20s). Another (Female, biromantic acesexual, white, mid/late 20s) described herself as paranoid due to the history of anti behavior, including:

I am paranoid about talking to other fans at cons because I have heard so many horror

stories of harassment and artist getting their tables vandalized because they have merch

of a character/ship Anti's don't like. I feel like a paranoid FREAK for formulating

'screening questions' to gauge if they are an anti based on the way they respond to "How

do you feel about XCharacter?". You should NOT have to wonder if the merch on your

itabag is going to be taken as a invitation for harassment, and if some one is hiding being

an anti because they KNOW security will throw them out for pulling something.

In early 2020, antis learned of sheith fans wanting to meet near conventions and planned, in public, online places, their plans to physically confront, attack, and harm them. While this specific instance was not a part of the survey results due to data collection ending before the event, I nevertheless wanted to include it here to emphasize the prevalence of this behavior

(Wilson).

Doxxing: We Will Find You and Hurt You

Conventions are not the only potential form of harassment that leads to in-person harassment and abuse. Doxxing, the act of locating and publishing/sharing data on an individual, such as their home address, in hopes of seeing harm or ill befall them, was similarly common.

Dozens of fans noted this act as a common tactic used, though many had more extreme, personal cases they lived through. One fan (Nonbinary, gay, mixed, early/mid 20s) recalled, of the start of 86 the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom, in 2016, that they, “and a few of my friends were on a doxx list on Tumblr that claimed to be a project by “sfwvoltron”. My full name, all of my online profiles, and the city I lived in were on this list, as well as my “offense”, which was shipping two adult characters in a supportive and loving relationship.”

Over time, this publication of data and the threatening act of doxxing grew in its commonality. Numerous fans expressed their experiences with doxxing, such as one who wrote,

“I was almost doxxed and receive almost daily messages telling me to kill myself because I ship two adult characters in Voltron” (Female, queer, white, mid/late 30s). Though this fan avoided the worst of the violence, others were less fortunate:

I personally am an adult and minimally participate in fandom politics, but I have a big

following and ship something antis don't like. For a year, I couldn't post anything about

fandom, no jokes, nothing about my personal life, without being ruthlessly threatened and

harassed. I never responded and rarely talked about it. At one point, I was doxxed and

sent brutal descriptions of where I lived and what they were going to do to my family. I

had to go to the police. (Female, straight, Armenian, mid/late 20s).

Attempts at both ignoring the issue and threats of contacting the police seemingly did little to deter the act of doxxing. Part of this stemmed from such fans believing they could not be charged with a crime. One participant described, “I've watched internet friends get threatened and doxxed to the point that the police had to get involved. When she calmly asked them to leave her alone before she did that, one of them claimed they were a minor and couldn't be prosecuted for death threats” (Male, Ace/queer, white, mid/late 20s). In another situation, one fan was granted a restraining order by the courts (Nonbinary, Gay, Native American, early/mid 30s). 87

The publication of data influenced other fans into safeguarding themselves, such as contacting the police in the previous example. Technology also influenced how fans combatted doxing:

I created a secret blog and used a VPN because I was so scared of being doxxed by antis

who might try and publicly accuse me of being a pedophile or trying to contact someone

related to my family or job in order to try and "expose" me or cause me harm. Looking

back, I was probably operating with an overabundance of caution, and I eventually

started "liking" posts on my main tumblr - but I never felt confident enough to reblog

content (it should be noted that my tumblr "likes" are private.) (Female, bisexual, Latinx,

mid/late 20s).

Overall, doxxing is often connected with death threats. In indicating antis know personal information about an individual, death threats become increasingly believable. That said, I also note another trend within these narratives. Doxxing and death threats are not the default action.

Typically, efforts in labeling others as pedophiles is used first as a coercive effort to either change minds or drive fans off the internet.

Violent Images/Gore

Images of violent gore were often used in conjunction with child pornography, abuse language, or physical threats to create a hostile environment the targets would not engage with.

As a fan (Agender, bisexual, white slav specifically), early/mid 20s) described:

I was getting graphic gore photos in my inbox and private messages, was said to be

gisgusting and a disgrace to society, was called a pedophile, was asked in very rude amd

ridiculous way if I want to have sex with my relatives and if I masturbate to toddlers,

which in result turned me off some shows which I watch even casually - mainly because

fandom spaces for those shows are overrun by antis and if I want to stay and have fun, I 88

have to keep my opinions about shipping and some "universally hated" characters to

myself.

Unfortunately, the above experience was not only a norm, but it also lacked some of the more violent threats experienced by other fans such as one testimonial that listed, “I've been

Stalked, harassed, threatened. They even told me to kill myself, die and that I should have been abused and raped more. They send me graphical gore and child porn and said I don't deserve to live” (Nonbinary, pansexual, white, early/mid 20s). Such emphasis on previous traumas were a frequent tactic to chase off the other fans, as further reported by (Female, bisexual, mixed, mid/late 20s) writing, “They sent me pictures of dead bodies and rape videos. They found out about a traumatizing experience and sent me pictures of aborted fetuses.”

While the fan narratives were cases of targeted harassment against the individual, other fans noted that entire tags, the search words fans used to locate content on Tumblr, were flooded with gore and violent images by antis to discourage fans from looking up sheith or other Voltron:

Legendary Defender ships.

Slurs: Racial and Queer Discrimination

As frequently noted, antis have labelled other fans as being supports of pedophilia and incest. While these are loaded terms with deeply rooted negative context and definition, actual slurs in terms of race and sexuality were also noted by fans, including the following:

“An anti called me a “retarded n!gger tr@nny who needs to be deported” so my opinions are heavily biased” (Trans man, bisexual, hispanic, late teens/early 20s)

“I had to block three ship names to even see my favorite tag of a canon pair because of all the hate. Also it was very sad to see slurs thrown at real LGBT+ cast crews in the name of

"protecting gay people" WTF” (Cis female, bisexual/queer, white, early/mid 30s) 89

“I have been called a homophobe because of my shipping preferences when I myself am queer” (Cis woman, Asexual, White British, mid/late 20s).

Kill the Cast and Crew

Antis extended their harassment to the cast and crew of the show as well, though it is worth noting most of their rhetorics, such as slurs, death threats, doxxing, and accusations of pedophilia, directly mirrored those used against fans. I put forth an encompassing summary one fan offered that documented many of the extremes shown to the cast and crew:

In the beginning they [antis] were, not cordial, but okay. They tend to spam their rhetoric

on every single post a cast & crew member made/makes (yes it still happens despite the

show being over). But I would qualify it as mild harassment, the cast and crew seemed to

be very annoyed with them after a time. And then when a cast & crew member publicly

displayed that they didn't agree with them or "shipped something else" they would turn

on them before you could blink. They spout the same harmful labels as they would

towards the fans and they made threats. (i.e. One cast member was threatened when they

revealed they had no problem with the "evil" ship that the antis despise and each of their

family members were threatened [including young children] and they were forced to

withdraw from interactions with the online fandom for fear of their safety). Violent

threats were written about one writer, threats to break her wrists so she "-can't write

anymore." Overall, I would call their interactions despicable (Cisgender Female,

Bisexual, Caucasian, late teens/early 20s).

Quickly we see the common themes of shipping, threats, and commenting on every post. These attacks against the cast and crew were incredibly well known in the fandom, with over 80% of participants referring to it. Among these narratives, shipping was one of the two most common 90 concepts discussed, along with death threats. In reviewing anti behavior, one fan (Male,

Demisexual, Asian, late teens/early 20s) wrote:

Antis are very transparent about their ‘ship’. They see only what they want to see, and as

soon as crew members from the show say something that doesn’t line up with their view,

they’re quick to accuse them of baiting. ‘Call out culture’ is the most common approach

to crew members, where antis will band together to essentially ‘cancel’ a member of the

staff. The most extreme approach is death threats towards staff members and their

families. Often times antis will play this off as jokes—as if that makes death threats any

better.

Less common narrative trends, such as slurs, were also applied to the cast and crew:

One thing that stuck out to me was that there was a lot more hate directed at Lauren

Montgomery and Bex Taylor-Klaus than at any other cast member. There are two

showrunners, and yet LM would get much more hate than JDS, both BTK and Josh

Keaton have been pro sheith, and yet BTK got the most hate. I don't know if I can say

there is some internalized misogyny at play here, but it's suspicious. Especially when I

also see a lot of gendered insults used by antis like "cunt", "bitch" and, to a lesser extent,

"old hag" ((trans) male, demiromantic pan/bisexual, white European, early/mid 20s).

Though there are other less common themes and patterns to be found within the survey data, I turn us now to the most predominant theme of all: pedophilia.

Range of Pedophilia, Child Porn, and Child Sexual Assault

Why Pedophilia and Why Lance/Keith/Shiro

As I explained in Chapter One, most antis were/are supporters of Lance and the relationship between Keith and Lance, also known as the combined name Klance. As my 91 research did not inquire directly as to why antis loved Lance or Klance, the few testimonials that address the issue note Lance’s popularity was unexpected and extreme. This popularity likely stems, in part, from the amount of screen time Lance received in the first season and that other characters, especially Keith, only grew in prominence and characterization season two onward19.

Though I have reflected upon Lance, the anti-favorite, through the narratives of other fans, I have yet to offer my own perspective. I think he and the archetype he stood for is an origin of what motivates antis. Lance is an everyman character- skilled but not too skilled, he only entered the pilot training school because Keith was expelled, and the school needed to fill the spot. While Lance had friends and served in a comedic role, he struggled in romantic relationships. He desired to be a leader and be recognized by his personal hero, Shiro. Neither happened. It is perhaps unsurprising that certain fans latched onto him and desired to see him succeed. Antis likely saw some of their own identity markers (everyman, not recognized despite having some level of skill) in Lance, building an especially strong emotional connection. If

Lance succeeded, if Lance was rewarded, it could symbolize that the fans too could succeed.

Even if they did not, they could passively view/consume that joy through Lance.

The Lance-Anti emotional connection isn’t something I can easily prove with concrete evidence. It comes from being an active member of the fandom for the entirety of its run and using those years to watch the language practices and behaviors morph. It comes from seeing antis frequently take identity markers or plot developments from other characters and gifting them to Lance, arguing he (and therefore they) deserved them more. For example, many antis became upset when Shiro was confirmed as the queer representation, not Lance, despite the proven difficulty of having any queer characters at all. When Shiro died at the end of season two,

19 Season two would feature multiple episodes centered on Shiro and Keith’s relationship, outlining their years-long friendship. Comparatively, only a few brief scenes across the entirety of season one indicated a deeper dynamic. 92 these antis envisioned the entire show with Lance as the leader, despite multiple episodes of season two having Shiro express to Keith and everyone else that Keith would become the de facto leader upon his passing. Anyone who called antis out on these actions, opposing their interpretation, or writing content that did not have Lance in these roles, invalidated their feelings and desires and therefore deserved to be harassed and targeted. Here, in this rationale, is where I truly see the youthful element of the Voltron: Legendary Defender anti subsection. Ultimately, the Lance-Anti emotional connection is best represented through the treatment of Keith, which explains how pedophilia and incest became either the ‘loaded terms’ or the moral ideology of the fandom.

Primarily, antis wanted Lance to earn the attention of someone the show positioned as superior to him, Keith. Keith was a noted prodigy pilot, a skilled fighter, and had a close friendship with Shiro, the leader. By positioning Lance as Keith’s equal and/or superior in a romantic relationship, antis could both have a queer Lance and a Lance transforming past his everyman status. To see this relationship happen, antis threatened the cast and crew and tried to blackmail the studio. They bullied anyone who wrote ‘sheith,’ the romantic relationship between

Shiro and Keith, because that pairing prevented Keith from entering a relationship with Lance.

The easiest way to do so was to claim pedophilia, because Keith met Shiro in his mid-teens, though they were both over 18 at the start of the show, or incest, as a younger Keith once referred to Shiro as ‘like a brother to me.’20 It was also a rhetorically powerful descriptor, as non- audience members could easily agree that pedophilia was a horrific concept. Thus originated the predominant tactic of antis to garner followers of Klance, via distorting social activist causes, such as opposing child pornography.

20 While watching this episode with me, my best friend has vivid memories of me slumping against my seat and immediately complaining that people on the internet were going to be annoying about this. 93

Child Abuse Survivors/Pedophilia Victims

Though antis put forth an identity of opposing pedophilia and incest to protect children, their methods instead caused harms of survivors of such abuses:

As a csa victim who has struggled with PTSD, antis have undermined my struggles

through irresponsible use of sensitive words and topics regarding sexual assault, equating

innocent shippers to pedophiles, forcing survivors to out themselves and more. This has

made my experience in the VLD fandom feel extremely unsafe despite the anti

movement often being regarded (by antis) as “beneficial” for csa victims. With antis

often picking apart social media posts for callouts I’ve felt even more unsafe as an

autistic individual who struggles with articulating my thoughts, especially online (Male,

gay, white, early teens/late 20s).

This was not an isolated incident.

The perpetual use of words like ‘pedophile’ have caused many of my friends and myself

to unbury a lot of the childhood trauma we made peace with. They provoke a massive

sense of distrust in society while simultaneously desensitizing the masses to harrowing

terms like ‘pedophile’ and ‘child abuse.’ I’ve seen first hand the mental decline of my

adult peers, and while some might say ‘go offline,’ fandom has been a hobby for many of

these people since they were 13. It’s not cut and dry (He (trans man for clarity because

my female socialization does have merit in this conversation), bisexual, white, mid/late

20s).

Across the data, there is no singular example of a fan who identified as a survivor of child sexual assault who labeled antis as anything but extremely negative, though I acknowledge this is also a 94 limitation of the scope of the research itself, as no antis who partook in the survey also identified as a child sexual assault survivor.

Pedophilia

Through spending time in the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom, the use of pedophilia has had long-term ramifications, starting with fans of media now questioning the validity of the accusation and being significantly less likely to believe an alleged victim without research. Antis are labelled the cause of such change, with one fan (Male, queer, white, mid/late

20s) explaining, “Antis have soured many of my positive feelings towards shipping, and I hate feeling skeptical of social media posts that state things like "pedophilia is bad!" because I don't know if they're talking about pedophilia or an 18 year old dating a 16 year old. Fandom used to feel like a fun, judgement free zone to explore difficult topics and taboo things, and now it feels like a battle royale.” This differentiation between the norms of Voltron: Legendary Defender’s fandom and other fandoms was remarked upon by numerous others as well, who emphasized,

“the voltron fandom is the only fandom i have ever been in where i have been called a pedophile or been made to feel shame for shipping two fictional characters. it is the only fandom where i have received messages telling me to kill myself” (genderfluid, bisexual, biracial (caucasian and chinese) early/mid 20s).

One fan documented how antis equated sheith shippers with neo-nazis and racists, explaining to non-fans that all involved were pedophiles:

I once saw an artist I liked get so much hate on night they had a mental break down and

closed of any communication for a while. Every day I see comments on sheith artists'

work that go "but shiro has adam/is married to [man]" or "they're BROTHERS" or the

passive aggressive "I just love brothers :)". There used to be a lot more references their 95

ages (even after it was revealed Keith was 18), but that died down after Keith's two year

time skip. One thing that pisses me off extremely that antis do, is when they make "don't

follow if" lists. They will then say stuff like "don't follow if you're a nazi, a pedophile, a

white supremacist, a sheith shipper, racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic". I just

want to scream at them "ONE OF THOSE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS". Worse is

when I go to block them and there is some poor ignorant soul in the comments going

"what's a sheith shipper" and they reply "someone who supports pedophilia". They're just

spreading lies and putting us on the same level as the absolute worse of humanity. And

then people who don't know about it spread it around because they want to warn about

dangerous pedophiles (who wouldn't), without knowing it's a ship war. Another thing that

a lot of them do is immediately get angry and refuse to hear counter arguments after they

themselves started stuff. They'll reply to a post or tag a ship so people following the tag

have to see their hate, and when someone replies to them they'll dismiss them saying stuff

like "i'm not reading all that, you're just pedos who want to justify wanking it to children"

((trans) male, demiromantic pan/bisexual, white European, early/mid 20s).

The sentiment of wanting to fight and ignoring counterarguments was also a noted observation from one fan, who remarked upon some of their other tactics, describing antis as:

they are often instigative; non-antis go out of their way to avoid angering antis or inviting

interaction whereas antis go out of their way to find people to harrass. i once was trying

to find fic to read on ao3 and an anti had taken the title and tags of very popular sheith

fics and reposted them with the body of the text as copy+pasted anti-pedophilia laws and

bible verses (genderfluid, bisexual, biracial (caucasian and chinese) early/mid 20s) 96

Voltron: Legendary Defender does not include child porn, incest, or support of pedophilia. Yet such facts are ignored so antis can develop arguments and persuade non-fans into agreeing with them and, in some cases, attacking fans they’ve labeled as enemies for their shipping practices. It is fitting that the most dominant topic in how antis harassed others always returned back to pedophilia.

Other Narratives of Harassment

Over 500 individuals shared their opinions, testimonials, and traumas in my survey. It is impossible, due to the sheer volume of their writing and outreach, to document all the nuanced problems they experienced. That said, I offer this space to a short selection of narratives that blend the themes outlined above, giving space to a few more voices before attempting to join my own with them.

One fan explained that, despite their interest in klance, the actions of antis prevented them from continuing their enjoyment:

I used to like the biggest ship in this fandom (klance) but now i cant look at it without

remembering the anti who took leaks hostage unless the staff made klance canon. I also

took a break from watching the show in the middle and klance shippers who were also

antis convinced me klance was actually happening in canon. When I watched the rest not

only was that lies, the two characters never even developed unsaid romantic chemistry

and I felt lied to. I ended up switching to shipping sheith exclusively and when i looked

for content was inundated with antis telling me that only criminals shipped it. And also

antis posting gore in the tags. (Nonbinary, queer, white, mid/late 20s)

Another fan explored how their own sexual assault as a child shaped their intolerance for antis, compounded by how they treated the cast and crew and creators in the fandom: 97

While I haven’t personally interacted with antis myself (I have produced very little fan content and have very few followers), they impact the fandom as a whole. And as a huge fan of Shiro, and someone who ships him with other characters (primarily Keith), many of my friends and people whom I follow have directly been targeted with harassment and threats by antis. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I am particularly frustrated and angry with the way they almost casually toss about serious words such as “pedophilia” and “abusive”, even accusing Josh Keaton and survivors of childhood sexual trauma of being pedophiles for either shipping Shiro with other characters (primarily Keith) or simply refusing to condemn people who do. Their harassment has made the voice actors more stifled in interacting with the fan base (online threats but also questions at convention panels, etc). And though my personal experiences have thankfully been few, I have seen fanartists at conventions be harassed over their art, panelists loudly booed at for even mentioning Shiro and Keith’s relationship (not even in an explicitly romantic way, while loudly cheering when Keith and Lance are mentioned), and have had awkward moments at photoshoot I’ve participated in, or run. Honestly a majority of my experience has been online due to the relative safety anonymity provides, but again it purveys into all parts of the fandom, whether you’re actively receiving harassment or not.

It gives a certain sense of being on edge. As a multi shipper and even someone who just likes Lance as a character, I still do have an almost knee-jerk reaction to avoid someone who primarily loves Lance or Klance, as most of the antis I’ve seen favor these. Even fans who aren’t antis themselves still sometimes support those who are, which I find off- putting and often not worth the effort to engage in. (Non-binary, agender, asexual, white, mid/late 20s) 98

Writers of fanfiction were forced to change their stories and question if they were welcomed within the fandom:

They harassed a friend of mine into deleting a fanfic in which she was exploring ethical

dilemmas regarding prisoners of war, political prisoners, and the politics of Alteans vs

Galrans, and she had to go dark on the internet for about 5 months before coming back

under a new pseudonym. She had to go to the hospital because of all the suicide-baiting

and harassment. Antis have slung mud at me using incorrect ad hominem and have sent

others I know into panic attacks over incorrect and loose interpretations of what they

said, what is canon in VLD, and as a result I have very few interactions with the majority

of the fandom. They threatened many of my friends and often pick fights for the sake of

picking fights. (Female, queer/pansexual, Mixed white and Hispanic, early/mid 20s)

The victim in the previous narrative is not the only member of the fandom who faced real world consequences and behavior changes for trying to be a member of the fandom:

When I first started watching Voltron (April of 2018, pre-s6 drop), I was wholly unaware

of the drama within the Voltron fandom. I had seen the terms "Shaladin, Anti-Shaladin,

etc" in passing for example, but I had no context and no clue of the scope of negative

connotations that these random words were associated with. It wasn't until a few weeks

later that I felt ready to explore the fandom, starting with fanfic. I expressed my

enthusiasm and excitement to a friend...and she responded with a warning about antis,

casually throwing in her "highkey uncomfy"-ness with my budding preference for

popular anti-ship, Sheith. I probably shouldn't have taken it so personally, but it really put

a damper on my enthusiasm for getting into something new and exciting. And it

discouraged me from getting too involved in the fandom beyond the fringes, afraid to put 99

myself out there and be faced with the same or harsher preemptive judgement from

someone who didn't even know me. For the longest time after, I remained hesitant to

openly express my shipping preference outside of the ship's circle, even when discussing

the topic in real life with friends, for the same fear that I'd be rejected by my peers. I

rarely posted fanart (my usual contribution to a fandom), and barely reblogged/retweeted

anything to do with the ship on my social media, just in case. I was hiding my shipping

identity, if you will, as I am sometimes forced to hide my LGBT identity in real life. All

because I didn't want to be called a bad friend, or a bad person, by making my friends

uncomfortable by talking about a preferred fictional ship. (Non-binary, asexuality

spectrum, pan-romantic, African American, early/mid 20s)

Dozens of fans expressed their various tactics for avoiding such harassment:

I was actively afraid for my own well being to the point I almost completely stopped

using Tumblr for vld fandom related things. Every time I see a fandom account for

related fandoms (vld, the dragon prince, yoi, She-Ra) I have to make sure that person isn't

an anti. I used to be positive to neutral to the ship klance now whenever I see an image I

feel anxious. If I hadn't found the discord group I'm in I would have likely left the

fandom years ago. VLD is the first fandom I turned off anon comments on my fabrics.

(NB woman, bisexual, white, mid/late 20s)

Another offered:

I got a handful of death threats via tumblr which led to me no longer publicly reblogging

anything to do with the show for a while. I have so many people blocked on social media

who I've never spoken to but know they're antis due to warnings from others and seeing

their comments on voltron posts. I don't talk about voltron to anyone outside of twitter 100

due to the anti reputation, and even then, it's mostly liking posts. I rarely retweet/reblog

anything about the show anymore. (Female, gay, white, early/mid 20s)

Fans also documented that antis have radically changed fandom as they know it and are unparalleled in their actions:

Anti behavior goes beyond anything I’ve seen before in fandom. For example, it’s

considered rude to comment something like “not my ship but the art is good” when you

reblog/retweet something. It’s not necessary and doesn’t do anybody any good. However,

that sort of thing is what I’d consider pretty normal fandom behavior. The commentor

broke a norm, but they didn’t harass the creator. Antis, on the other hand, make

inflammatory, relentless comments. I’ve seen fan creators answer tumblr asks calling

them pedophiles and there are entire Twitter/Instagram accounts devoted to reposting

fanworks just to call out the artist. Honestly being a Sheith shipper...forget McCarthyism,

forget the Red Scare. This is a Red/Black Scare, and I’m serious. Artists get singled out

as Sheith shippers and they end up being harassed by the reposter’s followers. This kind

of behavior by antis, I feel, is totally inappropriate because it hurts people. I think this is a

far cry from the sort of “don’t like, don’t read” attitude fandom promoted when I was

first starting out. And to put myself in context, I’m only a few years older than how I

imagine antis to be. I think either this behavior is new or I missed it. There’s always been

toxic corners of fandom, of course, and they’ve always been loud, but having it dominate

to this extent? I don’t remember that happening. (Non-binary, Pansexual, White, late

teens/early 20s)

Trying to explain this, another fan theorized: 101

I think a majority of the vitriol is online simply because the internet provides relative

anonymity to hide behind. Something I’ve discussed with others before is also the lack of

fandom etiquette on the part of many antis, that many of us grew up with. It’s also

curious that there were one or two who would steal Sheith artwork and repost it with

antagonistic comments. And I know several fic authors who had to disable the comments

section of their fics because antis would seek out the very content they hate and spam

those fics with hate or trying to antagonize the authors into a debate. Even sfw Sheith art

has been reported on Tumblr, flagged as being “pedophilia”, which, again as mentioned

before, I find infuriating, as that takes time and energy away from apprehending real

pedophiles creating and distributing actual child porn. And, I’ve seen this from both

sides, but antis seem to like portraying (particularly Sheith shippers) as being cis, straight,

white, women (also sometimes adding in age, typically 30 or 40) who are fetishizing the

characters, or being racist to the characters (primarily Lance) or homophobic for not

supporting certain headcanons (such as Lance being bisexual when he’s only canonically

been shown to like women); when in fact, a majority of the Shiro shipping individuals I

have met are a combination of identities and cultures (ironically many Latinx fans),

LGBTQIA being predominant. (Non-binary (agender), Asexual, white, mid/late 20s)

In-fighting among antis, the final theme within these narratives, spanned from both non-anti observes to former antis reflecting on their pasts:

I observe that when they are not spaming tags itching for a 'fight', that when they hang

out with other Anti's they just pat each other on the back for 'sticking it to us nasty's with

their Hawt Takes'. Talk about how their fav is 'underappreciated' their ship is 'cannon

king', and when they can not goad non-anti's, they can and WILL eventually turn on each 102

other. Their behavior in general is very reminiscent of Moral Abuse; where one try's to

control another's behavior/life by convincing their target that they are a 'bad person' and

need the abuser around to prevent becoming 'worse'. Moral Abusers often have a very

self-centered view of 'morality', and don't hold them selves to the same standards they

impose on others. (Female, biromantic acesexual, white, mid/late 20s

A former anti complimented this testimonial by explaining:

When I first joined the fandom in 2016, I was (unfortunately) quite deeply threaded into

the anti community. Although I didn't agree with their tactics and hatred, and did not

consider myself an anti, I didn't know any better, enjoying a lot of the sense of

community and the art and fic they provided (not the word I'm thinking of but close

enough). Before I left that community, I was too scared to create my own art or fic for

fear of doing the wrong thing and getting the same hate as the people outside of the anti

community. By early 2017 I left the anti community and yet I was still too scared to post

any fic or art because I was worried I'd get attacked for it, or receive anonymous hate, or

even get doxxed. I am still worried about it now, 2 years on. (Non-binary afab, pansexual,

white, late teens/early 20s).

Conclusion

It is easy to dismiss antis as an atypical blip within the larger culture of fandom. As this chapter demonstrated, there are many unique contexts that transformed the Voltron: Legendary

Defender fandom. Never had such wildly false accusations of pedophilia, child porn, incest, and verbal and physical abuse blended. Fans adapted in varied ways: leaving, fighting, ignoring.

These were uncharted waters in lieu of surviving. Even explaining Voltron: Legendary Defender to people, both before and after my own harassment, usually resulted in people hyper-focusing 103 on just how baffling the entire situation was rather than a firm analysis questioning the whys of these antis, their rhetorics, and their actions.

Antis were not formed in a vacuum. As Chapter One’s history of other fandoms and the testimonials included here show, older fans, shaped by previous experiences, became very vocal in their demands for specific representation in a specific character. One means of receiving this representation was to demonize all content that could oppose it and to harass both fans and workers of the show. Younger fans, the more commonly known antis, were likely first experiencing a large fandom and learned behaviors of acceptability from those who encouraged them to attack others. As minors, it is also easy to latch onto terms like pedophilia and incest, because they are the most important rhetor in other contexts, making such accusations. Former antis and non-antis likened them to a cult of misbehaviors, so justified and convinced what they desired would come true that anything could be justified.

Yet, as Chapter Four will demonstrate, the opposite was true. Even though anti- harassment and amplification of their point of view led to the show’s ending changing, it also did not result in the ending they, nor anyone else, wanted. It also led to the darkest period in my life, in which I became the newest target for harassment.

104

CHAPTER IV. “IT’S A CRY WOLF SITUATION21”: SHOW ENDINGS AND FIGHTING

BACK

Introduction

Chapter Three explored the patterns of harassment that occurred during Voltron:

Legendary Defender’s run. Daily behaviors included death threats, accusations of pedophilia and incest support, and encouraging self-harm. Yet, as the show’s conclusion would demonstrate, the ramifications of harassment went further than individual targeting. In December 2018, Voltron:

Legendary Defender ended with controversies. Fans were frustrated with the numerous plot inconsistencies and when Allura, the only woman of color, died. While the first gay marriage in

Western animated television occurred in the final moments of the show, fans were still aggrieved. The wedding between Shiro, a lead, and an unnamed character was the antithesis of the promised ‘meaningful’ romances from showrunners Joaquin Dos Santos and Lauren

Montgomery. The outpouring of fan grief was immense. Fans of color were demoralized over

Allura’s death. Others felt betrayed by the showrunners over the plot and character inconsistencies, especially those who identified as queer. Antis were frustrated the queer representation did not involve Lance. With no fans happy, the fandom united with a single focus: finding out why the show ended this way.

For months, fans questioned if and why the show’s ending was altered. They reviewed scenes, looking for choppy edits, such as discoloring in backgrounds. Translations in non-

English languages featured different dialogue and characters speaking. Many fans theorized

Allura was originally meant to be revived but that it was ultimately scrapped. As a result, fans protested. They boycotted DreamWorks and other IP holders involved, commented on all tweets

21 (Non-binary (agender), asexual, white, mid/late 20s). The entire quote and context will be addressed later in the chapter. 105 from the official Voltron account asking for answers, and developed a petition asking for the

‘real’ ending. Dos Santos and Montgomery left social media, refusing to comment or participate in any interviews involving Voltron: Legendary Defender for months. It was not until March of

2019, nearly three months after the show concluded, did Dos Santos and Montgomery admit they changed the ending of the show to include the queer wedding. They hoped to appease fans that accused them of queerbaiting, the act of hinting at queer relationships and characters but not fully delivering them. Such accusations largely stemmed from antis, hoping to pressure them into giving Lance a queer romance with Keith.

My research and the subsequent harassment campaign against me occurred between the show’s ending and Dos Santos and Montgomery’s brief returns to social media. To the fandom, I became one of the only places their voices were heard, as they felt ignored by the creators of the show. Such popularity amplified the chances of antis locating me, which occurred and led to the premature closure of my survey research and the cancellation of interviews I planned to hold.

The following chapter is not an analysis of the flaws of Voltron: Legendary Defender’s conclusion. Instead, it is a chapter of emotional reactions and the importance of rhetorical context. I begin with a review of the final two seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender, specifically the accusations of queerbaiting and the controversial conclusion. I then briefly note how fans reacted, ranging from self-harm to demoralization in applying for a career in animation.

It was these feelings and these fans who inspired my research, having seen a near universal agreement that the harassment they survived had no point if the show ended in disgrace. The second half of my chapter contextualizes myself in the mourning of Voltron: Legendary

Defender and how I was a victim of harassment. I conclude with a rhetorical analysis of my own harassment and an argument for how, despite the show ending, the rhetorical patterns established 106 by the anti-community relied on their patterns of incest and pedophilia accusations and death threats.

“Queerbaiting was an extreme exaggeration”22

On July 20, 2018, Voltron: Legendary Defender aired the first episode of season 7 at San

Diego Comic Con, roughly two weeks before the season premiered on Netflix. During the episode, lead character Shiro was confirmed queer, in a scene showing him breaking up with his long-term boyfriend, Adam. Montgomery announced to the crowd that Adam “is Shiro’s significant other...They weren’t married yet, but that’s the road they were going down” — that is, until Shiro “made the unfortunate decision” to go to space” (Romano). Fan reception was overwhelmingly positive (Anderton; Moylan; Romano). In an interview the showrunners outlined their plans for Shiro’s queer identity, stating, “We don’t want to pitch this as a gimmick of representation. It’s an aspect of Shiro but it’s not his defining aspect” (Romano).

When the entirety of Voltron: Legendary Defender season 7 released, the positive reception from fans quickly transformed into a backlash. Adam, who only appeared briefly in the first episode, appears mid-way through the season as a pilot fighting against an alien invasion.

He and his platoon all die. Accusations of queerbaiting and bury your gays were lobbied against the show by a minority of fans, especially antis, and non-fans. While definitions of the two terms vary in contexts and media, I put forth functioning definitions as submitted by a survey participant to keep in mind:

I would like to make the distinction between "queerbaiting" and "bury your gays".

"Queerbaiting" is when a show promises queer representation or teases it heavily, uses it

to sell merch and so, and then never delivers on anything (f.ex. BBC Sherlock). Even if

22 (Cis Female, Bisexual, White, late teens/early 20s). 107

you think vld's queer rep sucked, they actually delivered something queer. Shiro is still

right there. "Bury your gays" is when queer characters are killed, and usually only them

and there are no other queer characters around. To have "bury your gays", you can't really

have "queerbaiting" because if it was queerbaiting the character was not queer, and thus it

can't be bury your gays because the character was not queer. I see these being use

interchangeably, when I think there is an important difference ((Trans) male,

demiromantic pan/bisexual, white European, early/mid 20s).

The Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom debated if the show was guilty of either queerbaiting, bury your gays, or neither. One section of fans, believing the show had ill-treated queer characters, focused on Adam’s death and brief appearance. As one fan (Male, queer, white, mid/late 20s) wrote,

I am personally upset because I feel that using the adam/shiro relationship as a teaser at a

convention and taking that opportunity to further discuss and celebrate shiro's sexuality

raised fans hopes for a queer relationship on the show, and what they got was one half of

that expected relationship dying horrifically on screen instead. I think that is why the

term 'queerbait' has been used so widely; the situation feels like a bait and switch, where

we felt we were led to believe we would get one thing, and got something that was both

entirely different, and played into the harmful trope of killing queer characters in

mainstream media.

The condemnation on Adam’s death and queer character treatment was atypical in its volume as non-fans joined in writing posts and amplifying voices discussing # VolronLegendaryQueerbait.

These non-fans were quick to blog and tweet about the issue; some posts on the topic reached nearly 100,000 replies/reactions. As one fan noted, “The amount of outrage they caused was 108 extreme and it caused other people who weren't in the fandom and didn't know what was happening believe that s7 had indeed been queerbaiting” (Female, biromantic asexual, white, late teens/early 20s). These individuals rallied around a queer cause, assuming harm befell queer fans. Due to the continued press coverage of the situation and the fan outcry, Dos Santos posted an apology letter and affirmed these fan voices were being heard, accepting blame (Haasch).

Within the survey data, while there were fans who understand how queerbaiting could be applied to Voltron: Legendary Defender, the majority argued antis co-opted a genuine issue in queer representation to pressure the show into putting Lance and Keith together. One fan (Non-

Binary woman, bi/pansexual, Latinx, early/mid 20s), believed, of the issue, “I couldn't even say it was partially moved by antis; they were the only ones screaming on social media that this was queerbaiting. They even got people in other fandoms to call it queerbaiting, who knew next to nothing about the show, least of all S7, to sign the petition that led to the S8 epilogue.” Context was important for other fans, because only in knowing the context of the series did most argue in defense of the show, as “For the most part, lgbtq+ fans and allies have agreed that there was never any queerbaiting” (Female, cis, mixed white and Polynesian, mid/late 30s). The most common rationale to why Shiro and Adam caused outcry is shipping:

I believe that there were fans who were legitimately hurt by Adam's death. However, I

believe the loudest voices complaining about it were those where were afraid that Shiro

being gay and single left him open to a relationship with Keith which would sink their

ship. I saw this by looking at accounts of those who were complaining and seeing Klanti

tweets. They're loud voices also influenced those who didn't even watch Voltron to

assume the show was queerbaiting and express their dissatisfaction about it online. I saw

several instances of this on Twitter. (Female, bisexual and ace, black, mid/late 30s). 109

‘Klance’ was among the top ten words used in the survey data that asked, “Do you know about or have any comments about the complaints of queerbaiting after VLD S7?” which further documents the prevalence of believing ship arguments impacted the discourse around the issue.

Multiple fans wrote on witnessing antis tweet false information in hopes of garnering attention to the queerbaiting issue, “I personally witnessed antis spreading misinformation that Adam was

Shiro's fiance. They refused to correct their post” (Female, heterosexual, white, mid/late 20s).

By using fiancée and indicating their relationship was more detailed then on screen, antis successfully compelled non-fans to amplify anti-voices and concerns on ‘queerbaiting’ and ‘bury your gays.’

A frequent thread in fan recollections is the idea of weaponizing social justice and amplifying anti voices, even at the cost of dismissing other fan receptions. As one fan

(Female/genderqueer, bisexual, mixed white, mid/late 20s), summarizing what they believed were anti beliefs, wrote:

The klance fandom is where the vast majority of antis reside, so much that many non

klance shipping fans refer to the klance fans as 'klantis', thought there are many perfectly

normal klance fans out there. the klantis were overjoyed to have someone to pair Shiro

with - as sheith is the main ship threatening klance's 'canon' chances from the fandom

POV. So the klantis took 'adashi23' and ran with it. And they were the angriest and loudest

when they didn't get what they wanted out of s7. And of course, because klantis are

already well versed in weaponizing social justice related terms, they were best positioned

to use the outrage to milk the situation for all the pain and suffering it was worth.

23 The ‘ship’ name for Adam and Takashi (Shiro). 110

While no other fan used the phrasing of ‘milk’ing the situation, others explained that, despite legitimate complaints about what the series had done over its tenure, all were “buried under mass outcries about Klance and the performative care for Shiro/Adam, a relationship that was only ever meant to serve as backstory” (Genderqueer, pansexual, white, early/mid 30s). Others adopted frustrated language, noting, “The queerbaiting fiasco was fake news of the highest order and antis definitely spearheaded the movement” (Female, bisexual, black, early/mid 30s). Again, fans continuously returned to how antis wielded language to gain support from outside of the fandom, with one writing, of the situation, “It got blown way out of proportion by antis and then got blown even bigger because one of the tactics they use is to toss high-impact buzzwords around to anyone who will listen whether they’re in the fandom or have even seen the show and know the situation or not” (Female, straight.... ish? Lol, mix of Asian (thai) and white, mid/late

20s). Another fan believed the appropriation of queerbaiting was a continuation of the pattern of anti-language, as described in chapter three, because “Antis only care about their ship, in Voltron case it's klance. They will use any words, "queerbait" "pedophilia" "incest" so they crying won't be seen as just another angry fangirls and a ship war” (Female, pansexual, N/A, early/mid 30s).

Clearly, survey participants pointed towards antis and how they utilized queerbaiting to further their own shipping agenda.

Proof of the alleged shipping agenda was in a fan petition on Change.org from 2018, titled, “Dreamworks: GIVE THE VOLTRON WRITERS THE GREEN LIGHT! Give us LGBT

Representation!” Participants in the survey universally derided this petition. One fan explained,

“ppl who signed for the change.org petition against queerbait were simply Klance fans that wanted Klance to be canon, they were only interested in Adam for the sake of their ship”

(Female, bisexual, Latina, early/mid 20s). In reviewing the petition, the comment section of the 111 website is populated with both the word “Klance” and people who claim they have never seen

Voltron: Legendary Defender but want to support LGBT media. The inclusion of signatures from those who cared more about the queerness of the issue and the idea of representation also demonstrates the power of the topic and the success in conveying harm to unfamiliar audiences.

One survey participated added, “People outside of the fandom were more likely to hear the loud and aggressive antis and, because they didn't know the show or relevant information, were inclined to believe it” (Cis female, lesbian, white, late teens/early 20s). Throughout the show’s tenure and the aftermath, fans who did not identify as antis often expressed frustration with outsiders for amplifying anti voices.

In another fandom, the outcry about queerbaiting and the tactics of certain fans to have their voices heard may have been ignored or eventually solved themselves. In the Voltron:

Legendary Defender fandom, however, reality differed from expectations. Reacting to this outcry, Dos Santos and Montgomery changed the ending of Voltron: Legendary Defender, though this was not known at the time, resulting in a different type of fan frustration and protest.

“I have never seen a show backtrack on its themes and character development so spectacularly”24

On December 14, 2018, the show’s final season released and was met with fierce protest and condemnation from fans. Controversies soon erupted. Critical reviews were the most tepid of its run, and the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes review website was 6% out of 100. A massive fan petition of over 30,000 signatures requested the ‘real’ version of the final season air instead. Some fans went further, conspiring that the show had been delayed from an earlier due date and hastily edited in response to anti complaints about queer representation. The

24 (Female, Bisexual, African American, mid/late 20s). 112 showrunners, and most cast and crew, were silent in response to the negative reception.2526

Through the survey responses, the dominant points of conversation were Allura’s death and

Shiro’s wedding, both of which tie together under the overarching theme of how characters that mattered in terms of representation were treated.

In addressing Allura’s death (“an offensively bad decision”), many fans argued the act was inherently racist. One respondent noted, after discussing Allura dying that “They had ONE white character and still managed to give them the only “ideal” ending, which Allura did not receive” (Male, gay, Mexican, late teens/early 20s). Often, Allura’s death was compared to the fate of the other female lead character, a white woman, “Allura died. She did not need to give up her life. The only characters that got a bright ending where the Holts- the white family”

(Genderfluid, pan, white, 40-50). Another fan tracked Allura’s treatment across the show and argued she, “suffered every season” and that the show ignored sacrificing non-black women (i.e. the lions of Voltron) in lieu of her. Acknowledging the importance of Allura as, “such a strong

(and flawed!) female character that represents people of color - we rarely see anyone like that in animation” one fan documented her importance within the narrative was vital to show people how to survive, as Allura, “[who]... lost so much - her planet, her people, her family… We have a character that lost absolutely everything (besides Coran), but she's able to find another family.

25 Both Dos Santos and Montgomery left social media for a significant amount of time following the conclusion of the show. In the two+ years its airing, each has only sporadically returned online, often going months at a time without posting. It was not until June of 2020 that Dos Santos publicly apologized for how Voltron: Legendary Defender ended (see Chapter Five). 26 The cast of the show were more vocal online than Dos Santos and Montgomery, and they often engaged in conflict with the fans upset about how the show ended. In response to a queer fan tweeting how they felt disappointed by their representation, Shiro, leaving his job for a relationship fans never saw get developed, voice actor Neil Kaplan argued happily ever afters are more important than knowing why they occurred and that fans should use their disappointment to inspire their own stories. Fans equated his tweets, along with other voice actors’ (Bex Taylor-Klaus and Tyler Labine most notably) as “be happy or shut up,” though all of them eventually followed Dos Santos and Montogmery in briefly leaving social media within a few weeks of the show airing and no longer continuing dialogue about Voltron: Legendary Defender. 113

And after all that, she loses everything once again” (Non-Binary, bi/pansexual, Asian-Chinese, mid/late 20s).

Notably, numerous participants demonstrated a historical awareness of Allura’s death and how it likely speaks of both racism and sexism. One fan (female, bisexual, white, early/mid 30s), described her experience as a viewer as:

As a woman, Allura’s self-sacrifice enraged me. It feels blatantly misogynistic. Women

sacrificing themselves, especially over MEN’S mistakes (Zarkon and Alfor) is very anti-

feminist in my eyes. I doubt even white feminism would be okay with this crap. I feel

like Allura was developing all this power throughout the series, becoming a force to be

reckoned with, but she wasn’t allowed to keep it in the end. Women aren’t allowed to be

powerful and be loved at the same time. She could have had it all, this power to heal and

lead and be a literal positive force in the universe, AND have a family, AND have

someone who loves her, AND be a leader to the new Alteans who would desperately

need such guidance after everything Lotor and Honerva put them through...but that would

be too much for a female character. Women are only allowed to have power if they give

themselves up for the Greater Good. That’s what THAT particular message came across

to me as, and I can’t imagine what it must have felt like as a woc watching this nonsense.

Numerous women of color documented similar experiences, emphasizing that most27 fans agreed on her treatment as unfair, concerning, and suspicious, such as the fan who argued, “Killing

Allura off was hurtful and unnecessary. Young girls of color loved her character and were heartbroken by her death” (Female, pansexual, black, mid/late 20s). Another survey participant

27 Less than 2% of participant responses indicated a different sentiment towards Allura’s death. While still frustrated, they argued there was potential in the premise and that the writing of the entire season was flawed. If the show had done better, her death would have been acceptable. Others argued they were more hurt on how she was expendable rather than a woman of color being killed. 114

(Genderfluid, aseuxal, black, early/mid 20s) wrote, “I really believe it was because the big white men upstairs got scared and hated the representation the writers and fans wanted to see and needed “to protect their precious characters” from being anything other than straight and white.”

Voltron: Legendary Defender is the only interpretation of the franchise in which Allura is not portrayed as white. It is also the only version in which she dies28. Emphasizing the importance of

Allura to fans, regardless of race, more participants noted they “honestly haven't watched season

8 and don't plan to. The moment I found out Allura died, I refused to watch it” (Non-Binary trans man, pansexual, white, early/mid 20s) than fans who noted they were pleased about the final season and listed no complaint in their answer to the question.

Allura’s death held significant and troubling meaning to fans, many of whom documented physical and emotional trauma upon her death. In describing their reactions, fan wrote, “felt horrible, as if women are meant to suffer for others and then die,” “just more of the same bullshit done to female characters,” “deeply let down,” “painful,” “disappointing,” “a huge disservice,” “angry,” “sad, I cried a lot,” “cheap and undeserved,” and “this was a fucking sham.” Allura, however, was not the only character to cause discomfort.

Shiro, confirmed to be gay in season seven, married a newly introduced, unnamed man in the epilogue of the show. Even before the epilogue, season eight’s characterization of Shiro was a major source of fan ire. Through the season, “Shiro was completely mistreated and his agency was taken away from him” (Genderfluid, pansexual, white, 40-50). His primary function through the season was to act “like a stranger to the others, instead of a friend. He was no longer strong, but instead got pushed over by one measly alien on the bridge of his own ship. He became an

28 Prior to season 8, a video of Lauren Montgomery discussing watching Voltron during her childhood circulated online. In it, she described feeling traumatized by an episode in which Allura almost died, leading fans of her Voltron to assume Allura would live through the series. 115 empty shell of everything they had made him in previous seasons” (Female, bisexual/omnisexual, caucasian, early/mid 20s). Respondents also documented how Shiro’s relationship with his male best friend, Keith, was removed from the show, despite that “so many of the series's major plot points and story arcs were driven by the two of them, and their willingness to follow one another to the ends of the universe, so to go an entire season without seeing them even speak to one another felt stilted and unnatural. As a result, the two of them felt two-dimensional for almost the entirety of season eight” (Female, queer, white, early/mid 20s).

Fans highlighted concerns of homophobia with it’s removal, arguing, Shiro “suddenly couldn't be seen with Keith because he was gay??” (Male, pansexual, white (British), mid/late 20s) and

“Shiro and Keith's relationship (however you may view it) was axed completely so that people could not "read into it"” (Female, bisexual, African American, mid/late 20s) and “The complete erasure of Shiro and Keith's close friendship, weather it be platonic or romantic, right after revealing that Shiro was gay, felt very 'no homo'. Shiro is gay, so he can't interact with the one male character he's been closest to the entire show” (Trans (male identified), leaning towards nonbinary-masc, queer, white, early/mid 30s).

A minority of fans possessed a level of gratitude towards Shiro’s end for, “Controversial as it may have been, I love that we got a m/m kiss on screen on a children's show” (Female, biseuxal, Vietnamese, mid/late 20s). Primarily, though, Shiro’s wedding was viewed as turning him into a ‘token’ to “score them points for their performative social justice,” (Fluid, fluid,

Japanese and Vietnamese, late teens/early 20s) and as “brownie points” (Non-binary, queer, caucasian, early/mid 20s) for representation. 96% of fans who referenced Shiro’s wedding described it in negative terms, specifically anger and sorrow for “They had the actual nerve to pretend they gave a damn about him by shoving him into a last minute "happy" wedding with a 116 character that spoke 3 words to him in such an obvious PR stunt that if I showed it to my PR professor they would probably laugh their ass off and cringe at how bad it is” (Female, bi, Asian, late teens/early 20s).

The real world ramifications for the show’s treatment of Shiro and how fans viewed his marriage cannot be understated. As one fan (Trans-masc non-binary, asexual/biromantic, white, mid/late 20s) wrote of their experience:

I’m not a woc so I can’t say how personally Allura’s death hurt from that persepctive.

But as a queer person watching Shiro’s character get utterly gutted, that hurt more than I

can describe. I’m closeted irl, so I experience little homophobia on a personal level.

Internet and fandom is the one place I’m out and proud, and VLD, with a queer lead, I

felt such pride to be there. And then season 8 told me I shouldn’t be proud of who I am.

That I can’t have a leading role. I can’t be important. That my identity boils down to my

sexuality and having a partner. I wasn’t ready for that kind of hurt. I’m getting emotional

thinking of it now so I’ll stop here.

Other terms used to describe reactions to Shiro’s marriage include, “personally violated,” “like a slap in the face,” “heartbroken,” “dehumanized and humiliated,” “tokenized,” “nauseous,”

“ruined,” “vile,” “honestly still hurt,” “incredibly hurt,” “horrifying,” “terrible,” and “mistreated and utilized.” These feelings transcend just the show, however, with one fan (Male, homosexual, white, early/mid 30s) explaining, “It felt othering and brought up painful real life experiences of loneliness connected to the separation that sexuality can often cause in a hostile society. It sent the message to me that I should be ashamed because it was not ok to show a romantic or friendly relationship between a gay man and another man.” 117

Heightening the situation of the Voltron: Legendary Defender conclusion and its alleged ills are the emotional and, in some cases, physical traumas participants described processing. In discussing her personal reaction to the final season, one participant reflected, “I was depressed in the wake of S8; I did not eat nor sleep, I could not focus on my work, and I had gone so far as to take up self-harm after years of fighting against it. It largely stems from how disillusioned I became--writing and storytelling is a passion of mine for my whole life, and I admired VLD for doing relatively well that its story was engaging,”(Cisgender woman, Homosexuality (Lesbian),

Asian, late teens/early 20s) until it did not, as she attributed the flaws of the season to higher powers and burn out, oppressive forces that reminded her of her own struggles. Immediately, people recognized negative, harmful emotions, as inspired by the show, stating, “I felt so...empty. It didnt feel like an ending it didnt feel like the same show. I was hurt by how they treated the characters and their relationships, I was numb and depressed and hurting”

(Agender/nonbinary, asexual and aromantic, white, late teens/early 20s) and feeling “severally depressed and hopeless for several weeks. I still can’t watch the seasons I DID like without feeling so bitter” (Nonbinary, pansexual, white, mid/late 20s). In reflecting on the season and the show itself, one fan (Agender, aromantic asexual, Greek, late teens/early 20s), wrote, “Season 8 ruined a lot of things that have been established in the prior seasons and if I'm honest, really broke my heart. It didn't ruin the show for me only because of those 7 seasons and how they're still the best in my opinion. But the disappointment it caused me will probably stay with me for the rest of my life,” before concluding with a sentiment felt by nearly all who took the survey, “I guess that's what happens when your favorite show ends in such a dissatisfactory, disappointing note; you end up sad and bitter about it forever.” 118

Community with fellow fans was a common theme or processing the trauma, though fans were quick to establish it was a community of shared trauma. In discussing her friends, one fan wrote, “I saw them so heartbroken (and some even triggered into vomiting fits) that I couldn't even watch the entire season. It gave me an anxiety attack that left me shivering. To this day I'm still hyperfocusing on fix-it content” (Woman, bisexual, Latina, early/mid 30s). Another participant explained the show’s conclusion launched them, “into what was practically a depression spiral. I couldn’t draw or make anything for weeks because it just killed any drive or spirit I had. It felt like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. The only solace I had was the fact that the fandom largely hated the whole thing too and was in the same boat as me so at least I wasn’t alone” ((Female, ‘straight...ish’, mix of Asian (Thai) and white, mid-late 20s). One participant’s (Female, pansexual, n/a, early/mid 30s) lengthy description reflected the traumas, solace of fellow fans, and a new desire of attributing blame:

Since dec14 I'm fighting with depression. I also always had anxiety but I was pretty

positive person, so I could fight my anxiety with it. But I lost my positivity. I lost interest

in many things that made me happy before. It's been two months and I still cry when I

think what DreamWors have done and how long they ignore us. With the show, with the

characters, how everything LM and JDS29 said in previous interviews was a lie. I feel

betrayed, used, like we were only convenient to them to defend them from antis, but in

the end they listened to antis and they just stabed us in the back. I never expected to have

such feelings coming because of a show. It's the first time and I was in many fandoms

before Voltron. S8 completly ruined my enjoyment of rewatching VLD. I refuse

29 LM and JDS are common abbreviations of showrunners Lauren Montgomery and Joaquin Dos Santos. 119

accepting s8 as canon, but it still sit so deep in my head, I can't rewatch it. Because what's

the point of what happened before, if s8 ruined everything? Fandom is my only solace.

It is likely this solace and the concept of community that led to the popularity of my survey and the other means of protest.

“Signed the petition, tweeted about it”30: Fans Fight Back

Fans immediately mobilized to express their frustration after the show ended. On

December 15, 2018 Twitter user @theuncannyallie created, “Voltron Season 8 - Release the

Original the Showrunners Wanted,” a Change.Org petition. Believing the showrunners had been forced into altering the final season, she described the purpose of the petition as, “We are aware that this was not the original plan that the showrunners had for season 8, and we deserve, as an audience who truly loves the show and characters, to know what their vision and story was without the executive meddling that ruined the final season.” By December 18, over 15000 fans had signed the petition, frequently retweeting it and sharing it across social media. By January 4,

2019, there were over 25,000 fan signatures. At the end of the month, Change.org purged signatures they attributed to bots or repeats, taking the total from 29000 to 27000 (“Release the

Original”). Many fans also wrote in my survey about writing letters or calling as forms of protest. Others, in discussing the petition, focused exclusively on their concerns with epilogue, which they believed was added at the last minute and could have been avoided. Other forms of protest included communicating on social media, ranking the season on the aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes, reading fix-it fanfiction (stories in which fans address the major flaws of the season and attempt to ‘fix’ the problems, creating new, happier endings that could be

30 (Woman (cis), Lesbian, White, late teens/early 20s). 120 substituted for the actual ending), writing letters, creating and watching Youtube videos dissecting the final season, and talking with friends, both online and in-person.

An undercurrent of concern was present in the fans who protested about the show. Antis have long dominated conversations about the fandom. Per the survey data, 82% (454 of 554) of fans believe that any protests within the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom becomes equated with antis and ignored as a result. That awareness of anti-behavior is in how fans protested. In many cases, it limited what fans were willing to do to express their disapproval. One fan noted, in tweeting to the official Voltron: Legendary Defender account, “At times I almost felt like an anti, but I just want an earnest explanation” (Female, bisexual, white, mid/late 20s). While there is no mention of harassment or violent threats, the act of tweeting an official account is heightened as a potential concern. Another fan echoed this concern, describing her protest as,

“Tweeting, but not tagged or @ anyone as that is something I consider to be anti behaviour, I ahsve signed the petition too. I’ve also cancelled orders for official merch” (Female, bisexual, caucasian, early/mid 20s). Historically, and during the aftermath of the show, certain cast and crew similarly equated fan protest about representation as anti behavior. One participant (Male

(ftm), bisexual, white, early/mid 20s) wrote on how one voice actor for the show posted many tweets on fans’ lack of gratitude and poor behavior, even though this same fan’s behavior was,

“Tweeting my grievances in general and questioning some of the logic behind their choices.

Never engaged in arguments.” Prioritizing polite attitudes and avoiding argument was a tactic others mirrored, such as a participant who prioritized venting “in private. i've tried to keep it polite so i won't come across as an anti myself” (Woman, bi/pan, white, early/mid 30s).

Concluding her thoughts on giving up on protests, antis were the cause, as “At this point, any genuine complaint with the show would probably be seen as just more whining done by antis” 121

(Female, asexual, Mexican-American, mid/late 20s). This sentiment of anything equating to antis was expressed numerous times through the survey. Awareness of antis, upon the conclusion of the show, was a dominant topic of conversation across the fandom, especially in the months of silence as self-titled ‘supportive/non-anti’ fans were ignored on social media. During this period, many fans became convinced that antis were to blame for the ending of the show, specifically

Shiro’s wedding, and that, in appeasing antis, the fans who supported the show were cast aside.

In the months spent engaging with fans who defended the showrunners and felt punished by the ending, a new narrative emerged: frustration that this was the reality, and, for many, bitterness that there was no way to change or advocate. One fan (Male, gay, white, late teens/early 20s) remarked, “You heard anti's voices when it wasn't right, and you continued to go through with it. You didn't tell your voice actors what was going on, you knew we didn't like the leaks and you pressed on. You listened to anti's instead of the people who defended you against them in the first place.” Multiple fans pointed the silence out as likely preservation. As one fan

(Male, demisexual, white, late teens/early 20s) reflected:

I think it’s very interesting watching the fandom’s reaction to season 8 continue to play

out, and perhaps even more interesting is the cast reaction—or the lack of cast reaction,

in this case. Lauren and JDS haven’t shown up in any interviews or given any comments

about it whatsoever, which is the big one. Most likely this is also influenced by antis;

they’re done with the show and are moving on. I honestly don’t expect to ever hear them

talking in-depth about Voltron ever again, which could honestly be a good move on their

part.

Others have retained their frustration at the situation, and fully placed the blame on antis’ powerful rhetoric: 122

It’s a cry wolf situation, where now those of us with real criticisms are disregarded by

people unless those people have seen the series themselves. I also hate that antis have not

only obviously and continuously moved moral goalposts to suit their needs and been

pretty obviously biased primarily in regards to shipping, but that they have hated on Shiro

from the beginning (calling him a pedophile, mocking his ability due to his mental

illness, reducing him to a “dad” figure and infantalizing the others), but then changed

their tune after SDCC when his sexuality was revealed (even then many focused on what

this could mean for Lance’s possible sexuality being explored with Shiro as mentor), only

to change course again after Adam’s death and completely disregarding the importance of

Shiro as the representative character in favor of his *EX* boyfriend who only appeared in

two episodes and only in order to reveal Shiro’s sexuality. And then going back to

demonizing Shiro again. And these are the voices many outsiders listen to and make

assumptions about the show upon, when they’ve been the pot stirrers from the beginning.

It’s astounding how they’ve critized the very things they claim to champion. (Non-binary

(agender), asexual, white, mid/late 20s).

Antis remain a problematized group for fans, even when pivoting towards the future. A survey participant, discussing the show’s finale and Shiro, remarked, “It made me feel like antis crusading for rep from straight people only got us half-hearted, offensive crumbs and made me think "the fight for representation" was only based on ships and people need to rethink their strategies and conduct. Because actual LGBT+ people were hurt in the attempt and it gave us very poor rep” (Cis female, bisexual queer, white, early/mid 30s). 123

“Olive Branch”

As Chapter Two documents, my dissertation research primarily occurred in February.

March 4, 2019, not even two weeks after survey closed, Montgomery and Dos Santos joined an interview about the show’s final season, hosted by the YouTube channel, Afterbuzz. During the interview, the duo discussed that, in reaction to the queerbaiting controversy and DreamWorks and other IP holders relaxing the rules of queer representation, they wanted to “extend an olive branch to the queer community.” The epilogue in which Shiro marries his husband was originally planned to be filled with gags of side characters, such as an alien learning human exercises. They acknowledged wanting to reach out “to the fanbase affected negatively by the storyline between Adam and Shiro.” During the interview, however, no comments were made on the reaction to the final season, except to agree with the interviewer that praised them for their representation. At no point in the interview did Dos Santos or Montgomery discuss talking to queer people about this choice and seemed to backtrack on previous interviews, claiming Pidge was never meant to be viewed as trans representation. The hosts frequently made dismissive comments about fan complaints of the ending, as they were only motivated by shipping, to which

Dos Santos and Montgomery nodded along. Teenage girls were specifically singled out as a demographic complaining about the ending. Additionally, Montgomery focused much of her time discussing her love of Lance, as a character. In an interview later in the week, Dos Santos expressed frustration that fans were so focused on characters that his work in merging different robots with Voltron went ignored. Clearly, while fans had done well in communicating among themselves their feelings of disappointment and validating each others’ views, their attempts to advocate for change or an apology from DreamWorks or Montgomery and Dos Santos were not fulfilled. Instead, assumption of their complaints being about shipping or from teen girls, the 124 presumed rationale and demographics of antis, were attributed to the diverse fandom that unified in genuine grief of the show’s ending.

An argument that remains with me is that of audience. That is the crux of the matter here.

“When people say "listen to your audience" they mean "don't operate explicitly to piss off your fanbase, know why they're your fans and how to keep the majority of them in the audience" NOT

"hear the yelling of entitled fans/antis about a pairing they want to be endgame, buckle under the pressure, panic, and then nosedive straight into hell"” (Female, pansexual, white, early/mid 20s).

I remember watching the interview live, sharing thoughts in a group chat of a dozen

Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom friends. Feelings ranged from wrath, disappointment, hurt, and a sort of grim joy in finally having the truth acknowledged. Harassment won, and a lot of what we survived was pointless. Unfortunately, while many of my friends and the fandom in general were seeing the beginning of acceptance or a chance to heal, I was at the height of a harassment campaign against me, one inspired by the fact I saw fans upset no one was listening to them and wanted to do something about it: research. 125

Auto-Ethnographic Coda: Renee Gets Murdered By Voltron Fans Online31

Figure 2: A stylized meme introduction and example of gallows humor

As the collected narratives have demonstrated so far, the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom was rife with tension, both during the show’s run and the disastrous aftermath. While many cases of harassment occurred in physical spaces, the harassment was predominantly online and took two forms. The first was threats of physical harm, such as claiming other fans deserved to be raped, stalked, or harassed in real life. Social activism, the co-opting of social causes to develop an ethos that antis then used to form a platform of harassment, was the other. Chapter

Three explored how fans were constantly and consistently accused of supporting pedophilia and incest. Such language was used to discredit them and amplify antis as being morally superior.

Yet, as I documented these patterns, I realized an important narrative, supporting the conclusions drawn, still needed to be addressed: my own.

In many ways, my own narrative echoes the trends shown in the hundreds of accounts collected for this project. I loved Voltron: Legendary Defender and was a member of the

31 Personal thanks to Lena Nighswander for creating the image and granting permission for its use here. It was designed to mirror episode cards for the television satire, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and a common meme in its own right. 126 fandom. I made friends, joined group chats, liked artwork and analysis of the show, and worried how the show was going to traumatize my favorite character Keith this season. This was my home, and this was my community. Yet it was not only a shared love that bonded us. It was a shared suffering, for who else can point out their fandom had a blackmail scandal against the show studio? Who else has an entire archive dedicated to fandom misbehaviors that ranged from exposing children to child porn, telling people they deserved to be raped, suffer from cancer, or be killed over shipping, or describing how they would kill themselves in social media posts if their favorite character was not given more screen time? (Drouin)32

I created a survey for fans to express their traumas and feelings over the fandom and the show’s conclusion. The only limit was a participant needed to be at least eighteen. For allowing people to speak about harassment, I transgressed against the mores and values of a voraciously active and combative group of fans, the antis. Thus, I became an enemy to them and needed to be ostracized, threatened, and silenced. This community distorted my project and words to suit their own needs, and I was labeled with certain terms, such as pedophile, so antis could continue their social activist appearance and crusade. As I write, I continuously see my experiences mirroring those shared with me. Participants were honest with me, and they trusted me to share their stories. I, in turn, trust them and any other audiences with mine.

Inspired by Dana L. Cloud’s “Foiling the Intellectuals: Gender, Identity Framing, and the

Rhetoric of the Kill in Conservative Hate Mail,” in which she rhetorically analyzed hate mail directed at/about her, I present a two-part autoethnography, documenting my harassment. First is the section I label ‘The Personal.’ Here, I reflect on the trauma I survived, highlighting a lack of support and understanding with outsiders of the fandom. Simultaneously, however, I became part

32 While this half of the chapter is autoethnographic, I want to emphasize the archive and previous writings on it, such as my article on how misbehaviors of the fandom were archived from 2016-2018. 127 of the collective experience instead of a passive watcher of fandom drama over the years or the collector of research data. Other fans reached out to me and protected me, and this is also part of my story. The next section “Rhetorical Analysis” analyzes the rhetorics used in the harassment about me on Twitter and Tumblr, documenting how it follows the trends of social activism and discrediting the opponent.

The Personal

If the internet was Zoë Quinn’s home33, online fandom was and is mine, and there was no neighborhood more populated on the Tumblr platform than Voltron: Legendary Defender.

Though I had no interest in robot lions fighting in space nor do I think I ever previously heard the phrase “Form Voltron,” word of mouth in fandom social circles is a powerful thing. Critics may advocate, and did, but that is nothing compared to women and queer folk who value respect, diversity, and characters to the same extreme I do and have proven trustworthy judges across numerous media properties. I also knew and loved Joaquin Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, who held creative roles in some of my favorite shows from childhood and teen years. Thus, I allowed my past and such eager crowdsourced joy to propel both myself and my bullied best friend, Lindsay, into watching Voltron: Legendary Defender, some sunny afternoon in July 2016.

I loved Voltron: Legendary Defender from the start. I spent the show’s run whining to

Lindsay until she skyped me every time a new season dropped, made dozens of friends across the gif sets, fanfiction, fan art, and theories produced, and stared down my roommates until they too sat down and watched Keith slice something dramatically with a blade. Voltron: Legendary

Defender was a comfort show and a signifier of friendships that carried with me across the

33 Chapter One 128 country, as I finished my undergraduate and Masters degrees and began my PhD, friendships in both the physical and the digital realms.

Figure 3: Lindsay (right) and I during our Masters, watching Voltron: Legendary Defender

That love did not extend to much of the fandom, at least in the show’s first few seasons.

Antis were seemingly everywhere and constantly harassed fans and the cast and crew. The stories I included through this dissertation did not surprise me, for I lived them as they occurred.

There is not a single narrative I read through that shocked me. Disquieted me, yes, because the human suffering is incomparable and inconsolable. But this was typical of everyday life. I frequently debated just blocking Voltron on my social media and speaking of it only with my in- person friends. It was not until the third season, when an anti-fan attempted to blackmail the studio, that I began finding both a bitter irony and a gallows sense of humor about them. Most of us did, and we, as a fandom, became increasingly skilled at blocking fans, finding spaces away from them, using private chats, and ignoring them. Dos Santos and Montgomery, not to mention the cast and crew, seemed equally exhausted by antis, and we fans went out of our way to support and cheer them on through our love of the show, such as developing campaigns across 129 social media that focused on positive messages. For over two years, I ignored those I considered the perpetrators of cruel and unjust harassment and became friends with fantastic people. After season seven in August 2018, my part of the fandom, overjoyed at Shiro’s queer identity and his representation, eagerly looked forward to the show’s conclusion later that year.

Figure 4: Stephanie (right) and I in matching Voltron hoodies.

On October 22, 2018, my phone constantly buzzed during a graduate class, leaving me to open nearly a dozen messages during a break. The ending of Voltron: Legendary Defender leaked, and it was bad; a lead character died, and a romance was added at the last second. Antis were the only ones pleased online. I personally spent weeks denying the validity of the leaks, as did half the fandom. The other half entered a mourning period. I believed in my show and would love it until the end. Yet, seeing the dichotomy of the two sections, denial and mournful 130 acceptance, celebratory antis and distraught victims, inspired my dissertation on harassment and shifted my research away from an exploration of gender in video games.

Figure 5: A chat exchange between a friend (gray) and I from December 11, 2018.

On December 14, 2018, I woke my roommate and best friend, Stephanie, up at 3 AM to watch the disastrous final season of Voltron: Legendary Defender, in which the leaks were proven true. Yet the leaks were only the start, as inconsistencies, plot holes, out of character behaviors, and the marginalization of my favorite characters and dynamics were riddled through the final season. I sat there, stunned, as Stephanie attempted to find some positives.

Unbeknownst to me, this would be the last time I would ever watch an episode of a show that dominated my fandom, many friendships, and my overall online presence for two years.

All were devastated, from the antis who did not see Keith and Lance enter a relationship, to those who loved Allura, now dead, or Shiro, now marginalized. Dos Santos and Montgomery were silent, having left social media, and I spent weeks watching the community mourning compounded by the silence and the lack of closure. Thus again I saw my research track change, as I could not focus solely on the harassment when nearly everyone stumbled around, trying to 131 cope. I reoriented, adding a new section of my survey, the first half of this chapter, about how representation mattered to fans of Voltron: Legendary Defender and the legacy of the show. It is likely due to this opportunity to be heard about the grievances and grief that my survey grew in popularity, though the chance to share testimonials of trauma was also a powerful motivator.

I had never intended for my survey to become popular. My wildest dreams saw about fifty participants through February 2019 - January 2020, when it was to close. Clearly, that was an underestimate, and, as my popularity grew, so did outcry against it, from antis. Likely concerned their misbehaviors would be documented in such a way, they quickly mobilized.

Some, who identified as minors and therefore unable to participate, recorded themselves typing death threats into my survey (which led to the immediate closure of it on my end), began to share my private information, such as location and full name, and sent death threats.

Figure 6: Screenshot from an anti’s survey response

I cannot know for sure what their goals were in attacking me. My best guess, and the one shared by the many fandom friends, was that antis feared being known. In reporting on their behaviors, their use of social justice rhetorics to distort the truth and harass others would become public. While the anonymity of the individual would still be protected, the overall collective would now be a documented, researched story with hundreds supporting the claims of harassment. Likely, their goal was to prevent me from further data collection and to mire my 132 project in rumors of authenticity to ensure outsiders would discredit me. They succeeded, in that regard. I was unable to continue my survey data collection and not allowed to go forward with interviews. For my own safety, and on recommendation of faculty, mentors, and survivors of online harassment, I left social media for roughly six weeks. During this period, I tasked friends with checking on my social media, seeing if those who were harassing me and had blocked my access to their account were still continuing, and if there was anything else notable I should know.

Figure 7: Screenshot of an anti’s tweets, claiming I made up my harassment. This dismissal

of my experience was a common refrain.

I should have known better, and I spent one of the darkest periods of my life blaming myself for wanting to document online harassment. I felt foolish thinking that the shared community mourning would mitigate harm. The many examples of former antis coming forward and apologizing for their actions was not a testament to time passing or the group growing. Few had moved on. They just went quiet. No one could convince me that my harassment was not my own fault and that I did not deserve to be threatened. The difficulties and traumas from then were 133 and remain immeasurable. Even now, two years later, I still believe this was my fault, that I poked a hornet’s nest and should have known better.

I clearly did not.

An unexpected difficulty was watching others speculate on my life, my morals, and what ultimately happened to me. For example, knowing the tactics of antis, numerous people tweeted that I had been sent images of violent gore and child porn. As far as I know, there were either no successful attempts to do so (thank you spam folder) or no attempt at all. People noted calling the personal phone number listed on my IRB approval form to harass me, but I cannot vouch for that, as I got rid of the number as soon as threats began, and I deleted any voicemails I received.

A different anti fan explained how they were emailing a BGSU’s research compliance officer, a member of my dissertation committee, and bragged to their followers about doing so. Per the committee member, they never received such an email. A friend of mine, who knew me before the project launched, shared that I was fine with one of her friends, who then reported it in a pro- shipping Discord channel, a popular chat program for fans. This led multiple people to claim I had not left the internet and must be a fan of the ‘pedophilia and incest ship’, Sheith, which therefore created a bias in me and definitive proof I could not be trusted. These events occurred during the period I had to ‘leave’ social media because of harassment and in hopes those who harassed me would move on. Depending on which terms you search for on Twitter, you can still find tweets speculating about me, including ones with thousands of interactions that claim I lied about being threatened. Additionally, comments on Twitter that alluded to me and my research, many of which were mocking in tone, garnered thousands of notes and were engaged with by audiences outside the scope of my project. 134

In ‘leaving’ social media, I did not actually leave. I abandoned the twitter under my real name and was cautious not to like or retweet anything, as I sneakily used the account against advice to monitor my death threats. Even though I had loved ones who checked on my behalf, I became so obsessed with saving myself, with knowing what was happening, that I could not stop going online. I would use anonymous accounts that people who harassed me had not blocked so I could report their attempts to dox me. Despite my Facebook and Snapchat being heavily protected by privacy settings, I became so frantic and untrusting that I barely posted on them.

Instead, I kept logging onto Twitter and Tumblr, where the harassment occurred.

Figure 8: Due to having rip in the content, this was the only tweet Twitter took down.

This period of my life is among the most emotionally draining and traumatic I will ever experience. I was, in all ways that mattered, helpless and without recourse. Twitter did not believe the threats against me were a form of harassment. The only tweet, to my knowledge, that was forcibly taken down is the one that starts rip r*nee, who later tweeted to complain Twitter does not care about pedophilia, as I, a pedophile, could report them for violent language. This single tweet was deemed significantly more violent or concerning that attempts to dox me, conversations about burning my classroom down, or general threats.

Despite their best efforts, institutional support was not useful. The counselor I saw told me online harassment was not real and to ignore my advisors’ attempts to halt my project, which isolated me from any further attempts at counseling at my home institution. A professor suggested I contact the police, and I did, but due to the nature of the issue, there was no follow- 135 up or response, even after sending them the materials requested by them. This was unsurprising but continued my demoralization. A lawyer I consulted with told me online harassment, in this regard, was not a crime and grew frustrated with me when I fought back tears. Most others I spoke to, ranging from administrators to outside audiences, were arguably too distracted by the novelty of such extreme reactions “over a cartoon” to offer meaningful emotional support or any type of support. At the national conference in my field, a senior academic said, “Well what did you expect?” when I explained my research, his tone implying I deserved it. I grew increasingly suspicious of everyone, as people online openly bragged of sending others, armed with my image, general location, and times I would be at school, to find me. Such Twitter users found such information through Bowling Green’s websites and shared them, publicly, online. Some members of the Bowling Green community were gracious and quick to remove my data, but not all, and after a period, I was too exhausted to check to see if the images and content about me used in the doxing were gone. Simultaneously, I had to grapple with another risk. If I had all my data removed from Bowling Green, what evidence would remain of my activities when I applied for scholarships and jobs? 136

Figure 9: An example conversation in which people who circulated my image discussed

what days others would try to find me on campus.

On days notable threats were made, i.e. specific days were named, I taught online or did not attend my own classes as a student. The university and I briefly moved my class to a new computer classroom location and delisted where it was held. Unfortunately, the classroom did not have a locking door, was out of the way and led to students coming 10-15 minutes late, was in a remote area (a basement), and was designed in such a way that my back was to the door and could not see who came and went. I remember multiple strangers entering the room, and I was powerless to stop them until they sat down or listened to me to leave. If something tragic did occur, there would be no witnesses except for myself and my students. We then returned to my old classroom, ironically the place I felt safest due to the lock and how it was surrounded by people. As I joked to friends, I timed my panic attacks before and after teaching. Then, I would compose myself and go immediately home, where I had reorganized. I now had blackout curtains and rearranged my bedroom so the door was barricaded, whenever I was in it, by my bed. 137

Figure 10: Frequently, antis would post about which university I went to and my roles,

such as teacher or graduate student. This was a common source of mockery.

During classes at night that I attended as a graduate student, I would not spend workshop time as it was designated. Instead, I would be creating pro/con lists and determining which data security programs, upwards of over $1000, would be worth hiring to remove my data, and my family’s, online. Sometimes, I would use resource guides and spend hours each week going to individual websites and emailing back and forth with them about ensuring I was opted out so strangers could not search my address. I would then have to do the same for my family, especially my father, who I am named after and am sometimes confused with. All of this was done while balancing teaching, service, and course work, when I was not leaving the classroom early due to panic attacks. Sometimes, I would wrap classes/my night up by reporting to various friends the appearances of strangers sitting too close to me or leaving buildings at the same time as I did, just in case. One time, a man accidentally touched my side in his attempt to open a door for me, and I screamed and almost stabbed him with my keys.

My isolation was both in-person and online. I was not safe on campus, so I could not easily visit my friends or stay in my office without either a panic attack or manic concern that I would put them at risk. My beloved online friends, who had known me before and during the harassment, were lost to me, arguably the greatest regret of this entire trauma. Their love and 138 compassion were invaluable, especially as they communicated with me through a secret Twitter that I scrubbed of all identifying information (my gender, name, status as a graduate student).

Yet that too was a risk. This twitter was much older than my professional, created before

Voltron: Legendary Defender ended. My retweets included the fanfiction my friends wrote, crowdsourcing funds for artists, general snide comments about how the show ended. This was the space I could process my grief among the Voltron: Legendary Defender community, and this was the place I was loved. Yet my presence put others both myself and others at risk. If anyone who harassed me knew I made a tweet about Shiro thanking him for how he should me how to persevere through trauma, the accusations of pedophilia, incest, and attempts to send me gore (as he was a physically disabled character) would restart. If my identity was known, the people often commenting on my posts, and I on theirs, my friends, would be at risk. They also, in seeing others concerned for me, would often share, without malice, if I was safe. This also linked them to me. I quietly stopped responding to them, abandoning the account they knew to contact me on.

It has been so long, and yet I still miss them so much.

This is how I spent my spring 2019 semester, until classes ended, and I could go home to

Connecticut, where no one online knew I lived. The lack of support no longer mattered, as I could pretend that was the normal, being away from Ohio. There were still many ramifications of this event, however. I continued a near religious practice of checking what of my data was online, even more paranoid as I envisioned something happening to my family in our home.

Despite growing up in a small town with no crime, I began pacing the house every night, constantly checking the locks. I elected to move apartments in Ohio, despite an increase in cost, to have both a fresh start and a new location, not present online. I remained reluctant for much of the summer to leave the home, alone. I also, for better and for worse, became consumed with my 139 survey results and my own experiences, desperate to find something positive in the mess that became my life.

Figure 11: Sometimes, antis would confuse me with my sister, who is earning a PhD at Ohio

State. This led to further anxiety, as I had to worry about her harassment risks.

In seeing myself in the data, I was increasingly determined to do right by my fellow fans, even if I felt powerless to help myself. By sharing their narratives, I could broadcast and amplify the problems of the fandom space, the complex dichotomy between the youthful ideas of purity culture and experienced fans who either outgrew or never had such inclinations. Instead of normalizing these behaviors of abuse, as antis had done so, I would contextualize for multiple audiences how this situation developed.

I began by being open about my experiences, meeting and sharing with a group of academics in my field who had also experienced harassment. Though their contexts differed from mine, our traumas linked us, and we worked together to develop a workshop for one national conference and a spotlight panel for another. I took to writing about the experience in interdisciplinary ways, publishing a book chapter and an article in fandom studies publications. I leaned heavily on friends I met through my project and fandom. And, as always, I continued reading and researching within rhetoric and composition, plotting out my dissertation and future research trajectories.

Rhetorical Analysis

To explore the rhetorics of harassment, as I experienced them, I am shifting my methodology slightly. Up until this point, all data collected and narratives presented were shared 140 with permission and understanding of what my project entailed. In contrast, the various messages threatening me were not. I find value in including them, however, to explore the language and give evidence to what these language practices looked like. For my safety, I could not reach out to the various members of the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom who threatened me for permission. Instead, I have removed all the usernames associated with the posts, even in the cases where the original user has deleted their account and cannot be tracked.

Figure 12: Screenshot of language and phrases commonly seen about me on social media.

There are two types of rhetorics at play within the messages about me. The first is the more established, understood violence rhetoric of harassment, hoping I would burn in hell, encouraging people to locate me on my college campus, and wishing I died. It was these messages that inspired the fear explored in my personal narrative above. Though I included many of the tweets already, I list a few further examples here to emphasize this was not a singular bad actor but a range of folks.

The primary rhetoric, however, is one attempting to discredit me and my work.

Discrediting me falls into a few different branches. Like many victims of anti harassment, pedophilia was front and center in how antis presented my research to their audiences. Often, antis put forth the idea that my faculty had no idea they were working with a pedophile and would be able to stop me once I ‘revealed’ myself to them. I include the following image to emphasize how many were involved with liking and responding to this type of message. In only a few days, over 2000 people agreed that I was likely a pedophile and my research biased. Just from skimming the hundred+ screenshots of anti reactions to my research between February 17 141 and February 19, the vast majority use the word pedophilia to define me and or my research as unethical, concerning, and/or flawed.

Figure 13: One of the more popular tweets about me; it earned over 3000 likes before

deleted.

Many of the responses to my survey were to question Bowling Green, my faculty, and the lies I developed to have them approve my research. Dozens asked about my “fucked up university” though, humorously, they focused so much on the state that multiple antis first reported I went to Ohio State University. Additional errors, in their haste to identify me, included thinking I was 36 and possibly a mother, not a single 26-year-old at the time of creating the survey, and confusing me with my sister, Erin, who is earning a PhD in communications at Ohio

State University. Eventually, however, they returned to BGSU. As I noted earlier in this chapter, there were plans and even suggested drafts about how to contact the school about me and my research. 142

Figure 14: Antis used asterisk to prevent Twitter bots from removing the tweets.

My position as an instructor was also a cause for concern, as I was proven unethical in my research and support of pedophilia, so I needed to be separated from my students as soon as possible. As proven through the images, upwards of thousands of people agreed with these assessments. Another criticism of my research was my bias against minors. Due to IRB regulations and my inability to get permission from parents, I required anyone who took my survey to be at least eighteen. Countless individuals commented that this proves I want to bully minors offline or only care about the perspectives of pedophiles. Others tried to suggest research ideas for me, saying I should focus on how minors feel and must listen to them as they dictated what they wanted from fandom.

Through these accusations against me, I became increasingly convinced that the primary concern and goal was to avoid accountability. The show was over, and fans had moved on. Antis were now involved in new fandoms, such as She-Ra and The Dragon Prince, two other animated shows known for diversity and queer representation. But here I was collecting stories, specifically on how people felt about their fandom experience. And, as the data shows, people felt their fandom experiences were negatively impacted, almost universally. 143

Figure 15: Example of discrediting me.

I also sense a desperate attempt to discredit me in the logic of their answers. Antis were welcomed to take my survey. I never discriminated against ideology in partaking, just age. Even if a fan wanted to insult my work or their fellow fans, as long as they did not threaten to kill me,

I wanted to learn from them. There are no screenshots from me, my survey, or my correspondence with others on Twitter indicating anything else. I even included every single anti and their opinions within this chapter that were submitted through my survey data.

Considering I was protecting minors through my regulations of needed to be a legal adult to share a testimonial, their accusations of pedophilia never bothered me, and I noted that those who pointed out such protection of minors went ignored by antis, who did not have a good response. Truly, if it was not for the risk of physical harm to myself, my students, and my family,

I would not have been overly bothered with the accusations of pedophilia and supporting incest

(besides a general horror at the acts) because these attacks on my credibility had no support or bearing on my research. Yet, I am also very privileged in this, as the overall event and accusations were brief. Once I indicated I was stepping away, I was forgotten about. The 144 testimonials shared here were of years of trauma and fandom harassment that leaving the internet can never ameliorate.

Conclusion

At the time of writing, I am nearing two years since my harassment. There are the obvious permanent changes in my everyday behavior. My unwillingness to use my full or real name online never fades. I schedule weekly internet searches to make sure my data, such as my home addresses and phone number, is offline. The silence in the old chats with my former friends deafens but likely saved them from connection to me and subsequent harassment.

I have become unfortunately familiar with how people report child porn, as I learned from the false accusations of others. I no longer use blue and red nail polish at the same time, because that was the color combo of both Klance and many user icons from people who threatened me. An anti argued Donald Trump and Joe Biden reminded them of Klance (likely the red and blue color contrast), and my tension headache did not abate for hours. It is a constant reminder. I announced to the audience of my Fan Studies of North America conference panel that I divide my project in before or after it gave me gray hairs. Sometimes I wake up mournful over what I was not able to accomplish in my research due to anti harassment. I have not watched Voltron: Legendary Defender since the morning of December 14, 2018. 145

Figure 16: Me and the Voltron: Legendary Defender funkos Stephanie bought me.

There has been healing, of course. Stephanie bought me figurines of Shiro, Keith, and

Allura in January of 2021, and I was overjoyed to see them, these characters who meant the world to me (and still do). I have become friends with many people through my research, such as at conferences. Some watched the show and can commiserate. One recently described us as living a life titled “how voltron fucked us up. a series.” I am grateful and safe due to the efforts of my friends, faculty, and family, and I will never forget that. Yet my efforts in helping people understand harassment have been where I see the most progress and growth in myself. My goals now include building resources and a larger website repository for surviving harassment. People have reached out to me as a resource for coping with the harassment campaigns against them, one notably from their work in writing about animated television programs. If nothing else, much like how I joked about the fandom itself being awful, I can now approach the dramatics of antis and their impact on me with humor, most of the time. 146

To outsiders, it is easy to dismiss antis as an atypical blip within the larger culture of fandom. As the past two chapters have demonstrated, there are many complications in researching and discussing Voltron: Legendary Defender. Never had such wildly false accusations of pedophilia, child porn, incest, and verbal and physical abuse blended. Fans adapted in varied ways, some leaving, others fighting, and others more ignoring. These were uncharted waters in lieu of what tactics antis used to convince others to support their ship. Even explaining Voltron: Legendary Defender to people, both before and after my own harassment, usually resulted in people hyper-focusing on just how baffling the entire situation was rather than a firm analysis questioning the whys of these antis and their actions.

Antis were not formed in a vacuum. As Chapter One’s history of other fandoms and the testimonials included here show, older fans, shaped by previous experiences, became very vocal in their demands for specific representation in a specific character. One means of receiving this representation was to demonize all content that could oppose it and to harass both fans and workers of the show. Younger fans, the more commonly known antis, were likely first experiencing a large fandom and learned behaviors of acceptability from those who encouraged them to attack others. As minors, it is also easy to latch onto terms like pedophilia and incest, because they are the most important rhetor in other contexts, making such accusations. Former antis and non-antis likened them to a cult of misbehaviors, so convinced what they desired would come true that anything could be justified. Unfortunately, as the final season of Voltron:

Legendary Defender would prove, there was merit to such tactics.

147

CHAPTER V. “I FEEL LIKE IT BURNED TOO BRIGHTLY AND NOW IT’S ABOUT TO

GUTTER OUT34”: CONCLUSIONS, AFERMATHS, AND WHERE WE’VE STILL TO GO

Introduction

During an interview with Vulture on season seven and Shiro’s queer identity, Dos Santos and Montgomery were asked if Shiro’s queerness would “change the undertones of his close relationship with Keith?” In response, Montgomery stated, “Fans are going to see it any way they want. Some people are going to say their relationship is just brotherly and others will say it’s 100 percent confirmed that they’re in a relationship. There’s no getting around it for us”

(Moylan). This interview, and Dos Santos’ subsequent assertion that romance was never the foundation of the show, was something fans continuously referenced after the show concluded.

At the time of the interview, Dos Santos and Montgomery had yet to change the ending of the show to include Shiro’s wedding.

Montgomery’s awareness that fans possess the power of interpretation is the foundation of this research and, fittingly, where the title of the project originates from. Fans looked to Keith and Shiro and, for some, genuinely saw evidence that they were destined to enter a relationship.

In contrast, other fans looked at Lance and Keith and interpreted a relationship between them as most plausible or interesting. The question I then struggled with was if interpretation requires and presumes good faith? Normally, fans interpret with evidence and explanation. In fairness, some antis may have genuinely used the terms of incest and pedophilia because they felt it could be interpreted from the show. If Shiro is ‘like a brother’ to Keith, antis could and did make the argument they were brothers and therefore shipping them was incestuous.

34 (Female, Lesbian, Caucasian, early/mid 20s). The full context of the quote comes from the participant’s response to a question about final thoughts, in which she wrote, “I feel like it burned too brightly and now it's about to gutter out. Too much in too few years, not enough community with the official channels. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.” 148

Yet I and the participants for the study do not view anti acts or language as interpretation.

As the preceding chapters explore, rhetorically symbolic terms heavy with negative meaning, i.e. pedophilia or incest, are not a form of interpretation, especially when the show disproves them.

These terms are instead utilized for harassment. Further, antis themselves refuted the idea their views were interpretation, instead asserting them as face both inside and outside the fandom.

Harassment, more than the power of interpretation, became the root of the Voltron: Legendary

Defender fandom.

I open the concluding chapter of my dissertation with the idea of interpretation to emphasize how far behaviors have transgressed past the idea. Instead, narratives of how people enacted harassment under the guise of interpreting ill intent remain. This conclusion attempts to bridge the temporal gap between where my data collection ended in early 2019 to the state of the fandom two years later. I then move on to various futures for this data, such as how we can compare other examples of harassment to the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom or how this project can change future research. I conclude with a final reflection, of not just as an academic fan but of a survivor of online harassment.

Tweeting Nearly Two Years Later

In the immediate months after Voltron: Legendary Defender concluded, fans were met with silence. When Dos Santos and Montgomery began interviews in March 2019, however, the narrative became that the decision of Shiro’s wedding was in good faith and, until then, the inclusion of queerness was out of their control, as they did not own the IP.

Most fans reacted negatively to these interviews and became increasingly frustrated over the years as more details were reported, such as no diversity consultants were used by Dos 149

Santos or Montgomery. In 2019’s “Voltron Partners Not Responsible for Failures in Gay

Inclusion; Sources Dispute Claim From DreamWorks Staff,” Sean Z reported:

Unfortunately, Dos Santos and Montgomery still do not appear to understand the extent

of the injury they caused. In their interview with AfterBuzz, when asked directly about

Shiro’s abrupt retirement, they simply responded, “We saw it as ‘dude had been through

a lot’,” but didn’t acknowledge the criticism from so many queer fans. Nor, when

discussing the epilogue, did they acknowledge that they didn’t speak to a single gay

person about the epilogue. Nor did they pledge to do better by involving more diverse

voices in their creative process in the future. They even claimed to the AfterBuzz

interviewers “we did the right thing,” despite the overwhelming evidence they did not.

Fans expressed their frustrations over the situation and largely disavowed Dos Santos and

Montgomery. While they did not threaten or harass them, these fans no longer created days dedicated to showing support to the showrunners or cast. These are among the only uniform acts within the fandom. Unfortunately, what would be presumed uniform behaviors (such as not sending child porn to people or publicly admitting to doing so on a social media platform) were hardly the norm in the prior years of the fandom.

As a fan, I feel as removed as I will ever be from Voltron: Legendary Defender as a program. I have not seen an episode of clips from the show since its conclusion, except for the various video commentaries and mini-documentaries created by fans in response to the finale. I largely left my once thriving fandom Twitter and Tumblr accounts, as I no longer needed a steady stream of Voltron: Legendary Defender related fanworks. Some friendships, founded by mutual interest in the show, ended. This was not a unique approach, as countless in the aftermath, not just within the survey but online now, express a refusal to ever watch the show or 150 create content for it. Examples of this can be found in a sizable amount of survey participants’ responses, such as:

“I feel hurt, yes, and I don't think I can watch the show again anytime soon (which pains me because I love it)” (Female/woman, Pansexual, Caucasian, late teens/early 20s).

“I think it is terrible how long Voltron/DreamWorks has left everyone in the dark so long about their displeasure of Season 8. They have done absolutely nothing to address anyone's concerns and it is extremely upsetting. I still get really sad and want to cry when I think about the ending with Allura and Shiro. It just upsets me so bad. I can't rewatch Voltron without being saddened and I can't stand seeing Shiro and Curtis together” (Genderfluid, Pansexual, Mexican

American, late teens/early 20s).

“I watched s8 and was like, "Yeah, okay, I'm DONE." And I honestly haven't interacted with much of the fandom beyond my personal shipping circles.” (Female (cis), Asexual, White, mid/late 30s).

Other fans continue bonding over the characters, disavowing the ending. Voltron:

Legendary Defender belongs to them, as they continue writing fanfiction or creating fanart, gifs, meta, videos, or other fanworks. Between December 14, 2018, when the show ended, and

February 16, 2021, 27274 fanfictions were posted on Archive of Our Own, the largest fanfiction repository on the internet. Nearly 9900 were posted between February 16, 2020 and February 16,

2021. While the numbers of fanfictions posted daily are shrinking, Voltron: Legendary Defender remains one of the most prolific fandoms, even two plus years after it concluded. There are countless other methods of acting and adapting in the fandom. As one fan reflected, “I'm happy to say it wasn't all bad. I made new friends through the Voltron Positivity RP post s7. And the fandom is filled with so much incredible talent that I can hold out hope for somebody, someday, 151 to give a modern Voltron reboot the love and care it deserves, all the way to the end” (Non- binary, Asexual spectrum, Pan-romantic, African American, early/mid 20s). Yet, whenever someone connected to the show speaks, fans are quick to remember their trauma over the ending and respond, both publicly and privately.

Responding to the tragic death of George Floyd, Voltron: Legendary Defender showrunner Joaquin Dos Santos tweeted “#BlackLivesMatter” and a white image with the words

“Listen Learn Accept Support” in bold black type on May 31, 2020. This was only his sixteenth tweet since the show’s finale in December 2018. Like fellow showrunner Lauren Montgomery,

Dos Santos largely left social media, only rarely posting on Twitter or Instagram.35

Fans quickly replied to his tweet, expressing discomfort and frustration against what they perceived to be insincere support. To them, his silence over the past 18 months demonstrated he had neither listened nor learned. Many focused on alleged hypocrisy, arguing about how he chose to kill the only black female lead on his show (Allura) and how he ‘bragged’ as one fan argued, in interviews about the bold narrative choice. Dozens entered photos of Allura into the replies of his tweet, usually images of the character glaring or reacting angrily to emphasize their distaste. Of the eighty responses in the first five days his tweet was live, only two could be coded as including support, as they noted they were grateful of his post and work. Yet, each of these positive comments called him tone deaf or guilty of hurting POC. Eighteen months had passed, and fans were still engaged and attempting to hold who they viewed as the guilty party accountable.

35 While my dissertation focuses on harassment and the trauma of the show’s ending, I want to briefly address the participants’ response to Dos Santos and Montgomery. Initially, many had a level of sympathy, as they did not own the show and had suffered harassment as well. They also believed other stakeholders had required the show ending to change. Other fans countered this and critiqued their notable silence on social media. Though not present in the survey data, as it closed prior to their interviews, social media backlash to the fact Dos Santos and Montgomery were in charge of the ending was swift and still lingers today, as evident by responses on the few social media posts they have made since. 152

On June 4, 2020, Joaquin Dos Santos tweeted the following statement:

1) Just want everyone here to know that I’m listening to your anger and frustration. I’m

learning about how and why my creative decision(s) have had a negative impact far

deeper than anyone simply feeling sad or angry because their favorite character died or

did not get the proper on-screen representation. 2) I’m accepting my roll in all of this and

that fact that each and every creative decision I’ve made has come through a lens of

privilege plain and simple. The fact that I was blind to how deeply affected people would

be is proof positive of that that racism comes in many different forms. 3) I am taking

steps to educate myself on how to be a better ally, how to truly support black voices (as

well as voices of the oppressed and marginalized from all walks of life). I’m not trying to

win anyone over here. I know for many it’s probably too little too late and that’s totally

understandable. I’m staring at it, it’s uncomfortable but it’s what needs to be done if I

want to try and be part of the solution and leave behind a better world than I inherited.

Response to this set of tweets was still universally critical. Though a minority praised his efforts in apologizing, the predominant reaction was skepticism in his sincerity, anger in how it took him so long to apologize, questions of the timing of his post as self-serving, and doubtful he truly understood why fans were upset. As the year continued, wherever Joaquin Dos Santos or Lauren

Montgomery, who has not been present on Twitter for all of 2020, were rumored or confirmed to be involved with the project, comments on social media posts about said projects were flooded with concerned fans worried how the non white characters would be treated, especially in POC focused properties, such as Marvel’s Into the Spiderverse sequel. Despite the distance of time, fans have yet to forgive, nor forget, what they categorized as a betrayal, especially regarding race, gender, and sexuality. 153

And Now the Future

After Voltron: Legendary Defender concluded, antis largely shifted into other fandoms, such as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power or The Dragon Prince, both animated television shows with diverse casts. Future scholarship, such as updated surveys or interviews, are needed to fully comprehend how many of the behaviors from the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom are mirrored in their current fandoms. Having witnessed reporters who spoke critically of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power become victims of targeted harassment or the sheer number of people who felt the communities around the shows were toxic and unhealthy, it is clear antis are not a single, contextualized situation that is going away. It is also important to begin approaching a new demographic: former antis who are willing to discuss their past experiences within fandoms and how they ultimately moved away from such behaviors.

From my personal experiences, and the testimonials of many participants, Voltron:

Legendary Defender was a radicalization of certain types of fans, these antis, who devised new tactics (child porn accusations, etc.) to accomplish their goals. Seeing how these tactics have adapted across new contexts is an important area of future consideration. Their stories are hardly the only future, however.

The following section will explore three such potential futures of this research. First, I note the multiple rhetorics that can be explored via the data, offering an example with a method I once considered using, social circulation. I then discuss how developing methods that protect the researcher need to be more common. I conclude with a quick analysis of potential ways we can compare and contrast how gender may impact the development of harassment through a case study with GamerGate. 154

Rhetorical Futures to Consider

Due to the amount of data, it was impossible to include all perspectives, trends, and various rhetorical considerations. What could not remain within this research, however, helps pivot us towards the future in means of discussing online harassment through rhetorical language. The rhetorics of identification or blame, such as allowing people to name who traumatized them and attribute blame to those they fault for their victimization and harassment, is important to the victimized. Countless in my survey expressed gratitude in getting to share their experiences and point out a community that assaulted them. While I examined these experiences through rhetorical, gendered, and queer lenses, these are hardly the uniform approach. In discussing online harassment and surveying those victimized by it, trauma studies then becomes important to consider. From this experience, I want to emphasize the importance of open-ended questions and spaces dedicated to sharing. Ensuring future research projects, such as a follow up survey on another fandom, give space to trauma is one form of both supporting victims and collecting important data/narratives the researcher may be unaware of. Despite years of presence in the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom, I had not heard voices from survivors of child sexual assault and how the rhetorics of the fandom impacted their mental health.

Without open-ended, qualitative focused questions, however, I would not have gained such knowledge to include within my research.

Considering the heavily female and/or queer demographics within the fandom, one future methodology to apply is Royster and Kirsch’s social circulation, a “critical term of engagement to suggest that this sense of the fluidity of language use—as well as the fluidity of the power those uses generate—can help us see how traditions are carried on, changed, reinvented, and reused when they pass from one generation to the next” (101). Antis have moved on from 155

Voltron: Legendary Defender and into new fandoms. Social circulation is one means of tracking how the language develops. For example, the language of ‘incest’ and ‘brotherhood’ have different connotations within five years of online fandom. Whereas Voltron: Legendary

Defender antis argued Shiro and Keith could not enter a romantic relationship due to being ‘like brothers,’ Catra and Adora of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power were ‘like sisters’ and therefore so close over a long period of time that they deserved to be together in a romantic relationship. The rhetorics used in the Voltron: Legendary Defender context were not applied to the new situation. Perhaps ironically, many antis who harassed shippers of Keith and Shiro were among the most vocal of fans who wanted Catra and Adora to enter a romance, much to the frustration of their former victims, who pointed out the hypocrisy. Was the use of child porn or incest a one time situation, or, as I assume, a carefully applied tactic that will appear again once antis have a ship they dislike and want to discredit? Social circulation over time and fandoms is one method of tracking such changes.

Additionally, social circulation allows us to track backwards. As one fan (female, heterosexual, white, older than 50) asserted:

While the focus of this survey is Voltron, this phenomenon is by no means limited to just

them. I witnessed similar behavior in the "Sherlock" and Star Wars fandoms. While they

weren't labeled antis at the time, a subset of fans who shipped Sherlock Holmes and John

Watson showed the same extreme behavior to those who supported shipping each man

with female characters of the show or the villain, up to and including harassment and

death threats to fellow fans and some of the show's cast. The same undercurrent runs with

Star Wars fans who are against shipping Rey with Kylo Ren, claiming that his current 156

status as an antagonist invalidates any possible explorations of a relationship between

them either in the canon or in fanon.

Through exploring multiple fandoms and how language changes via social circulation, we can further explore the rhetorics of communication and gender.

Ethical Considerations for All

Only through personal, embodied experiences did I fathom the need for developing research methods that protect myself, as I prioritized the ethical considerations of the research subjects instead. Unfortunately, many other researchers only learned through their own personal experiences the importance of prioritizing their own researcher safety within their methods.

Though it was published years after my initial data collection, Bridget Gelms’ “Social Media

Research and the Methodological Problem of Harassment: Foregrounding Researcher Safety” offers potential ideas for us to grapple with, as do authors in Jessica Reyman and Erika M.

Sparby’s edited collection, Digital Ethics: Rhetoric and Responsibility in the Online Aggression.

I hope my experiences and the growing research efforts about harassment research and researcher preparation can help normalize the idea of planning for researcher safety before projects begin.

If I could return to the start, there are multiple alternate approaches I would take to this project in the form of preemptive protection. First, I would spend time reviewing data collection websites, which host addresses, phone numbers, family connections, and other identifying markers. I would use the various resources to opt out and remove my data, and those of my loved ones. Few things terrified me more than the fact I could Google myself and find pictures of my parents’ home during the height of my harassment. Complicating this experience was that I was named after my beloved father, Rene, so removing just my data wasn’t enough- he was at risk 157 too. All scholars, prior to beginning research that uses human subjects or any type of research they deem risky (gendered applications to video games, for example), should dedicate time in data removal of their private lives. Warning family members and/or the university harassment could occur is also a step to consider. Next, to further emphasize researcher protection, researchers, when required to include addresses, phone numbers, or emails via IRB consent forms, should create separate accounts for the research. A Google number is much easier to cancel, monitor, or delete harmful messages from than a phone line operated on contract, possibly one even connected to a family plan. I option these as the easiest to incorporate into a research plan, as they do not require major changes to current behaviors or non-research social media activities. For many scholars, other options, such as removing all photographs from online, locking down all accounts, or changing names, may not be plausible, as this can either prevent them from using social media to collect data or connect with participants.

Admittedly, these preemptive protections are hardly useful during the midst of online harassment. The aforementioned removal of photos, locking down, or changing of names are vital tactics to confront immediate harassment and prevent further observation from those who wish to harm the researcher. Requesting people you trust to monitor your social media also allows the researcher to step away and take care of themselves. When harassment occurs, however, there is little training in how to respond as a researcher. Instead, we, rightfully, default to how to protect the human (therapy, leaving a location, contacting authorities). Normalizing that harassment requires research to progress or adapt is also important in allowing the researcher time to process. In that regard, I also advocate for an inclusion in research method training, courses, or literature. 158

Primarily, what strikes me about my experience is a sense of community. I did not feel a sense of comfort or ease until two months after my harassment, when I attended a conference panel of scholars who survived their own targeting. Their presence and experience helped normalize mine in showing I was not alone, and that, eventually, I too may be able to draw from my experiences to help others. I soon began collaborating with the panel of scholars, and others, in preparing workshops, talks, and resources. Even outside of my personal connections, the discussions on how researcher harassment needs to be acknowledged and prepared for in rhetoric and composition allows me to see myself in the field.

For example, Bridget Gelms experiences eerily mirror my own, as she began with a survey on online harassment as well. Quickly, however, her research was coopted and she became a target. Immediately, I saw myself and my work in her:

The first few instances of harassment were relatively innocuous, mostly name calling, but

hurtful and anxiety-inducing all the same. The situation started to get more intense when

multiple people, seemingly working together, overwhelmed my mentions with demands

that I debate them about whether or not harassment is even an issue for women. After

reporting and blocking one of the users, I noticed that several hours later he was back in

my mentions using a fresh account he’d created to work around having been blocked.

Another user, a self-identified men’s rights activist, spammed me with link after link to

disingenuous studies about how men are the “real” victims of online harassment, suffered

at the hands of “femi-nazis” like me. This particular harassment tactic prevented me from

being able to reasonably keep up with mentions, which included sincere questions or

well-wishes from people with a genuine interest in my research (5). 159

Harassment started with name calling, became more intense as a group formed, became uncontrolled once the researcher tried debating, became impossible once people started creating accounts and monitoring if blocked, and, finally, prevented the researcher from accessing sincere and well-meaning folks. Like her, I suffered all means of trauma, both in the immediate present, and then in future considerations, as I questioned if I could continue my research to graduate or one day publish.

The major difference between us and the various scholars I’ve worked with, however, is our status. Gelms and my colleagues are not graduate students. I am, which means I had fewer options and recourses, especially as my harassment was tied to a project, this dissertation, necessary for my graduation. In this closing remark on what we need to confront as researchers in the future, I emphasize the contextualization of who are the victims, not just on gender

(primarily women), race (people of color), or sexuality (queer), but also on our placement within the university.

Different Populations, Different Tactics?

An important future for this work lies in comparisons to other harassment campaigns.

GamerGate, the harassment campaign against Zoë Quinn and other women in the games industry, was supposedly about ethics. Perpetrators of harassment believed the false claim that

Quinn had sexual relations with a games journalist, leading to positive reviews in her game,

Depression Quest. These claims were made by an abusive ex-boyfriend and were quickly proven false. Still, harassers claimed they were guided by ethics and protection of journalistic integrity in how they critiqued Quinn and later other important women, who clearly had agendas against gaming (Quinn). Their actual agenda was harassment against women in the games industry, feeling affronted their male geek space was increasingly diverse and open to new perspectives. 160

I remind us of GamerGate here for how it parallels the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. Whereas ethics and journalism were the alleged causes of harassers there, antis within the fandom furthered ethics and morality. Antis claimed they were trying to create safe spaces for minors and combating harmful shipping that normalized child pedophilia and incest. Like

GamerGate, this was not the only cause championed, as the primary purpose is antis was to discourage specific shipping that opposed the character relationships antis liked. Other fans were not aligned with their interpretation, and therefore they were against them and needed to be dismissed and mitigated via harassment. Examples of this include sending child porn to fans and then reporting them to the FBI/police in hopes they would be removed from the fandom through their arrest. As one fan (Female, BiRomantic Acesexual, White, mid/late 20s) lamented:

The thing that hacks me off the most about Anti's is the Hypocrisy, that some of them

think that they can use the title 'anti' in fandom as a "Good Guy Badge". Anti's LOVE to

talk about how they are ALL about "protecting children", that they are against 'incest' and

'care' SO MUCH about victims and survivors of rape/CSA/abuse, and have 'respect' for

the POC and LGBT community. But their actions say other wise....If they really care

about the subjects they name drop, they would not resort to spamming death threats and

say that 'certain' people 'deserve' to get assaulted for disagreeing with them. They are a

contributor to Siren Fatigue , "Is someone really a creep? or is someone using social

justice as a battering ram" It doesn't seem like 'Truth' matters to them if they can bully

others to get what they want.

On the surface, GamerGate and the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom have more similarities than differences about how harassment appears. Women (primarily) and queer folk were the targets. Rape and death threats were in each, though predominantly more common in 161

GamerGate. Slurs, misgendering, and misogyny were also present in each, though again we see it far more often within GamerGate. Most vitally, the alleged rationales behind the harassment campaigns were rooted in ethos, as Quinn was falsely accused of sleeping with a gaming journalist, which earned the game she created a positive review, and the Voltron: Legendary

Defender antis were allegedly protecting minors from supports of incest and pedophilia. The rationales were ultimately, however, about people wanting to preserve spaces they viewed as their own and dismiss those who did not fit into their collective ideology. These events also featured coordinated attacks, both online and in real life, that continued for years and, to an extent, are still ongoing. Finally, I do believe both were about community. While men in

GamerGate were protecting their long held beliefs gaming was for them, the antis differed.

Skewing young, they tried to claim fandom for themselves, young fans exclusively that could dictate the morals and behaviors of the larger community.

One survey participant (Female, Pansexual, White, mid/late 20s) offered a comparison of antis and others who tried to moralize a community:

The entire idea of anti-shipping and the tactics used by antis reminds me greatly of

christian parents who tell their children that they'll go to hell if they're gay, or the

disproven idea that violent video games cause violence. It's a very toxic and self-serving

mindset, especially amongst kids who may only be going along with the anti ideology

because all their friends do, and they'll be ridiculed and ostracized if they ever stray from

it. The way we engage with, consume, and create for the media we enjoy is a normal and

healthy thing that helps many of us relax and get away from the stressors of reality for a

time, and to suppress that through these toxic and abusive means is horrible and

unhealthy. But in the end many will simply cling to their cries of "pedophile" or "incest" 162

without ever taking the time to really understand what they're actually saying and why,

and that's the most depressing part because it reflects the state of our (US) government

right now. I'm terrified enough of the way this country is hurting minorities without being

attacked or watching others be attacked for their harmless enjoyment of fictional media

as well. And in the end, that's why I opted to block rather than engage, for my own

mental health.

The populations of abusers and the rhetorical situations are different per harassment campaign, however, and this is where I find the most promising future for additional research.

GamerGate harassment was populated by men, whose rhetoric was inflammatory and focused on threats due to gender, rooted in misogyny. As this dissertation has discussed, however, the

Voltron: Legendary Defender antis are younger girls and women, many of whom identity as queer. Anti motivation is complex to identity, as I lack their words to support my claims, another research future. For many antis, young teens, this was one of the first major fandoms they likely interacted with. They may not have known better, or they were following behaviors their

‘fandom elders’ enacted, enabling them to view the actions of abuse as ‘acceptable.’ Unlike

GamerGate, which received international and mainstream attention, their actions were reliant on context of a show many avoided due to the toxic behaviors of the fandom and is not well known.

Antis were acting this was due to shipping fictional characters. They did not discriminate or target their victims due to gender, race, or sexuality, though they used all those identifiers to personalize harassment, such as through racist slurs (see Chapter Three). Though GamerGate was largely rape and death threats, the anti harassment focused on ethos and pathos appeals, specifically through their common use of pedophile and incest terms. These are also much more engaging and easier to have support from non-members of the community, who do not need 163 context to agree pedophilia is bad and can agree with the basic principles of the anti movement compared to the outright ‘kill women’ tactics of GamerGate.

Future research, and much more in-depth analysis of the language practices of these different demographics, are needed to begin making assertions as to if, and how, the rhetorics of harassment differ depending on the gender and or sexuality of the harasser. Preliminary results from my work, however, note that, despite similarities, the rationales and approaches to harassment differ in these two contexts. Through this research, I believe certain tactics, such as stalking, doxing, slurs, and death threats, are universal tactics that can and will be used by all audiences. That should become, if it is not already, a baseline for similarities between dissimilar groups. Yet, to accomplish research on gendered differences, there is no perfect solution or approach that can guarantee researcher protection or even data collection. For example, if one researcher takes on the entire project, that leads to only one target, mitigating harm to multiple but placing the onus of all harassment on a singular individual. Further, all researchers will have different baselines for what harassment they can accept. I am more comfortable with female and queer fans of Voltron: Legendary Defender threatening to locate me on my campus or burn my classroom down than I am with Zoë Quinn’s graphic rape and death threats. I know what I can survive.

Additionally, the true priority for the researcher needs to be figuring out what communities and harassments they can plausibly cover. I selected Voltron: Legendary

Defender’s fandom because these were my neighbors and friends in my digital home. I knew the experiences, and I knew the contexts. I also respected the people. In their memoir, Quinn recounts how, after well-meaning academics would report on their experience, an increase of 164 harassment usually followed, as the narrative became a focal point again. They wrote, with rightful concern:

When it comes to conducting research that focuses on those who are targeted by online

abuse, researchers have to treat us as partners more than subjects. Someone speaking

about their experiences publicly, whether it’s through social media, blog posts, or

interviews, should not be treated as if they are automatically consenting to anything an

academic might want to do with their words. The nature of online abuse centers on

violating the target’s boundaries and ability to control their digital life; without centering

the consent of the people whom researchers study, research itself can be another

violation. (164-65).

I took their words to heart in conceptualizing this project and have ignored data I did not have permission to use if it came from victims of harassment. Only they could decide if I could share their narratives. Future researchers also need to address and accept this limitation of permission if they want to successfully build more research into harassment and the differences our identity markers make on it.

Conclusion

“Look, I’m not proud, but it’s mine.” This is how I often started the explanation for my fondness and defense of Voltron: Legendary Defender’s fandom and the show itself during its two year run. As a property, Voltron: Legendary Defender had numerous flaws: A rushed production schedule led to a revolving door of writers, meaning storylines frequently concluded abruptly or were abandoned. Some stereotypes, such as the fat character not fitting through a doorway or only caring about food, were used in lieu of meaningful development in certain episodes. Tonally, the show could switch from the characters watching the decimation of a 165 culture or coping with a character death only for the next episode to be a wacky parody of drug usage and celebrity culture. As fans, we accepted this, even embraced this, as we loved the show and loved the possibilities. Such possibilities also meant fanfiction and fanart creators could interpret and play with the material. These flaws were acceptable because the characters were what truly mattered.

It is difficult to not understate how important the characters of the show were to the fans.

Shiro, the leader, was a queer, disabled, Japanese man suffering from PTSD. That is not a typical combination of identity markers, especially for a hero. He is just one example of the type of character found in the show. Pidge, a male in every other iteration of the show, was now female and the team’s resident STEM genius. Allura, a helpless white princess in the original series, was reimagined as a black leader of a war coalition and a princess who frequently rescued the heroes.

Within the new series, diversity was key, and with that, connections to the characters easily built.

Their personalities were also engaging and broke through the archetypes. In lieu of a stoic loner,

Keith, my favorite character, was morally complex, willing to sacrifice himself to save the world but then willing to sacrifice the world to save someone he loved. As a fan, if you love the characters, you are willing to submit to any number of questionable plots within the show or abuses outside of it. Fans would then gravitate towards other fans who shared the same interests and ideologies, building relationships outside the show while simultaneously shaped by it.

I think this affection for the characters, for their diversity and for their relatability, is at the heart of all love and all conflict within the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. We, as fans, wanted to see Pidge reunite with her abducted family or for Allura to succeed as a paladin, like her father before her. We became defensive and protective of the characters, especially the male ones, as they were the majority of the cast. I myself would often get into petty ‘fights’ with 166 my friends at how underappreciated Keith was by other characters in the show (and he was). For many fans, the antis I have reflected upon, I think, for their horrific actions, there was a level of love for Lance, their favorite character, that served as a foundational element to why they continued with the fandom, even creating a mock cult ‘The Klult of Klance’ around his fictional relationship with another character. Yet, due to the love antis had, both for Lance and for how they viewed Lance as a proxy of themselves, it became increasingly important to antis to combat and later harass anyone who disagreed.

While the fandom’s antis were present in-between the June 2016 season one premiere and January 2017 second season, the radicalization and mainstream attention they garnered primarily came post season two. The most plausible, and presumed per survey data, reason for the rise in harassment was the season two narrative emphasis on Keith and Shiro as characters who had a history and cared about each other. Additionally, the universe, with recurring side characters, new enemies, and exploration of new robot lion powers, had expanded, leaving less time for Lance. Behaviors worsened, and a blackmail scandal followed a few months later.

During a tour of Studio Mir, the animation company behind Voltron: Legendary Defender, “a fan released pics (pics that were retweeted and shared across social media, including Twitter and

Tumblr), leaving the studio open to lawsuits from DreamWorks if they can’t get all them down”

(Caron). The fan, going by the username on social media of Klance14, demanded the show make

Lance and Keith enter a relationship. Only then would this fan, and their followers, take down the images. This seems to be the breaking point on behavior restraints. Antis continued to escalate their behaviors, culminating in the queerbaiting accusations and, ultimately, the show’s changed ending (see Chapter Four). As one fan stated of the anti-behavior and Voltron:

Legendary Defender as a whole: 167

VLD fandom is the strangest fandom I've been in and encountered, in my nearly 20+

years in fandom. I'm fascinated by the thoughts of several fellow fans about how the

confluence of modern-day politics, post-9/11, the influence of radical feminists/TERFs

and the lack of moderation in fan spaces have led to the rise of antis. But I'm also

incredulous at how much impact the antis have had, in that they have succeeded

incredibly at achieving certain outcomes, and how corporations like Dreamworks, full-

grown adults and others have capitulated to the whims of antis. The latter has been far

more shocking to me. (Female, Bi, Malay (South Asian), mid/late 20s).

It is important to preserve the histories of these fandom spaces, especially Voltron:

Legendary Defender. Not only does fandom typically act as one of the earliest public writing opportunities and spaces for people, but the behaviors within this fandom will also have long- term consequences we must monitor for years. While many fans need to cope with trauma and have had their identities online altered forever in fear of privacy, their abuses must also be tracked. Having successfully harassed countless folks and having had a hand in changing the end to a television show by pressuring the showrunners, antis are not leaving. Instead, they are adapting and transferring these behaviors into new communities. Though some former antis renounce their old behaviors and the ideologies they followed, countless more are mentoring new generations of antis across new fandoms, even though this powerful phenomenon and use of rhetoric truly grew so toxic within the past few years. Subsequently, our research must adapt to monitor and explore these developing language practices and rhetorics of harassment, protecting the researcher, the victims of harassment, and, when necessary, the subjects who are performing the harassment. I end with a final participant (Female, Gay/Queer, White, late teens/early 20s) commentary, reflecting our status in fandom and goals now, two years later: 168

I really feel like fan entitlement is extremely detrimental in any fandom, and antis have become the embodiment of it. I wish fandoms of all kinds could be peaceful and adopt the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" attitude when interacting with other fans. However, I think respectful criticism should be encouraged regarding the source material of fandoms-- but the lashing out and hate is too extreme, and people need to be educated so they can understand that it's not okay. Social media has its advantages, but I think the option to be (relatively) anonymous on sites like Twitter and Tumblr has allowed for an age of harassment because anonymity allows for them to attack without any serious consequence. As of right now, the extreme hate antis project into fandoms is ruining fandom experience for many people who just want to enjoy and appreciate something they like. Thank you for doing this research! I feel like it's a very interesting and relevant topic, and I wish you the best of luck!! :)

169

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179

APPENDIX A. IRB APPROVAL LETTER 180

APPENDIX B. SURVEY QUESTIONS Anti Language and Impact

Do you know what antis are?

Yes

No

Maybe

How do you define antis? What do they believe?

What do you think of when you think of an anti? Do you envision a certain gender or age?

Are antis connected to shipping politics?

1. Not at all to 5. Yes, it’s the major part of their identity.

What type of impact do you believe antis have had on the fandom?

Very negative impact

Negative impact

No impact

Positive impact

Very positive impact

Is the VLD fandom known, even to those not in the fandom, for antis?

Yes

No

Maybe

Have antis negatively impacted your participation in Voltron Fandom?

1. Not at all to 5. Yes in a very concerning way

Do you have any comments you’d like to make about the prior question? 181

Do you have any comments about how antis interact with fans of the show online, such as tumblr or twitter?

Do you have any comments about how antis interact with the cast and crew of the show on tumblr or twitter?

Do you believe antis use racist, sexist, homophobic, and other insulting language choices?

Yes

No

Do you have examples of antis or general memories of what they've said/done over the past few years you'd like to share here? Please ignore this question if you think it would be taxing to describe.

Do you know about or have any comments about the complaints of queerbaiting after VLD S7?

Do you believe this was partially moved by antis?

Do you equate anti with online harassment?

Yes

No

Any additional comments you would like to make?

Season 8 and Overall Feelings

• How do you feel about seasons 1-6 of VLD?

o 1 (Hated it and stopped watching) to 5 (Loved it. It was among my favorite

shows.)

• What about the earlier 6-7 seasons of VLD did you love?

• How did you feel about VLD Season 8 182

o 1 (It ruined the show for me and led to a lot of complicated, negative feelings) to

10 (My favorite season, it ended things perfectly)

• Can you elaborate on what inspired your emotions in the prior question?

• Do you believe antis are partially responsible for the ending of VLD S8?

• IF you have negative emotions about VLD’s ending, who do you attribute the blame to?

Select all that apply.

o Options: Dreamworks, Antis, Showrunners Lauren Montgomery and Joaquin Dos

Santos, Netflix, Inexperienced Writers, Others

• Do you have comments about who you blame for what aspects of the show?

• If you have POSITIVE feelings towards the ending of the show, please describe why and

who you attribute them to.

• Have you expressed your feelings (disappointment, etc.) about the show ending online?

o Yes

o No

• How have you expressed yourself? (example, signing petition, tweeting at the official vld

account, tweeting in general, etc.) Please offer as many reasons as you want.

• Regardless of if you support them or not, do you believe movements like #freevlds8, the

petition, the sending of socks, etc. avoid using the harassment and death threats of antis?

o Yes

o No

o For the most part with an occasional slip up

• Have you noticed fans dissatisfied with the show explicitly stating they're trying to avoid

ships and language antis used so they would not be associated with them? 183

o Yes

o No

• Are you aware of anti language and actively avoid using it, advising others to do the

same?

o Yes

o No

• Do you believe antis were listened to about their complaints (specifically queer baiting)

but fans with complaints about the final season have been ignored?

o Yes

o No

• Do you feel listened to about your feelings of season 8?

o Yes

o No

• Do you feel many people equate anyone who watches VLD to antis and ignore their

complaints as a result?

o Yes

o No

• Is there anything about VLD season 8 (the leaks, your feelings, specific issues such as

cast reaction to the season, etc.) that I did not cover here but you want to talk about?

Demographic

• Do you identify as a heterosexual, cis white man?

o Yes

o No 184

• What gender do you identify as?

• What sexuality do you identify with?

• What ethnicity do you identify as?

• What age group are you a member of? (note, you must be 18 or older to be taking part of

this survey)

o 18-21

o 22-25

o 25-29

o 30-35

o 35-40

o 40-50

o Older than 50

• During the early seasons of Voltron, what feelings did you have towards the show about

how it represented your identity?

• During the final season of Voltron, what feelings did you have towards the show about

how it represented your identity?

Optional Interviews and Final Comments

• If you are willing to be interviewed or answer follow-up questions to your answers,

please put your preferred method of communication (email, twitter name, etc.) below.

Interviews will take place over the next 18 months and in whatever format you prefer,

such as digital chat, Skype, etc.

• If you have any additional comments about the Voltron fandom or about this survey that

you have not been able to address, please use this space to converse. 185

APPENDIX C. ETHNICITIES OF SURVEY PARTICIPANTS Participant Ethnicity Frequency of Listing

White 172 white 48 Caucasian 21 White. 5 caucasian 5 White/Caucasian 1 White British 5 White - British 1 White (Dutch) 1 White (British) 1 American. White. 1 Caucasian/white 1 White (Canadian) 1 Scottish - White 1 White European 1 White/caucasian 1 white / caucasian 1 White/Mexican 1 I am a white French Canadian 1 White (if that's the category you're looking for. Caucasian? In my region we 1 don't look into ethnicity) im white as bread caucasian/white american Whites 1 White af 1 White (slav, specifically) 1 White, Swedish 1 Caucasian (white) 1 White Scottish 1 White (Polish) 1 Caucasian with a decent amount of Native American heritage 1 1 1

Asian 24 asian 3 East Asian 1 Asian (Korean) 1 Filipina-Chinese 1 Asian - Chinese 1 Japanese 1 Chinese-Asian 1 186

Japanese and Vietnamese 1 East Asian 1 Asian. 1 Asian, Vietnamese 1

Hispanic 19 hispanic 3 Hispanic/Latina 1 hispanic/latino 1

Mexican 8 Mexican/American 1 Mexican 1

Black 9 African American 3 Black American 1

Latina 9 Latino 5 Latin 4 Latinx 2 I'm latin 1

Mixed 5 mixed 2 White/Asian 2 mostly white 1 Mixed, black/white 1 Mixed... Afro-Carribbean / Italian 1 Mixed race 1 mixed white and Polynesian 1 Heinz 57! (im the average mixed american and my ancestors come from all 1 over, including native american) biracial (caucasian and chinese) mixed white Half white, half latino 1 mixed white/indigenous 1 Biracial/Half Asian 1 1 1

Native American 3

European 3 European 3 187

Chinese 6

Scandinavian 3

Filipino 3 Filipino 1 I am Filipino (Southeast Asian). 1

Asian American 2

Russian 2

Indian 2

Dutch 2

Middle Eastern 2

Jewish 1

NZ Pakeha 1 NZ European/Pakeha 1 white new zealander (pakeha) 1

Israeli 1 middle-eastern 1 Turkish / Swiss 1 Egyptian 1 East Slav mexican american 1 Malay (Southeast Asian) 1 Mixed white and Hispanic 1 Indo-Chinese 1 Black and hispanic 1 Latino. 1 South African/British. 1 Slav 1

White Hispanic 1 Nordic European 1 Arab/North African 1 Human being?.. I don't know how to answer, sorry 1 Australian (? we dont use that word here a lot) White - Hispanic (I’m half Cuban/half Colombian and my race is caucasian 1 ) Latinx and German. 1 Eastern slav Latinx 188

Japanese Caucasian. 1 Mediterranean white 1 biracial latina 1 white/caucasian 1 Biracial (Latino/White) 1 Greek. 1 Latina! I live in Latin America and have been born here! 1 Middle Eastern/Arab 1 Asian. Chinese. 1 im slavic 1 Vietnamese south east asian 1 Bolivian/Italian 1 Uuh Asian? 1 Black/Hispanic 1 Italian/Spaniard 1 Hispanic/Latinx 1 Biracial 1 black/white mixed 1 Black/African American 1 Mexican-American. 1 Does it matter? 1 Mix of Asian (thai) and white. 1 Latin european (Not latina, not hispanic) 1 Eurasian 1 I was born in America, raised with Dutch Indonesian culture. 1 European Latin American 1 Mediterranean 1 New Zealand European / Maori Cookislander 1 Im asian, speciffically filipino 1 Mostly white latin american 1 Native american 1 Half Asian half white Mexican American 1 Ethnicity? I'm french? I don't know what you mean by that, but I guess 1 white. 1 White? African American mix 1 Mixed - Cherokee Native and Black Biracial (Black/Caucasian) 1 Mixed race (white mom, black dad) 1 Baltic 1 Avar 1 Latina/Latinx 1 Mixed (half black) 1 189 nah fam 1 Puerto Rican descendant of American chattel slavery 1 Bengali 1 French-Algerian (half white, half North African) 1 Chinese-American 1 Latinx. 1 Not answering 1 Armenian latina 1 This is really American. I don't. 1 Indo-Guyanese 1 Mexican-American/Xicana 1 white European 1 Indigenous 1 Europe 1 Finnish 1 East Timorese-Australian 1 russian 1 I'm a latina 1 Polish 1 White latina 1 black Mexican 1 Latino/ Latin American 1 I’m Filipino Canadian 1 1 1 1

190

APPENDIX D. CODES Emotion Coding: Popular Negative

Pink: Especially prevalent in discussion of show end; Blue: Especially prevalent in anti- discussion

Demoralized Betrayal (against “Can’t go back” Scared/Afraid

creators)

Upset ‘Negative “Wasn’t worth it” Embarrassed

Connotation’

Sad (about Sucked (entire Unhealthy Hostile (environment, experience, about experience, people) show ending) individual examples)

Cry/Crying/Cried Anger (at selves, ‘Can’t enjoy’ ‘bad takes spillover’

antis, show, LM JDS)

Sorrow Hatred The worst (antis, Bittersweet

show, experience)

Frustration Attacked Ashamed (of self, of Reluctant (to take

community) action)

Inescapable Self-harm Sense of being on Poisoned my

edge experience

‘I don’t matter’ (made experiences) Helpless (no matter Near impossible

Hard what I do) (surviving fandom,

acting in fandom

without harassment) 191

Emotion Coding: Popular Positive

Friends/Family (build (People) Made it Loved (BLANK) Saw myself in the through being in the “worth it” character characters “felt seen” fandom (Shiro, Keith, and -primarily queer fans

Allura top three -traumatized people

mentioned, followed -African

by Pidge) American/Latinx

Vast potential of Love of science Shiro being queer “Great people, bad show fiction noted in positive fandom”

terms

Great structure/plot “caught my heart in Gorgeous (animation Breathtaking

such a way no other primarily, but also

cast of characters discussions of

have done before” – fanworks)

characters are

primary emphasis

(majority)

Trauma-bonding Joy/happiness/fun Celebration of Shipping (sheith,

identity allurance)

Fan creations Different genres of Confidence/Built me Respect (by fellow

(fanfiction, fanart, the show highlight up (despite antis, fans, people fanvids) for sizable minority found support in emphasized

of responses fandom) community as the pro 192

not the show by the

end)

Complication: Complication: Complication: Complication:

Acknowledged they disbelief they expressed joy in what Feeling they were loved but no longer survived the fandom, they created but that seen, especially via have idea what they pointing out people was later destroyed Shiro’s queer loved post show who made it okay for by anti experiences identity, but later ending them having that feeling be

twisted by

disappointment in the

ending