Irrevocably-delicious Fandom Blog

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, well really ever since the Voltron fandom blew up again a week or so ago. With the new Voltron discourse, Klance retaining it’s number 1 spot on the trending ship lists, and a lot of my dashboard being occupied with Voltron art, opinions, disclaimers, and meta over the past few days, it’s left a large proportion of the internet asking themselves:

“How does Voltron: Legendary Defender, which is a show that is just above average, have such a dominating and voracious fanbase? How does something so generic prompt so many people to scream and create content for it?”

And I think I have the answer… or at least… an answer from my own personal experience.

When people ask me “Is Voltron a good show?” I always end up umming and ahhing for a while, because it’s not bad, but I know it’s definitely not good enough for me to have wasted so many hours of my life engaging with it. The worst thing I want to have happen is my friend watches the show, then calls me and goes “THIS? This is the thing you’re so passionate about?”

And I have to dejectedly sigh out “….yeah.”

So when I’m inevitably asked this question, I always defend myself by going “The world and the characters are really charming. Everyone is very likeable. The show has a lot of potential!” 

And I think that’s it. That’s the secret of it all. Potential.

You see… I think it’s actually the lack of perfection that prompts so many people to go “hang on…. I think I can improve on this.”

You see, in between Voltron seasons, I was really engaged with Yuri on Ice! I waited every week for a new episode, reblogged the new gif sets that would come out after every episode, read all the new theories about where the plot might go, watch the previews for the next episode over and over and over….

I was, and am, SUPER into YOI…. but I’ve never generated any content for it. none. I’ll talk about it of course! But when the show finished, I had several people ask me:

“Hey! Are you planning on writing any fan fiction for Yuri on Ice?”

And honestly…. no. I had absolutely no motivation, no drive, to write anything for the show. For the series that I loved so dearly, I have never written NOR READ a single piece of fan fiction. And when people asked me why I would always say:

“The show gave me everything I ever wanted. There’s nothing more I can add to it.”

And I think that’s really it. Whilst Yuri on Ice is definitely not a perfect show, it definitely succeeds in giving its target audience everything they wanted. It’s potential is perfectly fulfilled. Sure you could write like a wedding scene, or a honeymoon scene between Yuuri and Viktor, and that would be lovely…. but I don’t need it. I have my closure.

This scene is the perfect ending to an emotional arc. As a viewer, I am perfectly fulfilled. 

Similarly, I think of other series that I adore, but have never really had the desire to create content for, or play with AUs or anything like that. In my opinion, the closest thing to a perfect series I’ve ever consumed is Fullmetal Alchemist (brotherhood or ‘03. They’re both really good, but for the sake of this post I’m gonna focus more on brotherhood.)

When I finished Brotherhood every question I possibly had was answered. Every emotional arc came to a close. Again, there’s no where further I could take it. That story is over. Personally, the only thing that left me longing a little bit was the potential relationship between Hawkeye and Mustang… but again I don’t need that. They are side characters, the story does not focus on them, so their ending is allowed to be left open. 

What’s up, I’m crying in the club. 

Shows like Gurren lagann, Princess Jellyfish, Deathnote, Kill la Kill, Baccano, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, etc. are all varying degrees of excellent, but what they have in common is there never seems to be any unfulfilled potential. They explore every ounce of their worlds and characters, so that by the end, I just kind of dusted off my hands and said “Yeah… you know what, I’m good.”

Things like Harry Potter and Avatar: The Last Airbender (and Korra) are interesting anomalies to me, because while they absolutely fulfilled the potential of their characters, these series’ created such interesting worlds that fans continued wanting to explore. I don’t see that much fan content created using these series’ characters anymore, but BOY OH BOY do I see both of these used as AUs when generating works for other series. Any fandom worth its salt will have a well established Harry Potter and ATLA au. People adore sorting characters into houses and into bender types. I love it. I live for that shit. 

So with ATLA and Harry Potter we’re starting to see how the potential of the world they are set in can drive fans to actively participate and engage with these series.

But you wanna know what I think really gets people mobilised? What really gets that fan content flowing? 

It’s character and plot potential. Primarily character, but plot also plays a part (again, I’m looking at you Voltron.)

You guys wanna know the first series I ever actively engaged with? the first series I ever followed dedicated blogs and wrote fan fiction for? The series that I still declare my undying love for even though it’s just a silly simple show?

Fuck me, I would die for this stupid show.

I’m gonna talk about Free! but honestly you could insert any sports anime into here. The Haikyuu fandom was fucking HUGE and for exactly the same reasons. Damn you sports anime with your endearing characters, you know just how to create a massive and active fan base that ultimately creates more fans. Damn you.

Listen, Free was a few years ago, so let me clarify that it was fucking HUGE. Think Yuri on Ice levels of massive, but like… with way more active and angry fans ready to declare their ship as the OTP. YOI actually never had any ship wars (as far as I’m aware), because all the viewers could see by episode 5 that Viktor and Yuuri were clearly what we were supposed to be rooting for. That was always what it was supposed to be. 

But Free had more boys. With more complex relationships. …. and they were naked a lot. 

Free and Haikyuu and (insert other sports anime here) don’t have unfulfilled worlds. They’re set in high school, we’ve all been to high school, who cares. They don’t even have unfulfilled plot. Not really. These are just sports anime! The plot is: THEY ENGAGE IN SPORT> WORK HARD> WIN THE THING. THAT’S IT! That’s all the story is supposed to be!

What the series’ have is character potential. Haikyuu and Free are both excellent at creating really charismatic and interesting characters and juuuussst bareely not letting us see enough of them. By the way, this isn’t a negative for these shows! This isn’t a criticism! If anything, I’m immensely impressed at how these series’ create such fun characters that I tune in every week to see, even if the story is that they’re just going to play some dumb sport. 

The lack of fulfilment usually stems from a large ensemble cast, so you can’t give every character the attention they deserve. These characters are also sometimes inhibited by the simple plot. Yes, yes it’s lovely to see them discuss plans for graduation and struggle with homework, but I think a lot of fans feel that these characters are bigger than the worlds they inhabit. This inevitably ends with fans wondering: 

“…. yeah, but what if Haru was a wizard?”

This drives the creation of AUs. The desire to see these larger than life characters meet a just as immense and impressive plot. These characters are so fun and dynamic, that it’s fun to insert them into different situations and see what they do. High school is a really blank slate, so you can take characters anywhere.

“Now Haru’s a mermaid, fuck you.” - the entire free fanbase, but also the show runners themselves. 

There’s also a lot of potential when it comes to relationships between these characters. Yeah, yeah, I could obviously talk about ships, but Free does things that are more skilful then that.

“Makoto and Haru are best friends who have known each other forever. They know each other so well, that they’re almost telepathic and the other characters make fun of them for it. When it looks like Makoto might leave, Haru has a break down. Also they move to Tokyo together in the end” - The show

me, a fan - “oh wow! SO are we gonna find out how they became friends? Or what they do in Tokyo together? Or were they always this close? Haru is a really non-verbal character, so are we ever going to see him articulate how important Makoto is to him somehow?”

The show - “no.”

And honestly, it doesn’t need to. For the sake of the plot, I just need to understand that these two guys are really good friends, so that is how one is able to influence the other into doing things he might now want to do. For the sake of the plot, I don’t need all these things.

But as a fan… I fucking need these things. 

So I make them myself. I create them. I draw and write and yes about them on the internet. And I’m not the only one. There are others doing exactly the same thing, until we take up a chunk of the internet. People stumble across this mess and go “hey what’s this thing we’re engaging with? People seem to like it? I’ll guess I’ll check it out.”

But it’s a trap. Because now they watch it, and they join in the screaming, pulling in more unsuspecting victims. Until eventually, if you don’t watch the show yourself, you definitely feel its presence around you.

The show isn’t excellent. It’s maybe not even that great, but it’s because of the fans exploring the potential of the show, that you have now been exposed to it. 

Now we come to this mess:

Voltron, to me, is a perfect storm of unfulfilled potential when it comes to world, character, and plot.

When it comes to the world’s potential, I can’t get too critical. It’s set in space. Like there’s literally alternate universes, infinite galaxies and alien planets. I can’t expect the show to explore all of this, so that’s fine. But it’s also understandable why fans love playing in this setting so much. the world is ripe for people to create alien ocs, world building, etc. Also, similarly to HP and ATLA, I’m already starting to see “which paladin would this character be” in other fan spaces. God fans love sorting shit. 

“Yuri Plisetsky would be a Gryffindor and a fire bender, also he would be the red paladin” - someone on the internet, I’m sure.

But again we see these characters who are really interesting and charismatic, just going unexplored. Or in many cases, getting only the smallest hints about their backgrounds, so fans fill it in themselves. Again, for the sake of plot do I need to know what Hunk’s family is like? Do I need to know if Shiro left someone back on earth? No.

But dammit I want it. 

Voltron also suffers from several plot points or mechanics that have fell below expectations. You guys remember how Narti could mind control people? remember that? And she used it to like make whole nations declare war on others? Remember how many comics and fics sprung up because we wanted to see that mechanic explored? How many times I saw people playing with the idea of Narti mind controlling one of the paladins to betray the team and change sides? And yet where did that mechanic go?…. fucking nowhere.

There have also been several character reunions that I know have left fans going “That’s it?”

So they declare “fuck it, I’ll write a better reunion. And I’ll also write flashbacks that establishes properly how these two characters feel about each other, so now I feel that this moment has more weight. Also I’m now writing about this character meeting the rest of the team to continue the emotional arc of my favourite character.”

Voltron has an amazing world and characters that promises far more than it delivers. So what it lacks, the fans make up for. This has created a fanbase of extremely active people who are imperative in sucking more fans in. 

Voltron doesn’t have devoted fans because it’s good. It has this extremely large and active fanbase because it has potential. And we’re all waiting to see if that potential actually goes anywhere. 

So when you ask “Hey, how does this really mediocre show have such a rabid fanbase?” you are completely misunderstanding. You fool. You absolute baboon.

It’s because it’s a bit shit that it has this fandom.