#why K/L and A/S are not actually queerbait despite anti claims

[avidbeader]

So, I've been doing the Great Sheith Reblog for a while now, gradually reblogging almost everything I shared before that was tagged as Sheith. Lots of art, gifsets, fics and recs, old merch posts, and meta to go around with the occasional dash of salt because lord, dumbness about shipping brings out the salt sometimes. But most of the time it's a lovely nostalgia hit and a reminder of why I still love this ship with all my fandom heart. It's bittersweet sometimes, seeing the usernames that left with Tumblr's worst decision ever, the fellow fans who have moved on to other things, and yes, the hopes and dreams we had before Season 8.

Long blathering under the cut: musings about the persistence of anti-shippers and what queerbaiting actually means.

But occasionally what both amuses and frustrates me is how things line up because it's 2024 and we still have klantis/antis over on the former Twitter spreading the same lies about Shiro and Keith - about their ages, about how they met, about what their relationship is. Right now over there, arguing is happening again because someone put up a clout-chasing poll about which mlm ship was the most influential and included KL but not Sheith (KL beat Johnlock and then lost to Hualian, so I'm happy twice over). Side note - I think if we take "influence" as a completely neutral term, then yeah, KL has been a huge negative influence on fandoms as it was one of the places that allowed puriteen attitudes and anti behavior to grow unchecked for so long. That helped turn some ship fandoms into cults, in which you had to believe with utter certainty that your ship would be canon or you weren't a "true" fan of the ship. That put more emphasis on opposing a rival ship through wank and harassment instead of focusing on the joy and fun of creating for the ship you supposedly love.

And that poll prodded someone to create a Google Form for soliciting answers as to what the biggest examples of queerbaiting are in media. And of course people are saying KL and Adam/Shiro, among other things that are not at all queerbait. These are examples of people guessing wrong and getting mad about it. Queerbait requires that the producers/writers/etc. say outright that a ship is going to happen and then it doesn't, without any influences from the powers above them making changes. Not received fan "wisdom". Not marketing doing things without consulting the producers.

And I just reblogged someone's ask in which they said they felt queerbaited by Sheith solely because of the "brother" line in "The Black Paladins". The answer is excellent and worth a ready if you haven't seen it on my blog already.

Breaking it down:

KL is not queerbait. KL was never planned as a potential ship and LM/JDS said so multiple times. They said it never occurred to them as a possibility and by the time KL's popularity took off they were too far along in the writing to try and go back and make changes, because animators need time to draw. LM flat-out said she was surprised that it became a thing. If the producers are telling you over and over in no uncertain terms that a ship had never been on the table and couldn't be added to the table now, that's not a case of queerbait. And they spoke of Lance's love interests as female every single time. JDS/LM never said anything that would lead fans into thinking KL was a possibility without the deliberate and willful misinterpreting of their words.

Adam/Shiro is not queerbait. Adam is a minor character in a series with a large cast. He has two functions: to be evidence of Shiro's status as a queer man and to be a "face" for all the pilots that died in the first wave of Sendak's invasion. Some people try to claim that LM and JDS queerbaited with their answers at SDCC 2018, but they're wrong. The only thing LM said was that we would see more of Adam in S7. And we did. She did not promise we'd see more of him with Shiro. That was people inserting what they wanted to hear, just like them trying to elevate Adam's status to a fiancé when again, LM clearly stated that they were serious and considering getting engaged. Not engaged. Not married. Just a couple that was serious about each other but broke up.

I don't consider Sheith to be true queerbait. It might fall under the cryptoqueer situation explained at the end of the post linked above, but JDS and LM were mostly very careful to talk of Sheith in terms of deep friendship and devotion to one another, after the initial wave of support for fan content during S1, prior to the klanti movement taking off. The only thing that skirts the line for me is a quote, I think from JDS, saying that if Shiro had a new love interest it would be someone he has known a long time. Or maybe that was about the romances in general being developed over seasons and not Shiro-specific - I would need to research. (Yet more proof that the endcard "wedding" was not planned since we didn't see the unnamed groom until S7 and they never interacted.) And that was said before studio execs started meddling and caused the trainwreck of S8.

I do think we were supposed to have an open ending for Sheith. Klantis like to point out a storyboard artist claiming that "no one wins" this ship war as evidence that KL was supposed to happen and got changed, but that statement applies if Sheith is left open-ended and Allurance happens, even without the endcards.

When I have a chance, I'll try and dig up the links for the various quotes I mention above. Thank you for reading if you made it this far!

#voltron #sheith #why K/L and A/S are not actually queerbait despite anti claims