#GOD the urge to give some of the paladins a polearm bayard in the rewrite......that would be so so so so so sexy

[scattered-winter]

You know, another thing that always bugged me about VLD is the shape Keith’s Bayard takes.

People always calls it a sword, but honestly it’s more similar to a katar, a type of Indian push dagger. Which is the same overall design as Pidge’s Bayard.

It’s weird that Pidge and Keith both use the same weapon as the base for the form their Bayards take, but Pidge’s has a lot more utility with both its grappling hook and taser functions.

YEAHHH I've noticed how keith's bayard is a katar (ancient weaponry autism go brrrr) and I actually think that works really, really, really well for him. (I'm drawing from Autism Research that I did several years ago so I may be misremembering in which case I'm sorry </3) but iirc, a katar has a lot of power in the forward thrust (because the blade is lined up with the user's arm, so he can put his whole weight into a thrust) but they can also be used for swinging/slashing which is generally what keith's fighting style tends to lean toward. additionally, because traditional katar don't really have a lot of blocking protection on the hilt (unlike a zweihander, for example, which has a pretty useful crossguard) for someone to use a katar they have to be pretty quick and light on their feet to compensate for not having as many defensible qualities. which sounds a lot like keith's fighting style to me. katar are pretty versatile and rely on the intensity and power of their design/technique to punch through an opponent's armor and take them down as efficiently as possible, which just fits keith soooooooo well imo

and for pidge, I also really like her bayard because it reflects her personality and fighting style incredibly well, too. it's probably one of the most versatile weapons used in the entire show with its grappling hook, and the taser adds another range of uses (there's the obvious shocking, but I also remember seeing her use it to cut through hulls and things like that) and for a green paladin who thinks outside the box, a weapon that can be used in so many ways works so well. to address the similarities between pidge's and keith's, I actually think it might just be because of the shape of the bayards themselves. the only other two bayards we see take gun forms, so pidge and keith are the only ones with melee weapons which makes it hard to really tell if that handle shape is the norm for bayards or if it's just their unique personalities. but regardless, the H-shaped handle (the main characteristic in katar) is what all the bayards have in their dormant forms, so it might just be a matter of functionality that the handles for keith and pidge's weapons are also H-shaped