#hey lauren your plot twists suck

[cryoflyte]

WE WERE WARNED

I was going to tweet this but it turns out Twitter only lets you thread up to 25 tweets in a draft. That’s insufficient. So fuck it, I’ll do it here. I’ve been ranting about this since season 1 (back when it looked like just a tiny blip on an otherwise great show, rather than our first warning sign that these people might have no fucking clue what they’re doing), it’s actually managed to get worse since then, I’m not over it, I’m not getting over it. 

Gather round, dear Voltron Twitterati (or tumblrati or whatever y’all are called around here). Let Cryo the Salt Phoenix regale you with ALL the reasons why Pidge's gender flip being a plot twist was, and remains, completely fucking stupid.

First, a couple of external biases to acknowledge:

1) I feel Pidge was the worst possible character to gender flip, precisely because it was so obvious. He's spent 30+ years getting "lol DotU Pidge wore a headband and had a squeaky voice, maybe he was a girl!" jokes. Buying into them is a disservice to both the character, and the stated idea that VLD Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't fit a norm. Okay sure, you took the character who got mocked for not sufficiently conforming to his gender, flipped him, then went "look how our Pidge represents not fitting in with the norms!" Nah, guys. Not how it works.

2) ...of course that's if you believe them suddenly saying Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't conform to begin with. All we heard in the beginning was "We wanted to make him a girl! Look, he's a girl! Girl, girl, girl! No, not trans, not nonbinary, GIRL! Look how smart we are for making him a girl!" That and how Lauren didn't like DotU Pidge, so she decided she needed to make him more appealing. To her. Which...

3) Pidge has, in all prior canons (possibly excluding DDP? Was it ever fully explained there?), been an alien. In VF (which supposedly Lauren did watch but didn't like him any better in) he was explicitly an alien ninja. So, you know, forgive me for being a little bitter that we got "the only way to make Pidge appealing is make him a girl. Now here, have five seasons of Keith the alien ninja!"

4) My complaint is not really against the concept of gender flipping Pidge. Had they done it upfront as they did the changes to Sven and Allura, I'd have been somewhat irked for the aforementioned reasons, but hey, new reboot, new rules. My complaint is about them lying to our faces for three months (up to and including Bex bluntly saying "Pidge is a boy" in an interview) in service of perhaps the most pointless plot twist in franchise history.

And that brings me to our feature presentation. Get the popcorn, y'all, I've got the salt.

Someone name for me a single solitary moment, watching the first three episodes, where there was even a hint that Pidge was wrestling with his (gonna use male pronouns until the reveal) identity. No, not "oh hey if you go back with knowledge of the twist this was foreshadowing it!" A point where prior to knowing about the twist you went "huh, what is Pidge not telling the rest of the team?" and it was NOT answered by him revealing that Commander Holt was his father. Seriously—please point one out to me. Pidge's premise is very consistent in the first three (and a bit beyond, but I'll get to that) episodes: he has his own reasons and priorities for being there, he'll do the bare minimum of teamwork necessary to achieve his own mission, and he's not there to make friends. Everything he does is consistent with this read. Nothing is pointing to further complexity, him hiding something totally unrelated. There's the picture, but it's at best confusing: I just figured it was his brother with HIS girlfriend, to be honest. Were we really intended to interpret a sad look at an ambiguous photograph as "Pidge is hiding another completely different big secret related to that picture!" rather than "Pidge is sad about his family, like he keeps saying"?

It would have been simplicity itself to add actual hints. Instead of Hunk just presenting "look, it's his girlfriend!" as fact when he finds the picture, "who's the girl? She's cute!" and have Pidge get defensive over that. When they're putting on their armor, maybe skip Hunk making the first of 500 throwaway fat jokes in favor of Pidge looking uncomfortable at the thought of, you know... changing in front of the others? Have him duck behind the armor case? Do something. Do ANYTHING. 

Even after the internal reveal in episode 3, we get nothing. Allura specifically drills her about "hey, do you have a big personal secret?" and she doesn't look the slightest bit worried or defensive, she just looks confused. Pidge is not that good an actress, we know that from Lance having to save her butt back at the Garrison. Also from seven seasons of watching her complete inability to keep her emotions in check, ever.

Pidge's internal struggle is never once presented as being about her gender, or about how the team thinks of her. It's about whether she's going to put aside her own personal priorities for the sake of the team. This is the struggle that's been built up. This is the struggle that she's invoked and settled in the climactic moment with Haxus: "I'm not a child. I'm a paladin of Voltron!" Haxus could just as easily have called her a "little girl" if we were supposed to be reading any sort of gender conflict into this.

(Of course as it is Haxus didn't know she was a girl—more on that later—but that's purely arbitrary. A show that wanted to sell Pidge having a gender conflict would have made Haxus realize she was a girl, especially given Coran's "we were supposed to think you were a boy?" in the next episode. You can’t just pretend it’s so obvious then have nobody else notice it ever.)

Now, I of course acknowledge not every worthy plot twist has to be able to be guessed by the audience prior to the reveal. But it doesn't work here. Because here's the reveal: Pidge is all "I was afraid you'd think differently of me" and the whole team is all "of course not!" and that's that.

Wait, she was WHAT now?

We have not seen Pidge struggling with this. At ALL. There is zero emotional weight to this scene because there were absolutely no stakes shown. You cannot have her say "I've been worried you'd think of me differently" when you haven't fucking shown her worrying that they'd think of her differently. This is writing 101, guys. And then Shiro is all "owning who you are is going to make you a better Paladin"—WHEN HASN'T SHE? Literally the thing she's been shown struggling to accept is THAT SHE'S A PALADIN! Not that she's a girl!

This reveal is bad. It's so, so bad. The only way I could make sense of it after first watching it was assuming they'd wanted to make her trans and chickened out at the last second. Nothing said in this scene seems to be part of the same show we've been watching for the past five episodes. It's not clever or interesting, it's just bizarre.

But now let's take a step back. Because in order to set up this terrible, pointless, non-event of a plot twist, we have also done great violence to certain characters. We have turned Pidge and basically all of Galaxy Garrison into morons.

Is Pidge not supposed to be a genius? What exactly was her thought process here? The whole wide world of possible disguises was open to her, and she went "I know! I'll pretend to be a boy, and I'll make myself look identical to my brother, the famously MIA space explorer. Nobody will catch on." Really, Katie? You couldn't buy some hair dye, maybe a spray tan?

And then nobody fucking does catch on. The Kerberos mission is so well-known it's being used as an object lesson for cadets, Pidge flips out every time the mission is brought up, and not one person thinks "hey, this kid who looks exactly like Matt Holt totally freaks out whenever the mission Matt Holt disappeared on is mentioned." This does not hold up if you think about it for more than two seconds.

Why does she even need to look like Matt for meta purposes? Oh right, because of the picture that was attempting to carry the entire load of this twist. Great. That's totally worth the blatant insult to everyone’s intelligence, not to mention the affront to common sense.

On that note, one specific point of the disguise: why does Pidge wear glasses? We know she doesn't need them. She takes them off to wear her helmet, Katie never wore them. And sure, they make her look less like Katie Holt... but they make her look more like Matt Holt. This was fairly weird even in season 1. It only gets weirder when we finally meet up with Matt.

Oh hey, guys. She's not just wearing a pair of fake glasses that make her look more like her famously MIA brother. She's wearing his literal glasses. Which, incidentally, we know are functional prescription glasses because he says he doesn't need them anymore because the Garrison fixed his eyes.

How many people did this go through without anyone pointing out that wearing glasses you don't need actively fucks with your vision? 

Yes, I know this is a show about alien space cats that I'm holding to standards of opthalmological realism. But most television manages to understand how glasses work. And again, it's just pointless. Why not just have Katie wear glasses to begin with? Oh right, because we need the guy in the picture to wear glasses and the girl not to because SMART PEOPLE DOING A PLOT TWIST, DERP!

It didn't work, guys. It didn't work at all. You know how people figured it out early? Because you gave her a female VA and we've had thirty years of "lol Pidge looks like a girl" so hey look, the picture confirms the meta theory that people were pitching even before we saw the character designs. Doesn't add even a shred of impact to the reveal. The only way to add impact to the reveal was if she’d actually been worrying that the others wouldn’t accept her being a girl. But no.

And after all this dumb, what exactly is there to show for it? Well... nothing. Nobody else in the show knows she's a girl. Aliens consistently refer to her as male. The team has used female pronouns for her what, once in seven seasons? Miss the right four episodes and even a viewer wouldn't have a clue.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the stated rationale that gender shouldn't matter. Know how else they could've shown that? JUST MAKING HER A GIRL IN THE FIRST PLACE. I mean, if they're going to crow about how brilliant they are for "plot twist, she's a girl!" maybe people should at least be able to tell she's a girl after said twist. Or hey, even better, they could make her trans, or genderfluid, or non-binary, put in some rep that would actually be brave and interesting. But no, instead we get "she's totally a cis girl, but it doesn't matter and nobody can tell because she's there to represent people who don't fit neatly into a box!" That's pretty much the worst of all options, guys. Good job.

And then everyone went “OMG yes! You made Pidge a girl! Yay rep, you’re so smart!” without the slightest shred of critical thought on how it was handled, while a tiny handful of us hoped it was just a fluke, the product of a showrunner pet project that didn’t signify anything for the rest of the series.

Then we got Keith’s Galra reveal, which somehow managed to be even worse.

Then we got season 4 making the bulk of season 3 immediately irrelevant.

Then we got two years on a space whale.

Then we got season 7, where everything is garbage. 

Every season has just been more and more ridiculous plot twists in place of character or consistency. It turns out nope, if we wanted to see where this show was going, the horrible Pidge twist was the ONLY part of season 1 we should’ve looked at. Let the salt flow freely.

Okay, I think that's it. Thank you for coming to my TED talk?

[cwritesforfun]

Bradley Rooster Bradshaw x Asexual!Fem!Reader: Flight

PLOT: Rooster x asexual reader where the reader is a nurse at Top Gun. She has always dreamed of flying and she has a crush on Rooster! This was a request, so that’s why there is a long specific plot lol:) Y/N = Your Name

Y/N’s POV 

I’ve always been afraid to embrace who I really am. I’ve wanted to be me for all to see for so long, but something always ruins that. 

First, it was when this guy I had been dating for over 6 months dumped me because I didn’t want to have sex. When I told him I was asexual, he broke up with me saying that I never loved him and I was just using him. I wasn’t turned on and I didn’t really want to have sex with him, but I did love him. He thought that was wrong of me to not want sex but love. He doesn’t understand that it took a lot to come out as asexual to him and that I needed to set those boundaries for a successful relationship. We broke up that night.

Second, I wanted to be in the Air Force, but I knew it was filled with a bunch of dude-bros that all talked about sex a lot. I also couldn’t make myself sign up because what if I fail at my dream? Then I have nothing. I would be a shell of a person and life would suck. 

I held back on my dreams and decided to be an Air Force nurse instead because I could still be close to the action, but I wouldn’t have to interact with the dude-bros unless they were injured. The twist came when I started to love being a nurse. There’s something so rewarding about being a nurse and it leaves me feeling pleased with where I ended up (most of the time). Sure, I still dream about flying. That’s why I watch the drills if I can or if I’m on break. 

Right now, I’m sitting on the Top Gun base watching the hustle on the base. They have a night off, but some people are still working. I’ve been here as a nurse for about 2 weeks. The best of the best is here at Top Gun and yet some of them still need hangover medicine. And here I thought they would all be too focused on their work. 

I hear my name being called and I get up from where I’m sitting.  I see my colleague, Lauren, who is another nurse here.  Lauren exclaims “Come on, let’s go get dinner in town. I’m starving.” I ask “What if someone needs us?” She answers “They have a night off and John is already working tonight. He can handle the few people left on base.” I reply “Ok. Let me change first.” She replies “I think a lot of guys would like the nurse’s outfit.” I reply “That’s exactly why I’m changing.”

I change into something more comfortable that won’t necessarily attract male attention. I don’t want to deal with men or talk about my sex life.

We eat at some restaurant where I eat a burger and feel great. 

Lauren takes us to the Hard Deck after to get a drink. I follow her inside begrudgingly. 

We both get drinks and some guy starts hitting on Lauren as soon as we get them. She goes off to dance while I keep drinking.

I sit there talking a little here and there with Penny, the bar owner and bartender tonight. She’s really nice.

I hear “Nurse Y/N?” I turn and see him. I exclaim “Yes Rooster?” I do find Rooster cute. I won’t say anything to him though because rejection exists.  He takes a seat next to me and says “I didn’t expect to see you here.” I reply “I didn’t expect myself to be here. But, I’m not a hermit and I came with Lauren.” He replies “Ah, friends will do that. I notice she is no longer over here. So, wanna join my friends and me? We’re just playing darts and drinking right now. There’s also pool if you want to play.” I reply “Sure I’ll join you guys.”

I walk over with Rooster and am introduced to the rest of the Top Gun pilots. 

As we talk, occasionally one of the guys says something sexual about a girl or about an experience they’ve had. I need to leave before they ask me something.

I turn to Phoenix who is closest to me and say “Hey. I’m gonna head out. I have a long day tomorrow and I need to get some sleep. If anyone asks, I left. It was good talking to you though.” She replies “It was good to talk to you too. I’ll be sure to tell everyone.”

Lauren agrees to leave now because her stomach is hurting. Great, she is going to be so sick tomorrow. She’ll definitely call in sick and I will have to work with John. He’s so lazy at what he does, but he knows how to do it. It annoys me.

We make it back to base and as soon as we get to our room, Lauren pukes in the toilet for the next 2 hours.

NEXT NIGHT 

The Top Gun pilots are running some drills in the sky right now. I am sitting outside at a table eating my dinner at 8 pm. 

I hear “Y/N?” I see Rooster standing there holding his helmet smiling. I wave and he walks over. He points to the seat next to me and asks “May I?” I answer “As long as you’re not late for drills, then sure.” He replies “I went first actually. I’m done for the night. I had to do 200 push-ups.” I reply “Sorry to hear that. If you mess up in the nursing world, you get warned and then you lose your job. And if you lose your job, you lose credibility as a nurse in whatever field you’re in.” He replies “Sh**! That was dark.”  I reply “Sorry... I don’t usually take the conversation so dark, especially to men I barely know.” He replies “I think we should change that. I’d love to get to know you. So what brings you out to watch the flight drills?” I answer plainly “It’s my dinner break.” He asks “I see you out here all the time and I know it’s not just because it’s a good place to eat. Because it’s loud and windy out here. It kind of sucks. So why are you watching flight drills?” I sigh and answer “I’ve always wanted to fly. I’ve always dreamed of being a pilot.” He asks “And why aren’t you?” I answer “That’s a very loaded question that I don’t know if I want to answer tonight. I’m going to pass.” He replies “That’s okay. Maybe another night?” I smile and nod.

We sit listening to the drills as I eat dinner for a bit. Rooster finally exclaims “You left yesterday without saying goodbye.” I reply “Yeah I told Phoenix to tell everyone I was leaving.” He asks “Was it something I said or did one of the pilots say something to you? Was it Hangman? If he said some lie or flirted with you, I am so sorry. He can be such a jerk sometimes.” I answer “No. I just didn’t like the conversation about how everyone was going to get some.” He replies “Yeah, my policy is to not talk about that. They do though and they like to joke. I didn’t know it bothered you. I would’ve told them to hold back.” I quickly reply “No it’s fine. They should be able to live their life talking about whatever they want. It’s a free country with free speech after all.” He smiles and someone calls his name. He tells me goodbye and leaves.

4 DAYS LATER

I’ve been working nonstop this week. It should make me feel great, but it doesn’t. You see, I’ve been casually talking with Rooster every day. I really like him as a person, but I just know that if I tell him I’m asexual, it could crush him. I don’t want to crush someone that is about to have to face a death-defying mission. I just can’t. So what will I do? Keep conversations light and fluffy without any talk about dreams or the future or relationships.

As I’m typing and logging in entries, I hear my name being called. I take off my headphones and see Rooster standing there. I ask “Hey Rooster. What’s up? What’s hurting?” He answers “I actually came to see if you were free for the next hour.” I reply “I’m working. I get off at 8 for a 30-minute dinner break though.” He turns to Lauren and asks “Hey John! If I were to take this lovely lady out for an hour, do you think you could hold down the nurse’s office?”  Lauren answers “Of course. I do sort of owe Y/N for taking my shift when I called in sick. Consider it taken care of.” I sigh and answer “Fine. Let me get my dinner. Can I eat where we’re going?” Rooster answers “Yes.” I nod and leave the room 

Switch to Rooster’s POV

I move over to where Lauren is sitting as Y/N leaves the room.  I ask “Hey. Is something bothering Y/N? She seems off tonight.” Lauren asks “Well do you plan on considering tonight a date?” I answer “I might have been thinking about it. I really like her.” She replies “Tell her that you care about her and want to know what’s up with her. Express that you’ve noticed her behavior and really show you pay attention to her. She’ll like that. If you’re mean, then I have to be Larceny Lauren.” I reply “Ok. I don’t know what that means, but okay.” She replies “It means I commit Larceny with no remorse.”

Y/N returns and we head out.  We start walking toward the planes and I exclaim “Listen, I know you want to fly and have always wanted to. I talked to Maverick and we can have a quick 30-minute flight with him watching our flight plan. We’ll be back with enough time to eat. I recommend eating after.”  She asks “Wait? We’re about to go in your plane to fly?” I answer “Yes we are. I arranged it, so we could use a two-seater plane.” She replies “Wow I’m so excited. Thank you.” I reply “No problem.”

We get into the plane and we fly. And as we fly, I narrate moments between my team and I as we pass certain areas. 

When we get back to base, we get out of the plane and we start walking to the table she always eats at. 

I ask “So what did you think of the flight?” Y/N answers “You’re a great pilot. It was amazing. Thank you. I really loved every minute being in the air.” I reply “I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I was hoping it was fun for you... what else do you like to do for fun?” She answers “I haven’t been taking a lot of time for fun recently. I’ve been working nonstop. I like to draw I guess. I also like to drink hot tea and eat burgers, but not together. Wow I have had no fun recently. I just cannot think of me having fun.” I smile and reply “That’s totally fine. I like your answers. You seem like fun to me. So speaking of fun times, there’s this cool place that serves burgers and it’s open on Saturday. Now that matters because I’m free this Saturday night. Are you?” I see her face drop from a smile and she starts to nervously look around. I say “Look, I know I kind of sprung this idea on you, so you can take all the time to think about it. I don’t want you to be pressured to say yes or no. And Y/N, I know you’ve become more withdrawn since the first time we talked. You don’t talk about deeper topics anymore. Something’s bothering you and if there is anything I can do to help, please tell me. I care about you and just want you to be okay.” She half smiles and says “Thanks... uh... I will only say yes to a date if you don’t mind that I’m asexual. I’m sex-repulsed, but we can totally still hang out all the time. We can cuddle, hold hands, and be in love, but sex is limited. Being asexual ruined my last relationships because they thought I was using them and they said dating me was pointless without sex.” Men suck and I am one. Sex isn’t everything. I reach over and place my hand gently over hers. I say “That doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I get why you didn’t like hearing about sex the other night. I’m sorry that some guys have been mean to you in the past. It’s their loss because you’re a wonderful woman. So what I’m hearing is we still get burgers, but we make a secret handshake together.” She laughs and says “That is ... wow you are too funny. I think burgers and a secret handshake sound great.” I smile.