space loser giant kitty committee (voltron)

because it's a total throwaway thing. but i fell out of my chair because at the halting reading of 'pidge... gunderson' i started laughing at the thought of LUNK HARDBEEF and BIG MCLARGEHUGE.

gunderson is just the most fake last name and it made me laugh unreasonably hard.

 

...I kind of want pidge to still be a she because I have basically never seen girl characters who get grumpy and aggressive and stubborn like Pidge does and it's treated as ok and just another part of character. And I think having no girls as paladins is kind of annoying, because, well. But at the same time I still want more trans representation because we need that. ><

 

consider: trans girl pidge

 

Possibly (if anyone asked) she went with being a semi-distant cousin of the Holts? Would adequately explain any family resemblance while avoiding the need to share a last name or potentially contact any remaining Holts.

 

If it was Both Arms I would think upgrade, but since it's just the one I'm leaning more toward "sudden and traumatic accident/arena injury that was taken advantage of". Unless they're really cost/resourse prohibitive to make, but in that case why waste it on a prisoner, even one that's a popular arena fighter that you're going to turn into a sleeper agent?

Also, the reasons I don't get pinged with the rank thing being part of Pidge and Shiro's power dynamic are many. Pidge obvs shows absolutely no respect for earth authority beyond what has to be faked to acceptably get by under the persona of academy cadet. Heck, Pidge in general seems to be kind of adverse to authority that hasn't proven itself on its own merits ("Oh, the princess of what!? We're the only ones out here and she's no princess of ours!") and is the first to go lonewolf on the group if it will bring a goal closer or accomplish a task faster. Pidge is full of spunk and sass and you better have a good reason for giving an order or it's going to be disregarded.

Shiro, by contrast, might have been higher ranking, but he's been a traumatized POW for a year. He's falling back into the role of command probably because it's familiar and orderly, and let's him act with out having to think about how fucked up he is, but when Sendak pushed him a little, that control went blip! When Pidge was gonna leave the team, Keith was he one that got upset, but Shiro never tried to force the issue and basically said you gotta do what you gotta do then. I don't think he could follow through with enforcing an order the Pidge was resisting if it wasn't life or death (in that situation, the need to get his team out alive trumps pretty much everything). In the moments that Shiro and Pidge have made connections and concessions to each other, it's been personal not business. Their relationship is not work based, despite the setting. I think in that regard Shiro might be primed for over stepping Pidge's boundaries without realizing it, because he feels like he knows Katie through Matt and Commander Holt. But at the same time, Pidge is ready and willing to do whatever and go where ever it takes to get something done, and everyone else's feelings be damned. So. Yeah. Lots of room for fucked up imbalance, but I don't think Officer/Subordinate plays into that much if at all.

 

personally i think the CO/subordinate thing goes both ways with shiro and pidge, as pidge's dad is (was? is? verb tense) his CO and i find that hilarious. the dynamic that i found the most Problematico was that shiro actually knows a whole lot about katie holt and pidge knows only that this guy was on the mission with her dad and her brother. especially since then shiro tells her "i know your secret." o... k... then...? that's not creepy at all for an older dude to isolate you from the group to tell you he could emotionally blackmail you.

at the same time, pidge is more than willing to hurt shiro. not, like, kick-in-balls or combat hurt, but emotionally punching him in the solar plexus. it's not just that she's willing to defy his purported authority, it's that she makes sure he feels it when she does. see: telling him "no" in the galra galley with keith as witness and telling him who she was to trigger the survivor's guilt so he would show her where the prisoners were kept, forcing him to keep the hand-that-is-not-his on the downed galra ship control panel so she could get the information she wanted about her family. with pidge being as smart as she is, and as willing to do whatever it takes to meet her goal, and with shiro being the ptsd-riddled ex-pow that he is, i honestly think she's just as capable of hurting him as he is of hurting her.

and then there's still the age/CO issue on top of everything else, like just a bit of cinnamon in the most sinfully rich hot cocoa you've ever had. delicious.

(sorry, had to reconstruct this post from when forums went down, probably disjointed as hell by now.)

i did not have a permission slip to go on this feels trip

that's the plan >:3

 

well, i mean, it's just trading one type of dysphoria for another. i have been told that cis people experience dysphoria when they are misgendered. and she was willing to be misgendered to get information about her family. the transgirl part of it is just adding a double mobius reacharound to pidge's genderfuckery. not needed, per se, and not my favorite headcanon, but if you wanna explore that idea in a fic, i need a permission slip first.

 

SAJKGHJAG You're terrible (plz don't ever stop).

Seriously tho, there's a reason sunspotpony and me refer to the ship as Sass and Ass.

 

Big McLargehuge is my favorite, and iirc Fridge Beefslab.

But I think Gunderson is an authentic last name, Scandinavian or US Midwestern sounding to me.

 

I WOULD LIKE TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOU AND SUNSPOTPONY'S NEWSLETTER.

or maybe just get ur skype.

 

Gunderson is a real last name, but when you add it to "Pidge," especially if that's actually what was on the enlistment forms, it really starts sounding like Fakey McFakename.

I have to headcanon that whatever Pidge enlisted as, "Pidge" is a nickname, or it drives me nuts. You do not get as smart as Pidge and then choose something that weird and attention-getting as your cover name while you are trying to hide.

ETA: (I say as a giant hypocrite from the Detective Conan fandom where the protag is a supposed genius but also fails at cover names due to time pressure and lack of creativity...)

 

The news letter is mostly just: " HOW AWESOME WOULD BE FOR TINY, BULL-HEADED SASS MASTER TO DOMINEER THAT TRAIN WRECK TO HEAVEN AND BACK, SO AWESOME, LIKE SO SO AWESOME, C'MON PIDGE, WRECK HIS SHIT!" because we are both suckers for small aggressive chicks taking charge, mmmhmmmm.

 

pidge "my name is jeff" gunderson

 

oh yes, exactly! :D:D:D

 

Spoiler: More Pidgegender Opinions

So I have two separate accounts of who Pidge is, genderwise, because I'm a clingy jealous dysphoric mess but I also REALLY like the idea of having a girl character like Pidge existing. So badass. So cute.

Basically, while I think she's a girl who made tactically sound gender decisions but also just kinda doesn't care in canon, in my heart they're nonbinary and that's really important to me for lots of reasons and I will never let it go. >:c

 

Spoiler: more gender things

Yeah, I have similar feelings. Bitty Lizard reacted to gender things a lot of the same way Pidge has, and I assumed "girl" matched what i was at 14 because of not hating body parts. And sometimes I would play around with presenting as a boy, but even though I was fine with that part, I felt bad about people using male pronouns, not because I disliked the pronouns but because I felt like I was tricking them/lying to people. Fast forward 16 years and oh hey Lizard learned that social dysphoria was a thing and stuff is making a lot more sense now. So I have kind of personally imprinted on Pidge-as-non-binary even if it's not canon.

 

Spoiler: This also ties in to why I like Shidge so much,

When I go with my heart-of-hearts truth about Pidge's gender and then think about throwing a respectful Shiro in that mix, it's so validating and thus, extremely hot.

There's just not enough fanworks in the world.

 

@Aqua Vitae this gives me life

 

100% feel free to PM me about it anytime,