#nonbinary pidge

[willowtreebee]

Keith and Pidge have such a close (sibling-like) bond, you cannot tell me otherwise.

Keith barged into their bedroom and announced that he had the best meme idea.

(Yes, Pidge taught him about meme culture.)

This was a hilarious idea-

Ref:

[clickabletale]

how other artists depict “long haired pidge”

vs

how I picture “long haired pidge.”

[still--kicking]

The voltron official tiktok account lowkey confirming nonbinary Pidge in 2024 by using they/them pronouns on a post about the team's coffee orders was not on my bingo card, but I'm not complaining

[oliveden]

keith who is simultaneously mtf and ftm vs pidge who threw gender out the window six years ago and has never gone back

thank you for coming to my ted talk

[ethereance]

Screw it. *Genderfluids your Lance* Post s8. Fix it.

Lance thought his Altean markings were cosmetic. Nothing more. Nothing less. A gift from Allura, leaving a piece of her with him, to look back and remember with fondness her company. As if he could ever forget a girl as incredible as her.

It’s not until much later he realises it’s something more. That maybe Allura gave a portion more than he expected. He stares, face to face with his mirror. Something off. Something strange. Something that grabs his attention before he really knows what he’s looking at.

His ears slowly shift back to human. But they were there long enough. He saw the Altean ears.

“Incredible,” Coran says when Lance broaches this to him, and after multiple attempts at trying at failing at repeating what happened in the mirror. At last he succeeds. “You’re shifting just like an Altean.”

“I’m not turning Altean, am I?” he panics. He’s pretty attached to being a human and all.

“Haha! Don’t be ridiculous number three, you can’t just ‘turn Altean.’ Good one! Turn Altean, he says. That’s one to remember for an open mike.” Then Coran takes one look at his genuine distress and sobers. “Rest assured, my boy, you’re one hundred percent earthling, ears and all. Allura wouldn’t change you so completely when she loved you the way you are. It just seems she passed our chameleon-like abilities over to you. I can’t say I’ve ever heard anything like this ever documented before, but Allura…”

“Has a way of accomplishing the possible,” Lance offers when Coran’s eyes grow distant, bittersweet.

“Yes,” agrees Coran. Something proud, something sombre, “That she did.”

***

Lance practices often, following Coran’s guidance. Even Romelle drops by at Coran’s request, eager to show someone the ropes.

“In the colony, we had little need to shift as our ancestors had. Our only home had been there, tucked away in a corner of the universe. We understood little of the outside world except what Lotor brought us. Even so, it was an ability we never lost. When you have mastered it, it’s like walking. It becomes natural. To some more than others,” she says, a surprisingly patient teacher. He wonders where this side of her was when she was trying to get him to teach her to pilot. “You may be the ‘others’! But that okay. My… my brother Bandor was the same.”

For such a bright supernova of a person, it is easy to forget that, like Coran, Romelle has been touched by grief. And grief again.

“You strike me as an adaptable person, pointy chin. Like rivers and oceans, it has made you you. I have full confidence in your abilities. And if Allura were here.” She smiles, and it is pain, but beauty. A flower unfurling in the wake of a storm. “I know she would say the same.”

***

He finds himself slipping into other forms like a glove. It becomes easier, a swifter motion just as Romelle had said.

It’s freeing, in a way. To walk as something so slightly adjacent to him. A Lance of another life. Altean, balmeran, olkari, puigian, anything he can think of.

He loves being Plaxum’s species the most. A mer. Beneath the waves, it feels like coming home. He’s a missile underwater, swimming loops around coral.

Dreams really do come true.

***

There’s something about transforming that pulls him that much closer to Allura. Her quintessence sings to him, and his skin dances. He feels alive as he hasn’t in a long time.

Happier maybe. Or that much closer to it.

He wishes he could take a photo of Keith the second he catches sight of Lance, a good extra foot on him, and purple as a plum.

“So this is a… thing,” says Keith eventually. And what an observation that is. Lance explains.

“Don’t let Hunk catch you like this,” is Keith’s response, a hint of tired amusement, “He’ll call you Galra Lance and never stop.”

***

It starts with him shifting into an unilu. He needs the extra hands. Lance doesn’t realise the gender he’d chosen until Coran points it out offhandedly. Now, Lance knows that not every species is going to be quite so clear cut as biologically male or female. Some have more some have less. Some won’t even know what the word gender means. He has experienced a taste of the universe. He knows how vast and diverse it is. When shapeshifting into a species like that, it makes sense his gender isn’t something he’d retain.

Female. He’d made himself into a female unilu. It was a matter of size and facial shape. Nothing too strange, no stranger than his body shifting into a skin it wasn’t born into, but noticeable enough.

And isn’t that something.

***

It’s out of curiosity he tries the same as a human. Curiosity and nothing more. Just because he can. Really. Honest.

Lance half expects his girl!sona would just be a carbon copy of Rachel with the added blue scales residing beneath his eyes. But that isn’t who he sees in the mirror.

He sees. Well, he sees himself.

Herself.

She looks, feels, kind of pretty. Which makes sense. She’s Lance. Of course she looks great. Goes without saying.

Lance’s lip twitches.

***

So. So maybe he throws on the form again. And again. And again. Maybe a little more than he does with any alien species. But can you blame him? He’s just found out he has a free trial at being a girl so quiznack if he isn’t going to try it out.

Her hair is long. Her hair is short. She pulls off both looks well, she thinks. Being a girl is kind of awesome, actually.

It’s not always the case. Sometimes it just isn’t right. But others? Sometimes he finds himself slipping into her without realising it. It’s just what feels right to her in the moment.

There’s something nice about strangers using ‘she’ and ‘her’ and they don’t know. They don’t know. Something in her bubbles, giddy, they don’t know.

But Lance’s family do. Pidge does.

They look at Lance—now once again a boy—and hum, thoughtful, considering.

“Are you are girl?” they ask. Pidge does not beat around the bush. It throws Lance through enough loops to put him in a spiral.

“No”, says Lance. But for some reason that doesn’t sound quite right. “I mean. I’m not always. But—”

“You are sometimes?”

“I guess. But it’s just shapeshifting. I’m not actually—” Lance trails off, lost. “Am I?”

“Do you want to be?” Pidge asks, and huh. Does he want to be? Is it really that simple? He’s always seen himself as a guy, and had no problems with that. But.

Well.

“… Maybe. Maybe sometimes.”

Pidge grins, wild and victorious. “Welcome to the club.”

(Something in his chest feels lighter. There’s a cavern, because it has made its mark and stayed. That has not changed. But this is this.

How wonderful it is to find the answers to secrets within oneself. He could have lived his whole life without knowing, a part locked away without him ever knowing there was a lock. But now, how could he?

It’s like he’s no longer holding in a breath.)

***

Pidge later tells him it’s criminally unfair he can change his body on a whim. They are fine with she, they are, but they are them. Sometimes she is just too much she to match their they.

Lance wonders how much Allura managed to see him. He remembers how close they became, how she became someone he’d call a best friend, then a lover. How she perceived him better than most throughout it all. Looked to him and saw greatness where he, despite wanting to be so much more, only saw failure. He wishes he knew what she saw when she looked at him. The person he was. Is. Lance.

If she knew what these markings have done for him. Did she know?

She can’t have done. Lance didn’t even know.

(But if she had—

It’s not like Lance can ask.)

***

Allura comes back.

She descends like a shooting star, the blinding light of an angel’s fall. She falls home and it is at home she stays. Days are bliss. A dream Lance dare not wake from.

“You’re not dreaming,” she tells him, soft, and kind, but aching, “I’m here. I won’t leave again. My duty to revive the universe is fulfilled. I’m here to live. And I chose to live with you.”

He kisses the words from her lips, blissfully sweet. She more than happily complies.

“I never meant to hurt you this much.”

“You’re here now,” Lance says, and it sounds so beautiful spoken out loud like this. How long he’s dreamed for such a moment. “That’s all that matters. We can move forwards together.”

This is their start.

***

It takes a while. But she tells Allura.

Allura kisses her senselessly. Lance loves it.

“Though I can’t take credit for this being my intention, I’m glad you learned more of yourself.” Allura’s fondness is an ocean she could drown in. “I love the person you are.”

“Yeah?”

Allura’s hand trails Lance’s ear. “Yes. Very much so. It’s an added bonus that I managed fix your ears. You have tried an Altean form, right?”

Lance jolts. “Allura!” she protests, a little put out. “What’s wrong with my ears?”

“Nothing,“ she says, warm and amused. “Nothing at all. I find that they have grown on me greatly. They’re cute. Just like the rest of my girlfriend.”

Oh. Girlfriend.

Her heart is full.

[pidgwin]

I'm agender. I feel nothing in the space a gender is 'supposed' to be. I feel equally detached from womanhood as i do manhood, but i am read and treated as a woman by people and society. It gives me this closeness to a womans experience, which I lack with mens experiences. I sort of experience womanhood by association. I don't feel it, but i sort of know it? I deal with the advantages and (let's be honest, mostly) disadvantages of a thing i don't relate to. I crave so deeply to be unreadable. For people to look at me and be unable to assign me a box within their heads. Then maybe i can simply be perceived as myself. Detached, finally, from this thing i don't understand. Just as me.

[iamnotdirtylaundry]

pidge but i'm awful w backgrounds

[alienboy51]

transfem pidge is actually the most goated headcanon. ohhh i love her she's so girl. she's so weird girl. she's so nonbinary. she's so demigirl but not demigirl. she's so picks worms out of the ground when she's four years old do you understand

[necronatural]

people talking about voltron again reminds me i first developed a sense for casual transmisogyny and the "cis women and women-lite only" philosophy from the way people reacted to pidge being a girl by doing everything in their power to make her trans to the point of trying to enforce the horrifically and stomach-churningly transphobic idea of her being a trans man but almost nobody was willing to assign her trans woman, even though "detransitioned to access information on her brother and not only are her friends reinforcing the catharsis of coming out they were also getting serious #girl vibes from her this whole time" is like. the most coherent, emotionally intense, and spiritually rewarding trans reading possible for this character.

this was so impactful for me despite not being in the fandom and not watching the show past season 1 i carried a "pidge check" impulse into every other fandom where im conscious of who "gets" to be trans and in what way.

the other thing i took from voltron is that keith/hunk should have been endgame.

[monster-blood69]

Oh also here is Pidge playing block blast

There will probably be another Pidge post soon :) bc I did draw more

[trivial-mecha-ramblings]

Pidge should have been nb and aroace. I speak for the people.

[asthmaticplushiedragon]

Friend: So who was your Gender awakening?

Me: ??? I didn't know that was a thing??? Who was yours?

Friend: hmm. Pidge Holt, I think--

Me: --OMG MY GENDER AWAKENING WAS PIDGE

[pidgefudge]

i think neo is like a different outfit. something i can slip into when im unmasked and less gendered and less human. and we only feel like separate individuals because we have distinct enough genders and a strong sense of our names (neo also has a strong aversion to my names)

[kitkatt0430]

Lance was, perhaps, not the most observant guy in the universe. He acknowledges this fact, accepts that's a thing about himself. It's fine, he's still a cool guy for the most part.

Still, he was pretty shocked about the whole 'Pidge is a girl actually' thing. Not because there weren't, like... signs. Which Lance did, in fact, pick up on. He has sisters; he can, in fact, recognize when a person with a uterus is having a bad week and needs chocolate to stave it off. He has, in fact, bribed Pidge with chocolate to calm the hell down a few times since he - she, gotta remember that now, she's a she who hers - was assigned to the same team as himself and Hunk. (It's been more than a few times and Lance maybe wishes he'd thought to stop Blue off at a convenience store to buy a few cases of Pidge's favorite chocolates before blasting off into space.)

But... having a period does not make someone a woman. Or girl. Whatever. It just made them someone who possessed a uterus.

So this whole time Lance had just been assuming that Pidge was a trans dude. Or trans masc with a preference for he/him pronouns. But, like, apparently she's just pulling the 'Princess disguises herself as a man' routine, except she's not the Princess in this story. She's the genius inventor/mechanic. Which is just as important as being a princess, not that Lance is going to share that nugget of wisdom with actual-princess Allura.

And the annoying thing is no one else apparently came to this extremely obvious conclusion that Pidge was just trans and so he's the only one who is just... confused that he - she, dammit - is not in fact a guy. It's a little annoying really.

(When Pidge comes out a few months later as nonbinary with a preference for she/him pronouns, Lance finally explains the whole 'trans guy' assumption. Because it turns out he was actually right. Mostly anyway.

Pidge - I hate to say it but... Lance was right. I'm not a girl.

Lance - Hah! I'm allowed to be right sometimes, ya know?

Keith - Only once a blue moon.

Lance - ... was that a Lion pun?

Pidge - *giggling*

Keith - ... maybe.

Meanwhile Shiro and Hunk are explaining human gender as a social concept to Allura and Coran who are relating it to Altean social concepts that are at once both similar and very much not. Apparently they've been letting the humans use whatever pronouns seem appropriate due to translation convention - it's not like human languages have the right pronouns for their actual genders anyway.)

[pidgwin]

I don't know how to explain to the people i love that i feel just as connected to womanhood as manhood - not at all. The meaning of those words is equally as obscure in my head. I am read as 'woman' but i am just here. I am read as a thing but have no sense of what it is or what it might mean. And yet, i am judged on it in my every moment. I am deemed as something i have no connection to. There's a sort of grief in that somehow. I inherently can not exist as myself because i am connected to a concept i have no affiliation with. I don't know how to escape it.

[iamnotdirtylaundry]

pidge :]

+ no glasses shine ver