#(mostly because he equated doing good at his pilot classes and his friendship with Shiro which was. his own issue)

[discordiansamba]

I do think Lance was once a big fish in a small pond. I think he was the kid from a small town who got the best scores on the simulator when the Garrison came to recruit him. I think he did probably kind of let it get to his head- maybe because he felt like he didn't really have a special talent before, and now he had something that made him stand out. That he was the best pilot in his town!

And then he actually joined the Garrison, and he realized he'd been in a tiny pond all along.

I think here's where he made a mistake- he'd gunned himself up so much on having 'natural talent', that when he was tossed into the larger pond and realized it was full of even bigger fish than him, he still tried to float by on his talent. I think he practiced! But I also think he only did the bare minimum and was like 'yep! that's good enough!'. I don't think he ever likely fully realized that all of the other bigger fish who he thought were so good due to natural talent practiced at least ten times more than he did.

Lance was a cargo pilot at first. We know this. He only got accepted into the fighter pilot program when Keith washed out- which implies that he was probably the best cargo pilot candidate. The top of the list... and then he was the bottom of the list of the fighter pilot class. I think he probably floundered at the more rigorous training the fighter pilots received, but still tried to stick to his 'good enough' training regime.

He had potential- he just wasn't doing anything with it. He was doing what was 'good enough'. It wasn't his fault everyone else had so much more natural talent than he did. He didn't spend enough time in the simulator to see just how much more time everyone else in his class logged.