#I kinda see Keith as gay regardless if he ended up with Lance or not

[leonawriter]

Last night I read a Voltron reincarnation AU - basically, they had vague memories of having been in this situation, flown these lions, before. There was a lot of hinting toward DotU compliant ships, too.

I went in thinking ‘hey, this could be really interesting if done well’, and I came out thinking ‘I would have done it differently’.

[cut for length]

The main thing I was unsure of was... well, not the shipping at all (which was only in hints, so that could even have been expanded upon) but the feeling like their ‘past’ selves were pushing them into becoming or wanting to fit into those past roles again, which made them having different roles feel awkward and stilted, sometimes creating tension in the team where in either canon, there isn't any.

There was not enough distinction between the past and present. Or, at times, too much distinction, enough that things were confusing for them.

In a purely self-indulgent version, I’d write it that perhaps DotU happened in an alternate universe - perhaps something like a Beta reality - meaning that we aren’t left wondering when, exactly, this previous set of Voltron pilots flew the lions, if the lions in VLD were only created during Alfor’s reign (as shown in S2 ep Space Mall). 

Not to mention, in VLD? Zarkon has been reigning for ten thousand years, during none of which have there been any other Voltron pilots. No alternate Allura. And also in VLD, Earth has only just started developing space travel to the edge of our solar system. It’s unlikely we had space travel over ten thousand years ago, let’s be real here.

So. With that, we’ve got a starting place.

Going with the idea that if they are reincarnations then they’re the result of, essentially, a doomed timeline - possibly one where they failed somehow like in one of the comics, but with more widespread repercussions. 

Next thing is understanding that the DotU characters and the VLD characters are different people. Sometimes, they might seem very similar! They’re supposed to. The VLD ones are based on the original DotU/GoLion/VF versions. But they are not the same. This is important, because although in the previous series Lance might have flown Red straight from the beginning and Keith was always the leader, here they are not best suited for those roles at the beginning, they’re kids, and if they are going to end up in different Lions (like in S3) then it’s because they’ve grown as people, and they’re better suited to those roles at that time.

Memories and deja vu would still happen, but... not in a way that would have Lance longing for Red, or Keith thinking up plans in way as though he’s the leader! 

Lance is clearly happy and best suited to Blue, and yes, I can see him having moments of jealousy over Red, but it’s more the kind of thing where he’s seeing Keith as getting the most attention again, picked out for the ‘best’ things - ‘hey, I can fly a speedy Lion! I can rely on my instincts and prove myself! I can do this too!’, with a mix in of feeling like he’d done this before. 

And as for Keith... I’m sorry, but I really can’t imagine him strategising competently in the first couple of seasons. I just can’t. We even see what happens when he tries (no, Keith, don’t rush the guards, we need to not hurt the Balmera). Maybe, though, he might look back on things they’ve done, and once the mission is over, be able to see what went wrong, and how he’d do it better next time, and sometimes have a sense of frustration that his mind isn't working like it somehow should, he should be able to do this, to think like this, why can’t he.

Shiro, I can see not having too many issues, though mainly because his memories/echoes from Sven are so similar to his own issues of dying/nearly dying/being imprisoned.

Pidge, I think, would probably try and ignore it all? She’s a scientific mind, down to earth and all, not one to put stock in the idea of reincarnation. Although, I do think she’d maybe have some gender issues here more than in VLD canon, where she really is some form of genderqueer due to DotU Pidge being male - but I think her preferred pronouns would still be female. And because I think it may even have been as early as DotU that introduced the idea that Pidge was from another planet (confirmed, by the wiki! Although in DotU Pidge wasn’t born on Balto, and I don’t know if it’s confirmed whether or not he was in Force), Pidge ends up going to Keith in the aftermath of him finding out he’s actually part Galra, to have some time bonding over being a different species, or remembering you were once - such as how Katie got teased and encouraged by her family for talking about Balto when she was little and it was all awesome.

Hunk might even have his echoes of having been a hotheaded ‘let’s rush straight in’ kind of guy make his anxieties even worse, being like, ‘er, guys, I have a funny feeling if I just rushed into that something bad would happen. Let’s not.’ 

Allura - now her, I can see taking all of her memories and listening to them. She’s attuned to the Lions and the castle, too. I could see her looking back at the castle on Arus and seeing the DotU castle, and hearing/seeing the word ‘Arus’ and thinking ‘I feel like this is safe/home’, and being sad to leave. I can see her becoming more at ease when she hears the new Paladins’ names, because those names feel familiar. I can see her feeling uneasy about Zarkon when she’s growing up, because he’s in her nightmares, but she doesn’t understand why - because he’s also her father’s good friend. She’d also feel a sort of kinship with Blue, which might be part of why she doesn’t just continue after Lance cuts in on her explanations, but she’s so involved in making sure she’s in control of everything that up until it’s needed, the idea of flying Blue is just a flight of fancy. 

And... Coran? Coran I can see having feelings of wanting to keep holding onto everyone as long as possible, not wanting his princess to go into dangerous situations but, at the same time, understanding better than previous versions that you can’t stop her if that’s what she’s got her mind set on. 

The bit I’d call this ‘self-indulgent’ for, though, is my ideas on shipping. 

Like... the VLD characters aren’t just blank slates? You can’t just say that they’re always going to end up with the same people, even in a reincarnation AU. Some of them might even have dated before they find themselves with Voltron, and liked their partners, and split up for reasons entirely separate from ‘I have this feeling in my head that I’m not supposed to be with you and I’m waiting for That Special One In My Dreams’. And they might meet the one they were in love with in a past/other life and just... that’s not who they are now.

Sometimes reincarnation shipping works, and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it just takes a lot of good writing to make it work. Simple as that.

My own personal take would be that... every so often, Keith gets certain feelings whenever he looks at Allura, and it’s, well, weird? Because it’s really more like he’s seeing someone else, not the Allura he knows. And when the moment is gone, so are the feelings, and it leaves him disoriented. 

Allura even gets something similar, where she’ll sometimes look at Keith and expect him to say or do something other than what he ends up saying or doing, and again - she might have moments where it feels like there’s a crush going on, but then the moment will pass, or she’ll actually look at him, and she’ll go, that’s not the same person. Again, confusion.

I can see after a while, Keith actually asks to have a word with her, after they’ve all agreed that something is going on, and asks if she’s getting this as well. He awkwardly apologises, but explains that he’s, uh, it’s not going to happen. There’s a reason it’s particularly weird on his end. Maybe this other Keith and Allura were involved, but... this Keith? He’s kinda not into girls like that.

He ends up red in the face from having to say this in such a way for such a reason, but even though Allura stares at him for a few moments, she starts to laugh, and then they’re laughing together, because - let’s be honest, the situation is ridiculous. 

After that, they end up as good friends, accepting that although their relationship isn’t the same as before, there’s clearly still some sort of understanding there. 

Partially because of this, Keith is the one Pidge goes to with her gender issues after Keith accidentally admits his ‘other’ self was in a relationship with Allura to the team (and a jealous Lance, possibly in a similar situation to Arc of the Taujeer in S2). They’ve both got memories or echoes of being some sort of identity that they’re not that isn’t just down to where they were born. 

(Lance picked up English far faster than any of his family expected him to, for someone with an often short attention span and some kind of learning disability.  Same with Shiro, whose first language is Japanese, where he picked up English quite well, but also ends up translating Swedish in his head whenever he’s not paying any attention.)

[backupblogforjg]

The racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and cruel tropes in Voltron

So, it’s the anniversary of the ending of Voltron. And I’m getting really, really tired of people saying that only shippers hated the ending. There were many issues with Voltron, and they were neither limited to shipping nor to S8.

So, I’ve decided to compile a list.

It gets LONG. Turns out there was a hell of a lot of racist, sexist, ableist and cruel tropes in VLD.

In fact, I had originally planned on writing a list of both the terrible tropes and the plot holes. But there just wasn’t enough room for both. The post is huge as it is, and with the plot holes, it would have been twice as long, so I had to focus on only one thing.

Salt, obviously. So, so, so much salt. I could turn a lake into a sea here. You’ve been warned.

RACISM:

1) The Alteans are genocide survivors. Out of all the Alteans, only the black Altean was used for a Reverse Racism story where she resents a teammate for belonging to the race that exterminated hers. The white Alteans are totally cool with him, and with his race in general, and only hate the bad people. But the black one had to be taught that hating people because of their race is wrong.

2) VLD Allura is also the only version of Allura who is black. In every other Voltron media (several different cartoons and comics), Allura is blond with blue eyes. All the white versions of the character get a happy ending, while only the black version ends up dying to save the world.

While "hero sacrifices their life to save the world" is not a bad trope in and of itself, it becomes bad when it kills off one of the extremely few black female characters in leading roles. You kill off a white male hero, there are 463278462387 more. You kill off the black female hero, you are kinda screwed. Making it worse, Allura had been portrayed as suffering from depression throughout the latest seasons, so that her death comes across less as heroic sacrifice and more as suicide.

3) The brown Cuban kid who dreamed of being a pilot, and never once in 78 episodes ever expressed anything but sheer love for an exciting life, in the final two minutes of the final episode ends up realizing that the place for him is a farm.

4) As told in interviews, Lotor was meant to be a bad example of mixed-race person, to contrast him with Keith as good example of mixed race person. Do I even have to point out how messed up this is?

5) Even before they became Space Nazis, back when they were still on the side of the angels, the Galra invaded and conquered planets. This is portrayed as totally cool when they happily name the prince after a "hero" who invaded and conquered a lot of worlds, and the peaceful Alteans think the guy is just as heroic as one of their greatest scientists. Apparently there is such a thing as ethically killing people to steal their land.

6) They whitewashed Keith, a character who is poc in every other iteration of Voltron.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to get angry here, claiming that I hate Keith. Let me assure you, I don’t. I love Keith, and I hate what was done to him. I hate that they took a traditionally poc character and went to frankly ridiculous lengths to erase that part of his character. Keith should be Asian, and it would be incredibly easy to make him so in VLD (seriously, all they’d have to do is update the freaking bios, an intern could do it right now in 5 minutes). But they refuse to do it.

A lot of people don’t realise that the surname “Kogane” in VLD is fanon.

I’m serious. Check his official bios page. Keith is not actually called Keith Kogane in VLD. Fans started calling him that in fanfiction, and it stuck, but it’s not canon.

In every other Voltron media, Keith is an Asian guy. But in VLD, they:

- went out of their way to always avoid giving him an Asian surname

- gave him a Texan father

- refused to confirm his race, even when every other character had a specific race. Again, check his official bios. All the other characters got a race, Keith gets “human.” It got so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren’t sad. It pretty much went like this:

Fans: Keith is half alien, but about his human half, what is his ethnicity? EPs: oh, we couldn't possibly say, because the story takes place in the future, and in the future, everybody is mixed up! So, Keith is HUMAN, we can't give him a specific race because there are no specific races in the future! Fans: ok. And what are the races of the other characters? EPs: Pidge is Italian, Lance is Cuban, Hunk is half-black half- Samoan, Shiro is Japanese. Fans: but Keith...? EPs: HUMAN! There is no such thing as race in the future!

Some people at least hoped that Keith's Texan father had Asian ancestry because he kinda looked like Shiro, who is Japanese. But the EPs confirmed that the resemblance was just a coincidence, they never meant for the dad to look Japanese.

At this point pretty much the only evidence that Keith is Asian is that he is voiced by an Asian person. But then, Josh Keaton is not Japanese, is he?

7) After whitewashing Keith, they claimed he is the best leader of Voltron, better than his poc predecessor, because he has Galra blood.

So, instead of bringing up any sort of legit reason to justify why Keith should be in charge (like his empathy or pilot skills), they go with "the half-white guy is also half space-nazi and that's why he should give the orders instead of the poc guy."

If you think I’m bashing Keith here, please ask yourself why you are getting angry at the person pointing out the whitewashing instead of getting angry at the whitewashing. Especially when, again, making VLD Keith canonically poc could be done anytime with zero cost and zero effort, and DW just doesn’t want to.

- Hunk, the half-black half-Samoan guy, was going to be killed and replaced as Paladin by a blue alien. The EPs were pissed when DW forbade them to, and complained in the interview about it.

SEXISM:

Every single woman who is ever put in charge ends up going insane, making terrible decisions that endanger her planet, or losing all of her authority.

Allura starts out as co-leader of Voltron and leader of the Coalition. Ends up as a foot soldier who takes orders from the new leader and his right-hand man, and is treated as a cadet by the Earth military.

HOMOPHOBIA:

1) Dreamworks, Netflix and the EPs very, very, very heavily promoted S7 as GLBT-friendly. The EPs gave whole interviews about the past relationship between Shiro and new character Adam, retweeted a ton of posts celebrating Shiro’s homosexuality, and enthusiastically sent tweets like "you are going to see more of Adam in S7! :D" from their personal accounts after they showed the episode that introduced him.

In S7:

- Shiro's homosexuality is so ambiguous that even the Brazilian voice actor didn't realize that he was supposed to be gay. Just by watching the show, without knowing the World Of God, you can’t tell he and the other guy were engaged.

- Adam gets about 30 seconds of screentime after that one episode they had already shown. Then he dies screaming in pain and terror in a fire.

A lot of people claimed that it was okay to kill Adam because Shiro was supposed to be our rep, not Adam, who was a brand new character we knew little about. And, out of context, that would be true. Adam was pretty much a NPC, why would his death matter?

But the problem here is the context:

- Shiro is closeted in S7, you need to read interviews to know he is gay. So, if only Shiro is meant to be the rep, they couldn’t even do that right.

- They very heavily marketed both Shiro and Adam as gay rep, and specifically talked at length about Adam in several interviews.

In THAT context, REGARDLESS of what you ship, killing off Adam revealed a complete willingness to manipulate the audience to the point of outright lying. Even if you hated Adam, even if Adashi is your NOTP, the clear evidence that the creators had absolutely no problem making empty promises was NOT a good sign.

2) The moment Shiro is revealed to be gay in interviews, he is practically quarantined from the Team.

3) Shiro is also given a Totally Not AIDS deadly disease.

Making it even worse, Shiro never actually gets cured in canon. We are told he is cured in interviews, but the show itself drops the topic entirely. Depending on where you lean in the Word Of God VS Death Of The Author debate, Shiro may be doomed to die.

4) A female villain is revealed to be a lesbian. 30 seconds later she gleefully tortures a little girl. Then she, too, dies in a fire.

(Fan outrage about pulling two Bury Your Gays in the Season that had been very heavily promoted as GLBT-friendly caused DW to retcon her death and bring her back in S8, but she was originally meant to die in the explosion)

5) Shiro ends up marrying a random character who doesn’t even get a name in the show.

ABLEISM:

1) Shiro's PTSD magically disappears offscreen. In interviews, the EPs claimed that he "got over it" between S6 and S7 because "he is a professional." Wow! Who knew being a professional magically cures mental illnesses!

2) Shiro is an amputee. The EPs admitted that they never put any thought into his status as disabled rep, they just wanted a character with a cool-looking arm. It literally didn't occur to them that making him lose his arm (TWICE! First up to the biceps, then up to the shoulder) meant anything. Also worth noting that Shiro’s new arm makes him look like the guy who tormented him.

3) Shiro is systematically robbed of his agency.

- He is the only Paladin who never gets to use his bayard.

- He loses his bond with Black for no given canon reason (and the reason they give in interviews makes no sense, they basically say that transferring his soul out of the Black Lion makes her stop loving him. But she still lets Zarkon fly her!).

I know that Keith is traditionally Black’s pilot in Voltron media (although that shouldn’t matter, because VLD made a lot of huge changes to the traditional status quo). But if they wanted Black Paladin Keith that badly, they could have given some non-insulting reason for it. For example, say “because Shiro has spent so much time within Black, their bond is now so strong that he will get absorbed again if he flies her again.” Or co-pilots in Black (if Pidge can co-pilot with Matt, why can’t Shiro co-pilot with Keith?).

- He is defeated not only by Sendak, but also by a bunch of random Alteans. He basically can’t win a fight anymore unless it’s played for laughs.

- His new robot Atlas is bigger than Voltron, but also much weaker, and can only buy a few minutes for Voltron to come save the day.

- Every single enemy he ever defeated comes back to be finished off by somebody else (even the friggin' Gladiator from S1 comes back in S8). In the epilogue, he retires in his twenties.

4) Narti, the disabled General, is fridged shortly after her introduction. For a while at least it seemed like her death had affected the remaining three Generals, but then it turns out that the "For Narti" line was a trick and they never actually planned on avenging her.

CRUEL TROPES:

1) They intentionally baited the fans by pushing the plot thread that Lotor would be redeemed. They named the episode where he defects "A New Defender," they kept saying in interviews that they come from Avatar and they are very familiar with Zuko *hint hint*, they showed his family as incredibly abusive and Lotor himself as desperate, they showed that Lotor was a victim of severe racism (he is mixed race, and as stated above, the Galra are Space Nazis and are pretty obsessed with blood purity).

Then, after revealing him to be a villain, they gave an interview where they practically dislocated their shoulders by patting themselves on the back as they gleefully bragged that "we made them think we would give them a Zuko, but we gave them an Azula!"

(Nevermind the fact that Azula herself was a 14-year-old child, not a monster, and that Aaron Ehasz himself confirmed that he always wanted her to be redeemed).

When fans who are survivors of child abuse told them that the bait-and-switch was really hurtful, they laughed it off, and claimed that Lotor was just beyond redemption. Then they proceeded to redeem Lotor's abusive parents, who were objectively much worse.

2) Shiro’s clone, who sincerely believed he was Shiro and always meant well, was dehumanised, demonised and discarded like his life meant nothing. His short existence was full of pain from literally the moment he first opened his eyes, as Haggar kept torturing him with migraines to manipulate him. In the end, she brutally violates him body and mind, and brainwashes him to force him to turn on the family he was so desperate to find in The Journey. He dies in incredibly questionable circumstances, without ever getting to learn that his family survived Haggar’s plans. He is victim-blamed for the things she forced him to do against his will with mind-control, and is never mourned because the only family he ever had writes him off as a “thing” and “evil.”

In fact, the horrific treatment of Kuron foreshadowed S8. The Medium article “It never stops at one - Why Voltron: Legendary Defender's tragic ending wasn't a surprise and why more DreamWorks' series will follow suit” explains how.

The tl;dr version is that, when a story posits that the circumstances of your birth determine the value of your life, so that good intentions and hard work mean nothing, and long-established bonds can be discarded with zero thought and care, and your very humanity can be revoked over something you have absolutely no control over, and the whole sociopathic disaster is celebrated as a happy ending... it really, really can’t end well. Not just for you, but for the entire cast.

[dotuindex]

Description: The DotU squad goes to Arus’s first pride parade in years. Cuteness ensues.

Warnings: None!

“Lean in close, I’m gonna get a picture!” Lance threw an arm around Keith as he pulled out his phone, quickly testing out different angles.

“Another one? You already have at least thirty.” Keith said, before smiling for the camera regardless.

“What? You’re gonna blame a poor guy for wanting more pictures of his beautiful boyfriend? How rude.” Lance faked a pout and batted his eyes, making Keith roll his own, but he laughed all the same.

Lance tapped away on his phone, probably sending a picture to Cliff.

“W- Hunk!” Lance turned to face the older man in the backseat. “You photo bombed us!”

“I’d say my gorgeous mug vastly improved the picture.” Hunk replied, making Allura and Pidge giggle next to him.

Lance huffed, but he quickly lit up again as he got an idea.

“Allura! Lean forward, I wanna get a picture of the two of us.”

Allura did as she was asked, propping her chin up on her arm as she laid it across the back of Lance’s head rest.

Lance snapped the picture, and she watched quietly as he covered it with rainbow stickers and hearts before adding the text “Princess’s first Pride.”

“It’s been too long since we last went to a pride parade.” Keith said, almost wistfully. “I’ve always loved them!”

“What’s your favorite part?” Allura asked as Keith squirmed around in his seat, trying to stop sitting on his flag-turned-cape.

Keith thought for just a moment before responding, “When I'm actually in the parade, I like handing out the candy.”

“I like eating it!” Pidge cut in.

“I second that,” said Hunk, “but try not to overdo it this time. Last time we gave you control over your sugar intake you threw up.”

Pidge huffed and flushed pink as Keith groaned.

“Just thinking about that makes me nauseous!” Keith gave a full body shiver.

The car came to a stop, but before Keith or Lance could even make a grab for the door handles, Nanny turned to them from her place in the passenger seat.

“Stay safe, and don’t cause any trouble!”

“Kinda hard when trouble looks for us!” Pidge’s laugh was met by a hard glare that quickly shut him down.

“Yeah, no problem, We’ll be careful!” Keith said in a rush, before throwing open the door and leaping out.

“Responsible is my middle name!” Lance said as he followed suit, gracelessly, almost falling face first into the pavement in his haste.

Pidge followed him out, eager to either get away from Nanny or to stretch his legs after being crammed between Hunk and Allura the whole way here, it was hard to tell. Hunk, ever the gentleman, let Allura exit first.

🏳️‍🌈

Pride parades, Allura concluded, were ultimately not so different from any other parade she’d ever been to. People dressed in bright colors, strange looking floats, banners and vendors and music and so on.

And yet, Allura felt wholly out of her element, what with the flags she didn’t recognize and the culture she didn’t know. They were still just as Arusian as anyone else, of course, but there’s a different history happening here, a whole different world of experiences.

Allura always feared the idea that she was out of touch with her people, but never has she felt so woefully ignorant. Before she met the boys, she didn’t even know that being gay or bi or what have you was even a thing, so she was absolutely thrown in the deep end when she found out that not only could people like the same gender, but that some of her closest friends did.

And here she was in the present, next to Lance in his “I put the BI in BITCH” T-shirt, surrounded by a bunch of people celebrating their lives for the first time in over 20 years, immediately at a loss.

“Allura!”

She shrieked as Romelle threw her arms around her and easily lifted her feet off the ground. The taller woman spun around with her a few times, making Allura dizzy.

“Careful, you’ll break her ribs hugging her like that.” Sven said, giving his almost silent laugh, more of an exhale than anything.

Romelle set her down rather gingerly after that, and Allura smoothed the wrinkles from her jumpsuit.

“This is so exciting!” Romelle’s voice went uncharacteristically high as she jumped from foot to foot. “I’ve never even heard of a pride parade until this one! And the floats are so pretty!”

It was odd seeing Romelle so giddy, but Allura couldn’t blame her. She looked like a regular young woman for once, dressed in shorts and a “proud bisexu-whale” tank top (courtesy of her boyfriend) and with a myriad of jingly, brightly colored bangles and bracelets on either wrist.

"It really is something, isn't it?" Allura replied. She'd never seen Romelle smile so much, and she wondered briefly if it was hurting her face to smile that hard.

"Let's go! I want to get a good place to watch!" Romelle grabbed her hand, leading her into a busy streets as the boys trailed behind.

🏳️‍🌈

Pride parades, Allura concluded, were awesome. Maybe it was the fact that this was the first parade she'd ever been to where Nanny and Coran hadn't been breathing down her neck the whole time. The older duo had declined coming along past dropping them off and joining her on stage for her speech. She found it... odd.

But the show- or parade- must go on.

After the floats and speeches came what Lance loved and Pidge dreaded; the market place, usually full of of fresh foods and whatnot was now stocked with all manner of shirts, flags, pins, bracelets, bags- basically if you could slap a pride flag on it, it was there.

Lance loved supporting local creators. Pidge just wanted to avoid getting trampled by a crowd of people twice his size.

They ended up splitting into groups for the sake of navigating the storm- Lance and Keith flew off like the little love birds they were, Hunk played chaperone for Pidge, who wanted something to eat (not the Hunk was complaining), and Allura opted to play third wheel to her cousin and Sven.

The trio wormed their way through the crowd to different booths, dropping cash as they saw fit. It was fun spending so much time with Romelle. They hadn't known each other for that long, but it felt like they always did, like they were old friends.

Sven had laughed when Romelle was so quick to throw a wad of money at this one vender with a "bisexual of the blade" T-shirt, but he couldn't deny that it suited her perfectly.

They found themselves at a stand with what had to have been millions of buttons, in dozens of designs. They quickly set to work scouring the collection in hopes of finding one for everyone in their little brigade. Keith was easy to find one for- the "moron-sexual" button a sure way to get a laugh and an offended gasp from Lance. Pidge was much harder, but while searching for his, Allura had a difficult enough time remembering what flags went with what label. They had rainbow pins, that one was easy. Then there was the bi flag, another easy one.

"Need any help?"

Allura looked up at one of the women running the booth. She was a little older than the princess, her hair a royal blue.

"Lots." Allura replied, laughing breathlessly. "What is... this one?

She held up one of the buttons, monochrome with a streak of purple.

"That's the ace flag."

At Allura's confused expression, she added, "the asexual flag."

"Oh! Okay, I know that one, um..." She must look so silly, the little straight girl who doesn't even know the flags, but she was curious enough to ignore her embarrassment.

"What about this one?" She asked, holding up a second button.

"That's the pansexual pride flag." The woman replied.

Okay, well, that's a new word.

"What's that?"

Oh gosh, was that rude?

Allura felt relieved, if embarrassed, when the women laughed a little.

"It's like... if someone is attractive, they're attractive. Pansexuals could be attracted to anyone, regardless of gender, I guess is how you could explain it." She said.

Oh. Huh.

"OUCH!"

Allura dropped the button back into the container as Romelle yelped.

"You alright?" Sven asked.

"Yeah, just pricked my finger." She said.

"Do I need to kiss it better?"

Romelle snorted and playfully shoved him. Still giggling, she asked, "Did you find a button you wanted?"

"No, but I don't need one. The pictures are good enough momentos." Allura replied, shrugging.

That left them with six buttons that they paid for before heading their way to their rendezvous point, a little cafe just around the corner.

Keith and Lance were already there, the former beaming at them and waving frantically to get their attention.

"So, how'd it go?" Keith asked, sipping his soda. He had a new rainbow heart sticker stuck to his cheek.

"Delightfully!" Romelle replied, sliding into a seat at the table.

"It was really something, wasn't it?" Allura said. She was exhausted, but in a good kind of way.

Pidge and Hunk arrived some time later, and the team headed back out into the summer sun. All the sudden Allura felt less tired, like she was missing something important, something she couldn't leave behind.

"Oh! I think I left my camera back in the market. I'll be right back!"

Before they could reply she was off, dashing back down the street.

🏳️‍🌈

They said their goodbyes to Romelle and Sven before cramming themselves back into their car. Hunk gave a sigh of relief, fanning himself with the rainbow fan he had gotten at some point.

"All that really takes it out of ya." He said breathlessly.

"I dunno what you're talking about!" Said Pidge as he popped a jawbreaker into his mouth.

"You're gonna rot your teeth out of your head!" Keith shot over his shoulder.

"Am not!"

"Let him live, Keith. He still just has his baby teeth anyway." Said Lance.

"DO NOT!"

Allura laughed, still toying with the pan pride button in her pocket.