ironinkpen:

I think I’m a little resistant to the “Lance is actually a prodigy” headcanon because a. it implies that a character can’t be useful unless they’re super intelligent and b. part of Lance’s charm is that he’s not an expert in anything. He’s all about practical knowledge.

Like, listen, Lance can’t fix an engine, but when something goes wrong with their ship in episode one he knows exactly what the problem is. He can’t fight as well as Keith, but when they need to wreck those Galra ships on the Balmera, he comes up with a plan that’ll take out the most. He probably can’t write a code or do all the funky math stuff Pidge does, but he can calculate the number of vargas they have to wait until they’re able to go into the Marmora base. 

Lance’s thing is “okay what do we need?” He doesn’t have to know how to fix a ship, he just needs to know enough to tell Hunk what to fix. He doesn’t have to know how to do crazy math, he just needs to know whether Coran and Allura are talking about a minute or an hour so he doesn’t get killed during a mission. And he doesn’t have to be an incredible fighter, he just needs to come up with the best way to stop the ships from taking off without hurting the Balmera– ie, close the hangar.

He isn’t super book smart or amazing at flying or fighting; he’s a creative little shit who asks practical questions: Do I need to know this or can someone else help me with it? Would knowing this help someone else? and Is there an easier way to do this? He’s really good at knowing what he needs to know and putting things together based on the information he has. Rover’s here, but Pidge isn’t with it and it’s beeping? Yikes, that’s a bomb. The queen seems to be out of a trance and says she didn’t mind control us? Must have been that creepy snake garden I was asking about earlier. 

He’s perceptive. He looks for simple solutions to difficult problems (again, I love how he looked at the Balmera situation and went “let’s just… close the door?”). He’s aware that he’s not the best at everything, so he uses any resource he has to his advantage, whether it be things in his environment (yo his fight against Hunk in the Depths was nice) or people. In the comics when Pidge has to fight a mind controlled Team Voltron, she calls Lance a “top priority” because he has good range and is likely to team up with others. Lance actively seeks the help of other people when he can and distances himself from problems when he can’t so that he can come up with a different solution.

I honestly think that his biggest strength is that he’s not a genius in the way the other members of the team are. Because it makes him take full advantage of what he does have.