#i still love the voltron arcade one

[johaerys-writes]

Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender

Pairing: Keith/Shiro

Summary:

It’s been a long while since Keith got in a fight. Long enough to make it an unlikely occurrence.

The last time he did, Shiro had really thought it would be the last. 

My entry for Day 6: Nursing & Ministering of @shirosaveskeith week is up! Where Keith gets in a fight, and Shiro is there to help and comfort him :)

Read on AO3

The day is already old by the time Shiro walks out of the Garrison. The gates buzz open when he shows his key card, and the guard smiles at him. 

“Done for the day, Shirogane?” 

“I should hope so,” Shiro says, returning the smile. “You’re off soon too, right?”

“Yeah, just a couple hours left until Stan comes along to replace me.” 

“Give him my regards. And enjoy your day off, Ray, you’ve earned it.” 

“Will do. See you around. And don’t work yourself to the ground just yet, eh.”

Shiro laughs politely and waves over his shoulder as he walks away. He’s been having more or less the same conversation with the man for the last three years, ever since he started working this post. The Garrison is Shiro’s home; no, it’s more than that. It’s a small world, all by itself, and Shiro has been part of it for nearly as long as he can remember himself. 

He makes his way through the front lawn, then walks across the parking lot to his car. It’s Sunday and almost everyone has the day off, so it’s empty save for his own car and a couple others. Most of the cadets have been given they day off, too; those who stay in the Garrison are only ever allowed outside once a month or so, and they’re never meant to stray too far. Shiro sometimes sees them at the arcade or the pool bar in the city, laughing and roughhousing. Keith is rarely amongst them, but then again, he’s always been a bit of a loner. 

Shiro hasn’t seen Keith since Friday. He wonders how he’s doing, whether he’s out, too. Shiro should probably send him a text as soon as he gets home. 

The car engine hums when Shiro slips the key in the ignition, then he’s driving down the long, straight road across the desert to the city. He turns on the radio and rolls down the windows, letting the warm and humid late summer air blow through.

An old song comes on, and before long Shiro is singing along under his breath.

The boy with the thorn in his side

Behind the hatred there lies

A murderous desire for love

The sky is painted in shades of gold, amber and red as the sun dips beneath the western mountain range in the distance. It occurs to him that he hasn’t gone hoverbiking with Keith in a while. He’s been so busy with work, and all the preparations for the Kerberos mission, that he hasn’t had much time for him. 

A thread of guilt laces the thought. He really should make more time for Keith. The mission is still months away, but he won’t be seeing him again for a while after he leaves. He wants to spend as much time with him as he can now, to make up for some of what he’ll lose. 

How can they look into my eyes

And still they don’t believe me?

How can they hear me say those words

Still they don’t believe me?

The traffic lights ahead turn orange, then red. Shiro pulls the car to a stop and drums his fingers against the side of the car, in time with the music. He should make a playlist for Keith, when he has the time. All of his favourite songs in one place. It’s as cheesy a gesture as it gets, but Shiro’s always liked making them, and he’s going to make one for himself anyway for the long months he’ll spend on the way to Kerberos, so why not share it with Keith? Their tastes in music don’t exactly match, but it can’t hurt to show him some new songs. Besides, he’ll have something to listen to while Shiro is away. 

The thought warms him. Shiro smiles, waiting for the light to turn green. 

How can they see the love in our eyes

And still they don’t believe us?

And if they don’t believe us now

Will they ever believe us?

The light ahead changes, and the cars before him start rolling forward. Shiro prepares to follow, when a strange sound from outside catches his attention. 

It sounds like the pattering of feet, coming down the lane. It is a hot and lazy evening, and the streets are quiet, so Shiro hears it clearly. A few shouts and grunts, and then a sharp, pained sound. A punch, Shiro thinks, or a kick; a hard one, too. More shouts and swears follow it, and as soon as Shiro turns the corner in his car, he sees it. 

Read the rest on AO3!

#voltron #sheith #shiro/keith #shiro #keith #takashi shirogane #keith kogane #shirosaveskeithweek #shirosaveskeith #johaerys writes

[mimi-croissant]

A few sketches I’ll probably never finish jdjdjxe, they’re fine

#my art #voltron #klance #lance mcclain #keith kogane #the owl house #luz noceda #voltron arcade au #art kidz au #luz as a witch #wif da pointy ears #i never finished the one with keith painting cuz i didn’t like how he looked #doodles #sketches #i still love the voltron arcade one #it’s my fave from the line up #also lance and keith have vitiligo in the top one #i have more #do you want to see more

[queerquintessence]

ok. ignore the other ask, this one's the correct one. for the charcter thingy hehe. Romelle or Acxa :D

omg. this has been in my drafts for like weeks I’m so sorry i forgot to answer it-

okokok here we go!

Romelle

Sexuality Headcanon- i’d say either lesbian or bi with a pref for women <3

Gender Headcanon: female but she/ they romelle also makes sense

A ship I have with said character: Romellura

A BROTP I have with said character: romance (romelle and lance)

A NOTP I have with said character: maybe keith and romelle? (it isn’t problematic or anything i just feel like they’re better as friends or chaotic siblings)

A random headcanon: Allura took her to the mall once and she was obsessed with the vending machines

General Opinion over said character: I really like Romelle! I just feel like she was so- out of place? I love her character but she wasn’t really relevant after the whole exposing-Lotor-thing and she just kind of followed the main characters around. But whatever- screw canon, i still love her <3

Axca

Sexuality Headcanon: lesbian- there is not an ounce of heterosexuality in this woman

Gender Headcanon: female

A ship I have with said character: Veraxca

A BROTP I have with said character: Kaxca (keith and axca)

A NOTP I have with said character: Lotaxca

A random headcanon: all i want. is veraxca at the arcade.

General Opinion over said character: Once again- really like axca! I just wish we got to see more of her being, yk- good? at the garrison? I feel like she didn’t get to interact with Team Voltron as much as she should’ve. but yeah. very pretty big stronk lesbian w/ gun

#this one is really fun i like it #can’t believe it took me so long to answer i’m sorry ajdhskshjaa #vld #voltron #vld romelle #romellura #vld axca #axca #veraxca #ask away

[danco110]

If you ever start thinking “Hey, maybe I have too many Commander decks,” let me tell you: you don’t. I do:

WARNING!!! EXTREMELY long post below, describing each deck and a brief summary of its strategy in overly abbreviated and nerdy Commander lingo. I mean, I’m talking a real wall of text, here. I mean it! Read more at your own risk!

——

——

THE A-TEAM: These decks have all been around for a while, and have all seen their fair share of wins.

-Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain. Artifact storm, and probably the closest I’ll ever come to cedh. WARNING: my Mana Crypt is in here!

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. OHKO tribal. Seeks to blast people wide open with either Embercleave, Kaya’s Onslaught, or Uncaged Fury.

-Bruna, Light of Alabaster. Voltron that can either play nice and fetch Eldrazi Conscription, or not, and grab Spectra Ward.

-Sigarda, Heron’s Grace. Human tokens tribal, and the rightful recipient of my only Doubling Season.

-Admiral Beckett Brass. Pirate tribal. Taking commanders and wincons is fun. WARNING: somewhat unfun to play against!

-Gishath, Sun’s Avatar. Dino tribal.

-Hallar, the Firefletcher. Kicker tribal.

-Syr Gwyn of Ashvale. Knights and equipments and equip 0 Colossal Hammers.

-Nikya of the Old Ways. A creatures-only deck that probably has more interaction than most of my other decks!

-Atemsis, All Seeing. Azor’s Gateway / Twiddlestorm / Untap shenanigans. WARNING: somewhat unfun to play against!

-Gnostro, Voice of the Crags. Flicker tribal with a non-Narset commander so as to not draw too much heat.

-Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty. Cascade / big spells / Simic is broken change my mind / tribal

-Aragon, Roar of the World. Cat tribal, and my first-ever Commander deck!

——

THE B-TEAM: My decks with fairly good performance across their games, independent of wins and losses

-Halana, Kessig Trapper and Alena, Kessig Ranger (Partner). Big bodies / EtB tribal.

-Khorvath Brightflame and Sylvia Brightspear (Partner). Knights and dragons tribal.

-Virtus, the Veiled and Gorm, the Great (Partner). Quietus Spike / force block shenanigans. WARNING: somewhat unfun to play against!

-Linvala, Shield of Sea Gate. Azorius party aggro.

-Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats. Phantom Rakdos party control.

-Tazri, Beacon of Unity. 5C party +1/+1 counters.

-Kazarov, Senior Pureblood. “I can’t play against Krenko anymore today” Pyroclasm tribal.

-Liesa, Shroud of Dusk. Angel and demon tribal (NOTE: no synergy there, I just wanted to stick to the flavor of “alliance with a demon lord”)

-Orah, Skyclave Hierophant. Clerics tribal that always tries for an Angel of Destiny win before it (always) defers back to aristocrats.

-Bruna, the Fading Light. Angel tribal that tries to meld Brisela every game.

-Anafenza, the Foremost. +1/+1 counters tribal, and the deck that made me realize Outlast really should’ve been instant-speed.

-Samut, Voice of Dissent. Exert tribal with vigilance, untap, and extra combats.

-Juri, Master of the Revue. Sacrifice tribal, with a burn subtheme.

-Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas. Big tribal, and the deck that made me realize Experience counters were busted. Run Suncleanser, people!

-Quintorius, Field Historian. Reanimate and blow up your graveyard. Also, Purify the Grave is hilarious!

-Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire. Chaos warp tribal, and a Primal Surge deck that doesn’t have Primal Surge because that card is extremely boring.

-Ishkanah, Grafwidow. Spider tribal that seeks to make opponents forget about Ishkanah’s activated ability until it’s too late.

-Omnath, Locus of the Roil. Landfall and elementals.

-Savra, Queen of the Golgari. Grave Pact tribal. WARNING: somewhat unfun to play against!

-Feather, the Redeemed. Haha, combat tricks go brrrrrr!

-Adeliz, the Cinder Wind. Wizards spellslinger aggro. Also one of the few decks of mine that actually uses cantrips!

-Aryel, Knight of Windgrace. Knights tribal with a removal/control subtheme.

-Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice. Mentor + Double Strike tribal. I only built this deck because I pulled a borderless Outlaws’ Merriment, ok?

-Araumi of the Dead Tide. Self mill encore, and the deck that made me appreciate the singleton rule in Commander.

-Kaza, Roil Chaser. Big spells. BIG! I mean, Electrodominance for 10, into a Karn’s Temporal Sundering, big!

——

THE C-TEAM: My decks that just don’t cut it at a lot of pods, sometimes even against those at appropriate power levels. That being said, however, these tend to be my more storied decks, that I still enjoy playing.

-Syr Alin, the Lion’s Claw. Mono-White go wide, with commons and uncommons only. Part of my cycle of Eldraine uncommon legendary knight decks, 1/5.

-Syr Elenora, the Discerning. Mono-Blue Voltron + draw power, with commons and uncommons only, 2/5.

-Syr Konrad, the Grim. Mono-Black aristocrats...kind of...? It’s complicated, but with commons and uncommons only, 3/5.

-Syr Carah, the Bold. Mono-Red storm, with rares and mythics for Underworld Breach and Past in Flames, because I feel like storm needs those, 4/5.

-Syr Faren, the Hengehammer. Mono-Green infect, with rares and mythics for Phyrexian Swarmlord, because I really wanted a deck that could run that, 5/5.

-Jodah, Archmage Eternal. Avengers Assemble! legendary tribal. I had a lot of bulk legends at the time, and wanted to make something of them!

-Abomination of Llanowar. Literal elf ball. Built in response to my irritation at someone’s Lathril, Blade of the Elves deck.

-Licia, Sanguine Tribute. Lifegain is good, I swear, built in response to my disbelief at the $200 price tag on a store-built Licia deck. Mine costs maybe $100, if you count the sleeves and box?

-Thalisse, Reverent Medium. Tokens tribal that breaks Anointed Procession even further, which made me wonder why green gets all the token doublers *cough*adrixandnev*cough*

-Hamza, Guardian of Arashin. +1/+1 counters, with commons and uncommons only, built because someone at my store wanted to play commons and uncommons only with an uncommon Commander. Thanks for getting me into Artisan Commander, Will!

-Siona, Captain of the Pyleas. Enchantress, with a tokens subtheme. Built because I and a friend both commented that she looked like Wonder Woman.

-Mina and Denn, Wildborn (NOT Partner). Landfall aggro, with all the creatures that pump on landfall.

-Ghired, Conclave Exile. Populate and tokens. Built because I was bored one Saturday and saw I had an extra set of sleeves.

-Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor. Landfall tribal, (again? Sheesh!) built the same lazy Saturday as Ghired, above.

-Armix, Filigree Familiar and Eligeth, Crossroads Augur (YES Partner). Artifact tribal, with a super janky 4-piece Marionette Master loop wincon! Built because Eligeth turns Preordain into “Draw 2 cards, then draw a card.”

-Akiri, Fearless Voyager. Equipment tribal, with an asymmetrical boardwipe subtheme. Built because I pulled an Akiri from a pack, and someone said “ooh, sorry,” from over my shoulder.

-Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch. Unleash counters tribal. Built because I found a Chaos Imps in my bulk!

——

THE MEME-TEAM: These decks...are. Yeah, they are. Not necessarily good or bad. Just...are.

-Kenrith, the Returned King. The game plan is “Get to Trostani’s Summoner, and either flicker it or make a bajillion copies of it.” One day, I found a card named Trostani’s Summoner, and it was love at first sight! My Demonic Tutor went in here!

-Phylath, World Sculptor. Landfall tribal...with 99 basic land cards.

-Rograkh, Son of Rogahh and Keleth, Sunmane Familiar. (Partner) Kill one guy and die tribal.

-Etrata the Silencer. The “I wanted a non-Koma Mirror Gallery deck” deck. Also with a guest appearance from flicker!

-Lazav, Dimir Mastermind. Literally just “Oops! All Control!” Draw, counter, and remove. WARNING: don’t play against this.

-Ravos, Soultender and Livio, Oathsworn Sentinel. (Partner) War of attrition, etb and control. WARNING: don’t play against this. It has like 15 boardwipes!

-Valki, God of Lies / Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter. (NOT Partner) “I want to piss off the table” tribal. It mills your opponents, it plays their stuff, and it removes the stuff it doesn’t play. WARNING: don’t play against this. It runs Jokulhaups, Obliterate, and Decree of Annihilation!

-Svella, Ice Shaper. Colossal Dreadmaw tribal, as in, anything that’s roughly 6/6 makes the cut! It’s actually won games!

-Brion Stoutarm. Hijack and fling tribal. “You know, I’ve never had an Eldrazi titan before. Can I borrow it? Well, see, I wasn’t exactly...asking...?”

-Grumgully, the Generous. Non-human “uno mas” tribal. Tries to run all the counters cards like Renata and the Rhythm of the Wild.

-Subira, Tuzuldi Caravaneer. Small tribal. Just think “mono-r blitz in Commander,” and you’ll get the gist.

-Neheb, the Worthy. Minotaurs and discard tribal. Not as oppressive as Tinybones, or as explosive as Nath, and that’s a good thing. Trust me.

——

THE ALL-RAVNICAN REJECTS: These decks are... *sniff* no longer with us. They were broken down for pieces, for sleeves, or because I slept through each time I played them.

-Najeela, the Blade Blossom. Boring warriors extra combat steps. Broken because I wanted her tri-lands, and I wanted some of her warriors for my party decks.

-Golos, Tireless Pilgrim. Maze’s End lands. Golos is broken and we all know it. Broken for sleeves, and because my first land tutor was always Field of the Dead because of the incoming hate, and not Maze’s End, and I wasn’t happy with that.

-Arcades, the Strategist. Walls. As it turns out, not a lot of decks can contest 3-mana 8/8’s. And against those that could, the deck was put in the ground extremely quickly. Broken because it just wasn’t fun to play.

——

THE DRAWING BOARD: These decks are in the works. Will they see the light of day, and the protection of sleeves? Well, we’ll see, will we not?

-Borborygmos. Go wide and SMASH! My first attempt at a pile of cards; I’m trying for a goblins/saproling hybrid tribal, because both make lots of tokens, but we’ll see how well that translates into actual play.

-Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer. Thopters and artificers and myr, oh my! All joking aside, I just wanted a deck that wants to run cards with Fabricate, because I thought it was a really cool mechanic!

-Garna, the Bloodflame. Reanimator/sacrifice, AKA corpse carousel. It’s a revolving door between the graveyard and the battlefield, yknow, and most of my store’s meta does not run graveyard hate.

I tried to warn ‘ya!

#magic the gathering #mtg #edh #commander

[pinkykitten]

boyfriend and girlfriend outing

- anonymous Hello, Ki!! 😊💖 Can I request a Lance Mcclain (Voltron) x shy female human reader fluffy oneshot about they are going to the swimsuit shopping at space mall? 🥰🥰💖💖 How would Lance reacts to shy female human reader trying on/modeling swimsuit for him? 🥰😂🤣💖 I really love to see Lance is blushing mess near her!!! 🥰🥰💖💖

- anonymous Can I request a Voltron fluffy oneshot about how would Lance Mcclain reacts to his shy female human reader wears his jacket? 🥰🥰💖 I bet he will be blushing mess to her cuteness, haha. 😂🤣💖 Bonus: fluff/general prompts #2: “aw, you’re so cute.” (only Lance) and #22: “i love you.” (only reader) 🥰💖 Please??😁😁💖  prompt(s):  “aw, you’re so cute.”  “i love you.” 

pairing: lance mcclain x female! reader words: 1,602 genre: fluff, romance, comedy, requested, prompt, one-shot

a/n: sorry guys i have written in a while ive been soooo busy atm so hopefully i can write more for you guys. its been a minute since ive written for vld and i so totally miss it esp my cuban bby. yes we all can agree it ended like poo but thats why moi is here to help w canon and make it a thousand times better bc im a miracle worker duh. ty guys fr for reading my stuff, following and reblogging my stories i really appreciate it. 

It was in order- in your mind to take time off for yourself. Getting up every morning at 5 to train hard your mind and body. All you wanted was one day to enjoy having fun and being a teenager. 

You giggled at your pathetic bucket list. To think on yours it would say go out to a mall or market when back on earth that was something so insignificant and so easy to accomplish. But you hadn’t done something exciting and something for yourself in a while. 

You practically begged Shiro to let you to go to the mall today. After much butting he finally gave in. You knew pouting your lip out and whining almost like a puppy would do the trick. 

You didn’t waste time in getting dressed and doing your makeup. You wanted to look fierce on your day out. 

A knock was heard on your bedroom door. 

“Where are you going?” Lance, your boyfriend raised his brow as he stood by your doorway, arms crossed. He was a bit jealous that you were going out looking so hot and you hadn’t invited him. 

“I’m going to the mall,” you applied lipstick. 

“Without me?” He pouted. 

You chuckled and went to hug him, squeezing hard. “What are you waiting for then? Get ready? We’re having a date.”

Going into the mall- it already made a huge smile on your face. The smells reminded you of home. Food, perfumes, creams, the clothing were of different colors and of different alien races customs. It was like a walking into a whole different world. 

Lance giggled as he saw your face and scooped you up, kissing all over your cheeks. “Aw, you’re so cute, you know that. What do you want to try first?”

You sniffed the air and couldn’t get rid of a cinnamon smell. As you went onward you saw what that smell was. 

“Doughnuts!” You were almost salivating. Grabbing Lance’s hand you raced to the stand. 

You and Lance shared a huge doughnut and Lance smudged some frosting onto your face. You tried pushing him away and all he did was tickle you. It was like a fight and as much of a flaco he was he still got a hold of you. 

“I’m gonna get you Lance,” you gave a hearty laugh. 

You climbed on Lance’s back and ordered him like a pony to go to the arcade. There were so many games there your eyes lit up with the bright neon lights and colors. 

“I want to try this.” It was a game of getting a hammer and hitting mini Prince Lotor’s. You and Lance were up against each other and of course you won. 

“You cheated,” Lance pointed an accusatory finger at you. 

You stuck your tongue out, “you just suck.”

Lance rolled his eyes and walked away pretending he didn’t know you. 

You guys hopped on a motorcycle game, Lance went first and you jumped in his lap and he taught you how to play. 

Next, was the perfume store. You bathed Lance in cologne as he twirled around, and rubbed himself on you. 

As you were walking onward you spotted a swim suit store. You were fighting with yourself if you should go or not because you were a bit shy around Lance but you decided to go because you would probably never come back again. 

“Let’s go in this store please,” you asked shyly. 

Lance didn’t want to show it too much but he was so excited to see how beautiful you would look in swim suits, especially bikinis. He saw how much you wanted to go in and he couldn’t and would never say no.

“Of course gorgeous,” he smirked and acted all charming. 

“You sit here and wait,” you pushed him onto the couch in the waiting room and fled to each aisle, picking up the ones you wanted. 

The store owner waved her tentacles around and glanced at Lance, “are you here for you?”

“It’s actually for my girlfriend.” He said proudly. “She’s special.” 

“Alright Lance,” you sang as you brought them in the room and tried one on. “This one I call Florida weather.”

You jumped out and the one piece had oranges on it. You modeled and pretended to peel an orange and eat it. 

Lance clapped and nodded his head, “that’s so cute!”

“Next!” You shimmied your way in the room again and put on a swimsuit that was adorned with a skirt and it was bedazzled. It looked so trashy and made for a grandma. It was the furthest thing away from sexy. You chuckled as you looked at your reflection. Lance was really going to love this. “What do you think about this one babe? I think this will be your favorite.”

“Let me see girl!” Lance bounced on the souls of his feet in anticipation.

“Tada!” You danced out, shaking your hips. “My name is abuelita.”

Lance was surprised to say the least but he clutched his stomach, bending over laughing. “Oh my God, you do!”

“Do you think this is flattering?” You strut your stuff and flung your leg out like a show girl. 

“I still think you look great sweetheart.” Lance grabbed your hips and kissed your lips.

Lance was the perfect boyfriend to you. Even though you looked like an old lady from the 80s, Lance thought you still looked perfect and that made you have fireworks in your tummy. He always knew what to say. “Alright, but I got one more!” You ran back to your room and lifted up the dark blue bikini. Was your body perfect? No. Did you care? No. You thought you were beautiful in your size and no body was perfect. It was for you and Lance loved you no matter what. As you pulled the straps up, you checked yourself out in the mirror. “Perfect.”

“Are you done baby?”

“Yes, I think you’re going to really love this one.” The beating of your heart was rapid as you thought of his opinions. Would he like it? You tiptoed out of the room and rubbed your arm sheepishly. “Do you like it?”

Lance was flabbergasted. Not because he never thought you would look that way but because of how perfect and beautiful you were. He was star struck. His eyes widened and shined bright like jewels. His mouth was wide open. His heart grew more large for the love he felt for you. You were his baby! 

“Well!” You crossed your arm, beginning to feel shy and bashful at his loss for words. 

Lance covered his mouth, “And I have the audacity to live.”

You shook your head as you giggled like a girl with her crush. It was kind of true he was your crush but he was also your boyfriend so you scored. Lance was so extra!

“My baby is so sexy oh my God!” He shouted so loud- everyone in the store glanced over your guys way.

“So this one is a buy?” 

“Heck ya! I’m buying this for you babe. You look so smokin in this like por tu madre, my girl gonna look good!”

As you both were walking out to go back to the ship. It was night time already and the sky was a dark purple. The stars looked like diamonds sprinkled on a painting. It made you have a warm feeling in your tummy to know that you were one of the many brave souls that traveled up there to save lives. The air was cool and the trees swayed in the wind. 

Hand in hand with Lance, you walk on the cobblestone, trying to balance as you place one foot in front of the other. The wind that blows by makes you shake and shiver. Goosebumps rise on your skin and Lance takes notice. 

“Baby, you’re cold?”

You didn’t want to seem weak so you shook your head. “No, I’m okay. Just the wind.”

Lance looked the other way, shy, as he stripped his jacket off and enveloped you in the warmth. 

You loved cuddling with it, the soft inside fabric tickled your cheek, and it smelled of his perfect self. You tried to hug the jacket subtly without his detection but Lance saw and became a bashful mess. You bit the inside of your cheek, not looking into his eyes because of your embarrassment. “It’s so warm,” your lips turned into a small, satisfied smile. 

“It looks amazing on you,” Lance said breathless. 

“Oh wait!” You paused as you sprinted to an open field.

“What are you doing, Y/N?” 

After a few minutes you ran back to Lance. 

“What did you do?”

You brought out a daisy, kissed it, and gave it to Lance. “A present for you, my Lance.”

Lance couldn’t contain his love for you. He lifted you up and twirled you in his arms. “You are defiantly my girl.” He put you on his back as you both traveled back to the ship. 

On his back, you hugged him tightly, nuzzling into his hair, kissing the back of his neck. “I love you.” You whispered your heart and soul into his ear. 

“I love you princess.” Lance kissed your hands as you started drifting off to the rocking of his steps. His breathing a peaceful melody in your ear. You needed the day to get out and have fun and just be you with Lance. As the day was ending your smile became wide as you thought about how perfect this day was and it was with the most perfect boy. 

#vld #vld imagine #voltron #voltron legendary defender #lance x reader #x reader #lance mcclain #lance mcclain x reader #imagine #netflix #lance imagine #vld x reader #voltron imagine #voltron legendary defender x reader #voltron legendary defender imagine #lance mcclain headcanons #boyfriend and girlfriend outing

[radramblog]

Elder Dragon Highlander

 Commander is a format of Magic the Gathering that has become almost completely detached from its original premise. Much of what the format is is built upon the concept of Elder Dragon Highlander- 21 Commander damage is lethal because that’s 3 hits from an Elder Dragon, the slow grindy format built to accommodate the original 5’s heavy mana investment and limited effects.

But that was a long time ago, and the designers at WoTC have opted to attach the moniker of Elder Dragon to a number of additional cards. 21 total cards hold the name, 4 cycles of 5 apiece with one straggler at the back.

What is considered “elder” is largely to do with lore, I think, but due to its association with such iconic cards, it’s interesting to see how and what the label is attached to.

I’ll, uh….do cube something next week? I dunno. But this is the Elder Dragons.

 The original 5

The first elder dragon cycle is kind of iconic of Magic in general. Released in Legends, they were the first tricoloured cards in the entire game, were I believe the biggest and most expensive cards of the time, and all represented characters from the comics that I think just about everyone forgets existed.

They do not even remotely resemble modern design. Clunky is one thing, but the quintuplets are almost aberrant to what would be considered attractive Magic cards. A monstrous investment of mana in multiple colours that has a continuous upkeep of more mana, all for an arguably understatted flying creature with one extra ability. Chromium gets Rampage, a keyword that started in Legends, ended in Mirage, and doesn’t have reminder text despite being arguably confusing. Palladia-Mors gets Trample, making it arguably one of the best ones. Vaevictis Asmadi gets Firebreathing in all 3 of its colours, in case 8+3+3+3… wasn’t enough mana-shaped eggs in one basket for you. Arcades gets a bonus ability in toughness-breathing, to make up for it’s deliberately mediocre ability- the “oh cool I can use this with vigilance” eureka/fun brain moment quashed by its pointless limitation.

And then, of course, there’s Nicol Bolas. Somehow one of the game’s most iconic characters, in an art rendition that makes a powerful villain look like a gentle draconic geriatric. (EDITORS NOTE: still Rad here but I just now noticed this mf has a fucking dragon nipple, wtf?) I suppose Bolas becoming so well known was inevitable, if only because it was the only one of the most popular cycles with an actually cool and powerful ability. There are currently 210 more Bolas decks than any other member of this cycle, and that difference also happens to be twice what the other four have combined.

Bolas is arguably the only one that stood the test of time, the only one to ever show up independently of the other 4. I suppose we’ll see if any of the rest do the same, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

(Elder) Dragons of Tarkir

The titular Dragons of Tarkir’s third set (Dragons of Tarkir) were a set I was excited to see as the cards were being spoiled. The lore of the plane was interesting, with Magic stepping into a plot with time travel and finally showing us what Ugin looked like after almost 10 years of curiosity. The dragons that would become the Clan leaders had appeared previously in Fate Reforged, and the editions that we’d see as Elders- 10,000 years older and in some cases even wiser- presented a powerful and exciting cycle. Unlike with the Legends dragons, I’m pretty sure all of these saw play somewhere.

Ironically, though, I’m pretty sure these were deliberately tuned for Standard rather than the format named after their typeline. Even outside of Kolaghan’s line of text that….doesn’t do a whole lot in the format, Ojutai and Silumgar were pretty obviously built to be the finishers in the Esper Dragons deck that ran them, Atarka a clear top-end for Gruul Monsters (and, eventually, Eldrazi Ramp), and Dromoka a potential menace in Dromoka’s Command-backed Midrange lists. These cards are all quite powerful, but they’re built for a different kind of game.

That’s I suppose the biggest issue with the Dragons of Dragons of Tarkir, they were underwhelming. The set as a whole was fairly middling, though I did truly enjoy the draft format. I’m pretty sure the most played card in the set is fucking Collected Company, one I kind of despise, followed with Kolaghan’s Command which is just a traumatic experience for me. And while 3 of these 5 are seeing more play than their past counterparts, including Dragonlord Ojutai being literally 10 times more commonly seen than Soul of Winter, that difference is largely a matter of power (or lack thereof), the Mythic Dragonlords being obviously stronger than their Rare originals. The rare ones are arguably more fun, though, and that’s what matters to me.

 Legends…2! (aka core set 2019)

Part of the theme of Core Set 2019 was the story (read: retcon so the ending of War of the Spark makes more sense) of Bolas and Ugin in their youth, which meant that we got to get updated, modern designs of the original Elder Dragons (not Ugin tho lmao). And by Modern, I kind of mean postmodern, because we’re at the point where Commander cards start getting absurd All The Time.

Each of the Elder Dragons of Core 2019 (copyright WoTC 2018) have the benefits of updated design practices with 24 extra years of experience, as well as not having to have a million words on them for silly reasons like extra mana sacrifice triggers. Even Palladia-Mors, probably the weakest of them (and still pretty threatening!), gets to have flavour text hinting at a potential return (which hasn’t happened yet).

When you’re designing cards like these, though, it’s inevitable that some are going to be overshadowed by others. Baby Bolas, of course, was one of the flagship cards for the set, being a transforming Planeswalker with lots of abilities that wins the game in just the most classy way I’ve seen in a minute. And Arcades took a fun niche deck people liked and blew it wide open, making Defenders into one of the most disgusting Offensive decks in a minute.

But then there’s Chromium, a fairly powerful Voltron/Control finisher but not one that leads you in any particular direction. Vaevictis does lead in fun directions, but would then be completely dwarfed by the absurdity that is Lord Windgrace the same year and Korvold the next one.

Outside of a few, this cycle feels like it got kind of lost in the shuffle, and I think that’s not really that much a reflection of the cards (except maybe Palladia, the Naya Problem rearing its ugly head again), and more the greater issue with Magic as a whole just shitting out cards constantly faster than most can catch up.

Welcome to Strixhaven School of Magecraft and Sideboardary

Our final cycle is the new kids on the block, the Strixhaven dragons. I suppose one way to make the definitely not Hogwarts Houses (they’re colleges, Clearly) seem important is attach a giant Fuckoff Dragon next to them.

A thing I like a lot about Strixhaven as a set is how it was introducing a new Thing for each of the enemy colour pairs to do- Golgari Lifegain, Boros Graveyard, Izzet Spells But Big Ones Instead Also Treasures?. The set came with loads and loads of cards supporting each of these themes, and having Commander 2021 alongside it and associated with it means they’re well supported by that as well. But, and this is the important part, the Elder Dragons aren’t as overshadowed because they too are doing something different, even if its rather slight in some cases, on their own- but each supporting or being supported by the Dragon in question.

Beledros is a Big Mana Golgari commander (normally seen in Mono-Green or Gruul) whose huge life cost is assisted by the Lifegain cards Witherbloom got. Galazeth helps ramp into the giant spells associated with Prismari while also making the alternate discard into treasure option some of those spells have a lot better. Tanazir doubles the power of Quandrix’s Fractal tokens, and makes them even more huge when attacking due to then natively being 0/0s. And I don’t really know what the idea in Silverquill is other than “Politics”, but Shadrix looks fucking cool and probably plays really nicely. It’s just a really fucking solid cycle.

It’s not really possible to tell how these 5 are going to play out- Strixhaven is still the latest Standard Set to release at time of writing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the most successful Elder Dragon cycle as a whole assuming you’re looking at, like, mean Decks.

And then there’s The Other One

As part of Modern Horizons 2, cards for a set of characters from alllll the way back from those Legends stories were created- a new Dakkon, a Geyadrone Dihada, and the Elder Dragon that showed up in their story- Piru.

Piru is, obviously, a reference to the original cycle of Elder Dragons, but in a Wedge colour rather than a Shard. And with an extra keyword, which is something I missed, because it makes all the difference. I had written this card off, until I realised that Lifelink triggered from the death trigger, and when this thing dies it isn’t too hard to gain dozens of life points. That’s a lot and combined with clearing the board it’s not too hard to get virtually unkillable. I love leaning into the downside from the original dragons by adding a powerful death trigger like this.

Piru released very recently, and already has 112 decks to her name. I wouldn’t be surprised if that plateaus, but it’s still rather promising. 8 mana is a lot in non-green colours, but I like Piru, and I’d be happy to see her see lots and lots of play going forward.

While 2021 has so far had more Elder Dragons than any other year, they’ve been a very promising cadre with a lot of interesting ideas going on. With that said, I’m not sure that I want the trend to continue, because the more they make (the more Elders in general, really), the less special they get. But for now at least, it looks like we’re finally getting to a good place for Elder Dragons. Only took us 27 years.

#ramble #mtg #edh #commander #elder dragon highlander

[ravenvsfox]

klance holodeck fic 1/2

Lance is gone. Lost in the plunging gaps between astral bodies, sewn into an invisible seam in spacetime. Missing, for two long years. It’s impossible, to think of the time he's already lost with him. Time passes strangely in a war, and stranger still in space. Stars gasp their dying breaths and ripe dust clouds give birth to whole planetary systems. Some light reaches them with its centuries-old fingers and some can’t weather the journey. So many beings shiver and die. Lance would be twenty now. He tries not to think about it.

Keith can't bring himself to grieve when he knows Lance is still out there. Instead, he follows versions of him down holographic rabbit holes, trying to pry closure out of his memories, and losing himself to an obsession with the simulated landscapes where Lance was never lost.

(Read on AO3)

At first, it’s a french restaurant.

Slate grey and stationery white, sunlight drooping over the tablecloths like curling petals on calla lilies. Keith presses the knot of his tie into the hollow of his throat and swallows against his fingers. The get-up is ridiculous—grey suit, red tie, cufflinks, Italian leather shoes.

He’s never worn anything so expensive or well-tailored in his life, and he can already picture the precise geometry of Lance’s expression when he sees him: badly suppressed smile, like a slipped disc, his cheeks puckered.

Keith seats himself next to the window, fiddling almost immediately with the circlet of his napkin ring. The trees outside rustle and drizzle shade over buskers and vendors across the street. His designer watch has both hands folded over the twelve. A waiter breezes past and lays a rectangle of cardstock in front of him, smiling conspiratorially. As soon as he’s out of view, Keith has forgotten his face.

He looks at the menu, and the transition from the burbling restaurant to the cramped typeface is disorienting, like a cut scene in a video game. When he puts the menu down again, his head is swimming sickly with words like bordelaise and remoulade. And then, like a sweet apparition from a terrible dream, Lance drifts through the doorway.

For a moment, the sight of him is impossibly painful.

Keith’s fingers go again to the knot of his tie, and he makes an involuntary noise, gulping air as if surfacing from extreme physical exertion.

“Lance,” he chokes.

Lance smiles, quicksilver. “Hello.”

“You’re here,” Keith says, staggering to his feet. He crosses the bistro to take Lance bracingly by the wrists. The napkin holder is still in his hand, and the circle of it presses into Lance’s forearm so tightly that his skin bulges through it a little. “Do you—do you know where you’ve been?”

Lance should be defensive, or sly, or angry, or bashful. He should be telling a story that Keith can barely follow at a pitch that he can barely stomach, bragging about all the stupid things and downplaying all the impressive things.

Keith knows that’s not how this works, but still. It’s the Lance he knows.

He focuses on the brittle warmth of his body, the details that are just right. His heart breathes into the paper bag of his chest.

Lance just keeps smiling wanly. His hair is styled wrong—there’s too much volume, and it swoops down too close to one eye. His tie is robin’s egg blue. “No need to get up for little old me.”

Keith shakes his head, off-balance. “What?”

“I’m here to spend time with you! Why don’t we take a seat?”

Keith swallows painfully. It’s like looking at an animatronic figure of his friend—a jolting uncanny robot at an amusement park. “Lance, look at me.”

“How could I not?” he says cheekily, and winks. But his eyes haven’t quite settled into the same groove as Keith’s.

“Tell me—“ Keith starts. “Tell me what you remember. Tell me who you are.”

“Oh, you know me,” he says. “Name’s Lance ‘Loverboy’ McClain, blue paladin, sharpshooter extraordinaire, and defender of the universe.”

“Please.” It’s meant to be derisive, but it ends up falling somewhere closer to desperate. His hands slide up from Lance’s forearms to his shoulders. The napkin ring clatters pointedly to the floor. In a wide, embarrassing moment of weakness, Keith says, “you have to--be him. At least try.”

Lance chuckles.

Keith shakes him, and his shoulders jitter unnaturally.

“Come on. What’s the point if you can’t even act like him? Who would fucking buy this?”

“I don’t—“

“Stop using his voice,” he warns. His hands have crept up to Lance’s neck, and abruptly he lets go, repulsed at the almost-familiar feel of him.

“I would also be pretty overwhelmed to meet an intergalactic celebrity,” Lance assures him.

He’s starting to breathe too fast. He keeps seeing the real Lance—craned into the three-dimensional spread of a star map, brow furrowed, freckled hand curled loosely in the handle of whatever hot drink he found planet-side—superimposed over this stranger’s weird, unblemished face.

“Who am I?” Keith demands.

Lance grins. “My date.”

Keith pushes him hard in the chest. He nearly topples into a neighbouring table, and it’s unlikely, how he keeps his gangly legs underneath his body.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Lance says. “This isn’t the place for roughhousing.”

It’s the wrong cadence, but it’s so like something Lance would say that it’s debilitating. Keith stumbles through the momentum of another graceless shove.

“I told you to stop using his voice,” Keith snaps. “This is cruel.”

“Didn’t you want to meet me here?” Lance asks innocently.

“Of course I did. But you’re not—not—” Suddenly, he’s so fatigued with disappointment that he can’t speak.

After a long moment, he feels an ephemeral hand on his shoulder. And with the help of the ghostly waitstaff, the false Lance maneuvers him back to his place at the table. “Just tell me where to look and I’ll go there,” Keith begs, half-stumbling, half-dragged into his seat. “I swear. I know I can find you, I’ve faced bad odds before.”

“How about a drink?” Lance is saying, apparently unfazed.

“I thought that if you thought like Lance, maybe I could talk an answer out of you,” Keith says. Lance cocks his head, pleasantly receptive. “But really I thought I would look at you and I would feel better. Or at least I would feel angry. But you’re worse than a punching bag.”

“Red?” Lance says, and Keith’s heart is—airborne.

“What?” he asks sharply.

“Wine,” Lance explains. “Red or white?”

His whole body caves in. Rockslide. Catastrophic. He looks into Lance’s wide, earnest eyes, feeling uncomfortably like he’s levelling a shotgun at a newborn. “Neither. End simulation.”

The bistro melts instantly into the oily blackness of the Paladin Simulator.

His jaw is clamped tightly with shame and grief, and as the dark presses in, he folds his arms self-consciously over his chest. He’s ending his session an hour early, and he’s grateful, now, for the uninterrupted quiet.

He shouldn’t have let himself do this.

It should have been obvious what a bad idea it was when he didn’t tell any of the other paladins what he was planning; he was already falling back into his old, knee-jerk isolation, trusting only himself with his secrets.

He just couldn’t take any more of their pity. It was constant, wide-eyed, confused—why would the person who got along with Lance the least feel his absence the most? Sometimes, Hunk looked at Keith exactly the same way he looked at an old clunker of an engine that was in need of replacing.

Keith had heard tell of the simulators years ago, they all had. Liberated planets with the tech (and the admiration) had started building little cyber shrines to Voltron. Like a hyper-advanced arcade game, you could plug in your specifications, step into the simulator, and play out your wildest fantasies.

He’d gathered that tittering fans, unexceptional nerdy types, and bright-eyed kids were the most common customers; the lettering on the swinging board out front promised all kinds of adventure and celebrity:

Join Voltron! Become one of the gang, fighting Galra scum and saving the galaxy from tyranny!

Enjoy a candlelit dinner with the paladin of your choice, and get up close and personal with your hero!

Pick up your very own bayard, and spar with living combat legends! Who will win?!

Although it’s more advanced than the training room controls on the castle of lions, the programming still has its limits. The likenesses aren’t really supposed to stand up to the scrutiny of someone like, say, a paladin himself, but the experience is still sensory, impossible, the science fiction daydream of someone on Earth.

Lance used to love the idea of it, joking that it was the Star Trek filler episode he always wanted. He said he would win every game, romance himself, and beat up holo-Keith without feeling bad about it. He said he could finally stop pulling punches when Keith was just, like, light particles and shit.

In his grief, Keith convinced himself it was right and just and necessary to believe in a false lead. He told himself that the coat rack in the dark looked enough like a person that maybe he could hang all his hopes on it.

And so he had sought out the small, ever-bright planet of Seachmall, where night lasted for twilit months, and massive outdoor markets boasted every good and service you could possibly think of. Continent to continent there were melting, zipping lights, sky-high neon encircling tall buildings like bangles, and criss-crossing lanterns—buoyant in the low gravity—coasting up towards their celestial cousins.

In the capital, the local population joyfully shared liquor and arm-clasping greetings, speaking in the fast creole dialect of a port city, dancing to reality-bending music that haunts every forking path in a dizzying labyrinth of market stalls. Every single day on Seachmall was a feverish, luminous midnight that raged unceasingly past its breaking point.

And every step in the springy too-dark soil, every halting conversation in common, every sizzling technological spectacle that borders on nightmarish, Keith thought that Lance would have eaten this experience alive.

But Lance is gone.

Lost in the plunging gaps between astral bodies, sewn into an invisible seam in spacetime. Missing, for two long years.

It’s impossible, to think of the time he's already lost with him. Time passes strangely in a war, and stranger still in space. Stars gasp their dying breaths and ripe dust clouds give birth to whole planetary systems. Some light reaches them with its centuries-old fingers and some can’t weather the journey. So many beings shiver and die. Lance would be twenty now. He tries not to think about it.

Often, he resents those years he spent on a space whale, cresting out of his teenage years faster than he could track, trying to staunch the flow of memories with the paladins before he lost them all. He gets double vision looking at his mother, thinking of what he knows about love and struggling to apply it to this stranger.

When Lance disappeared just months after Keith returned to the castle of lions, he understood, finally, that loss is the bitter shrapnel of love.

In an alternate universe, Keith would have threaded Lance’s difficult needle, held his jaw, sharp and slight as a paring knife, and told him every wriggling, guilty, breathless feeling he’s inspired in him since they were sixteen.

In that universe, he stepped out of the time warp and into Lance’s embrace, and they were never parted again.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, Pidge started to refer to Lance in the past tense. Allura took over piloting Blue full-time, and Keith Red. The castle, already barren with the loss of Altea, became even more eerily quiet. Keith’s guilt swelled up and took any of their remaining teamwork hostage.

Space is so massively large and radiantly indifferent, but Lance is out there, surely, or Keith would have felt Voltron’s current being disrupted, as it had been when Shiro blinked out of the Black lion. But time stretched on, and he felt nothing at all.

When Lance disappeared it was from the middle of a battle for a nothing quadrant of space, and he was practically teleported out of the fray. They recovered his lion on a smalltime Galra ship within the hour, no sign of a struggle, no sign of Lance.

It was eery. Impossible. They interrogated sentries and hacked systems, combed entire light years of space using Allura’s wormholes. They waited for a distress signal, an apology, a triumphant return. But he just—vanished.

Keith ripped through the galaxy for any scrap of him, a blue flash, those bright ringlets of laughter, the flush of his skin tone in a kaleidoscope of different species.

Allura and Shiro joined him on the ground at first; Pidge, Coran, and Matt worked tirelessly to devise a tracking system, while Hunk took Red apart, hoping to unlock the moment that she and Lance had detached—but it was like her memory had been wiped clean. All they could feel was the panicked thrum of her loose bond with Lance, Keith more than anyone.

Romelle and Krolia hadn’t known Lance for long, but they always came when called. More bodies in the search party, more hands in the alliance. Once, he caught Romelle’s lip wobbling during a debrief, and he remembered the way that Lance had dragged an extra chair in for her first team meeting, winking, and then laughing himself to stitches when Romelle tried to wink back and couldn’t.

In pieces, Keith understood that he loved Lance, and as always, he was processing an obvious truth too late. His grief was swollen purple, and even as he told himself that no one would ever, ever understand, he knew they did. All around him they did, loudly and at length, hurting at such a frequency that Keith was scared it would drown out Lance’s return.

He left the castle of lions more frequently, turning over whole populations, infiltrating Galra ship after Galra ship, singularly driven—but also callous and unbalanced without his team, participating in more violence in six months than he had in five years of war and survival.

Once, Keith stumbled into Lance’s abandoned room and pulled clothes and trinkets out of his closet, stirring up the smell of him and crying like a child. He picked fights with his mother, because she had been a terrible absence once, too. In the artificial light of castle dawn, he sparred more than his body could sustain, and when he found a planet full of unmarked tombstones in his search, he ripped at the ground with his bare hands until his fingernails tore.

The longer he looked, the more he found that the whole universe was exquisite with death, every piece of it burnt out and drifting into expanding blackness. He was so tired of feeling like space rock himself, fast, deadly, and aimless, waiting to burn up in the atmosphere somewhere. So, heart striving ahead of his body like an eager dog, pockets full of tokens, he wandered Seachmall until he found the flashy booth where he would waste the next eight months of his life.

He leaves the simulated french restaurant that first time fully believing that he’ll never be so weak again, but it’s barely twenty vargas before he’s back, trembling all over.

He finds Lance in a simulation of battle, and in the rush, it’s much easier to forget that he’s a fake.

“Not this time, amigo,” Lance crows, looping around an enemy ship and blasting ice the whole time, showing off. Keith is shocked to find a smile bruising his own face. His hands close over fake-Red’s controls. It’s so strange, not feeling her at all while he’s piloting. It’s as impersonal as a Garrison sim, but eons more advanced, nearly authentic. He can feel the heat of battle through Red’s visor, and as always, his calloused thumbs creak against the wheel when he turns too sharply.

“On your right,” Keith warns.

Lance dodges dutifully. “Thanks!”

I know, Lance groans, in his memory. I’m out here flying too, Keith, this isn’t one of those drills where I’m fucking blindfolded—

“Red Paladin,” Allura’s voice cries, weirdly high and operatic. “The evil lord Zarkon is moving in for the kill. You must help us form Voltron!”

“Yeah, right,” he huffs.

The forming itself is so stupid, obviously programmed by an outside observer who’s never felt the itch of unity, the reverse detonation of an impossible bomb, where every scattered thing fits back together to be whole again.

There’s a silly bit of choreography, and fake-Red goes on rails, like a carnival ride. And then, without feeling anything concrete, Voltron pulls in around him.

“Hooray!” Pidge says, sounding like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz.

“Nothing can stop us now!” Shiro says, sounding like Shiro.

“Can we get back to putting Zarkon in a second grave now, please?” Keith says.

“Always the fighter, Red,” Lance says. Keith blinks.

“I love you,” he blurts.

“Aw,” Hunk says. “I love you guys too.”

“Lance—“

“Use your sword? Exactly what I was thinking,” Lance says.

“Let’s do it,” Shiro says. “Use your bayard, Red.”

“I know,” Keith snaps.

It’s obvious that the simulation has programmed Red in as shorthand for whatever player is in his spot. It would be the same no matter what lion was chosen, but hearing Lance’s nickname for him out of Shiro’s mouth is just—stunningly wrong.

The world trembles from the impact of a Galra bogey, uncomfortably real, and his instincts press him into action.

He turns his bayard in its slot, and the sword shimmers into reality. He watches at a remove as Voltron slices at Zarkon’s craft.

It’s actually starting to get to him, the memory of this battle, the reality of which was a lot more challenging, and much, much uglier. He remembers his frenetic pulse in his fingertips, the threat pressing endlessly past their defences, the damage to Green’s hull, and the awful discovery of Black’s empty cockpit afterwards.

He shudders.

“End simulation.”

In the dark, the adrenaline eases its panicked hands from his throat. You’re alive, he reminds himself. You survived. So did Shiro. So will Lance.

______

The next day, he goes back again.

He spars with himself, out of curiosity, and then with Shiro and Lance, but the holo-paladins are uninspired, easily blocked, programmed to strut and preen through choreography more than they are to improvise and adapt. Lance doesn’t play dirty even once, and Keith shuts down the simulation again, gutted. He wishes there were different difficulty levels, like the bots in the castle. You could program almost anything into—

He stops, midway back to his cruiser, the braid of market-goers loosening around him.

He taps twice on his communicator, and hastily opens a channel with Pidge.

After the long, peculiar swish of the line connecting, she answers, “‘sup?”

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Urgently?” she asks, distracted. He can hear the clatter of keys and the beep and whir of her latest project.

“It’s about Lance.”

The clatter stops. She doesn’t speak for long enough that Keith feels truly bad about himself. And then, “well Jesus, Keith. Isn’t it always?”

He breathes out. “How comfortable are you with the holodeck interface?”

“Very,” she says, no hesitation.

“And do you still have those files from a couple of deca-phoebes ago? That user profile thing you tried to instate, the uh—“ he dodges a Seachmallian waving a kebab in his direction.

“Yes, Keith,” Pidge drawls. “What, do you think I burn data when my projects don’t pan out?”

He shrugs, though she can’t see him. “I would.”

“Forgot who I was talking to,” she says flatly. He’s paused at the ice-cold entrance of a shop selling edible soap bubbles, light and iridescent.

“Do you think you could put together a—a simulation, compatible with a more advanced operating system?”

There’s a throb of silence. “What exactly are you asking me to do, here?”

He closes his eyes, still ducked under the awning of the store, feeling the cold move through him. “Don’t make me say it.”

“You want Lance,” she says. “On a fucking USB.”

“I want to find him,” he growls. “Remember when you wanted that too?”

“That’s low,” she says, deadly. “I’m not the one who’s trying to sleep with a hologram of my dead friend so I don’t have to grieve him.”

He cuts off communication. He feels feverish with embarrassment, and completely sick to his stomach. Candy bubbles breeze past him, over the apron of the booth across the way, which is advertising robot fights—both in Seachmallian and blocky common.

He remembers Lance, a lifetime ago, saying, when I go, I want all the stuff in my brain stored in a giant ship.

His comms ding, and he jabs the accept button on his wrist.

“Fuck you,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Pidge says. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he says fiercely.

“I know.”

“I just need to know if it was premeditated, if he ever had a safe house or a code in case we got separated, something we could look for.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” Pidge says thoughtfully.

“I know.”

“But I do think it’s a pretty terrible idea for you to do it.”

He grits his teeth, upset in a directionless kind of way. “I can handle it.”

“I know you’re on Seachmall,” Pidge says, “and I already thought that was going to get pretty gnarly. All they’ve got is, like, the mythology of us. Can you imagine what the information in the Altean databases could do to that kind of tactile VR experience?”

“Sort of,” Keith says.

“It would be like if all the OG broadway actors showed up to participate in a high school production of Cats, comprende?”

“No,” Keith says, waspish. “Less.”

“It’s the next step for Altean hologram technology for sure. It would probably revolutionize AI. It’s also not real, Keith.”

“I don’t need it to be real,” Keith snaps. “I need a lead.”

“Well,” Pidge says slowly. “You know I can do it. Can you wait a few quintants?”

He sets his jaw, and against the deep blue horizon, a billboard gleams so brilliantly yellow that for a moment, he thinks it’s the sun.

“As long as it takes.”

______

Keith meets Pidge when she touches down on Seachmall, windswept and gaunt, and although he doesn’t really understand what she intends to do, he dutifully distracts security as she futzes with the control panel.

It’s barely fifteen minutes before she beckons him into the alley adjacent to the simulator room, a sample platter of bolts and wires spread out around her knees.

“Alright chief, it should be compatible, now.” She pulls a stray length of cable from where she’s been holding it between her teeth and pockets it. The little nib of her ponytail bobs as she stands.

“So it’ll be him this time?”

“I mean, almost exactly. I programmed his profile into the grooves set into the existing simulation, but I softened the edges a little so he’s not too self aware. I don’t want him realizing he’s a projection, I’m not that cruel.”

“Right,” Keith says, uncomfortable.

“If you don’t find what you’re looking for and you have to go back in, all you’ve gotta do is punch in this code.” She jabs him in the chest with a folded piece of card, as close to paper as they’ve been able to find out here, and twice as durable. She could have sent him the info, but they both know this transaction is better left under the table. “The system should wipe itself automatically when you’re done. And Keith—“ Her hand flattens on his dark chestplate, and her eyes are troubled. “Please don’t forget why you’re doing this.”

He nods, and puts a gloved hand over hers. “I won’t. I’ll figure this out, and I’ll find him.”

She nods back, a wobbly smile rolling over on her face.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, I gotta go. I can’t—I wish I could see him, but.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees sadly.

She smiles again, fleeting, and gathers her kit. “We can’t spare another paladin,” she says, quickly, like it doesn’t matter. “Don’t get lost in there.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but she’s already putting her visor down, and walking out into the crowd.

______

This time, he finds himself on a boardwalk during a powder pink sunset. The air smells blisteringly of salt and roasting meat, and faceless people mill over the beach: parents holding hands with kids, couples sharing shaved ice, a galloping golden retriever in a red bandana.

The leftover scorch of the day blows in off the coast to meet him, like the wave from an open oven door.

He walks purposefully onto the sandbar, craning in circles, trying to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. He feels—pre-heartbroken, caught in the final moments of a long walk to an open casket.

“Where’ve you been?”

He whips around, and Lance is pulling one earbud out, squinting into the sun at him.

“Lance?” he asks, through what feels like a mouth full of marbles.

“Uh-huh,” he says, eyebrow quirked. “The one and only.” He settles back into the shade of his umbrella.

Keith shakes his head to clear it. There’s a red and white striped towel set out next to Lance’s, and he sinks down onto it, overcome. Is this Earth? Did Pidge program this specifically? Is it one of the date settings on the simulator? He can’t remember. He can’t see past the illusion at all.

Lance offers him an earbud. “Come on, Red, will you relax? Pretend you’re not the kind of person who sleeps with a knife under your pillow.” He accepts the bud, numb, and tucks it in his ear. He’s expecting synth pop, but it’s an old R&B song, smoky and familiar. “No overthinking on the beach.”

He can’t stop looking at him. It’s uncanny—the dusky chapped lips, the mole next to his mouth, the cowlick over his ear. His eyes are intelligent, laser-focused on Keith. “Where are we?”

“Dear sweet Keith. Senile at age twenty. So sad.”

“Shut up.” He has to look away, to mask the full-colour magazine spread of conflicted feelings on his face. It all feels a bit like a lucid dream that he shouldn’t jostle too hard. “I’m not used to this.”

Lance’s expression softens. “Hey man, I get it. Being home is weird. Sometimes it’s like—I can’t even remember how we got here.” He shakes his head. “But also I’m so happy to be back, I’m like—screw PTSD.”

His chest aches, badly. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“Rich coming from you, Mr. repression,” Lance says, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not doing that any more,” Keith says. “I’m working through my shit.”

“How admirable.” His mouth twitches. He produces a Palm Bay from his slouchy little backpack, tossing it from hand to hand as if testing its heft. “I’m drowning my sorrows in coolers, personally.”

And then he lunges, spritzing the can open in Keith’s face.

“Jesus, Lance,” he sputters, smacking it out of his hand. They scuffle, briefly, and that helpless, ebullient laugh blows past him like candy bubbles.

“Your—face—“

“You’re so immature—“

“Easy, cowboy, don’t you remember what team bonding looks like?” He pinches Keith’s cheek teasingly, and Keith grabs his wrist.

A pulse flutters under his fingertips.

He scrambles backwards, clothes dragging against the sand, a stray sandal popping off. The heat and grit is so real. If he focuses hard enough on the smell of meat coming off the boardwalk, his mouth waters. Lance looks at him incredulously.

“What? That’s too far for you? I barely touched you!”

“You touched me,” Keith repeats. He can still feel that pulse, like a second heart in his own body. He stands up, shedding sand, and Lance looks up at him, mild expression tinted with hurt. Keith sways, sidelined by a wave of vertigo. He can’t be here right now. “End—“

“You’re being so weird. Like Kuron all over again.”

He stops. “You think I’m a clone?”

“Obviously not really,” Lance says, getting up on his knees. “But that is the level of weird we’re dealing with here. You’re looking at me like you’re about to cry.”

“It’s just—home.” He gestures awkwardly. “Tandem bikes. Coconut sunscreen. Seagulls eating fries out of the trash. The ocean. Earth reminds me of you.”

"Birds eating garbage reminds you of me?" Lance quirks a skeptical expression at him. “Maybe you are working through some shit.”

He reaches for his abandoned sandal, dusting sticky sand from the straps. “You can’t even imagine.”

“Try me.”

Keith looks across at Lance’s calm, determined face, and the words rise up in him like a groundswell.

“I know I haven’t earned it, and I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but I miss how things used to be. And the worse everything gets the more I keep wondering what you would say, or do, and I hate that—god,” he breaks off, and presses his palms briefly to his eyes. “I mean, you would’ve had no way of knowing how I felt. I didn’t even know. But I should’ve—I just thought we would have more time after the war, or I would die and it wouldn’t matter. And I guess I assumed you were always going to be there, because you always were, even when I didn’t want you to be, and now—I don’t know, Lance, I don't know how I’m supposed to go to the castle, or pilot Red, or look at the planet I grew up on without remembering how much you loved it, and how much I love you—“

“Keith, what?” Lance says, alarmed. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Where are you?” he frets.

“I’m here.” He crawls closer, but Keith can't look at him. He watches the fussy waves coming in off the shore instead. “I’m right here.” He rests his hands on Keith’s ankles, and he has to steady himself on Lance’s shoulders when his knees go loose. “Man, I shouldn’t have joked about PTSD. I mean, I feel like this sometimes too.”

Keith looks down into his face. “What?”

“You know, like I’m back there. Like—time doesn’t even exist. Being off-planet was such a bitch sometimes. You feel like you can disappear in all that open space. And sometimes you want to.”

“Lance,” Keith whispers. “You wanted to disappear?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Lance says, serene. “Just for a while. Let someone else defend the universe for a bit, preferably an adult. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do it!”

“You would have told us,” Keith says, through bloodless lips.

“Sure,” Lance offers.

“No. No. You would’ve said something.”

Lance takes his hands away uncertainly.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” he says flatly. “I’m just telling you that I understand being pissed off, and I understand wanting to—hit pause.”

“What about hitting stop?” Keith asks. “What about disappearing so thoroughly that whole galaxies full of alien technology can’t find you?”

Lance’s face is a spinning wheel; he cycles through all manner of confusion, impatience, and worry before settling on defensiveness. “What the fuck are you talking about? Are you out of your mind?”

“If I am, it’s your fault,” Keith snaps. “How could you leave us?”

“How could I leave?” There’s no question now, that this is data from his Lance. His tetchy, self-conscious anger is unmistakeable. “You’re the one who ditched us for the Blades right when we were at a tipping point. You’re the one who wadded two years up and threw them in the trash. You didn’t have to care about us but you absolutely should’ve talked to us. We were a team.”

“You think I don’t care about you?” Keith laughs. “That’s fucking hilarious.”

“I’m really laughing,” Lance says sarcastically. “I don’t know what sort of crazy pills you took that made you think that I’m the deserter out of the two of us. I wish I could be that delusional. I may have wanted out once or twice, but I would never, ever leave the people who need me.” He’s fuming, and the wind is blowing through his curls like it’s trying to placate him.

Keith’s anger wobbles. It hurts, to hear Lance talking this way after so long. It’s not the reunion they deserve.

“I know. I know that.”

Lance sits back on Keith’s towel, frowning. He brushes the drained cooler away, and the remnant dribbles out and darkens the sand. “I don’t know why you always have to ruin everything.”

Keith’s throat aches, and he crosses his arms protectively over his chest.

“Me neither.”

Lance glances up, surprised. And then his gaze slides purposefully beyond Keith, considering. After a moment something comes over him, and his whole demeanour changes. “Keith,” he says softly. “Did you say you loved me?”

Keith screws his eyes shut. After a moment he hears Lance moving closer, reaching out, fingertips barely grazing the back of his hand—

“End simulation. Please.”

He crouches in the dark. “Please.”

______

“Oh, fuck you,” Lance crows. He ducks out from under Keith’s staff, and then grabs the end of it, using the momentum to slide through Keith’s wide stance.

He spins around, and Lance is five feet away, holding his own staff up to his eye like a sniper rifle.

“Bang,” he says.

“This is close combat,” Keith reminds him. He throws his weapon like a spear at Lance’s ankle, and he yelps when it makes contact.

“How is that close combat? You javelin wielding motherfucker. You should be disqualified, and jailed for your crimes.”

He watches Lance shake out his foot like it really hurts, testing his weight and pretending to stumble, falling forward—and then whirling around in time to clash staffs with Keith.

“Shit,” Lance laughs, up close, hot with exertion, putting the pressure of his body weight on the cross they’ve made between them. “Thought I had you.”

“Do you want to surrender?”

“Do you want to kiss my ass?” Lance retorts.

Keith steps out of the way, and Lance’s momentum sends him tumbling head-first to the floor.

“Sure,” he says coolly. “Turn over.”

“What the hell,” Lance says, rolling onto his knees, flustered.

“You lost.”

“Yeah, whatever, like six to five.”

“Six to four,” Keith corrects, and offers him his hand. Lance pretends to spit into it, then flops back onto his hands instead.

“If we were duelling with pistols, I would humiliate you. You would have to drop out of Voltron.”

“By that logic, you should be packing your bags right now.”

Lance throws his head back and laughs. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Kogane.”

“Try me.”

Lance shrugs, but just as Keith starts to look away, he throws himself at him. It’s so unexpected that Keith actually goes down, wrists slammed to the mat on either side of his body, wind knocked out of him.

Lance laughs breathlessly, looming messy and sweaty above him. “Wow, that was embarrassing for you. Your arrogance is your downfall.”

“You’re my downfall,” Keith says, a little too flat and sincere across the top, and Lance purses his lips.

“You’re taking this too seriously, dude.” He lets go easily, and rolls out on his back next to him instead. He flexes his wrist in the air above them both, and Keith watches his fingers work. “Why does it feel like it’s been forever since we sparred?”

“It has,” Keith says simply.

“I guess,” Lance yawns. “I can’t even remember the last time.”

His heart is still pounding from the first serious, sustained training he's done in months. When Lance goes to sit up, Keith puts a staying hand on his chest.

“Hey, Lance," he says. Lance hums. "If you got separated from your lion for any reason, would you—what would you do?”

He frowns. “I dunno. Alert you guys. Rescue mish.”

“What if you couldn’t contact us?”

Lance looks sideways at him. “Not loving this thought experiment. Why are you being so weird?”

“Please,” Keith says, taking Lance’s sore wrist, feeling for the artificial thud of his pulse. “Just—answer.”

“Uh. I don’t know, am I captured? Or planet-side?”

Keith swallows. “Planet-side.”

Lance nods, considering. “If the locals are part of the alliance, I would get their intel, and find a way to reach you. If not, I guess I would lie low. Wait for a friendly ship and signal them.”

“That could take years. It might never happen, depending on where you ended up. Like—alien vessels aren’t cruising over Earth very often.”

“Says you,” Lance jokes. “The truth is out there.”

“You could die waiting,” Keith insists, dropping his hand. “What if the atmosphere wasn’t compatible? The flora and fauna? What if your suit was compromised?”

“I would heroically overcome all obstacles, whistle for my trusty lion, and ride off into the cosmos,” he replies sardonically, “what do you want from me?”

“I just think we should have more rescue protocols in place in case something goes south.”

“Right,” Lance says slowly. “Well, I mean—and I’m going to try and get through this without gagging—I have your back, man. And if we get separated, I’m pretty sure you can take care of yourself.” He gestures at their discarded staffs. “Not as well as me, of course,” he sniffs, glancing sidelong at Keith to see if he’s cheered him up.

Keith feels the phantom weight of Lance’s body crushing him to the mat, a window of weakness pried open, broken and entered. He breathes out. “Yeah. You’re too good for that.”

______

He asks Pidge for more scenarios, and more user profiles. For fleshing things out, he tells her. For recreating the circumstances under which Lance was lost, testing his reactions to different situations, and introducing as many variables as possible.

Slowly, inevitably, he starts to lose control of it all.

He’s still a correspondent to the Blade of Marmora, and he’s on call as a paladin, but they haven’t been able to form Voltron in years. He’s perpetually out of sync with the rest of the universe, living more and more like a washed-up casino-goer, existing only for the market stall where he can plug his friends in and relive the past.

He pays off the owner not to ask questions, and gets an apartment on Seachmall, barely the size of a lion cockpit, just a sparse kitchenette and a twin cot. He spends hours in the simulator and crashes on his bare mattress, bathed in the constant, spectacular glow from the street lights.

Every time he staggers away from the market he has to remember that the real Lance is rotting somewhere, and he’s here playing dress up with shadows.

It’s all easier, in the holodeck.

He loads the original paladin line-up into battle, relives their victories and rights their wrongs. He finds himself in the kitchen of the castle of lions, in a ballroom overlooking a fathoms-deep canyon, curled in Lance’s bed so he can finally sleep. He takes his friends to Earth a hundred different ways.

There’s always a fog, a strangeness about them when they think too hard about where they are, but he knows it’s a mercy. He ends each simulation on the verge of spinning out, functionally pulling the trigger on his dearest friends.

Reality sags out of his grip. Pidge and Hunk call sometimes, and often Kolivan or Allura will give him status reports, scattered missions, and lectures that walk the line between morally superior and deeply, uncomfortably worried. When Shiro starts up daily check-ins, he understands that they all know what he’s been doing, lost on Seachmall for so long.

“You’re taking care of yourself, right?” Shiro asks.

“Yes,” Keith tells him. He’s staring at the empty wall across from his bed, absently sharpening his knife. “I’m just killing time.”

“We really miss you around here. It’s too quiet.”

He tests his blade, rolling his shoulder. “I’m not exactly bringing the party when I’m out there.”

Shiro hums. “I don’t know, you certainly keep things interesting.”

Keith snorts.

“I’m serious!” He can hear the smile in his voice. “There’s only so much quantum mechanics and ancient magic I can take before I want to hit something. I want my sparring partner back.”

They lapse into silence, and Keith traces patterns in the air, enjoying the fine metallic sound of a weapon without a target.

“You know we’re still looking, right?” Shiro asks. Keith stops cutting the air, and puts his knife down on the bed beside him.

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Shiro says. “Of course we are. Allura and I are visiting every contact she has, and Hunk and Pidge are working—overtime. We’re picking up a lot of slack here.”

The back of his neck prickles with guilt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shiro sighs. “I’m telling you this because you’re my brother.” But he has his diplomat voice on, which Keith has always hated. “And I don’t know if you’re thinking about what it’s going to do to the rest of us if you don’t come back from this.”

“From a simulator?” he asks, incredulous.

“From grieving,” Shiro corrects. “I would never tell you to stop looking, but I think you know you’re not going to find him in those projections.”

“I could,” he says stiffly. “He tells me things—every day he gives me clues and he doesn’t even know it.”

“He doesn’t tell you anything,” Shiro says gently. “Because it’s not him. Do you remember when Allura had to let go of her father? It was so easy for her precious memories to be corrupted, and even easier to get swept away in the illusion. Everything in a simulator is finite, Keith, but you can’t be. You have to grow, and change, and move on.”

He thinks of every different shade of Lance he’s seen, every secret door that gives and leads to another wing. “You don’t get it.”

“Of course I get it. If Adam—“ he cuts himself off, and his breath shudders over the line. “You’re not the only one to be feeling this loss, or to be struggling.”

“But I never even got to love him," Keith argues. “I never got close enough to put any of these feelings anywhere, and now they’re everywhere. No one ever gives me the chance to love them before they—“ he swallows, and when he goes to speak again he finds there’s nothing else to say.

“I know how hard it’s been for you,” Shiro says sadly. “But Keith, understand—we all love you. No matter where we are or what we’re doing. We don’t have to verbalize it to feel it.”

“Okay,” he says, numb.

“We love you,” he reiterates. “Lance did too.”

“Thanks for checking on me Shiro,” he says, and hangs up.

______

“No way, no way, no way,” Lance crows. “This is slander.”

“It can’t be slander if all of us were there to see it,” Hunk says, but he can’t look at Lance without cracking up.

“You’re remembering wrong,” he says. “She asked me to give a speech.”

“She asked you not to,” Pidge says, rolling her eyes. “Begged you, even.”

“Boo,” Lance laughs. “I was just trying to have a good time at alliance banquet number five zillion.”

They’re clustered on blankets between the yellow lion’s hulking paws, in the soft local vegetation of one of the last planets they liberated as a team. They were buzzed, when this conversation actually happened, but Keith hasn’t been able to replicate that particular feeling through the simulator.

“I don’t know why you always have to lie to these people,” Keith says, just as he did on the actual occasion.

“Embellish,” Lance protests. “I live by the principle that everyone wants to hear the best possible version of the story, and you owe it to them to tell it.”

“But the best version is almost never the real version,” Hunk says, exasperated.

“I dunno man, what’s real anyway?” Pidge says, easing back into the blankets. “Our lives are such a clusterfuck as it is. The line of what’s actually impossible gets farther away every day.”

“Yeah,” Lance says. “What squidge said. Lying is cool.”

“Ugh, don’t call me that,” Pidge complains.

“What, I’m agreeing with you,” Lance says, grinning. He leans over to give her a big-brotherly hair-pull that she intercepts with a karate chop.

“People deserve to know the truth,” Keith says mechanically, following the script, but then feeling flushed and hypocritical all at once.

“Okay, here’s a truth, universally acknowledged: Keith sucks,” Lance says.

“Hm. Sounds like another lie to me,” Hunk says, and Lance reaches up to steal his headband in retaliation. Hunk rolls his eyes and lets him have it, like he’s appeasing an overactive puppy.

Something skitters in the dark, beyond the dunes of Yellow’s paws.

“Don’t you have a rebuttal, Keith?” Pidge asks, sitting up on her hands.

“Why are you encouraging them?” Hunk groans.

Keith shrugs and stays silent; Lance’s gaze narrows shrewdly.

“You aren’t one of those weepy drunks, are you?”

Keith picks at a loose thread in their shared blanket. “No, I just changed my mind,” he says, veering off-book. “I don’t know why I was acting like it was ridiculous that you like telling stories, when it obviously makes people feel better to believe them.”

“Oh. Well. Glad you came to your senses,” Lance interrupts, overly loud. He always seems to hate it when Keith gets sincere like this. He begs for attention but recoils when he gets too much.

“Most of these alliance parties happen after a long period of unrest. So… what, you helped grieving people by acting like a superhero? To them, you are a superhero. God, I couldn’t stand that you took so much credit for our victories, but I should’ve given you more.”

Lance blinks at him.

He remembers with fire-bright clarity how this scene actually played out, the way Keith kept needling at Lance’s hero complex, accusing him of making things up so he could pretend he’d been helpful. Lance had dialled his bravado to a screaming pitch so he could hide the soft, spoiled look in his eyes where Keith had lodged a cruel sword that he couldn’t pull out.

Now, Lance purses his lips so he doesn’t have to figure out what to do with his expression.

“Huh,” Pidge says, chewing on a pseudo-protein bar from their rations. “That’s some unexpected character growth.”

“Are you… feeling okay?” Hunk asks.

Keith looks miserably down at his own crossed legs until Lance says, “not that I don’t appreciate it, but you did just do kind of an impressive one-eighty.”

He looks up. “Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

Lance smiles a little, relieved. He waggles the flask they’ve been sharing in his direction. “You just need to drink more.”

“No,” Keith disagrees, shaking his head. “I want to remember this.”

______

He opens his eyes to the world on its side, gritty endless flatlands sprayed out against a hazy auburn sky.

He rolls, putting his arm over his face, a visor against radiant twin suns.

He doesn’t have to look to remember the architecture at his back, a cubist explosion of edges and colours, each shape squared off and set into the hills. When the paladins liberated Imedemaa, they were offered accommodation in homes that corresponded to their lions: terracotta red, cobalt blue, mustard yellow, foliage green, and a brown so dark it could pass as black.

It’s his favourite place to visit: brilliant views, kind people, warm bed, privacy and proximity bumping shoulders comfortably.

Keith rolls again, sitting up. He feels heat-sick, and if it were real, he knows he would be bruised tan in the coast-to-coast sunshine. He’s spread out on the same outdoor palette where he fell asleep nearly three years ago. His apartment is warm, dull red, nearly orange. The shimmering public baths sparkle with activity just below his balcony.

“Yoo-hoo, neighbour.”

Keith squints over the waist-high wall and finds Lance clambering from his own balcony onto Keith’s.

“You’re going to fall to your death.”

“Nah,” Lance says, swinging a leg down over the railing and sitting contemplatively with one foot dangling over empty space and the other brushing the floor. “There’s a pool down there. Worst case scenario I perform an exceptional and history-making canon-ball.”

Keith watches him climb the rest of the way over, staggering and sitting heavily on Keith’s palette next to him.

“Oof,” he says. Lance's skin is dazzling in this climate, dark and freckled like granite. The simulation reminds him that he smelled like lotus, this day, fresh from the baths, warm shoulder and drizzling wet hair. “Are you ready to absolutely blow this popsicle stand?”

“And do what?” Keith asks, a little breathless from proximity.

“Did you seriously forget? It’s racing day!”

“Oh,” Keith says faintly. “Right.” They used to rent speeders for fun sometimes; the whole team participating at first, and then Keith and Lance alone when they surpassed friendly competition into bet-making and sabotage.

They would sneak back whenever they could swing the time off, careening around dusty corners and ramming one another’s speeders into hysterical tailspins. They would sob with laughter and then spritz their canteens all over each other, tussling in the dirt, so coordinated that it was almost an embrace.

The thought of it had driven him out of bed this morning, but he felt sick and shaky as he typed Pidge’s code into the simulator, setting the modified location of Imedemaa and rolling into a memory so fine and warm that it reminded him of death itself.

“Woah. easy, Red,” Lance says, his voice sharp with concern. Keith comes back to himself to realize that he’s angling into a panic attack, holding his own head in his hands. He can’t spoil this memory. Not this one.

“I—I—“ He can’t speak. Lance makes a dismayed noise, his entire demeanour turning inside out.

“Can I hug you, man?”

Keith jerks his head ‘no’. “I—can’t—you—“

Lance gets to his feet, and Keith grabs at him, hooking fingers in a belt loop, a fistful of shirt, whatever his hands find first.

“Hey, shh, it’s cool, I’m just getting you some water.”

Keith shakes his head again. “Don’t leave me.”

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Lance asks softly, sitting back down. “We don’t have to go racing today.”

Keith huffs this weird cartwheel of a laugh, and scrubs a hand over his eyes and nose.

“I think I dreamed you were dead,” he tells him. He doesn’t look up into his face, but Lance’s chest is steady in front of him, rising and falling evenly with each breath.

“Who, me? I’m fine, Keith, look at me.”

“It felt real.”

“Pretty sure it wasn’t,” Lance says, laughter tucked into his worry like a concealed weapon. Keith looks up at him, and Lance beams under his full attention. He wipes the tears from Keith’s cheeks with his thumbs.

Abruptly, he can’t stand it.

“You’re a hologram,” Keith whispers. Lance’s smile falters.

“What?”

“Do you remember how Pidge took our mental blueprints?”

Lance nods quickly. He’s not brushing Keith off, he’s not slow with disbelief. He’s clear and sharp and his face is increasingly overcast with fear.

“I’m using your data in a simulation. This holiday on Imedemaa, it was years ago. You’re not the real Lance.” It hurts, to admit it, but it’s clear that it hurts Lance much, much more.

“No,” he chokes. “No, I feel real.”

“I know you do,” Keith says, reaching for his hand.

But Lance jerks away, standing and reeling backwards, hands splayed out on red paint, which could be gore, really, bleeding out from Lance’s palms like that. “I was so fucking scared of this.“

“I’m sorry,” Keith says, watching this shade of Lance shaking through self-awareness, and feeling the weight of the words that could end it in his mouth.

“Why—where—“

“He’s gone,” Keith whispers.

“Gone as in gone?”

“Gone as in I can’t find him.”

“So why the fuck are you wasting time on this Black Mirror shit, and not out there looking for me?” he demands.

“I’ve looked everywhere.” The agony of his failure slides home all over again. “The search party is a million strong by now. I’ve talked to a hundred versions of you looking for an answer.”

“A hundred,” Lance says. “So what, when I tell you what you want to hear, you delete me?”

“I’m not wiping the data or anything, I—I don’t know how it works,” he admits.

“Jesus. Jesus Keith, this is fucked up.”

Tears start to well up, and he wipes them away furiously. He never used to cry like this. He never used to feel so constantly ravaged by guilt and fear. It used to live in his gut and press at his throat, but he could keep it wrapped and sealed inside his body.

“I miss you,” Keith tries, and Lance’s face twists with despair.

“I really wish it didn’t take this horror show to make you say that.”

Somewhere, something splashes and someone shrieks with laughter. Lance looks at him miserably, hunched in the shade from the terrace, brow damp with terrified perspiration. He absolutely shouldn’t have told him. He remembers Pidge laughing darkly, I’m not that cruel.

“What do you want me to do,” Keith asks quietly.

“What choice do I have?” Lance asks. “I’m a fucking video game character. I’m a dead man walking.”

“Do you want to do anything? Before I end this session.”

Lance swallows, considering. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I do, actually.”

______

They race.

What feels like all day, ripping in circles under arching rocks and through clinging, dragging sand, until the suns are setting, twin flames set into the desert like jewels.

Lance is extra reckless, gorgeous, perched high on his speeder and arched forward to reach the controls. His face, below the goggles, is streaked with mud, and he keeps crying out when he tips over too far or pulls triumphantly ahead of Keith, cathartic, unfiltered.

“One more lap,” he shouts, over the thrum of noise from the speeder.

“I’ll beat your ass,” Keith calls, trying for normalcy, but they’ve both kind of been crying on and off all day, and this is the last thing this Lance will ever do, and really, he’s not that cruel.

“Fucking try,” Lance says, pulling his bandana up over his mouth and taking off.

“Hey!” Keith laughs. “No countdown?”

“I think I deserve a head start,” he calls over his shoulder, but most of his voice is whipped away by the wind.

The speeder rips sideways, sliding over a natural boulder ridge that drops off into nothingness. Strange gravity keeps him on the right side of the cliff, and he hoots with joy, galloping metres and metres ahead as Keith eases through the same turn.

“You’re gonna—“ get yourself killed. He bites his tongue. Lance can’t hear him anyway. He zigzags through natural obstacles, glancing back in disbelief when Keith pulls up behind him. His face is red with the effort of staying upright.

“Can’t you let me win for once,” Lance cries, slamming on the thrusters and stirring up a fog of dust behind him. Keith coughs and dodges, feeling on the very edge of an awareness too big to name, like being able to feel one stage of grief ending and another beginning.

Sometime during Lance’s luxurious lead he’s taken off his helmet, and now the desert wind is whipping his hair straight.

He takes the next corner much too fast, and Keith’s heart is in his throat as he inevitably spins out, in smooth little frictionless circles at first, weightless as a bumper car—and then the rear of the speeder catches on a jutting rock and he’s ejected altogether. He topples out into the sifting dunes, rolling half a dozen times and stopping himself so abruptly that Keith can hear something snap.

He pulls up hard, tumbling off the speeder and throwing his helmet out into the sand, running as best he can to where Lance landed.

When he reaches him he’s cradling a severely broken arm to his chest, and the bone is piercing through the skin. There’s blood everywhere, weeping through his fingers, streaked high on his hairline, staining his shirt and the tawny sand beneath him.

“Would’ve been great if you could have programmed me not to hurt,” Lance wobbles. Stiff upper lip, terribly pale.

“Didn’t know you were going to throw yourself off a speeder.”

“Yeah, well. Me neither.” He hisses as Keith takes his wrist in his hand, unfathomably gentle, turning it this way and that.

“This looks terrible.”

Lance snorts. “Thank you doctor Keith.”

“I don’t think we brought any first aid,” he mutters, frowning, digging through the pack at his hip.

“I don’t need it.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re—“

“Keith.” He looks up at him, smudgy and sweaty and splashed with five kinds of red in the fading light. “I don’t need it.”

Keith trembles, still searching for a bandage or a stopper or an answer of any kind. “No. I hate this.”

Lance smiles grimly. “I don’t love it that much either. But hey, maybe there’s a way to bring me back. This exact version of me. From the ether somewhere. Doesn’t feel quite as permanent as capital D Death.” His eyes narrow. “As long as you don’t lose me, Red.”

“I won’t,” he whispers, parched and grief-torn. “Never again.”

“Okay. Okay.” He makes himself comfortable, stretched out on the sand, arm folded over his chest. “Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you not—raise me from the dead again? I don’t think—I mean. A hundred versions of me and you haven’t found what you’re looking for.”

“But I have,” Keith says fiercely. “I always find what I’m looking for, because I’m looking for you.”

Lance laughs, coughs, squeezes his eyes shut. “That’s real romantic.”

Keith’s mouth twitches. “I’m glad you think so.”

Lance cracks an eye open. “Just find me the old fashioned way, will you? No more beautiful Lance casualties.”

“I—don’t know if I can promise that,” he says. “I miss you,” he reiterates.

“Yeah. More, I bet, when you’re looking right at me. Ever wonder why that is?”

Keith shakes his head fast.

“Dumbass,” Lance says fondly. “It’s literally always gonna hurt, trying to live in the past. Makes you feel like you don’t have a future.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“That’s a pretty insensitive thing to say to a dying guy.”

Keith laughs wetly. “You’re being melodramatic.”

“When can you be melodramatic if not on your deathbed?”

Keith brushes the sticky hair from Lance’s forehead. He turns his face and Keith’s hand softens and cups his cheek comfortably.

“Pidge can do anything,” Keith tells him. “All your ones and zeroes will be safe somewhere until she can figure out somewhere for you to go.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lance says, like he barely heard him. He’s determined, heroic. Fucking heartbreaking. “I hope the real me gives you hell.”

Keith nods jerkily. “He always does.”

“I hope he—I hope he’s good to you, too.”

Keith’s face crumples, and he puts his forehead to Lance’s, feeling him wince when his chest grazes his broken arm.

“Sorry, sorry,” he sniffs, holding his face, wiping the blood and muck and tears back.

“It’s okay,” Lance says, starting to slur. “It’s okay, Red, just end it, quick.”

“You’re the last one,” Keith promises.

“Good,” Lance says, “because you’re not gonna do better than me.”

Keith laughs, putting their foreheads together again, and then kissing the place where a tear has rolled down into his hairline.

“See you soon,” he whispers. Lance leans up, golden, bloody.

Keith shudders, and says “end simulation” into his mouth.

Imedemaa winks out, and his whole world narrows instantly to a pinhead. He’s huddled on the floor over nothing at all, caught in the throws of fantasy, like a sleepwalker. When he licks his lips though, he swears he can still taste salt.

______

He leaves the simulator into the whiz and pop of another Seachmall night. The owner nods at him, looking vaguely troubled, possibly by the amount of time that Keith has been locked in his simulator today, and by the look on his face now, which he can only imagine is ripped in half by loss.

The market is busier than usual, stranger, overfull with alien tourists, so much so that the paladin simulator has accumulated a long line-up.

He sidesteps their stares, slipping soundlessly into the alley, already dialling Pidge on his communicator. She said the system would automatically wipe after each use, but he’s certain she can retrieve whatever information would be inaccessible to the public. She said herself that she doesn’t burn data.

He waits through the suck of the empty line, feeling antsy and keyed up, aching from a day of racing but incongruously clean and dry.

“Come on, Pidge,” he mutters.

Somewhere in the market, there’s a great clamour of voices. Something clatters to the ground, and someone apologizes profusely in common. Keith chews his lip distractedly, waiting for a thief to run by, a sheepish tourist, or scuffling rival business owners.

The line connects and disconnects in quick succession, and Keith kicks a trash disposal chute so hard that it dents.

He frets, thinking of Lance’s final moments, the wilting fear on his face, his mouth split open like fruit.

A hoverbike rounds the corner, and Keith only steps barely out of the way, nearly clipped by a wide fender. It crashes to a stop, making a thin, rumbling sound, and then its rider has whipped all the way around to stare at Keith. Achingly humanoid. Cobalt blue Motorcycle helmet. Rippling with motion even while sitting still.

They swing a leg over the seat of the bike, staggering closer, and Keith knows. He knows when a slender, gloved hand reaches for the visor, and when twin pistols clink and gleam from their holsters. The helmet falls, rolling into the dirt.

“Keith,” Lance breathes.

#vld #klance #voltron #klance fanfic #mine #alcohol mention #injury tw #I promise I'm working on my tfc wips but I took a hiatus to write a 20k voltron fic bc..... i felt... like it #long post #I know this might flop due to it being voltron lmao but hit me up if you want chapter 2!!

[mirakae]

Voltron Characters but as ~songs~

A/N - So, uh, this could be a whole playlist HAHAHA

Warnings - Swears, suggestive and explicit themes will be marked with ^

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Lance McLain

22 - Taylor Swift

Sweet Melody - Little Mix

Look at Me - Why Don’t We^

Can’t Help Falling in Love - Elvis Presley 

She’s kinda hot - 5 Seconds of Summer

Shake it like a Polaroid - Make Out Monday

Phases - PrettyMuch^

Woman - Anthony Ramos

Bitter - Dylan Conrique, Noak Hellsing

Fuck up the Friendship - Leah Kate^

Keith Kogane 

Hope - The Chainsmokers, Winona oak

We’ll be Fine - Luz

Older - Sasha Sloan 

Mirrors - Justin Timberlake

House of Memories - Panic! at the Disco

Everybody Wants You - Johnny Orlando^

Listen - One OK Rock

Paper Houses - Make Out Monday 

Twixter - Make Out Monday 

English Love Affair - 5 Seconds of Summer 

Uh Oh - Jeremy Shada

Takashi Shirogane 

Arcade - Duncan Laurence ft. FLETCHER 

Illicit Affairs - Taylor Swift^

Take Flight - Lindsey Stirling

Just Friends - JORDY

No Place - Backstreet Boys

Bye-Bye-Bye - *NSYNC 

Love Song - Why Don’t We

January Gloom - All Time Low^

Champagne Problems - Taylor Swift^

Pidge Gunderson / Katie Holt

Fade - THE DRIVER ERA

Golden Eyes - HANNI

I like (the idea of) you - Tessa Violet 

Left Hand Free - Alt-J

 Sand in my Bed - The Aubreys 

Sofia - Clairo 

Why’d you only call me when you’re high - Arctic Monkeys

Burning Pile - Mother Mother

It’s ok if you forget me - Astrid S

Blondes - Peach PRC 

Still Into You - Paramore

Everybody Talks - Neon Trees

Allura

Gloves Up - Little Mix

Woman Like Me - Little Mix, Nicki Minaj^

God is a Woman - Ariana Grande^

 Sue Me - Sabrina Carpenter 

Hey Mama - David Guetta, Afrojack, Bebe Rexha, Nicki Minaj 

Money - Cardi B^

Hurts Like Hell - Madison Beer ft. Offset^

Skin - Sabrina Carpenter^ 

Hunk Garret 

Wonder - Shawn Mendes 

8 Letters (Acoustic) - Why Don’t We

 Gone 2 Long - PrettyMuch

Flaws - Johnny Orlando 

Wake up - Madison Reyes (Julie and the Phantoms)

Mine - Felix Cartal, Sophie Simmons

Best Years - 5 Seconds of Summer

Exhale - Sabrina Carpenter 

How Far We’ve Come - MatchBox Twenty

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

#voltron #lance mclain #allura #pidge holt #hunk #shiro #keith kogane #music #taylor swift #why dont we #5sos #cardi b #sabrina carpenter

[maliciouslycreative]

Last 10 first lines

Post the first line of your last 10 works, then tag 10 other people. Thank you @stevieraebarnes

One Apple Pie Please (With A Side Of Unconsolealbe Sobbing)- Voltron - Sheith - T

Keith's been at McDonald's for 3 years now. 

Mission Accepted: Find Shiro A Date - Voltron - Sheith - T

“You hair, it’s umm, it’s long!”

Take A Shot At Love - Voltron - Sheith - T

“It’s called never have I ever.” Lance grins around the lounge at his friends.

Lava The Chandelier Alone, Jason - Batfam - G

Bruce looked between his children, the broken chandelier, and then over to Alfred who was trying his best to get Jason to hold an ice pack to his swelling nose.

Baby, I Got You - Voltron - G

“Hey, you’re the captain of that space robot, right?”

Falling In Love (But In Swedish) - Voltron - Sheith, Allurance - T

Mom: The pic of you and your bf is really cute

And Now With A Little More Tongue - Voltron - Sheith - G

“It absolutely will not stick.”

Let Me Give You A Hand - Voltron - T

Petty Officer Summer Night had been on the Atlas 3 days.

Trigger - Supernatural - Deancasjimmy - T

Dean thought it would be funny to take the twins to the arcade for their 30th birthday.

A Roomba By Any Other Name - Batfam - Jaydick - T

Jason never gets phone calls.

Hmmm, who to tag. Who of my friends is even active on tumblr still? ;-; If you want to do this then please do! Tagging: @rosemoonweaver @scottishhellhound @gabrielthemoose @jupiterjames

#fanfics #my fanfics #tag meme #voltron #batfam #spn #sheith #jaydick

[sheithfictioncatalogue]

Any fics that are mainly based on Shiro and Keith in high-school, running away by any chance? :)

I couldn’t find any where they’re running away, but you can check out our highschool tag here, and here’s a few more:

Homecoming - marmorasblade @fakegenjimain

23k. (Mature). Contains: child abuse, underage smoking.

It’s halfway through Keith’s freshman year. He’s in a new foster home, one of many over the last ten years, and he has no delusions that this will last longer than the others. He tries to keep himself distant; from his aunt, who came out of the woodwork to take him in, from his classmates, who keep insisting he join them for things like lunch and movie nights, and from the handsome older jock that just keeps popping up around every turn he takes. But of course, these people try to embed themselves in his life anyway. Keith’s trying to come to terms with the fact that these people care for him. He’s trying to come to terms with the realization that he may finally have a home.

Crush Course 101 - PerrythePlatypusGirl @perrytheplatypusgirl

45k. (Teen).

Shiro is a high school senior with a good reputation and a solid academic record. He has only one weakness: Keith Kogane, the mysterious popular boy who moved here just last year and took the school by storm. Shiro is certain that Keith would never look in his direction, but perhaps some chance of fate, and a class camping trip, can turn the tides in his favor.

Sheith high school AU where Shiro is pining. Hard.

Tulips and Roses - Diamond_of_the_Merthur

13k. (General)

It’s time for the annual Winter Formal at Voltron High; everyone’s out and asking people to the dance, be it romantically or platonic. However Keith is having none of this stupid dance, it’s stupid and a waste of time and money so why the hell would he go.

When You’re Ready to Catch Me - stellarparallax @stellar-parallax

6k. (General).

Keith went to school, did his homework, worked on his art and worked a part-time job to pay for his art supplies. As far as he was concerned, his life was complete. That is, until a chance encounter with Takashi Shirogane, the star football player at Garrison High, led to him striving for more than he thought he was capable of.

Still Got Love to Give - tagteamme @phaltu

7k. (Teen).

Shiro leaves junior year a gangly nerd and comes back senior year as a tall, well-built nerd with a Mysterious Bad Boy on a Bike™ for a boyfriend.

The Arusian’s Castle - MarcellaEReeves @marcellaereeves

ongoing, 5/? chapters. 15k. (Teen)

Keith finds a friend in the arcade, Shiro finds a purpose. They both find each other.            

Wonder If You Feel The Same - starboykeith @starboykeith

4k. (Teen).

5 times Shiro tried to woo Keith, and 1 time he succeeded.

(attempt to) kiss the boy - sheithkeef @sheith-keef

5k. (Teen).

Shiro has been pining after Keith, a boy he happened to glance at in his chemistry class, for four years. And now Keith is looking back.

- Kel

#sheith #voltron #highschool #highschoolau #recs #abuse

[getyourvitamin-bri]

Super-Mega-Foxy-Awesome-Hot Klance Fic Recs!

One-Shots

Sweet Quiznak - CheckeredCloth Read if your into hurt/comfort and humor, an odd mix but this fic does it awesomely. Summary: "You're really into him," Hunk mutters, and wow, Lance's face is on fire. Hunk is killing him. "Look, read into how you like, Freud, just make sure that if I die Keith knows I totally would've mowed his ass like grass. That way, I can laugh hysterically at his emotionally-constipated expression from the afterlife." Rated Teen & Up

Love Bug Stuff - WhatTheBodyGraspsNot @whatthebodygraspsnot I’m such trash for Love Bug fics, this one in particular is stellar. Summary: Keith is bitten by an alien love bug that makes him fall in love with the first person he sees. And just guess who the heck that first person is? Rated M

Never Saw You Coming - dimpleforyourthoughts @dimpleforyourthoughts Read if you love angst, slow burn, mutual pinning, and hurt/comfort aka read if you love being put through all the feels :) Summary: Three months in space on his own would have been fine. Three months in space with Lance McClain is a whole other fucking story. Rated M

nothing’s quite as sweet - dimpleforyourthoughts There is cute cats and cute klance, need I say more? Summary: Keith is a barista who hates his job. Lance works at the cat shelter across the street. Rated Teen & Up

Muy Lindo - flipfloppandas - I’m trash for shy adorable keith and this fic delivered. Summary: In which Lance must learn how to navigate through a relationship with a Keith who is surprisingly shy, but it’s okay because Lance honestly freaking loves it. Not Rated.

implosion (the lines we cross) - pidgeotto_gunderson Some well written hard core angst if your up for it. Summary: The adrenaline is pumping through his veins - this is what he needs, what they both need. To yell and scream and hurt each other before they can mend.Fix-it fic for s7e6, imagining if Lance and Keith fought things out while they were all lost in space and it led to Lance finally spilling about his insecurities. Rated Teen & Up

Crest of White, Bow Down - 2towels @2towels I totally went “awwww” while reading this fic, its so adorable, it will definitely make you smile. Summary: “I don’t know what I need to do to prove to you that I haven’t thought about leaving, but I haven’t.”Without hesitating, Lance lifted his good hand to rest on Keith’s cheek and stroked his thumb across it, silently appreciating his pouty features as he swallowed. “Tell me every day you love me more,” He finally demanded dramatically and breathlessly, flitting his gaze down to Keith’s shoulders instead of the intensity of his eyes, “maybe that would work.”“That wouldn’t even be a challenge.” Keith said quietly.--Five times Lance is swept off his feet, and one time he falls. Rated Teen & Up

Kodachrome - HoddieMaine @joinmeinthishell , Ninke_A @collector-of-hats Wow this is such a beautiful story, its really well written, read if you love pinning and fluff. Summary: Keith has been at a loss for a while now. His job is terrible, his passion for photography has waned, and his pseudo brother has moved to some little town and keeps insisting he visit.When Keith finally does go, he ends up on a little street full of quaint shops. He intends to simply spend time with Shiro but ends up in a record store across the street. With a very attractive man, who signs instead of speaks. Rated E

Thinking ‘Bout You - BleuSarcelle @bleusarcelle, Queerklancing   @queerklancing I got a cavity from the fluff in this fic :) Summary: That time Keith had a voice in his head singing and found out he had a quite unique soulmate link. Rated G

Rose-Colored Boy - melancholymango  @melancholymango Read if you enjoy angsty lance, langst, & to experience all the feels. Summary: “I missed you, you know.”“Yeah?” Lance sighed, warm and giddy, clearly not absorbing how serious the words truly were. “Yeah.” Keith said, more certainty in his voice now. He reached down, hesitantly threading his fingers through Lance’s and giving his hand a squeeze. Lance tensed next to him. “I still do.”“I mean, I’m right here.”“Are you? You still seem pretty far away.” Rated Teen & Up

Blue Christmas -  melancholymango  I loved how keith and lance were written in this fic, its just overall super well written. Summary: The team decides to celebrate the holiday season in space as nostalgia gets the better of them, but reflecting on the past hurts Lance more than it helps and Keith doesn't have any memories to reflect on. AKA the one where Keith and Lance hate the holidays together, only to realize that they were actually celebrating all along in their own Keith and Lance way. Rated G

Multi-chapter

Not That Bad - varelsen @lvtvr Yeah this fic gave me lot of feelings, their relationship builds beautifully. Summay: “Am I really going to have to explain this to you?”“No, I’m totally fine with you shutting up right about now.” Hunk cups his hands around his mouth. “You. Are crushing. On Keith.” Or, a college AU featuring coffee shops, silly rivalries, motorcycles, arcade games, friendships, and lots of warm, fluffy feelings that are both confusing and delightful all at the same time. Rated M

Entangled - Purpleneutrino (mackerelmademedoit) @purpleneutrino I found this fic super interesting to read, and literally could not put it down. Summary: When Keith found himself mentally linked to Lance of all people, he never thought that it would end in anything but irritation and misery on both sides. He certainly never imagined that it would be a useful asset in team Voltron's fight against the Galra Empire. Now if he can just keep his feelings in check, they might actually have a chance at defeating Zarkon. Needless to say, when he'd wished for a 'bonding moment' with Lance, this wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind. Rated M

Hearts Don’t Break Around Here - klancekorner @dimplesandcurlsss Yeah I stayed up till 4am reading this and it was glorious, I finished at 3am and just thought about it for another hour, so awesome! Summary: Lance and Keith have been best friends since first grade. Lance’s brain is always on overdrive and Keith’s blunt, realistic ass can never keep up. They both come to realize that sometimes you can learn a lot about loving yourself by loving someone else. Rated M

Something just like this - klancekorner A summer romance sundae with a friends to lovers cherry on top. Summary: Keith reluctantly becomes the counselor for the Red Cabin at Camp Voltron, a summer camp in the middle of buttfuck nowhere that his older brother Shiro has worked at for years. Already unhappy with the current position that he is in, Keith prepares himself for a boring, sweaty, miserable summer; and his frustration only grows when he meets the counselor for the Blue Cabin Rated M

You and I Collide - idratherhaveyou @itsthegameilike If you looked up cute in the dictionary, this modern apartment au would be the definition. Summary: Lance likes to sing in the shower. Keith lives in the apartment next door and the walls are not very thick. And you can bet when Lance wakes him up at 7:30 in the morning, Keith has something to say about it. Rated M

I’ve Got You - DragonofFernweh @dragonastral Keith comforting lance is my aesthetic, this fic is my aesthetic. Summary: Keith isn’t great at the whole comfort thing, he doesn’t have a way with words, nor does he have much experience in way of affection. Still, when Lance hurts, Keith wants to do something to help. Otherwise known as; five times Keith comforts Lance, and one time Lance comforts Keith. Rated G

it’s easier for you to let me go - welcometothehumanrace  Should be called 6 times I went AAJKSCNSKDCNSJ because of how fluffin’ cute keith and lance are. Summary: Keith did not think Lance's arms were anything to get excited about. Or his shoulders. Or any general part of him. Just everything about him was unexciting as a whole.Obviously. Or 5 times Lance put his arms around Keith and the one time Keith really wanted him to. Rated Teen & Up

The Message - shipstiel @shipstiel-writes Wow this wrong number fic is just glorious, I laughed, I went “awwwww”, I just had such a good time reading this. Summary: Keith is texted by accident by some idiot one day, and honestly he's not even sure why he responds. Or why he keeps responding. Yet somehow he finds himself drawn in, and okay, so maybe this fool is mildly entertaining after all. Who would've thought. Rated Teen & Up

Homesick at Space Camp - K0bot @k0tron So awesome...just a fucking great fic. Its got fake relationship/married, its got angst, its got ballroom dancing, its got so much fluff, do I need to say any more? Summary: Lance realizes he's been an asshole to Keith, and on a diplomatic mission to a key planet for the Voltron alliance he... overcompensates.

Fake It Till You Make It - nikkiRA @aravenlikeawritingdesk I’m a sucker for Fake/Pretend Relationship fics and this one is the fic that started that particular habit. Summary: “What Keith here means to say,” Lance says, and although his voice is steady, he is gripping Keith’s fingers so tightly it’s painful. “Is that we can’t mate with your people, although we, um, appreciate the offer, because, well. We already are. M-mated, I mean. With, you know. Each other.” Rated M

I hope you love these fics as much as I did, they are some of my fav fics of all time. It took me forever to finish this post because I sorta, kinda, maybe, totally re-read a lot of them while making it :) Shout out to fanfiction writers, thank you for putting so much of your time into these stories for free, your all amazing! 

Check out my blog if you would like >>> @getyourvitamin-bri

#voltron #klance #klance fanfiction #klance fanfic #klance fic rec #keith kogane #lance mcclain #laith #klance vld #vld #voltron legendary defender #voltron lance #klance voltron #klance fic #klance fanfic rec #keith #keith voltron #keith vld #lance voltron #vld lance #klance fluff #fanfiction #fanfic #recommendations #voltron fanfic #lance and keith #keith and lance #keith/lance #lance/keith #getyourvitamin-bri

[voltron-queen-140]

My Notes on Season 8 - Part 1 of 2

I'm writing them as I watch the series but they may not be in order completely. My opinions and whilst I know no one cares I'm writing them anyway.

Episode 1:

PIDGE WITH BUNCHES IS THE BEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN

The original Voltron is a TV show based on them?! Love it!

"I don't really sound like that, do I bae bae?"

Hunk is best bro/wingman 11/10 need a Hunk in my life

Okay I guess Allurance is happening. Good for Allurace shippers! I'm happy for you!

"Grounded? I wasn't aware humans could float" Romelle, I honestly love you.

Pidge is 15, nice to get an actual age

She's also grounded omg rip

"Apparently saving my brother and dad doesn't get me a pass!"

"We'll make sure she doesn't leave the ground once"

PIDGE NO, PUT YOUR NORMAL OUTFIT ON

ALSO STOP WITH THAT VOOOOOOICE

Keith and Lance bonding 😍 it's not what I was hoping for but I didn't expect it to be canon, I'll take what I'm given.

Ugghhhh I need more of Lance family dynamic!!!! Fanfic writing time.

Oh no no no, it's a little early in the relationship for "I love you" ugh I always cringe when people say I love you in shows and books when they've only been going out for like a day, no matter the ship.

Episode 2:

Baby/kid Lotor is cute

I like how he was named

Seeing how Lotor was raised I can't blame him for being a little... extravagant

OMG HE WAS ACTUALLY WORKING WITH THE PEOPLE ON THAT PLANNET AND IT GOT DESTROYED?! W O W THAT HAS TO HURT.

Episode 3:

Am... am I meant to remember this dude?

Oh? OH! So you're gonna insult Keith for being a half breed hu? And the Blade for accepting him as one of them? Hahahaha I hate you.

"Okay.... or we could just do this *hacks*" PIDGE MY QUEEN YAS

Rotten... food goo? If food goo can go rotten why didn't the food goo go rotten in the castle of Lions after 10 thousand years?

"I don't know what it's going to take to get it through your thick skull, but we are not your enemy" aaaahhhh I see the red paladin in my boy Lance now. I could jam to that all day, YES MY BOY. -right after that guy accused Keith of releasing the monster deliberatly, I know it means nothing but my Laith shipper heart will treasure it for years to come-

That monster hurt cosmo so I'm going to hurt it.

Of course the Galra and the Galra Half-breed are the ones locked in a room with the Galra hating monster. Of course.

Lance's face when Keith -and the other guy but shhhhh- gets locked in, has me in tears. My ship may not sail but I'll cherish these moments.

Also Pidge and Hunk's faces. I stan a paladin space family

"Keith!" "We're coming for ya!" I 👏 STAN 👏 ONE 👏 SPACE FAM 👏

KEITH'S BAYARD BECAME A GUN BLASTER THING OMG I'M SCREAMING

Episode 4:

Omfg Pidge's love of the olcary is so pure

"ThAt WaSN't ThE RhYMe!"

I was not ready to see my gal cry again. Please protect her

Pidge is a QUEEN

Episode 5:

Ha

GAY

That is all

Episode 6:

I missed Slav

Uuuuugghhhhhh guys I don't have the patience for an atlas and a voltron transformation

Oh thank Quiznack they skipped the Voltron transformation

Ezor's voice sounds different but idk

Zethred's techie is a m a z i n g I love him

"How do we fix it?" "for starters you have to TAKE OFF YOUR SOOOOOCKS"

Fucking Lotor's back

Episode 7:

Okay... kinkade is cute.

"You making a movie?! Cool. Can I be in it? No wait, if this is an action movie- is it?- I don't wanna be in it."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'll make you some doggie treats later."

Seriously though who let bae bae come on this mission? Could she not have stayed with someone on earth? Is it wise to have a dog bouncing around a space ship that can turn into a mech and fights in battles?

"But... I like cooking."

"So... is this interview over?" "N o. Great. Now the talent is getting restless."

"The camera!" "Leave it! We need to go!" "BUT THIS IS GOLD" okay. Okay my love for these two is growing.

W- was that Sal from Vepit Sal's?

"Need to get someone more exciting in here" *cuts to Coran*

Okay so more Allurance, I'm happy for Allurance shippers, bet you guys are thriving!

"No that's private" Kinkade you're so sweet! Too good for this world.

Hunk is such a sunshine child I love him!

Episode 8:

Okay. Allurance is cute. It's growing on me.

"I better go find the arcade and... make sure it's safe" *noom* "uhhh me too" *noom* "me three" *noom*

*elongated sigh* Allura. You fell right into their trap. You still trust Lotor and now I'm feeling iffy about your relationship with Lance again right after it started go grow on me. You aren't over Lotor yet are you?

🎵Coran Coran the Non-Truth telling man🎶

Pidge is hitting coran as if she's been waiting to do it for a long time... what did he ever do to you Pidge?

"Okay that's a start! Did you get a good look at- it's me isn't it." I WILL NEVER NOT LOVE THIS BOY

🎶"Wadda we say? Clear day clear day clear-"🎶 "I've gotta get out of here" my BOY

"In that case you can get one of these shovels and dig yourself out of the hole you find yourself in." I STAN THIS GIRL CAN SHE BE MY FAVOURITE BACKGROUND CHARACTER?!?!

I call using a mechanical arm in an arm wrestling match cheating but kay. IT'S NOT EVEN ATTACHED TO HIS BODY WTF

Pidge puppy eyes!

Pidge and colleen bargaining on the photo is amazing! Yes.

So... is that chick Matt's girlfriend? Because I will happily add that to my mountain of Matt ships yes yes.

So clearly Allura still likes Lotor but she also likes Lance which is why she's so close to freeing that damned thing (I refuse to say entity becuase it's been said enough) when both of them talk to her.

Well FU-

Keith's having a mental breakdown. I can't blame him, could you imagine being stuck on It's a Small World for hours?

"THAT'S IT" *slices through bar with his Bayard and runs*

Once again, am I meant to remember this guy?

Shiro winning that arm wrestle because he looked at the team is the new "do it for them"

#voltron #lance mcclain #keith kogane #takashi shirogane #pidge gunderson #katie holt #season 8 #spoilers #voltron season 8 #hunk voltron #hunk garret #hunk #princess allura #coran #voltron legendary defender #vld #my notes #my opinions

[safeklancewriters]

Fic Rec #3

Date ending: April 21

Sorry all that this is late! Next months should hopefully be on time if life doesn’t get in our way. But this month she’s a long one and we have some stellar fics for yall this month! As usual, the fics will follow below the cut

bring him home by 221bdisneystreet Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: Hunk | Pidge | Shiro | Allura | Lotor Tags: Angst | Hurt/Comfort | Angst with a Happy Ending | of course there's gonna be a happy ending i'm no sadist | klangst | Brainwashing | Blood | Violence | the blood and violence isn't very graphic tho | it's somewhat mild | Post-Season 4 | Canon Divergence | i guess?? idk where this could be in the timeline exactly | just pretend it's after s4 | anyways i hope you all love dying cuz i sure love dying | Minor Injuries Stats: Words: 1713 Chapters:1/1

Summary: This isn’t Keith. This isn’t the Keith he has fought alongside as a fellow teammate. This isn’t the Keith he used to call his rival and now can consider his friend. This isn’t the Keith he has slowly grown fond of with each passing day, with each passing second. This isn’t him. But maybe…

Keith’s been brainwashed and Lance hopes he can snap him out of it.

red skies ch. 4 by angstinspace Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance | minor Hunk/Shay Additional characters: Hunk | Pidge | Keith | Rover | Zarkon | Haggar | Shiro  Tags: Alternate Universe - Space Opera | heavily influenced by star wars | but not exactly a star wars au idk | broganes | au where rover doesn't die | Slow Burn | pew pew laser guns | plot twist heavy | spot the golion references | adding characters and tags as i go | white haired keith | lance is basically han solo | POV Multiple Stats: Words:39,121 Chapters:4/?

Summary:

Lance's fingers hovered over the talisman, an inch away from brushing against it. His mind went blank as he stared down at the other boy, who stared back at him with wide, questioning eyes that were a startling shade of violet.

The dazed look on the boy’s face transformed into a frown as his breathing quickened. The more his eyes focused on Lance, the more a wild panic started to set into them.

"Who are you?" he asked sharply. It sounded like he'd meant it to come out with more ferocity, but his voice rasped on the words like he hadn't spoken in weeks.

Lance doesn't know where he comes from––only that he was found in a forest on a distant planet when he was an infant, with no sign of his origin except a blue talisman around his neck. Nowadays he's content to travel the universe with his best friend Hunk, scavenging and selling goods. But that all changes when a girl named Pidge hitches a ride with them, and in the same day the trio finds a crashed ship carrying nothing but a boy with no memory of who he is ... and a red talisman that matches Lance's.

the stars are bound to change by angstinspace Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: OCs Tags: Kidfic | Angst with a Happy Ending | Fluff and Angst | Pining Keith | Minor Injuries | Slight Canon Divergence | Slow Burn | like....really slow burn i'm so sorry Stats:  Words:50,828 Chapters:9/9

Summary: Both paladins turned to their new, small alien companion. She lifted her head to look at each of them in turn, her eyes round. Keith laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“How about you, Zola?” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

She didn’t answer right away. Then she hesitantly asked, “Where are we going?”

As he made eye contact with Lance over her head, Keith could have sworn he felt something electric in the air: a simultaneous resurgence of determination.

“We’re going to take you home.”

Keith and Lance rescue a little alien girl from a hostage situation and bring her home ... and learn a few things about themselves and each other along the way.

Sunlight by bepsicola Rating: N/A Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: Shiro | Allura Tags: Drabble | Alternate Universe - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Setting | Pining Keith | Pre-Relationship | Listen. It's tender. Stats:  Words:1,015 Chapters:1/1

Summary: Lance had made a mistake, but he could also make flowers grow.

Learning About Strays by Katsudonace Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: Red Lion | Blue Lion | Black Lion Tags: Established Relationship | Alternate Universe - Modern Setting | Trans Male Keith | Trans Male Lance | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD | Abandonment Issues | Emotional Hurt/Comfort | Fluff | Light Angst | Nightmares | blind cat | three-legged cat Stats: Words:5,780 Chapters:1/1

Summary: It's been two weeks since Keith and Lance started dating, and they've begun preparing to move in together. They decide to tackle one hurdle before they go any further in their relationship, sleeping in the same bed. However, there are still aspects of themselves that they haven't told their partner. What starts as a peaceful night turns into one of discovery as they learn more about the baggage each of them carry.

Cheetah Tongue by mishcakes Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: everyone else on team volron Tags: Alcohol | i mean it isnt but it makes them act like it | so just to be safe Stats:  Words:2,680 Chapters:1/1

Summary: In which Keith and Lance go on a journey to find out why they woke up alone together in a closet.

Glow in the Dark by mishcakes Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance | mentioned Hunk/Shay Additional characters: Shiro | Pidge | Hunk Tags: ghost au | Real estate au | ghost lance | broganes | supernatural au (not the show) | keith | is bad at feelings | Slow Burn | i guess this counts as one now | Angst Stats:  Words:35,571 Chapters:9/9

Summary: Keith and Shiro are real estate agents tasked with fixing up a once abandoned house. It's a mystery why the house was abandoned, until Keith realises that it's haunted by an annoying ghost named Lance.

The Stars Above Nevada by quasarii Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance | Keith & Shiro | Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Keith & Pidge Additional characters: OCs | Iverson | Keith’s Father Tags: Major Original Character(s) | Gay Keith | Bisexual Lance | Laundromat AU | a dash of angst | lowkey slow burn | Gays In Arcades | Wannabe Contemporary Novel | Coming Out | Lance Likes Philosophy | Bilingual Lance | Cuban Lance | Texan Keith | Pretentious Philosophy | Alternate Universe - Laundromat | Don't Ask Me How This Fits Into Canon | Galaxy Garrison | Keith has Social Anxiety | Shiro Is Flawed But We Love Him | Pre-Canon | i guess | Don't | Examine This Too Closely | some time skips | finished fic | Greek Mythology References | if nevada-boo was a thing like weaboo i'd be it | a ton of broganes Stats:  Words:77,957 Chapters:28/36

Summary: “Tell me,” Keith asked, finally tearing his eyes away from the sky to look at Lance. Lance frowned in confusion. “Tell you what?” “What the desert whispers into your ears.” – One night, a few hundred years into the future, in a dark laundromat in the middle of the vast Nevada desert – Keith ends up meeting Lance by a turn of fate. When they meet again in Galaxy Garrison for their junior year, an unlikely friendship blooms between them, as lively as the star-scattered skies, and as strong as the desert wind. 

The stars, the moon (they have all been blown out) by Talking_Bird Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: Pidge | Shiro | Narti | Kova Tags: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts | Room of Requirement | One Shot | First Kiss | Pining Keith | Love Confessions | patronus reveal | Tooth-Rotting Fluff | gryffindor klance | beater keith | chaser lance | liberal use of the room of requirement | Patronus | Friends to Lovers | Best Friends | Amortentia | POV Keith  Stats:  Words:9,700 Chapters:1/1

Summary: On the night before Lance and Keith graduate from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they decide to sneak out one last time to the astronomy tower.

or

Keith tries to find the courage to tell his best friend he's in love with him.

[[Updated with art!!]]

New Endings ch. 4 by thatreallyshittydude Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: Allura Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence | Black Paladin Lance | yeah you heard me Stats:  Words:11,004 Chapters:5/?

Summary: For the last two years, Keith has been completely alone. Nothing in his life meant anything. He simply kept going without any purpose, serving a faceless organization that hardly got anything done. But one day, he receives a call. A call to join Team Voltron, a call to become the Red Paladin, a call to meet new people. Though begrudgingly, he answers it.

polaris by VaraderoBeach Rating: Teen Pairings: Keith/Lance Additional characters: Shiro Tags: Alcohol | Underage Drinking | Keith is Bad at Feelings | Pining Keith | gratuitous imagery of constellations | Keith Has Anxiety | rating for alcohol use | Garrison AU/Modern AU Stats:  Words:6,513 Chapters:1/1

Summary: Keith looks down at the stereotypical red solo cup in his hand, filled with some liquor he found in the fridge. Someone named Rolo had put in his hand almost an hour ago. At first, he hadn’t had any of the mystery liquid out of fear of the unknown, but the second he saw Lance he chugged half of it’s contents. It’s fruity, but sour.

Keith looks up from the cup as he brings it to his lips again. His eyes, almost as if they’re trained to do so, find Lance. Lance is speaking to the short girl — Katie, he thinks is her name, but he isn’t positive — and the larger man he knows to be Hunk. He and Hunk have physics together. They’ve never spoken. Lance laughs at something Hunk says, and Keith finds himself smiling into his cup. He hates it and downs the rest of the cup’s contents, and then grimaces at the taste.

Keith decides he needs a refill.

#skwficrecs #i hope the format sticks this time :/ #and that the links dont break #sorry if they do! #monthly rec #ficrec #fic rec #march #april #safeklance #safevoltron #ficrecs

[dynared]

When do you think VLD got bad? Do you think it can still be redeemed?

Season 3. In fact, I can specifically point to that time when my posts on the show switched from criticizing the fandom to criticizing the show (Not that the fandom is much better). I had actually gone to NYCC 2017 for a fandom panel and realized that there was no saving this show on its current path. So the problems?

1. Shiro. I know a lot of the issues here are the fault of executive meddling and the fandom reaction but it still weakens the story tremendously. Also, there are tons of stories where popular supporting characters die to progress the hero towards his goal, and you see why. Keeping Shiro around has been an albatross on the storytelling mechanism and has actively hindered the development of the others. If you were going to bring him back as a clone, it should have been done way later and there should have been no “Original Shiro is back in the clone body! Hooray!” retcon ala the old Space Hospital. I wouldn’t have even objected to Shiro being a sort of spiritual mentor for Keith. But as it stands, his presence muddles the cast and causes confusion, especially with all the “One True Black Paladin” nonsense (He isn’t, that’s bad writing).

2. Stagnated, unclear development. A conversation with @sol1056 sort of crystallized for me what I had suspected, that the show is scripted in bullet points where the objective is to get the story to Point A, Point B, etc. The problem is what fills in said bullet points. There’s nothing really there that suggests coherency in the direction, and more often than not, it meanders about until the point is reached. (Meander being the key word here). Look at Zarkon for instance. He’s defeated, comes back, and does nothing before dying again. Lotor is not shown to be reaching for his goals, they just pull up to his place and he starts going “MWAHAHAHAHAHA!”

So what do we get instead? Filler episodes, usually at the cost of world building. Did we really need a knockoff of Ember Island Players when the actual hows and whys of recruiting an army could have covered an entire season and given numerous characters some much needed development, especially considering how antisocial Keith and Allura can be? Was a boring Dungeons and Dragons knockoff contributing anything to the plot besides letting the writers write something besides the sci-fi show they seem to dislike? It’s the classic case of missing the forest for the trees. Speaking of that horrible DND episode (from someone who loved the old DND arcade games and their spiritual successor in Dragons Crown, so I have nothing against the concept, just not here):

3. “Voltron? Oh, that thing.” I’ve made no secret of my annoyance with how the titular machine is ignored except once a season because presumably the executives come in with the whip to make sure the showrunners don’t ignore it entirely. The show is so obsessed with these boring, badly choreographed hand to hand fights that they put no effort into the mecha element. This is particularly egregious when the mecha is the ONLY reason people would give two shits and a holler about Voltron. Do you really think if 80’s Voltron was about 5 ethnically diverse idiots fighting people in nothing but boring hand to hand fights it would have sold a single toy? You don’t need to ponder that, since the modern day toys of the human characters all bombed! Kids were not interested in playing with Shiro figures when they could be buying Avengers toys, or WWE figures.

The fillers and desire to ignore Voltron show a clear disdain from the writers to show it, and a desire to have literally been doing anything else. Which of course begs the question as to why you would hire these people for your giant robot show. Going back to that NYCC panel, the giant robot didn’t come up ONCE, save a member of NYCC staff talking about having a toy as a kid in the run up to the panel, which was met by the showrunners with an eye roll, as if to say “Yeah, no one cares about the robot, we’re here to talk about the Paladins!” Yeah, that’s why Shiro toys were just FLYING off the shelves, weren’t they?

Speaking of a desperate attempt to write about anything but giant robot fights, the showrunners lamented not being able to put in an episode about pro wrestling, which judging by their description of the outline, would have just been another filler (and before defenders of the show go “But Avatar had a pro wrestling episode and it had Mick Foley in it!”, that was the same episode that introduced Toph. This was filler in every sense of the word). If this is where their passion is directed and the main attraction is viewed as little more than a distraction to what they really want, what’s the point?

Sorry for the ramble. Now, as for your second question:

I think the show’s last season is going to really determine how it’s remembered. If they return to Earth and the next season is just boring family stuff while the Galra gather themselves for one last battle, then it’s a wash. Kids will be bored as hell and the show will have squandered an opportunity to present a different villain. I think that there could be potential for a human force, whether they return to an Earth under a dictatorial rule, or a clandestine organization that wants to create a weapon superior to Voltron. Something that creates a spark that the Galra have been lacking lately so when they do return, it creates a bigger impact. There’s a lot of other issues, but that direction is the primary one.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron season 6 #Voltron meta #voltron critical #Voltron season 7 #Shiro

[satsuma-dan]

RULES: tag ten followers lovely friends you want to know better!

I was tagged by: @maetaurus (thank you!)

TAGGING: i’m a shy loner even on the internet and never know who is okay to tag in these things, so if you want to do this, feel free

NAME: daniela

STAR SIGN: libra

HEIGHT: 5’3’’

WHAT’S YOUR MIDDLE NAME? don’t have one

PUT YOUR ITUNES ON SHUFFLE. WHAT ARE THE FIRST 4 SONGS THAT   POPPED UP?

feel again - one republic

in the cold light of morning - placebo

the suburbs - arcade fire

unsustainable - muse

i should really add some new music in there...

GRAB THE BOOK NEAREST YOU AND TURN TO PAGE 23. WHAT’S LINE 17? “The sun drove high, then higher still.” from the song of achilles (i cheated and got the nearest book in english)

EVER HAD A POEM OR SONG WRITTEN ABOUT YOU? yes unfortunately

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PLAYED AIR GUITAR? probably some time when i was hanging out with my friends but i don’t remember for sure

WHO IS YOUR CELEBRITY CRUSH? i don’t feel very strongly about any celebrities these days tbh

WHAT’S A SOUND YOU HATE + SOUND YOU LOVE?

 –HATE: the sound of my own voice. horrifying

 –LOVE: rain

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS? nah, unless it’s very late at night and i’ve just watched something scary

HOW ABOUT ALIENS? yes they are out there

DO YOU DRIVE? yes

IF SO, HAVE YOU EVER CRASHED? i was crashed into, once. it was a year after i got my license and it sucked but i was kinda happy that at least it wasn’t my fault even though i was such a shit driver at that time

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? the song of achilles by madeline miller, finished this about two hours ago

DO YOU LIKE THE SMELL OF GASOLINE? maybe a little?

WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU SAW? i just spent way too much time trying to remember but it’s too late and i have no idea

WHAT’S THE WORST INJURY YOU’VE EVER HAD? i’ve never had any serious injury, thank god, only minor things

DO YOU HAVE ANY OBSESSIONS RIGHT NOW? voltron. please don’t judge me, i know the fandom is awful

DO YOU TEND TO HOLD GRUDGES AGAINST PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE YOU WRONG? well... yeah, honestly i neve forget when someone is shitty to me

IN A RELATIONSHIP? what even is a relationship

#personal//

[evaceratops]

tag games

there are like 10000 of these in my drafts so i’m going to do them all at once in one big post, organized by who tagged me

tagged by @leopoldjamesfitz

name: eva

gender: female

height: 5′0″

sexuality: ace as heck

what image do you have as a wallpaper? fire emblem awakening cutscene screenshot

where do you see yourself in 10 years? livin the dream as a researcher at the monterey bay aquarium

if you could be anywhere right now, where? yosemite national park, or monterey

what was your coolest halloween costume? ... is it weird that i legitimately can’t think of one

last kiss: uhhh i’m assuming this is in a romantic context, so never

have you ever been stood up? this would require having been planning to go on a date in the first place, so no

what’s your favorite 90′s show? is kim possible from the 90s

favorite pair of shoes: there’s these black and gray tennis shoes that i really like

favorite fruit: cherries

stupidest thing you’ve ever done: download fire emblem heroes i legitimately forgot about chem lab once and missed the entire thing and didn’t realize until a week later

favorite book: .. you come into my house and ask me to choose One, you absolute fool,, just to spite you my answer is all 35+ books of the warriors series

colors i’m currently wearing: black, brown, denim

last band shirt i bought: 5 seconds of summer, like 2 years ago

last band i went to see live: the oh hellos!

last song i listened to: masterpiece theater III by marianas trench

lipstick or chapstick: definitely chapstick, i’ve always hated makeup

last movie i watched: pacific rim uprising

last 3 shows i watched: i think i watched a few episodes of total drama island and pretty little liars with my sister recently, and the third... probably voltron?

3 characters i identify with: arc trooper echo from star wars, ricken from fire emblem awakening, pidge from voltron

books i’m currently reading: the song of roland for my medieval history course, aaaand i’m in between the first and second books of my reread of the dawn of the clans arc of warriors

what’s your favorite song(s) to sing/hum? probably willow tree march by the paper kites

what’s your favorite flower/tree/plant? italian cypress,, and most other evergreen trees tbh

favorite colors? navy and pretty much any shade of blue/grayish-blue, dark red, gold

what do you always doodle? it varies depending on what i feel like that day but yesterday it was cats and dinosaurs

how do you take your coffee/tea? i can’t have caffeine so i don’t drink coffee at all and i rarely drink tea, but with tea i’ll use like 3 entire packets of sugar and nothing else

favorite candle scent? pine, or the ocean

sunrise or sunset? is this referring to the warriors books with those titles or the actual times of day sunset

what perfume do you wear? none

what’s your go-to dance move when you’re alone? ... i don’t even know

favorite quote? shrug emoji,, i just don’t think about this stuff i guess

favorite self care routine(s)? taking a long bath/shower and then going to bed early or reading a book i like

what color are your eyes? grayish-blue

what’s your favorite eye color on others? i’ve always thought brownish-green looks pretty cool

favorite season? why? fall/winter because i like cold weather and rainstorms

cheek, neck, or nose kisses? cheek kisses but also why aren’t forehead kisses on here

what does your happy place look like? anywhere in the sierras or along the coast of california

favorite breed of dog? i’ve always thought huskies are really pretty even though being around big dogs makes me a little nervous (i am 110% a cat person)

do you ever want to be married? if so, what colors would you pick for your wedding theme? no

cursive or print? print

favorite weather? THUNDERSTORMS.

Rules: Choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions.

i choose: heck, let’s go with the 3 i’ve been most into recently!

star wars | fire emblem | warriors

the first character you loved: 

anakin skywalker. i still remember being indignant when ahsoka talked back to him in the tcw movie | either lissa or frederick | probably dovewing (i borrowed the fourth apprentice from a friend and read that first before going back and reading the rest of the series)

the character you never expected to love so much:

probably ezra bridger, tbh! i started watching rebels purely for ahsoka and rex and did not expect to get so attached to the ghost crew literally within the first 5 minutes of spark of rebellion | TAKUMI | ... god, it’s so hard to remember these things, the first time i read these books was so many years ago... squirrelflight, maybe?

the character you relate to the most:

echo! i used to read encyclopedias for fun as a kid so i understand his love of the reg manual | probably sumia? i don’t quite have self-esteem issues like she does but i do tend to downplay my strengths and kinda write myself off. plus we both love reading and even tend to prefer the same genres (mostly fantasy and fiction) | leafpool because i too spend a good deal of my time pretending everything is fine even if it’s not and trying to fix my mistakes,

the character you’d slap:

wat tambor | fernand | clear sky. i’ve had enough of that dude

three favorite characters (in order of preference):

anakin, kanan, rey | gaius, takumi, lissa | JAYFEATHER, lionblaze, bramblestar (if i’m being totally honest jayfeather alone is favorite characters #1 through 10 for this series i love him SO MUCH no one else even comes close)

a character you liked at first but don’t anymore:

... i don’t really care for ventress? i don’t dislike her, but i don’t seem to like her as much as everyone else does. i thought she was cool the first time i watched tcw all the way through, but now... | cherche, maybe? i don’t think i’ve ever really disliked a fire emblem character - at least not one from any of the games i’ve played - but i’m not as interested in cherche as i used to be | sorry, dovewing

a character you did not like at first but now do:

ahsoka, believe it or not. i don’t remember caring about her too much when tcw was first airing, but i really like her now | camilla | as usual i never really disliked hollyleaf but i like her more now than i did the first time i read the books

three OTPs:

anidala, kanera, ultimate rarepair™ arcmaiden | the Original Rarepair™ ricken/lissa, chrom/sumia, gaius/robin | bramblestar/squirrelflight, lionblaze/cinderheart, hollyleaf/fallen leaves (honorable mention for bluestar/oakheart bc i do love me those classic and tragic Forbidden Relationships but hollyleaf falling in love with a literal ghost is just too good of a concept and is therefore slightly higher in the rankings)

tagged by @minhoruns

rules: bold your aspirations!

AIR: I have small hands • I love the night sky • I watch small animals and birds when I pass them by • I drink herbal tea • I wake to see dawn • The smell of dust is comforting • I’m valued for being wise • I prefer books to music • I meditate • I find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE: I don’t have straight hair • I like to wear ripped jeans and overalls • I play an organized sport • I love dogs • I am not afraid of adventure • I love to talk to strangers • I always try new foods • I enjoy road trips • Summer is my favorite season • My radio is always playing

WATER: I wear bracelets on my wrists • I love the bustle of the city • I have more than one set of piercings • I read poetry • I love the sound of a thunderstorm • I want to travel the world • I sleep past noon most days • I love dimly lit diners and fluorescent signs • I rewatch kids’ shows out of nostalgia • I see emotions in colors and words

EARTH: I wear glasses • I enjoy doing the laundry • I am a vegetarian or vegan • I have an excellent sense of time • My humor is very cheerful • I am a valued advisor to my friends • I believe in true love • I love the chill of mountain air • I’m always listening to music • I am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER: I go without makeup in my daily life • I make my own artwork • I keep on track of my tasks and time • I always know true north • I see beauty in everything • I can always smell flowers • I smile at everyone I pass by • I always fear history repeating itself • I have recovered from a mental disorder • I can love unconditionally

rules: spell your url out with song titles

exeunt - the oh hellos viva la vida - coldplay anna sun - walk the moon caves - haux earth - sleeping at last red hands - walk off the earth all the right moves - onerepublic the royal we - silversun pickups ophelia - the lumineers pompeii - bastille stay frosty royal milk tea - fall out boy

tagged by @autisticpadme

rules: list the top ten songs you’ve been listening to lately

masterpiece theater III (by marianas trench), willow tree march (by the paper kites), 3. wake up (by arcade fire), valley - reprise (by the oh hellos), you of the light (from the fire emblem: fates soundtrack), the royal we (by silversun pickups), the last of the real ones (by fall out boy), alight (storm) (from the fire emblem: fates soundtrack), where is your rider (by the oh hellos), enishi (from the fire emblem: fates soundtrack)

#about me #tag games