seen from Argentina
seen from Austria
seen from Belgium
seen from Türkiye
seen from Switzerland
seen from Malaysia
seen from Jordan
seen from Netherlands
seen from Singapore
seen from Türkiye
seen from Switzerland
seen from Brazil
seen from Yemen
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Netherlands
seen from Colombia
In an AU created by @falsechaos where Lance has a cybernetic Altean arm & works with the rebel forces, and Keith is still struggling in the Blades of Marmorra, their feelings speak louder than all the space ships exploding around them. Gotta love my gay boys lmao, thank you so much once again for commissioning me!! <3
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Emergency commissions are open! 10 USD/character!
Instagram: crazycookiemaniac
Buy me a coffee? ko-fi.com/ crazycookiemaniac (w/o spaces)
falsechaos replied to your photo “leslietries: “Shiro, please…. I love you.”
Fuuuuuuck. I think I ship it now. Yup. Definitely ship it now. XD;;
one of us one of us
Hey, do you have any tips or hints as to your outline process for fics? :3
Well, I can tell you some things that I do?
1 - Write your initial idea down. Don’t let it slip away. Seriously, if an idea hits you, type it out on your phone. Or if you carry a notebook around with you (I almost always have a little pad of paper and a pen on me), write down the idea wherever you are…unless you’re driving or something. You know what I mean.
2 - Take inspiration from everything (again, why I always have something with me to write, even if it’s just my phone). Seriously, one of the things I had to do as a writing assignment once was sit in a busy place and just listen to people. Listen to their conversations and if you hear something great, use it.
3 - Start with an outline and write the bare basics down. For instance, my story, All That Still Matters. It’s a soulmate AU and those are super common. Still, I wrote down things that I KNEW I wanted off of the top of my head. (Keith and Lance are NOT soulmates. Lance doesn’t know. Keith does. They fall in love anyway. In the end their soulmarks change to match.)
4 - Once you have your basic idea down, start trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B. What I mean is, in the example above I had to figure out these questions:1. How do soulmarks work? 2. How does Keith know when Lance doesn’t? 3. How do their soulmarks change?
I used a lot of ‘if, then’ questions. As in, ‘if this thing happens, then this happens’.
5 - If you can’t figure out exact details of scenes, that’s okay. Half the time I plan out scenes with dialogue and bare basic character interactions anyway. It looks almost like a chat fic, but then I keep adding more and more details to it.
6 - Once you have your chapter written, go back and add in more details. Keep your five basic senses in mind: sight, taste, touch, sound, smell. Not just those though. There are so many ways you can describe things.
7 - Research if need be. What I mean here is that if you’re going to work in something you don’t know that much about, don’t just make it up. For example, I am a white, ace, cis female from a middle class family who grew up in a primarily white, Christian community. It doesn’t give much for world views, does it? So, I admit I know nothing about say Cuban culture, well, I assume what I was taught is wrong, then try to figure out what’s right. I’ve had people correct and suggest things that have already been posted, and you know what? I listen to people who know more than me and fix it.
The most important thing: Character. Character is EVERYTHING in any story. Know your characters. Know their backgrounds. Know their motivations. Every character has their own thoughts, feelings, way of doing things, beliefs, life experiences, etc. Use them.
I can probably come up with more things if you like, but this was kind of just everything off of the top of my head.
What on earth are ghost cores? Is it a fanon thing? Canon? I have no idea. :<
The idea for ghost cores came from canon, but for the most part, they’re purely fanon.
In Urban Jungle, Frostbite mentions that his “central core readings indicate extreme cold.” The intent of this line was to back up the claim that his body was self-generating the cold sensation. I doubt there was any other purpose for it.
I’m not sure how things evolved, but I’m certain this is where the idea for ghost cores originated. In fanon, they’re the center of a ghost’s being. It acts like all the vital organs of a ghost’s being. It’s similar to gems in Steven Universe. It’s where the ghost’s consciousness is stored and what keeps them alive. If their physical form is damaged, they can still be saved as long as their core is in tact.
Unlike gems, however, it seems ghost cores can’t exist on their own. Ghosts need both their physical form and their core to remain stable. Either part can be damaged without “killing” the ghost. It will only affect their psychological or physical state. If the two parts are separated, they both fall apart and the ghost “dies”.
That’s my understanding of the whole thing, anyway. All of that is fanon, though. The only part that’s canon is Frostbite mentioning the cold in Danny’s central core.
What that means is that you can accept cores as canon, ignore them, or change what they are depending on your own headcanons and interpretations. Most phans do seem to accept cores as legitimate, but it is more fanon than anything else.
HAPPY JASPYXMAS TO MY SECRET SANTA @falsechaos I am so sorry it comes this late, I was really sick around christmas and just couldnt finish it in time. I hope you had wonderful Holidays and a good start in 2017!
falsechaos replied to your post “If I see one more post claiming that Lance hasn’t gotten ‘a character...”
Do it anyway. Give us fuel.
Okay, but to actually do this, I would have sit down and watch every episode of VLD from season one up until now. It would literally be a research essay.
Though I have done research on stranger things for actual university credits like Pokemon, zombies, and online Brony culture (who says research essays have to be boring), so this wouldn’t be nearly the strangest thing I’ve ever done.
You know what? I just might do it. If I’m going to put in the effort to that, I might as well do all of the characters while I’m at it. I don’t work in summer, so I’ve got the time. It wouldn’t be for a while though.
Hi! Do you know of any guides on how to write hockey? I know the best way is to just settle in and watch a few games and read a few fics, but I'm sort of on crunch time because of a holiday exchange and this'll be the first time I write about ANY sort of sports. XD;; Dunno if this is useful info, but it's an AU with non-RPF characters. (saw your recent meta post on RPF fiction, very well-thought out!)
What a fun question! Though I suppose less fun under a deadline (good luck!!). Unfortunately, I don’t know of any guides already in existence -- though if anyone reading this does, please pass them along. In the absence of that, here are some thoughts off the top of my head. (This is about hockey; I’m not sure what you mean by an AU with non-RPF characters, so if you’re not writing in a hockey setting, this will probably not be helpful to you. But if you’re not writing in a hockey setting, you’re in luck, because you don’t need to know any of this!)
Preliminary warning: I am not a hockey expert! I don’t watch a ton of games or read all the stats, and there are people out there who know way more than me. As recently as this year I’ve made some pretty major errors in stuff I should already have known about. So take my advice with a grain of salt, but also know that people are there to enjoy the story and won’t mind too much if you screw things up. 😄
The schedule:
The hockey season starts in early October. It goes until early April. Training camp is mid-September, and then there are a few weeks of preseason games before the season starts, where everyone doesn’t play every game; the teams are trying to get a look at prospects and see how players gel, and longtime vets may not play. Prospect camp or development camp is July-ish, but you don’t go to that if you’re a returning player.
Players don’t really get a break during the year except for the All-Star or Olympic breaks, if they happen. In the last year or two (I think?) each team has started getting one bye week of five days off per year. This year it looks like they’re all overlapping with the All-Star break, which sucks for the players chosen for that game. Other than that they might get a day off at a time but not usually much more than that -- maybe a few days at Christmas, depending on the game schedule.
There’s a game roughly every other day, but it’s not quite as regular as that. I usually write with the Wikipedia or hockey-reference.com page open for that team’s season. I tend to assume the team has practice or some kind of skate pretty much every day, which may or may not be accurate for any given team. There’s also media stuff and team events, so true days off are rare.
Players take naps in the afternoon before a game. It's an important sports performance thing.
Half the games will be at home and half will be on the road. I believe (someone correct me if I’m wrong) teams are required by their CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) with the NHLPA (Players Association) to return the players as quickly as possible, so at the end of a road trip they’ll usually fly home that night right after the game.
Sometimes road trips are pretty long, like if they’re going to play a bunch of teams far away. Some teams have an annual long road trip when some other group is using their home arena (e.g. the Blackhawks usually have a circus trip in November). They fly on private flights and will take a bus to and from the hotel and the rink.
Playoffs start a few days after the regular season wraps up. 16 teams qualify, based on their number of wins (2 points per win, 1 point per overtime loss, 0 points per loss in regulation). Non-qualifying teams are usually mathematically eliminated in late March or early April, depending on how badly they’ve done that year. There are four rounds of playoffs: two rounds within their conference, then conference finals, then Stanley Cup finals. Each round is the best of seven games and stops after one team has won four.
Teams play other teams in their division most often, then teams within the other division in their conference, then teams in the other conference. Divisions and conferences are organized geographically, so this makes sense for ease of travel.
In the off-season, players rest up, train, see the people they don’t get to during the year, and play a lot of golf (they’re jocks, but they’re prohibited from playing dangerous sports by the terms of their contracts, so golf is one of their few refuges). Sometimes they’ll try to bulk up because it’s hard to keep weight on during the season. They usually take at least something of a break from training right when the season ends, and they won’t start skating again until partway through the summer. A lot of them go to special training camps or work with professional trainers.
Worlds happens during the Stanley Cup playoffs, so players who aren’t in the playoffs, or who get knocked out early, will go represent their countries. Junior Worlds is around Christmastime. There’s sometimes a World Cup of Hockey, which is in theory every four years but has been irregular. It happened in 2016, but the 2020 tournament was cancelled. When it does happen, it’s in September, just prior to the start of the season.
The game:
If a player earns a point, that means they’ve gotten a goal or an assist. An assist is when they passed to someone who scored (a primary assist) or passed to someone who passed to someone who scored (a secondary assist). Goals are better than assists but both are good, and both are worth a point in terms of player stats.
A point per game average is very good. If a player’s at a point per game, he’ll be very happy. Your top players probably do a little better than that. Of course, this is an average; it’s very rare to score in every game, and players have point streaks and also stretches where they’re held scoreless. There’s a LOT of randomness in hockey.
Shots on goal is another good stat: how many times did a player have a scoring opportunity where the goalie denied him?
You get three forwards, two D-men (defensemen), and one goalie on the ice at a given time. The forwards are organized into four lines of three: one winger on each side and a forward. The D-men are organized into three D-pairings. Defensemen will usually play for more minutes per game than forwards because of this. Your top line (of forwards) will play close to or just over 20 minutes per game. Your bottom line might play more like 10. The top D-pairing might be more like 25 minutes or even higher.
Play starts with a faceoff, where one forward, usually the center, faces off against a forward from the opposing team. The ref drops the puck, and the two players in the faceoff both try to knock it back toward their own players. The one who succeeds wins the faceoff. Sometimes a player will move toward the puck before it's legal to do so, and the ref will throw them out of the playoff circle and one of the other forwards will have to take the faceoff.
There are a bunch of penalties you can get for stuff like illegal checks, high sticking, holding, tripping, hooking, delay of game (e.g. if the ref thinks you deliberately knocked the puck out of play). If you commit a penalty, you go into the penalty box and your team is on the penalty kill for two minutes, meaning they’re down a player. The other team is on the power play. If the team on the power play scores, the power play is over and the offending player is released from the penalty box early. If the team on the penalty kill scores, it’s called a shorthanded goal, and the power play continues. How often a team scores on the power play is a stat people talk about -- sometimes teams have stretches where their power play is terrible, and they never manage to convert (score).
The two-minute penalties mentioned above are called minor penalties. You can get a five-minute major for fighting, or you can get thrown out of the game or suspended for multiple games for really bad stuff.
There are three main parts of a hockey rink (there are probably technically more, but eh): each team's offensive zone, where the opposing goal is located, and the neutral zone between them. You can't take the puck into the offensive zone if there's another player from your team already there; if you do, it's offsides, and there's a stoppage of play and a faceoff in the neutral zone. That means you can't pass to someone deep in the offensive zone. Because of that, sometimes when players enter they dump the puck, meaning they shoot it deep into the offensive zone even though there’s no one there to receive it. They might do this if they need to buy a little bit of time for a shift change.
They might also try to buy time for a shift change by shooting the puck deep into the offensive zone from behind the center line, but it will not work, because this is called icing, and results in a stoppage of play. The team responsible is NOT allowed to have a shift change, and there's a faceoff in their own defensive zone. You can get some really long shifts from this. (The exception is when you're on the penalty kill, when you are allowed to ice the puck.)
Shifts are usually about a minute long. When players aren't playing, they're on the bench. When it's their turn to play, they go over the boards.
If a player gets the puck and has no members of the opposing team between him and the goal, it's called a breakaway.
If two players have the puck and are facing one opposie in the offensive zone, it's called a two-on-one.
There are three twenty-minute periods divided by two fifteen-minute intermissions. If at the end of the game, play is tied, they go directly to one five-minute overtime period, which for the past few years has been three-on-three (three players plus a goalie, usually two forwards and a D-man) and is very exciting. If no one scores in overtime they go to a shootout, where the players take turns shooting on the opposing goalies. Overtime rules are different in playoffs, where I believe they keep playing regular twenty-minute periods until someone scores.
If one team is down by a lot at the end of the third period, they'll often pull the goalie so they can have another forward on the ice without going over their six-player limit. If the other team scores while there's no goalie, it's called an empty-netter.
Players wear a ton of pads but still get a lot of bruising. Which can be fun for writers. 😆
The team and the players:
There are up to twenty-three players on a team at a time. Twenty can dress for a given game, which includes the goalie and the backup goalie.
There's usually a captain and two or three assistant captains (A's). They have general leadership responsibilities among the players. The captain wears a C on his jersey and the A's wear an A.
If a player gets injured, he might be put on IR and someone would get called up in his place from the minors (the AHL, or American Hockey League). There's been a particular focus on concussions in recent years, since a lot of players have had major problems with them. There's a concussion protocol players have to go through if one is suspected. Players still, unfortunately, lie about their symptoms to try to play through concussions sometimes.
There's a cap to how much salary a team can pay out to its players in a year. This can get very complicated so I'm not even going to try.
When players are first signed, they go on a three-year ELC (entry-level contract) which is capped at I want to say $895K per year, but I don't think that includes bonuses. Again, this is complicated stuff and I'm not even going to attempt the details. Players on ELCs aren't guaranteed their own hotel rooms, so you get road roommates. Good times for us fic writers! After their ELC runs out, they’ll negotiate a more lucrative contract with their team; there are also some limited ways in which they can choose to go to a different team. Later in their career they’ll become free agents and can choose which team to sign with.
Players get drafted at 18 or so, or older in rare circumstances. Draft picks are determined by a lottery that's weighted by how badly your team did this year. Again, you can look up the math on this -- it's a limited number of teams that have a shot at a first overall pick. The draft happens in a bunch of rounds where each team gets a pick, but sometimes teams trade their picks in advance as part of complicated trade deals. The first round of the draft is televised and the players go up onstage and shake their new GM's hand and get a jersey.
Players often come up through Major Juniors, which is the CHL (Canadian Hockey League, though a lot of the teams are in the U.S.). The CHL has different divisions: the OHL, the WHL, and the QMJHL. Players get paid and are considered professional, so they become ineligible for top-tier college hockey in the U.S. There are scholarships offered to CHL players at Canadian universities; I don't know the details of that. While they're playing Juniors they often live far away from their families with billet (host) families. Junior teams are limited in how many players they can have who are over 18.
Other places players might come from: American colleges; private prep schools or even public school systems; the U.S. NTDP (National Team Development Program); or many places overseas.
Most draftees don’t start playing for their NHL team right away, if they ever do. They might stay in Juniors for a year or two, or play for the A (the AHL) once they’re old enough, or go to college first.
NHL players in their rookie year often billet with an older player or sometimes even front office staff. Partly this is because they don’t want to invest in long-term housing until they get their housing letter, which is the team saying that they plan to keep them around. Partly it’s because they’re only technically not children anymore.
Players will each have an agent who negotiates contracts and does other stuff for them.
The teams each have a head coach and a bunch of other coaches, a lot of them specialized. I don't have a lot of detail about this. There's also a front-office staff, headed by a General Manager, who reports to the owner(s). The GM makes staffing decisions as well as draft and trade decisions.
Teams usually have an official arena where they play home games and their front office has their actual offices, and they’ll also have a practice facility which may be theirs or may be something local that they rent.
There are a bunch of awards players can get: the Art Ross for the most points in a season; the Hart for MVP; the Conn-Smythe for MVP of the playoffs; the Calder for best rookie. (There are a bunch more that you can look up.) These are given out at the NHL Awards in June. And of course what everyone wants to win is the Stanley Cup. If your team wins, you get a specially designed cup ring with your name and number on it (possibly everyone in the front office does, too??), and you get to spend a day with the Cup during that off-season. Players usually throw a big party for all their family and friends.
Other general stuff:
These boys are kind of dumb in general and specifically about emotions. It’s one of my favorite things about writing them, honestly. It also means you can go as bro-y as you want with the language.
The NHL is pretty deeply homophobic. Its official position is not homophobic, and there's an organization called You Can Play that's fighting to eradicate homophobia, but there are no out players, which speaks for itself. It's pretty much like all major male American sports in that way. The homophobia is something I really enjoy exploring in some of my stories and in other stories just elide entirely if I feel like imagining a better world. You definitely have flexibility there.
Watching is definitely helpful but also I didn’t watch a hockey game until at least two stories in, soooo you can get away with a lot by just reading fic. :)
Reading fic is especially helpful because honestly the stuff I've laid out here doesn't even touch on the details of a particular player's life or a team's traditions and history and dynamics. You can Google some of that, but the prior research done by other fans is going to be so helpful. (Maybe you don’t need to worry about this if you’re not writing RPF characters?)
On the plus side, if you don't know much about how something works, you don't have to go into a lot of detail about it. I've had some stories where I've gone into a bunch of game details and others where you wouldn't even know they played hockey if it weren't for their spending a lot of time changing next to other men. Feel free to stick to the parts you know.
Another thing you'll get from fic, which I'm not even going to go into here, is the plethora of tropes that are popular in hockey fandom. Or fandom in general, of course -- you can always import new tropes, or make them up from whole cloth. AO3 is your oyster.
So that's some info to start with. I'm sure I've forgotten a million useful things that I'll think of as soon as I hit post, and also I'd be shocked if I haven't gotten at least some of this wrong. Please send me corrections and additions, everyone! If I get enough of them, I'll post a new version later in the week.
Also, good luck with your story! I'm sure it will be awesome. 🥰 Like I said, you can fudge SO MUCH OF THIS. Most of us are here for the dumb hockey boys kissing, and we won’t care if they do it after a slightly implausible hockey game.
So @falsechaos and I were talking about a theory she had and I kind of went off with it.
A lot of people mention that Keith’s attempted sacrifice in S4 was completely glossed over in every sense afterwards, but FC came up with the idea that, visually, it was referenced.
In A New Defender, we have Keith closing his eyes to embrace, well, for the end. He only opens them again when Lotor takes out the ship. That was the end for him in that moment though, he had given up.
In The Black Paladins, we see this directly mirrored when Keith and Shiro are falling. Keith closes his eyes again and braces for what’s coming. However, this time, he decides that he’s not going to give up on himself, and opens his eyes again. The first time, he gave up on himself entirely. This time, he’s not done fighting yet.
That’s the moment when Keith, in the eyes of Black, was cemented as the Black Paladin.
I love her theory and that’s why I’m sharing it. Also because I kind of took her theory and kept going with it?
I think she’s right about everything above, but I think there are three additional significant things in this episode. The title, Haggar calling Keith ‘the Red Paladin’, and the black bayard.
Haggar Honerva calls Keith the Red Paladin, but keep in mind that by this time, Keith would have spent more time flying Black and with the Blade of Marmora than he had in Red, and that’s not even counting the two years for him spent on the space whale. He’s probably nearly three years separated from being the Red Paladin. At this point, Lance has probably been the Red Paladin longer than Keith ever was. Keep in mind, the armour colour doesn’t matter, it’s not what makes the paladin. It’s the lion they fly. There’s literally no reason for her to call him the Red Paladin.
I think it’s more for our benefit, especially since the episode is titled The Black Paladins, as in TWO. Zarkon’s not around anymore, so he doesn’t count. That title refers to Shiro and Keith.
Haggar calling Keith the Red Paladin was put there to show us that, at the beginning of the episode, though he was flying Black, he wasn’t her real Paladin yet. It’s the same thing as when Shiro and Zarkon were both technically the Black Paladin at the same time, in a sense.
I can prove that statement too. Why? In Blackout, Zarkon’s hold over Black is completely removed when Shiro takes the bayard from him. That’s when, no questions asked, Shiro is 100% the only Black Paladin, which is kind of sad because it’s like…minutes before he technically dies.
(Also, Blackout? Black Paladin out? Fuckers.)
In The Black Paladins (again, title with Black in it), we see Keith do the exact same thing. Shiro had the black bayard. He sort-of used it (as a deadly Frisbee??) against Romelle and Allura, so we know he has it. Then Keith takes it from him, and that’s how he wins.
I think that moment’s significant, because yeah, others can use the bayards, take them from them, but it’s definitely in a different context when Shiro takes it from Zarkon, and when Keith takes it from Shiro.
Keith didn’t become the Black Paladin this time by flying Black and forming Voltron. That was step one to show that he could still do it. Step two was the bayard, showing that, at that moment, his ‘claim’ was stronger than the clone’s (like Shiro’s was stronger than Zarkons). The reason Black fully accepted him was, as FC mentioned, when Keith opened up his eyes again and decided he wasn’t giving up.
Honevra calls Keith ‘the Red Paladin’ to remind us that he’s not actually Black’s paladin at the beginning, not yet. Like he said in his vlog, he was just piloting her. By the end of the episode though, he becomes the Black Paladin, hence why the title uses it as a plural.
