Hey, so I'm really excited about your superhero AU! I love all the ideas you have for it so far (full-on Jean Grey Phoenix mode for Keith HELL YEAH!)! I hope you'll get around to writing it some day :)
Aw thanks bud!! This was really encouraging to read haha. I also hope I do something with it sometime this year, cos I think about it a lot and have some cool scenes in my head I wanna get to.
And even if I never manage to write the story (cos it’s a big one and at this point I barely have energy to write a 1k drabble lmao ;__;;) I at least wanna draw some art for the AU. Making hero outfits for everyone would be super fun hmmm
haleykim84 replied to your post: Mistborn Voltron AU
Hm…I haven’t read the Mistborn series, but this is making me want to check it out!
I highly recommend it, along with literally anything else by Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson is my all-time favorite author, a huge inspiration for my own writing, and every single one of his books is solid gold. Incredible plots, amazing magic systems, and the only male author I’ve ever seen that writes well-rounded, believable, likeable female characters who exist for more than just sex appeal.
At this point I don’t even have to know what the book is about, if I see the author ‘Brandon Sanderson’ on a novel at the bookstore, I’ll buy it straight up without even reading the summary. That’s how much I trust this writer’s work.
I was partnered with the wonderful @haleykim84 for her emotional roller coaster of a fic, In the Hands of Hatred. If you’re in need of equal parts suspense and fluff, please go give this a read!
Could I ask you about Stay the Course? Thank you :)
Of course! Here’s the summary for it:
Keith had done the math long ago.Before he’d even left Voltron, he’d thought about this kind of scenario, knewhis answer far in advance; If it came down to it, was he willing to die forthis war?The answer was always anunshakeable yes. His team has a few things to sayabout that.Or; During negotiations with Lotor,Keith stays at the Castle as a representative for the Blade. But when TeamVoltron find out about what almost happened at Naxzela, it causes the tensionbetween them and their wayward Paladin to reach a paramount.A series of conversations follow,in which not everything is mended… but maybe, finally, some steps are taken inthe right direction.
It’s a post-Naxzela fic!! I started writing it almost immediately after s4, but when the seasons started coming out faster I lost a lot of motivation for writing it since it largely lost relevance. I still wanna finish it though!! The fic is mostly made up of a lot of heartfelt but sorta-awkward conversations between Keith and different members of the team. I wanted to write something that would address the distance between Keith and the others, and attempt to at least partly bridge the gap of understanding there.
Also, I’m me, so there’s a lot of self-indulgent sappy K&L friendship lol (but there’s some emotional scenes featuring all the Team Voltron characters! They all care about him ;__;;)
It’s unedited and a lil shaky, but here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the fic, set directly after Lotor’s intervention and the battle coming to an end:
He knows he should be concentrating on Lotor,making sure the prince doesn’t pull anything. But there’s a dull haze threadingthrough his awareness, a tiredness more vague than the post-battle fatigue he’s familiar with. Keith is struggling to process everything that had justhappened, fighting to stay present and alert. Somewhere along the way, his mindstarts to wander. A fog of blurred-together images muddy up his head-chaotic laser fire, a harsh purple glow, a sudden wave of flame cascading towards him- afterimages oftheir narrow escape.
Even through the exhaustion, something hard and on-edge twists tightly in his stomach. It leaves hismuscles tense and his teeth clenched; Like he’s still bracing himself for a collision.His mouth feels dry.
Keith’s tight grip on his ship’s controls hasn’tlet up at all since his attempt at the barrier. Even through the post-battlediscussion and the current lull of activity, it remained iron-clad andwhite-knuckled. His wrists ache, hands cramped and sore; though his mind is becoming sluggish and unfocused, relaxing his body at all seems impossible.
Frustrated at his scattered thoughts, Keithlooks outwards, watching for Voltron’s arrival amidst the endless blackness.
There’s a minefield of debris from theweapon Lotor had destroyed floating outside. Nothing more than twistedscraps of singed metal, now. He turns to watch the remains as they spin slowlyaround, deceptively peaceful for what they once were.
If he’d hit that shield, would that be him?Lifeless and adrift in the nothingness of space; Just a broken, twisted thingleft to decay in the stillness? Would someone have found his body, eventually? Orwould it have been well and truly lost- eroding quietly away. Just anotherscrap of space junk.
Or maybe there would have been nothing left ofhim at all, burnt away entirely on impact- gone up in flames along with theship.
A coldness seeps through him, achilling feeling that starts in his chest and trickles into the pit of hisstomach. It travels up and outwards, freezing through his ribcage likestalactites, snaking slowly up his throat until he’s choking on it, breath snagging on the ice in his insides. He’s frozen over. Numb.
The debris spins idly on the spot.
Keith can’t tear his eyes away.
Distantly, he hears the tinny voices of Mattand Coran conversing over the comms. One of them might have said his name, butKeith’s only vaguely aware. It’s too hard to pay attention over thetoneless buzzing noise coalescing in his head.
His hands, rigid as they are, tremble slightly. When had that started?
His ears ring. The universeslips away, melds into discordant flashes of bright violet light, overlapping patterns of galra tech, unyielding and condemning and Voltroncouldn’t die, that would mean the end, but Keith could. Keith couldafford to die and if there was achance he had to take it, there was a chance, just one chance- don’t think justfly, don’t think, don’t think, get the job done, don’t watch- close your eyes and wait for-
“Keith!”
Awareness slams back into him andhe snaps his head around with wide eyes, stifling a strangled gasp. Matt had opened upa visual channel, and is looking at him in concern.
Keith suddenly remembers where he is andwhat he’ss meant to be doing. The ice in his lungs relent just a little as his face heats with shame, and he quells the quiet wave of panic swelling inside him with a glanceat Lotor’s ship. It hadn’t moved. Just how long had he been spacing out for?
He gives the buzzing in his mind anothermoment to die down. Matt is still watching him, eyes searching. Waiting for aresponse.
Right. Talking. He could do that... probably. Keithblinks a few times, swallowing thickly.
“Sorry, what?” he manages to reply, voicestrained. His mouth is bone-dry and his skin feels too tight. How long had Mattbeen calling him for? An edge of embarrassment worms its way into theconfusing anxiety coiling in his gut.
Geta grip, damnit he chastises himself.
Matt pauses, eyeing him cautiously. ‘Are youdoing okay?’ he asks. Keith resists the urge to scowl at him.
‘I’m fine,’ he bites out, terse. ‘Is Coran onhis way?’
Matt frowns at the deliberate subjectchange, but only hesitates a moment before affirming. ‘He’s starting up thewormhole jump now. Shouldn’t be a minute. Do you…’ he trails off, hesitating.Keith bites his tongue and feels his shoulders tighten even further.
‘Listen, the Captain and I have this under control.If you wanted to head in when the Castle gets here, we’ll be fine without you.’
Keith wants to argue. At the very least forthe sake of his pride, he wants to snap at Matt and tell him he’ss okay, he’s alive and breathing andready to keep doing his job. Not to mention the large part of him that’sreluctant to let Lotor’s ship out of his sight for a second, nevermind his earlier slipup, but…
But he trusts Matt with this. He knows he andOlia are just as capable of handling Lotor as Keith is, and in any case, theprince didn’t seem too inclined to cause trouble right now, as unnerving as that fact is in itself.
And Keith is exhausted, unfocused, mind amess and body too wound-up. Like this, if something did happen, he would be a liability. He’d just get in the way.
Better to remove himself from the situation,and let someone else cover for him. He shuts his eyes for a moment, takes asteadying breath to try and calm down, ground himself.
‘Okay,’ he relents, and even to himself hesounds tired, flat. the fight drained from his voice. ‘Yeah. I’ll do that.’ Mattgives him a small, relieved smile, and the panel displaying his scarred facewinks away.
Keith sits and waits for another minute,closing his eyes and trying to breathe deeply through the silence. He forces himself to focus on the repetition of the rhythm; in and out. Inhale, exhale. Repeat.His shoulders finally relax a notch, the anxious feeling in his chest fallingaway to enervating numbness.
By the time Coran arrives with the Castle, hishands still haven’t stopped shaking.
My fav is Pillar in the Dark, with Whispers in the Dark being a close second. I just love the Keith & Hunk dynamic in PitD (and the Keith h/c of course ;)). There's so little of it out there in fics and I just love how you wrote them.
I am not surprised that your favorites are Keith-centered, haleykim :) I am glad you enjoyed my weird h/c horror haha.
If they haven't already been asked, 1, 7 and 22 for the get to know your author thing, please :)
Sure!1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?A bunch at this point, just because I only have so much time. Parasite Knight’s sequel comes immediately to mind because there’s always something more time-sensitive that needs to come first. There’s also a few more AU’s I’d like to try, but I haven’t had time to fully work out the details of how to involve all the characters, and I won’t touch AU/crossover type fics without having a plan for everyone so that everyone gets a moment to shine. I have at least 2 other fics I’ve started that have potential, but I put them on the back burner for now since I hit a roadblock and need to make the story make more sense before I keep going, first.7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?Depends on if we’re talking online or IRL. Online? Sure. Fanfic is prevalent, people get it, it’s not weird. IRL? I might mention that I’m spending the day writing to family, but I never go into detail over what. If I went to a Voltron/VLD con I would literally never tell anybody I’m VelkynKarma. You could rec my own fics to me and I’d just be like, “Hmm, sounds interesting, I’ll check it out when I get home, uh-huh.” It would just be too weird otherwise.22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?Romance and sexual stuff. Sex is a squick and romance is just boring and unrelatable to me. I never touch either one. Probably highly related, but even many forms of intimacy that are still purely platonic/gen still make me uncomfortable or are extremely difficult or exhausting to write--hugs, snuggling, hand holding, professions of caring for another or baring one’s soul to another even in a platonic sense are tough to tackle. I don’t like these things personally, so even writing it feels like “too much” sometimes, and it’s always tough to try and maintain the proper balance of ‘enough’ and ‘over the top.’
These have probably already been asked, but: 8, 23, 40 and 45?
They have not! Let’s see..8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?It’s funny because I never intended to get into Voltron at all. Shiro showing up on my dash so often actually used to annoy me pre-fandom because visually he is very similar to Batman’s Jason Todd, so I’d get excited for a batfam pic and then it wasn’t. And it didn’t help that a lot of the batfam blogs I’d been watching were suddenly swapping to Voltron. But back in September I think it was, I’d been working on a big art project for a contest, and my motivation was starting to lag. There hadn’t been any decent new fic in the Batman fandom recently (my usual carrot on a stick), so I thought, “Okay, whatever. I’ll check out that Voltron thing I guess. It’s short enough I can do that. Every time I reach an art goal in the project I will reward myself with an episode.” It was just supposed to be something to keep me going, a one-off thing to watch on the fly without getting majorly involved in multiple seasons. Only, it didn’t stay one-off. I was intrigued by it too much. There were too many possibilities. So then I did my usual post-new-series thing and went to check out the fanfic. This is usually where shows/movies/books fandoms still die for me. I’ll lightly browse fic, but if I don’t find some good ones fairly quickly my interest in the fandom dies pretty fast and I move on. Except through extremely lucky circumstance I happened to stumble across @maychorian‘s Boom Crash The Sound Of My Ship which had literally everything on my wishlist for light browsing: H/C and adventure with the two characters I had already decided I was most interested in, Shiro and Lance. After that I decided that damn, this fandom has some decent work in it, and delved further. But there were still things I’d wanted to see and hadn’t even after a much more in-depth browsing of the fic offering at the time. So I wrote it. And people responded positively, so I decided to stick around. And here I am! 23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.In the Voltron fandom Phantasmagoria still holds a high place for me. I really like writing psychological horror and creepy stuff and this fic just came together perfectly for me. I liked it so much I commissioned this gorgeous art for it, and I got a big kick out of peoples’ reactions to it too. However more recently Prince of Memory has become quite special to me. That one was very tricky to write, and had been more of a personal challenge project than anything. Not only was I pleased with how it turned out, but the reactions people had to it were exactly what I was going for, so I know my challenge was successful.40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing?Oh boy. Word length for starters, I literally cannot write anything short. Longfic is great, but there’s a time and a place, and keeping things short, sweet and to the point is a skill I fail at hardcore. I’m frankly stunned at people who can write drabbles. I also struggle a lot with emotional responses and character interaction, specifically for things like characters needing comfort or dealing with grief. The ‘comfort’ part of hurt/comfort is time consuming and exhausting, especially since I’m not a person who is very good with expressing emotion or physical contact to begin with. So a lot of those moments when a hug or a pat on the shoulder or characters just letting out all their grief and pain are a real struggle for me to wrap my head around, because for me they tend to be very uncomfortable responses IRL. It’s kind of funny since I write those scenes quite a bit, but you have no idea how many times each sentence is carefully examined, each character action is reworked, each word is picked oh so deliberately, in the hopes that I get it right. (See above as to why Prince of Memory was a challenge project). 45. What is your all time favourite fanfic?I’m honestly not sure I could answer this question with just one fic because there’s so many go-to fics in so many fandoms that I’ll return to for different moods. So I’m gonna point to this post I did a while back with Voltron fic recs because they’re all fics I adore and each one hits the spot exactly right depending on how I’m feeling. But then for other fandoms:For Young Justice/Batman Black Friar has some of the best, but The Volatile Verse is definitely my fave of the lot.For HTTYD, To Soar into the Sunset: A Night Fury’s Odd Memoir by Fjord Mustang is a tongue-in-cheek clever piece that I still love to this day.From One Piece, Seven Deaths by x-parrot is still incredible even 13 years later, and peroxidepest17′s Zoro’s Directions will have you dead from laughter (I just read it again while writing this. I died of laughter again).And from Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan, Ketita’s Levi’s will have you in stitches, and Emamel’s On the Shoulder of a Giant is an interesting AU take that I reread whenever I get back into AoT.I like a lot of fic I can’t choose just one okayCurious what this is for? I’m playing the ask challenge. Feel free to ask something!
