dragonsandink

Latest Posts by dragonsandink

https://archiveofourown.org/works/59077405/chapters/164835976

Final chapter of Arc 1! We did it! It was so fun writing this and it's now my longest posted fanfiction! I'm looking forward to Act 2 already because we're dropping that slice of life tag like it's a potato straight out of the oven!

So, I've mentioned before that I found I really like writing Hunk's POV. But this chapter was NOT supposed to be in his POV and I am so mad at myself for it.

I like how this chapter turned out. It’s great. I like how he comes in as an outsider and has to watch this all go down and how his anxieties stand out compared to the teens who don’t immediately go to worst-case-scenario.

But I’m MAD because I realized during my final edit of the chapter that it was supposed to be written from Shiro’s point of view.

Not only did I miss a chance to write from my favorite character’s POV but now he only got 1 chapter in act 1 and his next is chapter SEVEN in Act 2! That’s SEVENTEEN chapters between his POV chapters!

I have no one to blame but myself. I have everything so meticulously planned up to the end of Act 3 and yet I somehow missed this. The chapter turned out great so I don’t regret it so much as I’m baffled how I missed that so completely and sad that I don’t get to write from Shiro’s POV for so long. Ah well. So it goes!

Hope you enjoy!

I got the link to work again. But I don't know how.

You know what. I'm not going to worry about it.

Also ignore the fact that I can't stick to a consistent schedule for some reason.

Last chapter is up on Friday!

Not a whole lot of thoughts on this chapter? I finished reading The Starless Sea (Fantastic book. Slow to start, but if you enjoy setting descriptions you'll love it and Erin Morgenstern does a SPLENDID job of making the story immersive) around the time where I finished editing this chapter and in the acknowledgements she mentions the importance of describing smell specifically, so I started trying to work in one strong scent into future chapters.

Hope you enjoy!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/59077405/chapters/163772938

I don't know how Tumblr works. Who knows how to make link posts properly. Not me.

Anywhizzle~ I'm done editing Act 1 which means I'll be posting a new chapter every week now until it's done! I'll be taking a short break while I get halfway through Act 2 so I have some wiggle room before I start posting again. Good news for that: Act 2 only has 8 chapters and I've written 2 out already so I don't anticipate the wait being very long.

Going back to the actual chapter I'm posting NOW ^^3 The goals were to show off Pidge's relationship with Keith and Shiro in this chapter. Pidge and Keith have grown close after training together for months and Pidge has met Shiro on occasion, but kind of know him more in a mutual friend kind of way.

This chapter is mostly sweet. Buuuut a little bitter when you consider what comes next...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/59077405/chapters/163224979

Links are still acting weird, but here's the new chapter of The Stars in Retrograde!

This chapter FOUGHT ME SO HARD. By FAR the hardest chapter to finish of Act 1. I wrote this one in stops and starts, most of it while I was at work on various sticky notes, which made me mix them all up and they didn’t connect well and I originally wrote all the dialogue action as them talking over their meal so I had to go back and rewrite all of it to feature the puzzle instead. And then the pacing was bad. And then something was wrong but I couldn’t figure out what until my friend read it over and mentioned that it felt more like a Lance chapter than a Hunk chapter and man it just was not turning out the way I wanted it to. I was so displeased with it that for a while even thinking about trying to fix it overwhelmed me.

But I did it. IT’S DONE. I’m decently happy with it. There’s probably more tweaks I could do, but I’m ready to just be done with it and it’s in a place now that I’m not embarrassed to share it. Hunk has one more chapter from his perspective in Act 1 and I’m already halfway through writing Hunk’s Act 2 chapter and let me tell you those two I’m much more pleased with. The only thing is, uh, Hunk’s troubles in this chapter are nothing compared to what I put him through later :)

Man, it feels like I've written WAY more than I have, but that's probably because I spend so much time editing before posting. Still, Act 1 alone is turning out to be the longest fic I've ever written!

USA people! Buy NOTHING Feb 28 2025. Not anything. 24 hours. No spending. Buy the day before or after but nothing. NOTHING. February 28 2025. Not gas. Not milk. Not something on a gaming app. Not a penny spent. (Only option in a crisis is local small mom and pop. Nothing. Else.) Promise me. Commit. 1 day. 1 day to scare the shit out of them that they don't get to follow the bullshit executive orders. They don't get to be cowards. If they do, it costs. It costs.

Then, if you can join me for Phase 2. March 7 2025 thtough March 14 2025? No Amazon. None. 1 week. No orders. Not a single item. Not one ebook. Nothing. 1 week. Just 1.

If you live outside the USA boycott US products on February 28 2025 and stand in solidarity with us and also join us for the week of no Amazon.

Are you with me?

Spread the word.

CW for EMD: family abuse, physical/psychological abuse, violence, self harm/experimentation, pyromania, violence, gore

CW for Canary: psychological horror, abuse, attempted murder, suicide attempt/thoughts, mind control, torture, self harm, ptsd, dissociation, food issues/vomiting

LINKS:

Even More of a Disaster

The Canary Continuity

https://archiveofourown.org/works/59077405/chapters/162320320

Love this chapter. I'd been looking forward to this chapter, both to write and post, for a long time. My goals were "have Keith and Adam interact" and "have Lance and Shiro interact" and the plot kind of snuck its way in. Which, you know, funny story, this whole arc wasn't supposed to have plot beyond getting Keith and Pidge into space and yet here we are.

I especially liked realizing that Keith's dad would have once stood where he now stood and letting Keith have a moment of connection with him in that way. It's been a while so, as a reminder, Keith's dad died in the same year as Canon, but Keith was older by that point, so he had his dad in his life for a lot longer than Canon.

Also, I finished writing the rest of the chapters for arc 1 and am going through edits now and it's still chapter 13 giving me pacing issues but my friend recommended I look over it as if it were written as a diary entry so I'm going to try that next and hopefully get it into an acceptable place.

In any case, enjoy!

And with this chapter we're back on track!

Also, good news, I've finally wrangled chapter 13 into submission and just need to run it through my edits now! As soon as I was done with it I instantly got chapter 15 done and half of chapter 14 done as well. If I finish all the chapters early then I'll switch to posting a chapter once a week.

Anyway~ This chapter is just me giving poor Lance a break from all the drama I've been dumping on him, haha.

What day is it? What year is it?

I apparently have no clue because I missed posting last Friday! Goodness gracious, my apologies. Things will be back on schedule next week with chapter 11.

In the meantime, enjoy Pidge and Hunk interacting! I really wanted this chapter to feature Pidge, Hunk, and Lance interacting because they are all just so fun and feed each other's chaos, but I just couldn't come up with a situation where all three of them would get together naturally. There's a few ways I could force the three of them into a room together, but this chapter is supposed to focus on Pidge and Hunk's relationship anyway, so I'm not mad it turned out like this.

Also, I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I struggle SO MUCH coming up with chapter names and tend to dislike what I end up with. If you've got tips on how to chose chapter titles I'd love to hear them!

It's here. The "Keith gains two new friends in one fell swoop" chapter. I was going to call it the "Keith acquires more than one friend" chapter, but I think at this point he would call Hunk a friend. Hunk is actually...probably the person Keith's age that he would call a friend.

So, to be clear about their relationship, if you were to ask Keith at this point what he thought of the boys (Shiro, Adam, and Matt) he would tell you that they're his friends and would probably call Shiro his best friend. This is true, but there's also a little more to it.

I like the idea that the Galra were originally a pack species. A lot of time has passed and evolution has occurred that makes it less obvious and Galra don't necessarily feel to drive to create a pack or bond as such, but they are comfortable with it and it satisfies a part of their natural instincts. Similar to how humans are a social species, but not necessarily every human needs a lot of socializing and many of us can choose when to socialize and for how long to satisfy ourselves, but in the end socializing and creating bonds is satisfying for most of us.

So, Keith, being half Galra, has some of those instincts. He isn't actively seeking out a "pack", but Shiro, Adam, and Matt are slowly integrating themselves into his life in a way where he would instinctually consider them to be part of his pack, especially since they're younger than him and he feels a responsibility towards them as a teacher. It's satisfying for him and so he's getting something out of it that simply socializing with other people has never given him before. Having a give and take at the beginning of a relationship helps center him around people who he considers to be strangers; which is why the start of his relationship with Shiro was so rocky. He wasn't sure how to interact when it was just Shiro talking with him, but once he had something to contribute (teaching Shiro to fly) he felt more comfortable around him long enough for them to establish a greater bond.

Anyway, this chapter is from Matt's perspective and I'm running my mouth on Keith headcannons lol. Matt's just a silly little guy. He's the youngest and he has simple needs and wants and does not allow anything to get in his way. Which, you know what, good for him

Enjoy the chapter while I untangle the MESS that chapter 13 has turned into

-Gets home at 11:30-

-runs to the mailbox-

THEY'RE HERE AND THEY'RE PERFECT!

Thanks so much, @kaysdenofchaos! Fantastic quality, adorable drawing, and everything I could have asked for!

Google Docs

MALAN Fire & Wind Storm Resources

Hi everyone! I hope everyone in the Los Angeles area is staying safe and that the fires are put out soon!

The attached document has information on shelter, free food, animal boarding, and other services that may help.

Stay safe!

"Beating up the blorbo" is a fantastic way to describe this masterpiece lol. Absolutely go read it if you haven't yet, it's so well-thought out, a slow-burn of encompassing annihilation, and the writing style is captivating. This fic f'd me up in all the best ways

people following me for my art; i dont normally post that here (or draw turtles on the reg, might change though with all the positive attention) so to be in the know gooooo read canary continuity. you should read canary continuity! its 147k words deeeeeeeppp and its about to get to a really good part~~ >:3

id say read this if youre a donnie fan but i think "beating the blorbo up" would be an understatement for what i inflicted on that poor kid LMAOOOO. read this if youre a donnie fan and you love whump i guess (but heed the tags, seriously)

Writing Adam is so much fun. He barely gets any screentime or characterization in the show as is and in this fic he's years younger than in the show, which gives me a near blank slate to futz around with. I've been taking a lot of inspiration from other fanfic writers in his characterization, particularly CaffeinatedFlumadiddle's Storytime: Voltron is (Basically) a Disaster series which I just adore. Mostly I'm just having fun balancing a character who is serious yet sassy, nitpicky yet chaotic, and figuring out how he fits in with all the pre-established characters.

Pidge also is just so easy to write. She thinks logically, yet will take any chance to not be serious about a topic and turn a discussion into a joke. They're so fun to have in any scene and I get to practice writing someone with multiple pronouns at the same time.

In any case, enjoy the chapter!

i love you im glad you exist im so happy you’re alive

So, part of planning out this fic was deciding how many scenes there were going to be and who was going to be in each one. I decided pretty early that I wanted to prioritize character interaction over plot devices, for a few reasons: mainly because at this point, everyone is already familiar with the plot, so I didn't want to just re-write scenes with different names.

What this led to is a pretty detailed excel spreadsheet of each scene because I want to showcase EVERY possible character combo (in pairs).

Because of this, I have more or less forced myself to focus on characters I wouldn't normally seek to write and found I actually love writing them.

I'm talking about Hunk. I love writing Hunk. He's precious and anxiety-riddled and Id find myself easily slipping into his narrative.

This chapter is ESPECIALLY fun because it's Keith POV and I have a lot of fun figuring out how to portray Keith "a cat-alien with non-human traits that are starting to become more prominent" Kogane in a way where you can tell something's weird about him but people are more willing to write it off than investigate it at this time.

So the two of them together in this scene were very fun to write. Even if Keith fought me A LOT for this particular scene. But, if the writing comes across as awkward at all, Keith is very off-balance here so I chose to think it just improves the POV voice ;)

I started writing this fic a while ago and only started posting when I had enough of a chapter buffer that I thought I could finish writing the whole thing while keeping to a posting schedule.

That being said, it's been enough time that I've forgotten bits and pieces of the earlier chapters and get to re-read them with fresh eyes right before posting them.

This one made me giggle quite a bit. In this chapter, I wanted to portray Lance and Pidge's relationship and I remember wanting to capture the energy of chaos feeding off of chaos. A sort of prelude to the shenanigans they're capable of when working together.

This is one of my favorite chapters I've written so far.

Warning for some ableist remarks about halfway through this chapter.

“Those poor boys”

“She deserves to be punished too.”

“I’m not saying I support rape, but-”

“Sorry to say - she deserved it.”

“She put herself in harm’s way”

“But if she was fingered, then that’s not rape.”

“She ruined their lives.”

New chapter of The Stars in Retrograde!

Are you ready for some Langst? :D

New chapter of The Stars in Retrograde! This time featuring our favorite genius siblings :)

First chapter to a new fic I'm writing! I haven't posted anything in a while and I was nervous to put anything out for fear of not finishing the story, but I've got 12 out of 16 chapters written and outlines for the other four so I feel pretty confident I'll finish this one.

Check it out on AO3 here!

It's a Voltron Age Swap AU that starts at the Garrison, where Shiro and Matt are roommates at school, Keith and Lance are both pilots, Hunk and Pidge have just started building the ship to visit Kerberos, and Adam sets out to get a date with his best friend. Tags will update as I post!