This Is One Of My Favorite Chapters I've Written So Far.

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.

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/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!

New chapter of The Stars in Retrograde!

Are you ready for some Langst? :D

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.

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 ;)

-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!

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!

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!