crazyrandomhappenklance

It was soft; just a gentle press, like a test, a question.

Then another; slightly firmer, like a reply.

Then another; bolder, this time - an affirmation.

Then another.

And another.

As first kisses went, it wasn’t fueled with passion or fervour. It was cautious. fragile. It was like unspoken words. Like a quiet conversation between two people who were desperate to convey their thoughts, yet scared they would be misunderstood.

i drew a scene from Front and Centre by crazyrandomhappenklance on ao3 :D it’s such a gorgeous rivals-to-lovers fic, there’s frontman keith and broadway-loving lance and so much music and karaoke!! the latest chapter gave me a heck load of feelings 😭💕

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/BcJhWtK

by crazyrandomhappenklance

Lance and Keith are Honeymooning in Paris, the very capital of romance! However, Keith is less than enthusiastic about posing for photographs. Then a chance encounter with a group of interesting people in the park leads them to discover an intriguing and addictive new hobby, which stokes the embers of their eternal competitiveness, and might just persuade Keith to change his mind. Written for the Klance zine: Honeymoon Around the World.

Words: 2468, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron)

Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Gay Keith (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Honeymoon, Paris (City), Geocaching - Freeform, Adventure, Post-Canon, Romantic Fluff, Married Keith/Lance (Voltron), Soft Keith/Lance (Voltron), Competitive Lance and Keith, Vacation, Flashmobs, Zine: Honeymoon Around the World

Jump here to get your pre-order in! https://klancefirstdateszine.bigcartel.com

https://klancefirstdateszine.bigcartel.com

- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’

- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction

- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour

- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’

- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc

- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from

- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant

- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white

- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’

- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired

(That’s Mila Kunis. She was born in the Ukraine.)

(Sebastian Stan. From Constanta, Romania.)

(Mia Wasikowska, from Poland)

(Nina Dobrev, who was born in Bulgaria.)

They are white! Just because they are white, it doesn’t mean people from their countries cannot face horrible discrimination, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t be constantly told that they don’t work as hard as people from Western Europe, and that they don’t deserve basic human rights.

But as somebody who has lived in England and the US, I can vouch for all of this. The race issues in Europe and the race issues in the US are not the same.

For the last few years, there has been an awful backlash against immigrants from Poland, with some of the same language used that Americans use about “Mexicans” (By which, half the time, they mean anyone from south of the US/Mexico border).

It’s worth understanding that

1. Racism and discrimination are everywhere.

I was yelled at in the street because a lady thought I was Polish. People have pushed their chairs into my parents and insulted them in a restaurant because they were recognised as Germans.

Less than 100 years ago we were considered mongoloid (and while it’s not entirely wrong, though Uralic or North-West Asian and Caucasian mix would be lot more accurate), and were oppressed by another nation (Russia) that tried to enforce cultural and linguistic genocide on us, and before that we were oppressed and practically enslaved by Sweden, not all that differently as in any other colonized nation–which we were for 800 years.

I’d like to point out that also italian people have faced discrimination from other european countries. We were, and sadly often still are, always seen as part of the mafia and therefore dangerous, or inferior and poor (y’all can find signs saying pretty nasty stuff online, and i’m leaving this here even tho it’s in Italian), i’ve heard a lady telling his son to stay away from me and my family because we were speaking italian and so we could do “bad things” to him and there were times when in shops we were made feel not welcome because we are italian…..and guess what my family is white.

“What are you talking about?” say my sister and I. ‘There are two Italian guys RIGHT THERE.” 

“OMG you cannot say Italian people are not white,” he says.

“Yes we fucking can,” says the Italian friend watching the show with us, deeply offended. 

And then we had to pause it and a lot of complex explanations ensued. (Including the fact that Greek and Italian people generally aren’t considered White in Australia and in fact many a Nonna will smack you if you suggest otherwise.)

Basically, ‘white’ is a category upon which no two cultures/countries can agree on the definition, they all think they have the only possible definition, and it usually boils down to Preferred Flavours of Bigotry.

also, eastern europe is severely discriminated against in other parts of the world to the point where theres even a “slur” for immigrants from eastern europe going to the usa for a better life

I consider myself Scottish—I was born in Scotland, as were my parents, and their parents—but like many people in and around Europe, our family trees are criss-crossed with unions from many different European (and other) countries. The distance between countries in Europe is very small compared to somewhere as large as the continental US, and immigration wasn’t the same in the not so distant past as it is now.

One thing that really highlighted things for me a few years back, was this picture I took of myself and others at Pride:

Everyone in this picture is Scottish, but look at the difference in melanin between my arm and the others!

It threw up a lot of questions for me. Am I "white"? Would I be considered white or a POC in another country? I've never experienced racism due to my skin tone, but I have for being Scottish. I have an Irish surname, but that's quite common for people in Scotland.

Going back a hundred years through my family tree, you will find Scottish, English, and Italian blood in me (where my darker skin tone comes from). Go back a little further, there's French and Irish, and gawd knows what else, but I don't relate to any of my heritage in the same way I've seen so many Americans do.

I'm Scottish, sure, but not Scottish in the sense that I can consider myself Scottish because of my ancestors.

THE TENSION!!! AND CLIFFHANGERS!!!

Oh, how quickly the past is forgotten. 

They are part of the reason A03 is a thing now. Not the whole reason, but part of it. 

The Great Purges of 2002 and 2012 are when ff.net got a wild hair up their ass about THINK OF THE CHILDREN and nuked any fic posted on there that was explicit. Thousands upon thousands of nc-17 smutfics were lost.

Is there any way to spread this info? 

THE OTW WAS CREATED BY FANS SO WE’D HAVE AN ARCHIVE THAT WASN’T SUBJECT TO CORPORATE REVIEW. 

Nonprofit, so that nobody could ever say, “this isn’t making enough money; it’s getting shut down.” (See: Geocities, Quizilla, Figment, G+.) With lawyers involved and a firm awareness of the legalities of fanfic, so nobody would decide “we’ve gotten a nasty letter from a megacorporation with lawyers, so we’re hiding because we can’t afford to face a lawsuit. (Jedi Hurtaholics, Trevizo’s Millennium site.) With teams, so that an argument between co-mods didn’t result in the destruction of a whole archive. (Gryffindor Tower, Detention.)

AO3 IS OUR SITE.

It is by fans, for fans. Fans do all the coding. All the legal paperwork. All the abuse/tos violation complaints. Fans make all the choices about policies. Fans decide how to run the fundraisers. Fans write the blog posts. All the volunteer staff are fans; all the people who train them are fans. Fans wrangle all the tags. 

(And the other OTW projects, too. Fans manage the entries at Fanlore. Fans run the Open Doors project. Fans publish Transformative Works and Cultures.)

EVERYONE WORKING FOR THE OTW LOVES FANDOM. Wants it to survive. Wants it to be awesome for everyone.

(Knows that it can’t be awesome for everyone; some approaches to fandom just clash hard. But they strive to minimize those clashes as much as possible, because they love fandom.) 

AO3 is not some company that decided, “we’ll make a site for fanfic and then…” I don’t know what people are thinking is the reason. Money? Data harvesting? Tax shelter? Amusement and pity?

Nope; AO3 was fans saying, “Livejournal sucks; we’re tired of this fucked-up ‘rebuild every three years’ garbage; WE NEED TO OWN THE DAMN SERVERS.”

Chapters: 21/? Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron) Characters: Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Hunk (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Kolivan (Voltron) Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alpha Keith (Voltron), Omega Lance (Voltron), omega biology, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, Mission Fic, Undercover Missions, Missions Gone Wrong, Bonding, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Claiming Bites, Rivalry, Slow Burn, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fake Marriage, Friends to Lovers, Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Getting Together, Kissing, klance, Body Paint, Gay Disasters, Scent Marking, Frottage, BAMF Lance (Voltron), I am so happy that is a tag!, Fights, Blood and Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Rimming, Blow Jobs, Anal Sex, random pop culture references, Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Handcuffs, Angst, Coercion, Lance (Voltron) Whump, mild whump, Verbal Humiliation, Kicking ass and taking names, Healing, Fluff, Fluff and Smut Summary:

When the Blade of Marmora requests assistance on an information gathering mission, Lance and Keith go undercover as a bonded alpha and omega pair. At first, it seems like this is going to be more like a vacation than a mission – right up until everything falls apart and they realize how unprepared they really are. Now, Lance and Keith have to fight to not only survive, but to make it out together. They’ll have to rely not only on their skills as Paladin, but the bond they’ve created and nurtured between them.