#mumblefox

Suiaraine!!!!! It is canon in the books, with the heavy caveat that it was a "teenaged" romance (because the author assumed that if you locked a bunch of women in one place, ie, the White Tower, with no men around, that of /course/ they would all start sleeping with each other. And like. He's a lil confused but he's got the spirit!) and so I found it very fun that the TV show brought it to the forefront<3

AND THE WARDERS AND THE WARDER BOONNNDDDDDDD. ITS SOOO GOOD. I go feral for s1ep5 every time as they really dig into the Warder bond and the back and forth there and just how deep it is. There is SO much abt the Warder bond mechanics that comes up in the books that make my brain go BRRRR, but I think the TV show has done a really good job to highlight how intense the bond is in a way the books never quite got across, even if they (at the point you're at) haven't had a chance to dig into some of the Implications of this bond just yet (in the way the books do).

And Matt!!!! Admittedly he IS a bit of a twat early in the series (both books and TV show). I will give minor forgiveness for this character choice as the ending of that ep had to be changed (and the following 2 eps) due to the pandemic lockdown, and then Matt's actor not returning to the show. However!!! That is the story now that Matt dipped out on the gang. And so we do have to follow his character arc with that in mind. 👀 Where's he gonna go from here???

“I can’t read this list at all!” Hunk yelps, waving the scrap of paper anxiously. “How are we even supposed to start doing this?”

“That’s part of the training,” Shiro says. He looks calm, but Hunk is sure he’s smiling behind that leader mask, the jerk. “If you’re on a foreign planet you need to figure out what to do, right?”

Hunk grumbles. When Shiro had mentioned they were doing a new kind of ‘team building exercise’ today, Hunk had assumed it would be some kind of new combat exercise. Shiro was big on those. He hadn’t expected it to be a scavenger hunt of all things. Clearly, Shiro has more of a wicked sense of humor than anyone had anticipated.

“Hand it over,” Pidge says, reaching up for the scrap of paper in Hunk’s hand. She’s on tiptoes just trying to get it, and Hunk obligingly hands it down to his partner. For today’s exercise, Shiro had divided them into the right and left quadrants of Voltron, insisting that it was important to have good coordination between each other to literally coordinate the massive robot down the line.

Pidge snatches the paper as soon as it’s within reach, and glances over briefly at the opposing team, hunching over their assignments protectively. Hunk doesn’t think she has to bother. Lance and Keith are, from the sounds of it, already too busy bickering over their own inability to read their instructions. Hunk barely makes out any of it (“You’re the alien, you read it!” “I’m not an alien, I can’t read it any better than you!”) before Pidge taps him on the arm.

“I got it, let’s go,” she says, gesturing for the door.

“Wait, you know what it says?” Hunk asks incredulously, as he follows.

“It’s Altean, and I can recognize Coran’s handwriting,” Pidge says, grinning competitively. “Shiro must have asked him for help on the instructions. But I’ve been learning Altean, so I can decode it. I’m even used to Coran’s chicken-scratch.” She glances over her shoulder to make sure Keith and Lance aren’t following, and adds in a whisper, “The first item we’re looking for is a five and three-quarters lightwell wrench.”

Hunk lights up. “I’ve got one of those in my work station!” he says, trying to keep his enthusiasm relatively low-volume.

“Great, let’s go then!”

Two vargas later, the two of them stand proudly before Shiro, unloading the assorted items and requirements on their scavenger list. Some of them had actually been quite tricky—like getting Allura’s autograph (while she had been deliberately instructed to avoid them), or a photo of Shiro himself without being noticed (which had taken a team effort of Hunk distracting and Pidge sneaking close enough to get the shot). Other tasks had involved riddles that were a piece of cake to pull apart between their brains, or getting into difficult spaces (the trickiest of which was letting Pidge stand on his shoulders to unscrew an air duct vent, so she could crawl into it and retrieve a worn out filter they’d needed). In retrospect, Shiro had actually designed the challenges really well—the game had been silly, but Hunk can see how these sorts of stealth and problem-solving skills could be applied to actual missions.

“I’d say that’s a solid win, wouldn’t you say?” Pidge says, smug. Hunk glances over at Keith and Lance, and has to agree. Even if they hadn’t gotten every item on the list, they’d certainly beaten the opposing team’s whole three items, and the two of them were still bickering.

“You did a good job,” Shiro says, looking through the spoils. He glances at the perfect profile shot of himself on Pidge’s wrist computer, and nods, clearly impressed. “I didn’t even notice that. Left Team wins—you can be excused from the last exercise today.”

Pidge and Hunk grin in delight, and exchange a truly victorious high five.

you WOULD

--

“Okay,” Lance announces, hands on his hips. “Everybody listen up!”

“I don’t see why we have to do this,” Pidge complains, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She’s between Keith and Hunk in the middle of the training deck, the three of them forming a loose semi-circle in Lance’s direction.

“Because Shiro left me in charge while he’s under the weather,” Lance explains, smugly pleased. 

“He left me in charge,” Keith corrects.

“And your idea was dumb,” Lance says patiently, “This is way better than let’s-fight-the-gladiator-on-a-higher-level-guys. C’mon! Who doesn’t want to play with all this stuff?”

He gestures to the side. An entire rack of what’s probably best termed Altean-Sports-Equipment sits innocently to the right, stacked high with all kinds of equipment ranging from large cubes, balls, mallets, nets, and everything in between.

“The rules are simple,” Lance announces. Pidge picks up a volleyball-sized cube and nearly drops it from the weight. Hunk’s dubiously eyeing what might be an Altean hula hoop. “No bayards. First one to ten points wins.”

“I’m not playing,” Keith says, heading for the door.

“First one to ten points gets to check on Shiro,” Lance calls after him. Keith redirects immediately for the rack.

“No bayards?” Hunk asks doubtfully. Pidge heaves at her cube, straining. It doesn’t budge.

Lance nods. “That’s what Shiro said to focus on. This’ll work, right?”

“I don’t get it,” Pidge gasps, making exactly no progress, “Is this like Calvinball or something?”

“Better,” Lance and Hunk chorus at exactly the same time.

“We used to do this all the time,” Hunk explains, helping Pidge with the cube. It clatters back on the top of the rack; Pidge nods a shaky thank-you at Hunk. “Lance made it up when we were both stuck on break back at the Garrison. It’s kind of - ”

“It’s Sportsball,” Lance announces proudly, “Everyone ready?”

“How do you earn a point?” Keith asks, gripping what might be a butterfly net. The Altean equivalent of a cast-iron pan is in his other hand.

Lance grins a wolf’s smile. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”

--

It must be something about being a Princess that makes Allura smell like money to the shopkeepers.  Any sales person who gets any kind of commission is on her in an instant.

Shiro watched uncomfortably the first couple of times it happened.  He was all too aware that they didn’t actually have any kind of money on them - it was all with Coran again, as he continued his trend of haggling with the local shops.  But Allura doesn’t give the hint of it from the moment they walk in to the moment they step out of each store.

“Just browsing,” she said airily, in the tone of someone who could be persuaded.  Then Allura would try out a few outfits, listen to a few sales pitches, sigh over anything of interest, and walk back out.

When he asked later, Allura gave him an odd look.  “You don’t go to a mall to shop,” she told him incredulously.  “You go to have fun.  Now try on this hat.  It’ll look good with your hair.”

Shiro relaxes after that, and when they come back, Allura’s tech pad is full of increasingly silly pictures of them that none of the others are ever allowed to see.

(Allura does end up talking to Coran to get a set of hair clips, lovingly crafted and practical.  And, yes, they are quite shiny)

Okay wait. Wait. Are we talking fanfiction or are we talking fiction. Because I have a lot of both and that is such a long post so lemme just focus on the fiction aspect here. 

Kate Griffin still owns my soul for her Matthew Swift series and her spin off series as well. I just. I love Urban Magic stories so fucking much? There’s something about technology and magic and how stories evolve and how magic evolves that just grabs me and doesn’t let go and Kate Griffin writes some fucking stunning prose okay. 

Also if you haven’t read The Raven Cycle, go immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect, just delve into the rich world that Maggie Stiefvater has written and kind of die inside because it’s so good and I’ve reread the series so many times and I still get heart palpitations after finishing it. It’s gorgeous. It’s written so well. I love all the characters and I love all the relationships and I love the story and just. Yup. This is me. Dying. Again. 

Ahaha I am! A snowy high five to you!

:D I’m so glad you asked.

The Voltron Think Tank is a loose term that refers to a few of my Voltron fic writer friends. There’s @ashinan, @mumblefox, @bosstoaster, and @velkynkarma, plus me. It sort of - founded itself, I suppose?  There was a period of time this last winter where we were all pretty heavily debating certain aspects of Voltron meta back and forth with each other on tumblr - are the Lions self-aware, what do we think about this aspect of Shiro, what about pineapple on pizza - very serious stuff. We were pretty busy, and people who follow all five of us at that time started getting into it too.

Someone dubbed us the ThinkTank; someone else asked us what Lions we’d each pilot; we had another anon pop in and link most of our fic together in a continuity theory. Someone else spawned an innocent question about crossovers between our fics. Next thing you know bada bing bada boom. Here we are.

Voltron ThinkTank! Sometimes we do writing challenges together. Sometimes we do meta. We’re actually all in a chat room together and do a lot of our continued writing there. Mostly we just goof off and enjoy each other and this little corner of fandom.