#vldpositivitymonth

It’s Saturday, which means I can take care of this earlier than usual: Day 6 of Voltron Artist Appreciation Week! Today I’m appreciating @v-0-3, who has become one of my favorite artists, period - no qualifiers of a certain fandom or ship. Her style gives the characters she draws this ethereal quality that I love and the fact that she’s always applying it to characters like Shiro with robotic/android features is just so different from what I normally see in SF and fantasy art. I think this was the first piece by her that I noticed - my eye was caught by the “hidden Sheith” tag - and it stuck in my memory so much that months later I had to go hunting for it and ask for help finding it so I could put together a “subtle Sheith” mini art collection for a Dreamwidth comm. Then I started following her for the great VLD and Sheith work. I’ve even had her fanart inspire me to include scenes in my own fanfic. I started supporting her on Patreon and then over a long holiday weekend I sat down and read her original manga/comic, “Paper Roses”. And now I am just as in love with her original characters like Hiro and Akio and Satoru and am as excited to see work she does with those characters as I am Voltron characters. If you do nothing else, please go check out “Paper Roses”.

Day 2 of Voltron Graphic Artist Week is for @garrisonsheith. Whether it’s gifset edits, manips, or icons and banners and such, they look great and often capture moments that may not be canon (yet) but feel like it. I’m pretty sure the first time I saw this one, my eyes just slid past the second one as a scene I’d misplaced, because it looked like it belonged. Love their creations and looking forward to seeing more.

Voltron Writer Appreciation Week Day 2: in which I sing the praises of @latart, who is one of the writers and possibly THE writer that cemented my status as a Sheithen for life. I’m pretty certain I’d read some other fics that paired Shiro and Keith and enjoyed them, but Strengths and Weaknesses caught my attention from the beginning. The opening trope of “Shiro has lost the memories of his relationship with Keith” wasn’t new, but she wrote a backstory for them that just sucked me in. It was plausible and she made the Garrison such a vibrant place, filled with great OCs and a ton of detail. Add to that a fabulous slow burn that turned into the kind of healthy, mutually supportive relationship that stems from the show itself, and I at least was hooked. It’s thanks to her that I wrote my first Sheith story, an alternate chapter for S&W that she was gracious enough to encourage. Her story has gone on to spawn a series, including Slow Burn #2 as Keith and Shiro find their way back to each other and a meanwhile-back-on-Earth story full of the delightful OCs that fill S&W. If you love Sheith and you haven’t read this story, I highly recommend that you carve out some time some weekend soon and fix that.