~This is the Truth About It~

Metal Heart has continued to outgrow its outline, so I finally gave up on the original stricter chapter outline I had; I know where the arc is ending, and it'll get there when it gets there.

This chapter goes back to Team Almost-Voltron on Earth, trying to sort themselves out in the aftermath of Haxus's "greeting" to the Garrison encampment. Keith and Pidge have family issues to deal with, Lance wakes back up, and they have to resolve the question of the Black Lion and the apparent no-win situation that's become.

This is my gift, the act of my tears - This is my prayer, embracing my fear

While I've been scribbling at some of the original work things and will probably end up with progress on Winter's Curse to actually post snippets of sometime soon, today is not that day.

Today was "Hell I'm partway through Shiro's 'Blackout' side-chapter for Truce, I may as well keep going".

Yes, that's exactly as much of a mess as you're probably expecting, although there's bits of it I'm bouncing off my normal friend-betas for "CAN YOU AT LEAST FOLLOW THIS? IS IT A SENSE-MAKING SORT OF POV IS BRAIN-MUSHY NONSENSE?"

Today's progress WAS: 2,574 words!

( We are the night, we are the dream, we are everything we need - just breathe )

A decent batch of sour cream cookies with a recipe given to me by Ryxl, groceries, and being gloop before the holidays.

Somehow rattling around in "I'm not sure what to work on" ends up landing on Old Gen Dumb Teenagers pretty often, which in this case was sorting out what I'm doing *right now* with it and getting some setup/worldbuilding together, plus outline notes for later bits with Trigel Being A Menace And A Ninja Gremlin.

She's Pidge's predecessor. You know she had to be a terror when she wasn't having photogenic hero moments.



On the worldbuilding note, what I've been using for this for the Dalterion is a diet something like a bigger version of hummingbirds and lories - fruit, nectars, some other greens/veggies, and some light protein. Of what I've got worked out, she's actually got the most annoyingly restricted range of "Edible" of any of them.

For what it's worth for comparison headcanon worldbuilding:

GALRA: Obligate carnivores, I know this's come up before in other fic.

RYGNIRATHI: Garbage dumb omnivores, can live on damn near anything.

NALQUOD: Carnivore, albiet amphibious and normally mostly "seafood"

ALTEA: Close to human enough to overlap comfortably, but skewed a bit more toward plant based.

The politics Alfor's been trying to ignore in that series are basically that area of space being in a mess of conflicts and alliances that could turn into their equivalent of World War I if something shoves it the wrong way.



PROGRESS: 1228 words on old gen Dumb Alien Teenagers/Noobs



(And a short bit from what I'd managed today!)



A good half of the non-Galra passengers and traffic were Dalterion. All she had to do to go unnoticed was dress down and make sure to mind which ID she used at customs and that the backstory and 'reason for visit' matched it.

She was a tourist, an arts student on vacation seeking 'inspiration' from Galran architecture and artwork.

It was the kind of cover story that was almost a vacation. After all, it would be suspicious if she disappeared too quickly after arrival; she had every reason to just circle the capitol, setting up a room to stay at and meandering to eat out and sightsee for a bit. Finding something edible took some effort - Galra were carnivores, after all, and while she could handle some meat, what they preferred was much too rich for her tastes - but some exploration found a trade market with fruit, shellfish, jars of juice and nectars, and some promising looking grilled insectoids that she didn't recognize.

It was easily a more relaxing mission than half of her others had been. She had to go out in an enviro-suit and pretend to be unable to breathe the same atmosphere in Altean space, because trying to pretend to be an expatriate would still draw too much attention and scrutiny, anything of interest around Nalquodan territory was underwater, and she'd been through four gunfights and six brawls that had nothing to do with her in pirate and scavenger territory.

Until she actually got into the palace complex to snoop around, the worst she had to worry about here was how much she could get away with spending before the High Commander frowned at her about their budgets.

So I didn't get it posted yesterday, but I did finish the first chapter for Strange Ways/Truce's continuation!

Posted here! It's centered around Hole In The Sky, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that a lot of it's Allura-PoV.

AS FOR TODAY: Sick is officially gone, work is less hectic than last week, and things are going pretty smooth for the holidays! I also realized I hadn't finished/posted the second chapter on Dumb Alien Teenagers, aka Dear World I'm Pleased To Meet You, so I got the last chunk of Trigel's shenanigans and her involvement in Politics done and posted the whole thing.

This is where it becomes much more obviously a continuation from Pray That There's Intelligent Life Somewhere Up In Space, since Coran's a little more involved and there's a couple more obvious callbacks.

Also it is horrendously funny going between the PoV of the Alteans who are terrified of Trigel, and Gyrgan.

Whose reactions sum up as "WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS YOU DEMENTED GREMLIN?!"

The new chapter is here!

(Yes, Trigel did know the significance of what she did to Alfor and Coran this chapter.)

DAILY PROGRESS: 1503 words on Dear World I'm Pleased To Meet You + Sketch and partial flat color for a D&D character portrait

Sick is better, it is now my weekend, and I managed to go an hour past when I try to be in bed because I got going well on something and am hoping it still reads well after sleeping on it since I wrote most of it after taking my sertraline. Not that it throws me that far off anymore, but "Tired and a little out of it" is definitely a thing.

DAILY PROGRESS: 2478 words on Strange Ways Ch. 1. At this point yes, I am basically going on momentum to see if I can get the first chapter posted as my current Goal.

Right now it isn't entirely in Allura's PoV; there's Coran in a couple places and Keith in a couple, and Axca briefly, but most of it's Allura.

She continues to be the one where I know what's going on enough to try to plan, but when I sit down to actually write or sort out details of events, she just. Decides to do something different from the original plan.

At least this time she isn't making plans to walk off with an entire small Galra civilian/research outpost.

And anything on this project with her PoV, one-shot or parts of the continuation, is going to be entertaining because Keith is no longer the upper end of the range for "sensitivity/awareness/tendency to poke the relay", and it's just. Normal for her. The kind of thing where I'm sure she academically understands the humans don't get it as Loud as she does/integrated into existing senses and abilities, but doesn't quite grasp how different it is for her compared to them.

I also love, after 200k in Keith's PoV with how Keith sees everyone else and Keith's self-image, getting to skip over to other PoV's for things like "how the others see Keith/everyone else".


PROGRESS EXCERPT BELOW THE CUT
( It hurts the young to live in the open - with so much love to give but too little to spare )

So I finally finished the first arc of my fanfiction 400 pound gorilla.

Truce itself has completed!

This 212k word baby of mine started out as two disconnected drabble fics that had just enough thematically in common for me to decide I was going to try to stitch them together and build a fic around them.

Except, one was waaaay at the very beginning, and one was late in Season 2.

I continued to write it under the same basic method of writing scenes out scattered and then filling in between them, and right now, those go straight up to the epilogue of Season 7 spread out in bits and pieces, but at some point in working on it, I figured out where I wanted to end the PoV-locked arc on it.

My little confused angry half-alien firebaby fic has come a long, long way.

I am still enjoying the Hell out of working on this sprawl, and have not only the main file of fragments to build continuation from, but a handful of other-PoV bits scattered across the part of the timeline Truce covers to finish and add to the other one-shots currently linked to it; it's far from over -

But holy shit, I have a finished arc piece.