atlasarcana

[atlasarcana]

snippet no.3 of the crazy post canon klance + shatt + bdsm matt/keith fic, in which concussed lance talks to worried husband matt about the possibility that drunk keith is going to explode on depressed shiro. and matt makes a poorly timed joke about bondage. this is a telenovela

[atlasarcana]

another snippet of the crazy post canon klance + shatt + bdsm matt/keith fic, in which lance can't figure out how to talk about the fact that keith hasn't processed a single hard emotion in the past 4 years

[atlasarcana]

the girls are fightingggggggg

[atlasarcana]

small thing I did for the fic 'only broken horses know how to run' by @atlasarcana 🦄

[atlasarcana]

I felt like drawing some modern Essek in stylish clothes (inspired by a picture of Dylan Wang)

Maybe a popstar AU? I may do Caleb later, just need to figure out his style.

[atlasarcana]

here's a snippet for my next fic called four-body problem. it's a psychological character and relationship study focused on keith/lance and matt/shiro years after canon, through the lens of matt/keith therapy and Dom/sub funtimes. i'm about 2/3rds of the way through writing and it's around 56k already :) if you read my fic radio waves, this takes place in that same AU.

ao3 summary:

Three years after saving the universe and getting his happy ending, Keith still hasn’t gotten any better. Despite promising Lance that he’d open up eventually, he wasn’t able to break patterns of avoidance that had their relationship hitting a brick wall, and the final straw was saying Shiro’s name during sex.

So they’re on a break. Desperate to fix things with Lance, Keith asks Matt to psychoanalyze his unwanted sexual fixation on Shiro. Through talk therapy and BDSM, Matt helps Keith unpack his emotional dysregulation and insecure attachment issues while in turn teaching Lance to Dom Keith. 

But Matt and Shiro are having their own hurdles, and Lance isn't doing too hot either. It’s up to all four of them to learn how to grow and communicate before their attempts at triage do more harm than good.

snip, opener for chapter 1:

(cw for injury, hoverbike crash)

On the night that Keith ruins his life, the only think he can think to do is pick a direction and run.

Good thing he has a hoverbike. He peels out of his and Lance’s garage so fast he nearly decapitates the mailbox, then speeds out of Primavera Vale without looking back.

There’s nothing but the red roar between his ears for an indeterminate time, the road whirling underneath him until it drops out into sand and rolling, bleeding eternity. All the better to keep him from thinking. He rides past the midnight of one timezone into the daybreak of another, and he knows he’s home when the sunlight folds like flipped eggs over the broad plateaus of the Sonoran Desert—a shock of choking memories, a burn in his stomach, but a numbing sort of relief after it settles. Bloody grooves form beneath his gloves from his death-grip on the handlebars, as if his bike will leave him if he blinks. He doesn’t blink. So much sand has caked over his goggles, he’s started driving blind.

When his shack comes up out of the earth faster than expected, he’s already too close to hit the breaks. He whips the bike to the side, drifting at an arc to avoid a collision, but his weight pitches awkwardly and rocks get kicked up into the wheels, and the whole thing ends up flipping.

For a split-second, the ground is where the sky should be. A red fall. Jacket in his face; dirt, gravel, clay embedding in his skin—his shoulder goes crack, dislocated—the calamity of a hoverbike shredding across the mesa—and then he’s on his back, bellowing inarticulately and trying not to bite his own tongue off. 

It’s the worst pain he’s felt in years, and worse even for being idiotic. This must be what roadkill feels like. Something not quite dead, forced to lay there staring up at the sky as it goes from curdled yellow to deep, bold blue, while bleeding out under the baking sun.

Just his luck. He survives an intergalactic war, then dies from a speeder flip in the middle of nowhere, twenty feet from his house. Awesome.

Throwing himself up and down a few times does the trick of popping his shoulder back into place. He uses the adrenaline to crawl, then limp back into the shack, where he takes account of his injuries. Just the shoulder so far, and a number of bruises and abrasions; nothing duct tape and half-Galra healing won’t fix. There’s another hoverbike stashed under a tarp against the side of the house, so he hasn’t totally exiled himself, but the prospect of facing people again—facing Lance—hurts almost more than his shoulder. When he fishes around for pain medication, all he finds are a few stashed bottles of liquor from back when his dad was still alive.

Whatever. It’ll do. He sits down hard on the dusty old cot, cracks the whiskey open against the dresser, and drinks until he stops hurting.

He ignores the world. Out here, the world does him the mercy of ignoring him back.

__

if you read this far, lmk what you think! it's an out-there idea, and i'm certain that it won't resonate with everyone, but i'm having a lot of fun writing keith have The Problems Of All Time.

[atlasarcana]

lance - slutpop girly. sabrina carpenter espresso. ayesha erotica. he's still on million dollar baby. has a spiritual connection to bruno mars and silk sonic. bad bunny and rosalia

hunk - got emotionally invested in megan thee stallion's career. probably likes disco revival bands like jungle and other feelgood groovy stuff. likes chappel roan SO much. achingly earnest BTS army with a stan account about self-love

pidge - tyler the creator, charlie xcx during the first 2 weeks of brat summer and not after, SOPHIE, JPEGMafia, niche garage grunge noise industrial techno bands with less than 100k listeners on spotify. has saved a bunch of youtube playlists with titles like "video game bops to sploink to". knows who thelivingtombstone is

shiro - lorde and marina and the diamonds and lady gaga fan from back in the day. almost exclusively listens to those hour-long dj setlists of jazz fusion where there's a dude drinking matcha with a bunch of plants in the background. doesn't know individual songs very well. always reacts positively to new music and then forgets to save it

keith - inherited a bunch of cds and his dad's old walkman and only uses them, not even in a chic gen-z return to physical media way, but in a begrudging refusal to get a smartphone way. prog rock. prog rock. the band Yes. pink floyd, pj harvey, jeff buckley

[atlasarcana]

on my voltron bullshit again. batshit fic idea involving BDSM therapy as couple's mediation again. this is echo bren part 2 except it's klance

[atlasarcana]

have you guys done that “what kind of reader are you” quiz and if so what did you get

[atlasarcana]

by the way, for anyone who follows me on tumblr but isn't subscribed to my ao3 at all, i'm working on a new fic and it's pretty juicy (lots of content warnings tho)

[atlasarcana]

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines. 

Or, send in a ⭐star⭐  to have the author select a section they’ve been dying to talk about!

[atlasarcana]

sooooooo jayvik

[atlasarcana]

hi, i'm still working on this, here's another snippet:

BECKE: Producing was the best job, in my opinion. The tweaking and the… the perfecting of something you’d already met in your mind days, weeks, or just moments prior. Rendering an illusion into reality. It was its own kind of magic.

GRIEVE: I liked producing too. I liked the bleepy and bloopy sounds. But if I’d try to touch something she was working on, she’d turn me into a sloth.

WIDOGAST: There was a sloth in the producing room sometimes. I still don’t know what that’s about.

BECKE: Of course, I couldn’t always have one job to myself. Bren would be over my shoulder every now and then. I knew he was just trying to learn, but I couldn’t help but feel possessive. I wanted to be seen as the one in the chair, the one making everything happen behind the scenes. The intelligent one. The mastermind. (She laughs.) We all know where this is headed.

WIDOGAST: I don’t blame her at all for wanting to be the producer. It was how you got the closest to Trent, and it was how he saw your work in an intimate, one-on-one setting. When we danced and sang, we were treated as a unit, but we weren’t being ranked when we helped produce. Our problem was that I wanted that approval too. I craved it like nothing else. So we were butting shoulders, thinking that it was about the music and the buttons and the lack of room, but we both knew it was never about that. It was always about him.

GRIEVE: The two of them were more into Trent than I was. I was getting worried as time went on that they were going to try to make him sign adoption papers. It was creepy. But I guess it helped with the band’s morale, to have that spirit of self-improvement. At least at the start.

IKITHON: It’s a tried-and-true fact that competition breeds good genes. In a music industry setting, that sort of competition serves to whet blades and hone skill. There’s a reason we hold so many music, sports, battle tournaments across Exandria. It’s a simulation of the natural order of things—just a little less fatal.

here’s a snippet! it’s a test-drive for the epistolary “interview” style of a shadowgast pop star au inspired by daisy jones & the six, hozier, prince, the corruption of the western music industry, so on and so forth. this may or may not be included in the actual fic!

ESSEK: The problem with the Empire understanding of the Dynastic music industry has less to do with personal prejudice and more to do with propaganda.

TRENT: I don’t believe that propaganda has much to do with it. Honestly, it has to do with the belief that rural and local fans in the Empire maintain about Dynastic standards of excellence. Which are based in fact.              It is an objective truth that the Dynasty has the most rigorous education and extracurricular programs on Wildemount. It is inarguable that music tutors originating from the Dynasty are the most sought-after in the world. Is it prejudiced to become wary about the promise of “equality” in the treatment of performing artists, when there’s such an obvious privilege afforded to those from select regions?             I think it’s perfectly rational to speculate that there are injustices going on. Non-elf races have to puddle around in their hundred-odd years of life to make something of themselves, while the hundreds of thousands of dark elves on the other side of the mountain range have been perfecting one style of lute-playing for the past 700 years. It’s hardly fair.

CALEB: Whoever said that humanoids could never catch up to the elves is a fool. Rigor has nothing to do with a spark. Rigor can polish, can curate a spark. But it cannot invent one. The desire to learn music can be found in everyone, but the desire to consume it, to reimagine it and distort it and create anew with it — that is a phenomenon afforded to the great few.               And I believe, as many in the disenfranchised parts of Empire do, that this sort of spark requires some stressor to ignite it. After all, you cannot create fire without friction or chemical reaction. You cannot have the light of great art without an input of peril. Humans and humanoids have been called ‘matchsticks’ before — but it is this very threat of burning out that ignites such passion and tenacity.

ESSEK: Of course there are benefits to being an elf. The time scale affords more practice. The culture of rigor in the Dynasty in particular lends to extremely high standards of excellence, as many say — that is true. Though I resent to believe that privilege has anything to do with to whom the award goes to at the end of the night. The only thing the judges need to concern themselves with is discrimination, and if the skill is consistently coming from one nation or the other… Well, there’s only way to go about it. 

INTERVIEWER: Which is? 

ESSEK: The objective way. Award whoever deserves the award, no matter from where. That’s skill, that’s rigor, that’s practice. Talent is a construct used to distribute the feeling of effortless success, but there’s no success without effort. I should know.

INTERVIEWER: Sure. But what about the point that Ikithon made?

ESSEK: [He chuckles.] What point?

[atlasarcana]

radio waves 🎶

“Talk about a first kiss,” Matt laughs, voice husky. He’s tilted his head back in reverie, exposing the sheen on the hollow of his faintly bobbing throat. Shiro suddenly feels as though he’s started traveling at the speed of light. As though he’s back in his room on a now-cannibalized shuttle, Matt between his legs, tinny music coming through the radio at his belt. “Your memory’s better than mine,” he says. His throat feels thick. Neither of them are dancing anymore.

— Shiro and Matt had something romantic and undefined on the Kerberos mission, but after enduring Galra slave camps, the gladiatorial arena, and forced amputation, rebel Matt reunites with Pidge and Shiro as a completely new man. Shiro takes the time to learn how much Matt has and hasn’t changed, and vice versa, as they rebuild something new together.

Chapter: 5/5 (COMPLETE)

Rating: E Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Ship: Matt Holt/Shiro Word Count: 26,568 Tags: Canon Divergence, Matt has Galra prosthetics AU, Vignettes, Relationship Study, Character Study, Sparring, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Fluff.

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and elaborated in the Author’s Note.

⋆ read on ao3 ⋆

[atlasarcana]

radio waves 🎶

“Talk about a first kiss,” Matt laughs, voice husky. He’s tilted his head back in reverie, exposing the sheen on the hollow of his faintly bobbing throat. Shiro suddenly feels as though he’s started traveling at the speed of light. As though he’s back in his room on a now-cannibalized shuttle, Matt between his legs, tinny music coming through the radio at his belt. “Your memory’s better than mine,” he says. His throat feels thick. Neither of them are dancing anymore.

— Shiro and Matt had something romantic and undefined on the Kerberos mission, but after enduring Galra slave camps, the gladiatorial arena, and forced amputation, rebel Matt reunites with Pidge and Shiro as a completely new man. Shiro takes the time to learn how much Matt has and hasn’t changed, and vice versa, as they rebuild something new together.

Chapter: 5/5 (COMPLETE)

Rating: E Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Ship: Matt Holt/Shiro Word Count: 26,568 Tags: Canon Divergence, Matt has Galra prosthetics AU, Vignettes, Relationship Study, Character Study, Sparring, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Fluff.

Content warnings for the fic are described in the tags and elaborated in the Author’s Note.

⋆ read on ao3 ⋆

[atlasarcana]

Hi!!! Coming from your fic 'radio waves' and wanted to send some love :) Me and some friends have been promoting your fic my Instagram @illustraice, and I was wondering if I could dedicate some art to the fic? :D No pressure at all—otherwise, thank you so much for writing for the ship in 2024!!!!!!

oh hey hi ice!! ✨✨ :)))) sorry just got this now!! yes yes go ahead 😋!!

[atlasarcana]

the only reason i’m back in this fandom is for them <3