She successfully snuck around when she left the group in Adventure, so I imagine she knows how to stay under the radar when she feels the need.
O: What would it take to break them, inside and out?
Hmm... Being alone? Like, having no one to love and be loved by, losing an important bond, having no one to need her and rely on her.
R: What are their hands like?
Sora is athletic and also does ikebana and sewing, so I imagine her hands are dexterous.
A: What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?
Oh, I bet she likes PE! And art classes too. As for an academic subject... She’s probably good at things centered on human relations, like literature and social studies/history?
So somehow I ended up falling into the Voltron fandom and so far I’ve really been enjoying it! Aside from all the fantastic character-building with Shiro, my favorite thing about the new season was definitely confirmed part-Galra Keith??? A few days ago @xerospark and I ended up doing a massive ramble about Galra biology and how it might relate to Keith’s Galra ancestry, and we decided to post some of our favorite headcanons.
xerospark’s post about Galra Keith specifically is over here, but I had a lot of thoughts about Galra biology in general, so I decided to post those under the cut. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on these, and feel free to add on your own headcanons if you have them!
Lifespan-wise, we don’t know much about the Galra but we do know that at one point the Alteans and the Galra were allies, or at least that they got along well enough to have concurrent Paladins of Voltron. @xerospark pointed out that it wouldn’t make much since for them to have an alliance with a comparatively mayfly-like lifespan. They’re almost certainly much longer-lived than humans and probably in the same ballpark as the Alteans.
I personally don’t think that the planetoid we saw in “Space Mall,” where the Black Lion originated, was the Galra homeworld or even a particular stronghold of theirs. There’s never been any mention of their home planet, not even asides like Coran’s mention of Deadly Pebble Rain on Altea. So basically we know jack about where these guys came from.
Physically, the Galra we’ve seen on the show have been relatively diverse, but there have been some common denominators. Large ears, purple skin, body hair/fur, and prominent canine teeth have come up time and time again, which to me suggests that A) the Galra trend more in the direction of obligate carnivory and B) that their homeworld might be a colder planet with short days, low light levels, or other conditions that might allow better hearing to serve an evolutionary function. They might even be nocturnal.
The named Galra we’ve seen on the show so far have also all been male?? Since Hagar is an Altean it also begs the question of who and what the Druids are, exactly... The females might look completely different from the males and we just wouldn’t know yet. *waits patiently for Keith’s mom*
@xerospark also pointed out that the Galra tend to heavily favor their purple-and-red color scheme, but they also don’t use the same lighting everywhere. In some of the prison bays the lighting is brighter, almost green, which led me to think that Galra eyes might be optimized for lower-light settings as well. In humans, color vision relies on three different types of cones that are optimized for short, middle, and long wavelengths of the visible spectrum; there’s some overlap, but dropping a few of those middle-wavelength cones could mean that the Galra would see purples and reds better and have comparative issues with yellows and greens.
It’s possible that the appearance of Galra eyes (flat, yellow, and pupil-less) might have something to do with the presence of tapetum lucidum. They’re a common adaptation in nocturnal carnivores that help improve visibility in low-light conditions; a side effect is that the tissue’s light-reflecting properties make eyes with tapetum lucidum “glow,” like a cat’s eye-shine.
And then there’s the whole “sensing quintessence” thing because IDK how that even works. Alteans and Galra can both do it, but humans can’t. We don’t even know if all Galra can detect quintessence - maybe some of them are better at it than others.
Anyway, since it’s a type of energy, quintessence has got to have a wavelength, like other forms of energy (visible light, thermal radiation, sound waves, etc). Unless they have some sort of “sixth sense” that lets them detect quintessence (which is entirely possible since it’s basically Space Life Magic), it would make the most sense to me for the Galra to be able to hear quintessence, maybe as a high- or low-pitched humming. In her headcanon post, @xerospark talks some about Keith can sense quintessence in the same way that humans can hear infrasound - he can detect it, but he isn’t really sure what he’s perceiving. To me, this suggests that whatever sense the Galra use to detect quintessence is something that’s analogous to one of our human senses.
I’ve unfollowed people here and there if I didn’t like their content anymore, but the only person I can distinctly remember unfollowing was because I asked them to tag their spoilers for a show I wasn’t caught up on and they refused. I’m not about that~
💖 8. Is there a character that embodies your good traits, or traits you wish you had?
A lot of the characters I write are better at living in the present than me. I’m generally a fairly optimistic person, but a lot of times I’ll get bogged down by things that happened to me when I was younger and I have a really hard time letting go of bad memories and grudges. I definitely wish I was better at moving on from things than I am, so I like to subtract that from my characters and write positive experiences about them moving past grudges and resolving conflicts instead of stewing in them.
🖤 9. Is there a character that embodies your bad traits? Several characters? Which ones and what traits?
I tend to not write characters that share my bad traits, since the reason I consider them “bad” is that they’re counterproductive and don’t get me anywhere - giving a character my tendency to hold grudges, for instance, would lead to three pages of that character listing every perceived wrongdoing perpetuated against them by another character, which. Generally doesn’t drive the plot. If a character of mine has a mental illness, I do tend to give them one that I have myself. It’s a lot easier for me to write about anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc than something that I’ve never experienced. In my roleswap AU, for instance, some aspects of Barry’s anxiety/paranoia are based on my own experiences.
🌩 16. Is there a character of yours who’s a real struggle to write/draw? Why do you think that is?
I have the hardest time with characters who don’t have a clear and distinctive “voice” to me. Distinctive mannerisms, phrases, ways of seeing the world, etc that are unique from my other characters help me to get into the headspace for them, especially if I haven’t written them in a while.
Green: What are you currently studying/hope to study?
I’m an Environmental Science major! I mainly study ecology and geographic information systems (aka database+mapmaking software) and I like it a lot. I’m about to graduate from college but I eventually want to go to grad school after I work for a year or two. No idea what I want to study once I get there though.
Magenta: What’s your favorite Disney movie?
Ahh right now I am still in Moana hell. I loved the story and the songs, and the characters were all incredibly enjoyable, especially Moana herself. I was rooting for her the whole time, and loved that she was independent and kicked ass but still knew that she had a lot to learn about the world and herself. As much as I think this movie can stand alone, I would pay literal money for more intel on what her life is like now that her quest is complete and she’s taught her people how to be voyagers again. Also the friendship between her and Maui was so good????? Proof yet again that no romance is needed to make a movie wonderful!
Cerise: Do you believe in aliens?
I sure as heck do believe in the possibility of alien life. I don’t think it would necessarily be anything like Earth’s life, but it seems so unlikely that we are the only planet with lifeforms in the vast reaches of space. Idk what other intelligent life would be like, but I hope it’s friendly and interested in meeting us one day... It’s lonely to think that we might be the only sentient beings in the entire universe. I don’t believe that aliens have necessarily made contact, but I believe they could be out there, somewhere.
