#my sister is truly such a boots tho personality wise.

[prophecyofgray]

i'm 9 yrs older than my little sister (same age gap between gregor and boots) so i always think of her as boots However it just today crossed my mind that she is now 11 which is the same age as gregor at the start of TUC. so i think i need to lie down now

[moltensunlight]

More (like a lot more) Altean!Lance arrives on earth by way of a crashed ship and then gets raised by a human family AU because my brain won't shut up about it lmao

like this is something i actually don’t think i’ve seen yet??? and i’m craving it now so i’m trying to be the change i want to see in the world lol here we go

so in this idea that’s been pestering me for like two weeks now, Lance and his family live on a completely different part of planet Altea than Allura and the royal family do 

mainly because i want to explore more of Altea as a fully-realized planet with different climates and ecosystems and cultures

and when the Galra attack Lance looks like the human equivalent of an eight year old

how old is this in altean? who fuckin knows I'm still debating this b/c I can't decide how I want to break up the growth stages for alteans 

his Altean family and maybe more escaped the fall of Altea in a ship (maybe one not unlike a smaller version of the castleship??? aka one of those ‘buildings that can turn into ships’ deals) and in order to escape detection by the galra they went into cyrosleep and shut down the ship (which we see is totally possible in the castle of lions) to keep it untraceable 

they're either aimlessly drifting through space or they have a specific course, but basically they’re trying to keep themselves always on the move 

then around 10,000 years later something happens that essentially rips part of the ship off (still debating the cause for this one tbhhhhhhh) including the section of the cryochamber room with lance's cryopod (which is miraculously unharmed) in it 

the damaged part of the ship then ends up on a collision course for earth

lance's human family (like in my head it’s mainly his dad and his dad’s brothers (a personal headcanon i’ve based off my own family lmao) but honestly it could be any of the adults) finds the broken ship bit and searches the wreckage for survivors, thinking maybe it's a damaged Garrison craft or something until they're inside and they realize this is definitely not From Earth

during this exploration they find Lance in a pod that’s been damaged in the crash, it's cracked and Lance has a head wound that does not look pretty and probably a broken bone or two to boot

they pull him out and he's clearly not human but he looks like a child they can't just leave him there, but they also can't take him to a hospital 

cue like an aunt or uncle who's medically trained patching him up the best they can (or even better sneaking him into a hospital for x-rays and bloodwork and the like, but i’ll get into those ideas later)

when lance wakes up he doesn't know who he is or where he's from aND there's a language barrier there 

like I refuse to believe in canon vld that the castle and their lions and suits aren't constantly translating stuff for them because hOW DOES EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE SPEAK ENGLISH 

but these people take care of him and they're really nice from what he can tell 

I actually have this whole scene in my head where the family finds altean writing on lance's clothes that looks like "Lance" too, it says something completely different but it looks like “Lance” to humans that use latin-based alphabets, so boom name matching canon immediately addressed 

but haven, how are you addressing his markings and altean features??? 

simple, my dudes, imagine that young alteans tend to shape shift to look like people they really like - oftentimes for other alteans it's hair or eye color, but for aliens there can be a lot more shifting involved. plus this whole process is encouraged because it's good practice for their shape shifting abilities too

habits also aren't going to be forgotten so soon, especially if they're a kind of muscle memory, and kids tend to do it without thinking (imagine a kid going "I want a haircut to match my best friend!!!!" with the strength of conviction that only a child can have; it's a strong enough thought that they just kind of subconsciously shift to that) 

and Lance has no recollection of his life before he wakes up to this family, he's got nothing to go on, so he latches on to them (I imagine he bonds with his new siblings (that are around his age) super quick too) and shifts to look like them pretty early on, like way before he ever actually learns Spanish and English

and since he has no other influences for him to latch onto shifting-wise, and also no one to tell him "hey you can shift back too you know" he ends up just staying shifted human

also idk if any of y’all have ever had a concussion before but like there are like months-worth of time after the concussion itself occurred that are still fuzzy to me, even four years after the fact

this is relevant because if Lance shifts so early on in recovering from his concussion, he might not even remember that he looked like anything other than human to begin with

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other things to help reduce plot holes include: 

Lance’s human family homeschooling him until he at least learns Spanish, since there is literally no one else on the planet who can explain things to him in his native tongue 

they also need to figure out where his level of knowledge is at so they can figure out what grade to put him in

because of this time spent with his human family and seeing how humans work in the process, he quickly absorbs that shifting isn't a thing humans do, even if he wasn't fully conscious of the fact that he did it in the first place 

he watches his siblings' hair grow and then get cut (no shifting involved), he listens to his brother complain when their sister grows taller than them because he wants to be the tall one!! but he never shifts to do so

basically a lot of "subliminal" messages that teach Lance about how humanity works, aka how we human children learn about how society and social settings work too - we watch others and copy what they do because they seem to know what they're doing (aka also how we get ourselves in trouble too because no one actually knows what they're doing lbr) 

another fun thing: Lance subconsciously adjusting his strength to match that of a typical human after watching the amount of effort it takes others to do things

because of all this and a lack of memory surrounding his life beforehand Lance fully believes he's human through and through, because what else could there be??? 

now saying this, he probably totally has a phase where he wants to be/believes he is a mermaid, but his subconscious is rooted in humanity firmly enough by that point that he can’t accidentally shift into one (though imagine an au of this au where he does omg. imagine That Reveal. Lance voice: [after pidge reveals she’s a girl] well if we’re coming clean about secrets then i guess you guys should know that i’m a mermaid *finger guns and grows gills to prove it* Allura voice: no you’re just shapeshifting, you’re clearly Altean. wait, whAT-)

Lance's parents only tell him (and other family members like grandparents and such) the basics of finding him (we got you out of a nasty crash and we couldn't find anyone else in it so we don't know what happened to your birth parents but we love you very much and will always be your family) 

because like how do you tell your son that now looks and acts and believes he's a human that he's really an alien?? 

also like, what would that accomplish??? Lance doesn't remember anything about his life before earth, what would he even do with the info??? He can't get back, he wouldn't even know where to even BEGIN looking in //all of space// for his birth parents, and that's IF they're even still alive, like, it's just a Bad Time all around 

so they love their star boy very much and try to give him the best life that they can here on earth 

(this also breaks my heart but imagine Lance’s parents’ reactions to him deciding to go to the Galaxy Garrison and then working really hard to get in - they’re so so proud of their star boy and they want him to follow his dreams but there’s a part of them that wonders if he was always going to return to the stars, if he never truly belonged with them)

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now cue the entirety of canon VLD events

literally nothing changes, i just have the idea of a few extra scenes thrown in to raise some questions, but nothing that really comes to a head until after Shiro’s disappearance 

this post is so long already tho i think i might just continue these ideas in another post lmao