Will's bullshit

rocky: per eridian courting rituals i have woven the sound of your heartbeat into mine and i will sing you its song

There are big and small snake variations, but big ones are BIG. think gigantic great dane or mastiff 😂 and just as there are bad dog owners irl, there are bad snake owners too......

Thank you for asking this question! I jumped out of my seat in joy in anticipation of answering. I will be explaining some speculative ways of how Eridians were able to evolve different colored carapaces :)

Traits in general can be sorted onto a spectrum: they evolved because they are in some way advantageous for survival and reproduction, or is so neutral to evolutionary success it just never needed to be selected out.

Eridians don’t percieve colors, so different color carapaces probably lands closer to the "no effect" end of the spectrum. Happy coincidence that (at least with movie depiction) we have colorful little pebbles!!

We can see the difference between an advantageous trait and a neutral trait demonstrated by the fur coats of wild cats vs house cats. Wild cats don’t have nearly as much fur variation within a species as house cats, because in the wild cats have a way higher need for good camouflage as it is crucial for hunting for prey and hiding from predators. House cats, however, coexisted with humans for centuries -- humans provide cats with shelters, food, and way more variability in types of environment (so a specific coat is not selected for) so even unusual fur patterns could be passed on with way more success.

Colors are likely a byproduct of other physical traits, so let’s consider some physical traits eridians CAN perceive via sonar: 1) texture, and 2) silhouette.

Silhouette is straightforward enough: by how sound bounces off a surface, an Eridian can get the outline of another Eridian, down to the unique spiky protrusions of each finger. They can also get information via the texture of the surface: sound bounces off differently on different textures. This combined with silhouette can allow very fast person recognition!

The Eridian carapace is entirely inorganic, being composed of oxidized metals. If “Eridian” is all one species, all Eridians over Erid probably have very similar carapace makeup, especially Eridians living in close proximity, because they consume similar foods. But if they are different species of the same genus (think modern humans and neanderthal humans), it could allow more possibility for more carapace variation. (If you are interested in the speculative biology different species of Eridians, @lutheban has a great post on it under the tag #eridian biology !!)

Addressing the second part of the asker's question: can the colors be result of different minerals? While pure mineral/crystal Eridian designs are super cool to see, it unfortunately is not super biologically viable (unlikely to be evolved consistently). Eridian carapaces are comparable to shells and scales, being grown and shed as needed; it would take way too much energy to maintain pure mineral carapaces when a mixture of what is most available is an option. But at the end of the day, spec bio is spec bio: if Erid is strange enough, even the strangest traits can become necessary and be evolved.

Now that we know these factors, we can go into the main possible reason Eridians develop different colors: variation that comes along with the mechanisms that create the unique textures and sillouhoutes of each Eridian. Perhaps every Eridian breaks food down just a little differently, making the carapace a little different between each Eridian. Color, in this context, is similar to human fingerprints and palm etchings: due to it having no evolutionary effect, it’s allowed to randomize to no bounds -- to the point it’s pretty much impossible for two humans to have the same etchings!

Imagine Eva seeing Grace again.

Oh no no no don’t look at me like that. He’s not mad at her. He understands that she did her best in a horrible situation with no good answer. So no he’s not mad at her.

It’s so, so much worse than that.

Eva didn’t even realize the difference between Grace’s friendly and Grace’s politely cordial until suddenly she had experienced ‘friendly’ and sent him away, okay with never experiencing it again.

But then he comes back. And he IS friendly, downright loving towards the rock people following him around. But he’s politely cordial to Eva. He answers her questions when she asks them but doesn’t ask any of his own. He turns to the big brown rock when it chimes and tells it in that tone of affectionate disbelief, “Rocky, you can’t say that to her!” But then only tells Eva when she asks, “you don’t need to worry about what he said; he didn’t mean it, he’s just mad.”

Imagine Eva attempting to go for a hug when she first sees him again, and he either just tolerates it, or even worse, he politely tells her “not yet,” “not now,” or even just “no.”

It was easy to pull the lever when you thought you’d hear the trolley roll over one person you loved, and they’d scream and train wheels would roar and with a splat, that would be it. But no; the one life she threw under the trolley, even though it was someone close to her, closer than she ever let anyone else, did not die. He managed to escape and survive the trolley and even managed to make the universe a bigger, better place.

But now he’ll never forget the look on her face when she pulled the lever. And things will never, ever be how they were because even though it was justified and he understands and doesn’t blame her, it hurt, even though the trolley never touched him.

It was better when she thought she was killing her friend, because she wouldn’t experience his friendship again, and neither would anyone else.

Now, everyone gets to experience his friendship.

Episode 3 of @eridian-heart

Even as an Eridian Grace is not immune to flashbacks,