object worldbuilding :)

an object with AA as their genome would have arms, an object with Aa as their genome would also have arms, & an object with aa as their genome wouldnt have arms

let’s explain Lightning’s weird lightning powrds

first thing is that lightning is not actual lightning, just hang onto me for this. Lightning is composed of two layers:

The electric layer

The rubbery layer

The electric layer is where all the electricity stuff happens, it’s all made of electrocytes pigmented yellow for warning displays I guess. These electrocytes are a little more violent than their real word counterpart because they’re so many of them! Anyways yeah you get a nasty shock if you touch this area.

The rubber layer is the protective coating to all of Lightning’s internal stuff, and also is a protective ring around the eyes, where the limbs connect and also a protective coating around the mouth and gums. It’s so that lightning doesn’t end up burning his CNS to char, cuz woo boy that’s a lot of volts. I’m assuming so because I’m not looking at the wiki right now, because my head hurts.

So what about the lightning he makes? The lightning strikes.

uh

watch this

Throughout Lightning’s body is a series of thin tubes made of Silica, all connected to this ring that most CO2 diffuses into from blood vessels, still some CO2 is breathed out but is very little. The CO2, now a gas, is left standing in these tubes and this serves as a medium for light, produced by a highly powerful version of luciferin and luciferase. This bright light produced is focused through the silica, the silica acting as a lens.

Basically lightning just made lasers and these lasers leave the tubes and escape into the surrounding air, ionising particles. These straight lines of ionised particles act as channels for electricity, discharged from nearby electrocytes, to travel along and thus produce a lightning strike. Much of this idea (the whole laser to lightning part) I got from a reddit comment about firing biological lightning.

All of this is happening in milliseconds mind you, probably faster.

Also some food for thought:

Lightning’s species, or most likely ancestors or ancient species of lightning, probably hunted mainly objects composed of conductive metals. Since their prey had a shell of conductive metal, they were basically wearing armour that would fry their CNS to bits. Maybe they were easy prey because of that.

Also that thing cheesy did in s4e5 lol

Compared to the rest of their bodies, an object’s face is softer, much more flexible and has a musculature alike to a human’s, so very complex. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to express the way they do, now would they?

This point is useful for an object’s nostrils. An object’s nostrils, in my eyes, would have to be like finely thin slits, so fine they don’t look present when you look at their faces. When air is taken in through the nasal region, the nostrils open into a circular shape.

How their nostrils are always staying closed if they’re not breathing through their mouths is a…post for after this one. I’ve got a bit of talk on just BFDI about objects and their ability to survive in space without breathing though needing to breathe while underwater.

There's two types of bottles and other liquid container objects - first born empty, can be filled with anything and second, those who's liquid is a part of their body produced by it, loss of it is a health risk.

If we're taking worlds where objects have child stage which isn't true for some shows, all of second category are born with default "baby liquid" (water mixed with waste from the time they were forming and some other stuff) inside, in few weeks their body starts producing the proper liquid (juice, acid, beer, whatever) but before it the baby liquid can be tested and you can predict what the final one is going to be.

Fun fact: for objects who naturally have alcohol inside it's almost impossible to get drunk, they're pretty resistant to effects of alcohol since their body always produces it. tho there's a condition they can be born with that actually causes them to be drunk all the time. Most objects with it die as babies, but if they make it through the first year they're most likely gonna make it to adulthood. There's a similar thing with objects who have harmful chemicals inside, tho they're guaranteed to die if they aren't born resistant.

First category objects often use liquids for fashion purposes, like filling themselves with glittery water. Among rich objects who are glasses 🍸 it's common to "wear" pretty looking multilayered alcohol shots inside to show off their status. And yes, it makes them drunk.

First category objects don't have to have liquid inside but for plastic bottles it's heavily recommended as it makes them less likely to get deformed.

No matter the category, drinking out of someone is seen as something personal or intimate in majotity of object societies. Tho a lot of younger objects are chill with it and don't see it as a sacred thing and often let their friends take a sip.

I actually really fw this! One thing tho, since (imo) this is the way objects reproduce, they're not "born" per se but rather 'fertilised'. So the parents have a choice over whether the baby will be fertilised with a liquid or without. But I guess this could still work since this (↓)

liquid would likely go into the liquid. And instead in a few weeks their body will gain the ability to regen the liquid inside them like blood (because something something evolution idk). Ig the parents would also have to gradually filter out the old liquid to stop disease setting in.

the marriage thing is so cool, and i could see it falling out of fashion just like irl; the new 𝔀𝓸𝓴𝓮𝓻 object generations start to stop doing the tradition because it might result in parents pressuring their engaged children into doing it. It might be painful or uncomfortable, or act as an incubator for pathogens. etc etc. (not to diss @julespinkchair's hc or anything, i'm just thinking about how this would evolve as objects get more 𝔀𝓸𝓴𝓮 like in the human world) (ok i'll stop)

I like how each object worldbuilding enthusiast has different views on how objects reproduce (and the shows where it's told also give different versions). I try to keep my concepts in a way that could be applied to multiple object reproduction ways instead of sticking to one :D

Yes, objects definitely got less traditional.

this is what i mean: https://x.com/Ju1cery/status/2056608249055760839 (idk how to send images)

i noticed this too and i can't think of any explanation other than cartoon logic, but that's pretty unsatisfying :/

I could just say “high deposits of collagen” but like then if you apply pressure to either of them, it would press inward like our skin. But that doesn’t really happen for these two. Or at least we don’t see it.

So here’s a more fun explanation:

Objects have a spine or at least some analogue to one. You can’t see it because, using the very popular method of Organspace, it’s pushed into another dimension. This backbone acts as the main support for muscles, which pull on the ‘outer shell’ of the object’s body. But how does the outer surface not be damaged permanently due to the pull force?

Have a look at this:

Fig 1: Depicting the process of cell movement when an object stretched (ignore sphere guys)

Each cell of the ‘epidermis’ is held together by a special intercellular structure called a “demosome”, which provide a strong adhesive force that stick cells together. It’s kinda like cellular Velcro. These structures are why your skin holds together also.

Just like the cells in the topmost layers of our skin, they’re dead or at least…barely alive perhaps for objects, while much of their cell contents are made up of their object’s material, i.e. wood or silver. So, they can’t respond to cell signals well. So, energy has to be placed into the demosomes to break that adhesive force. It’s a lot of energy and that’s why you rarely see objects do it.

Once a particular pair of cells have their adhesive force split, the muscles easily pull apart the two halves of the top layer. Beneath that layer, there is another layer of more alive cells, which are prompted to squeeze into the gap made quickly by nerve signals. The more this top layer is pulled apart as the object continues to bend, more cells from the layer beneath are added. Rarely does it get to a point that the beneath layer runs out of cells to supply.

However, the stretched area does get more taught and easier to puncture due to its thinning. On the opposite side, cells instead bunch together, create a temporary dense area of cells.

It’s best not to overstretch though.

This is all well and good for objects like Needle. But for Book, her species and other objects like it have to rely on a more specialised skeletal structure. Their sternum is more flexible and functions akin to a psuedo-spine, but this kind of process is only needed for the front and back cover. The pages can bend just fine.

Imagining like two teens chatting

“Uncle Beakery is gonna pick us up at 5, and then we’ll eat dinner there?”

“Why is it, that everyones parents and uncles and stuff are named… like, Tabley or whatever, like thank god i wasn’t born 40 years ago lmao I’d probably be named Fenceposty or something and Miranda is so much cooler. Oh uhh yeah 5 is good i think”

“Cool ill let mom know that’s the plan. And trueee i wouldn’t wanna be named like, idk ‘Spray Sealant’ or whatever”

“Pfft. Spray sealant”