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It'll be a quick epliogue, three hours max, she said.

Anyways "she" is me and nine hours and 7.3k words later here is the final chapter/epilogue to In the Eye of the Beholder! I am very proud of it but uh do point out any typos you find I did write this all in one day again.

While it's not required knowledge for this post, if anyone is reading my fanfic In the Eye of the Beholder, this post contains spoilers for chapter 5! If you plan on reading it and haven't yet, I'd recommend skipping this for now.

Something that's come up a few times while I've been creating my alternate origin AU for the Solarballs universe is the existence of the irregular moons. Why do they have consciousness in the show, but asteroids don't? It's implied that it's because they're moons, but that never sat quite right with me as an explanation all its own, so I decided to expand on it.

In the Evolution AU, the innate consciousness of a celestial requires two conditions to exist: a stable surface and a spherical form. Earth, for example, didn't have a consciousness until after his surface cooled down from the Proto-Theia collision, and asteroids don't have one at all because they aren't spherical. It's a neat base reasoning, but leaves out a pretty glaring hole in its worldbuilding: the irregular moons.

A tricky question the Evolution AU poses is how the irregular moons of the solar system can exist. I dedicated a significant part of the Beholder fic to explaining it through the lens of Mars, Phobos, and Deimos, but a lot is left implied and I wasn't able to go as in depth as I liked. Since the subplot ended in chapter 5, here's my in-depth explanation for irregular moons:

The reason irregular moons can have consciousness but asteroids don't is because their planets (or the larger moons who have a gravitational influence over nearby minor moons) give them consciousness. If an asteroid falls into a stable orbit around a planet, or is significantly influenced by their gravity (such as the major moons of the gas giants), the bigger body can transfer a part of themself to the irregular moon. In short: spherical moons like Luna and Titan were formed, irregular moons like Phobos and Deimos were made.

Unlike the spherical celestials, an irregular moon's existence was a choice consciously made! It's also my explanation as to why Jupiter and Saturn don't have 100+ celestial moons; most of them haven't been "born", for lack of a better word. I'd like to write a one-shot about that dynamic within the outer Solar System sometime, but to give a brief overview:

Jupiter gave consciousness to a few of his largest irregular moons, like Himalia and Elara, and gave them the same level of independence as the Galileans. Io gifted it to the innermost moons - Amalthea, Thebe, and Metis.

Saturn's irregular moons were almost entirely made by Rhea and Dione (who themselves are woken up by Titan, who in turn was woken up by the Galileans) and number maybe 50 at most.

Neptune purposefully decided to gift consciousness to all of his moons. It doesn't matter how small or distant they are; once he finds one, he'll put basically all his attention onto it until they're awake.

The irregular moons are very different from their spherical counterparts because they're "artificially" made, if you can call the closest thing the celestials have to giving birth artificial. They tend to have more juvenile, immature minds, and take the form of children to match that. The larger the moon, the more mature their consciousness will generally be, though that's far from a hard rule.

(There are significant debates between the gas giants on the morality of making celestials who will never reach full maturity. Neptune thinks that they all deserve to experience intelligence and life, while Saturn is more cautious about handing out consciousness callously and potentially causing suffering.)