impressions in old stone

something i think isn't explored enough in the hail mary fandom is that while yes, humans are biologically a weird mess consisting of good enoughts that's just not efficient at all, the reason we're like is because of mutations that all happened because of a bunch of random environmental factors and our biology trying really hard to keep us alive in those situations.

#I have SO many headcanons in the works#I believe some eridans would have eating problems - difficulty opening or closing their ventral seal could be deadly without intervention#methinks egg fusion is a holdover from parasitic egg laying practices. Have your egg steal some other animals egg nutrients.#until there came a time when host eggs grew too powerful and only eggs that were laid with another eridian survived anymore#thusly Eridian eggs are technically immune to each other. And modern Eridians are born with certain nutrient deficiencies that used to be#handled by said ancient parasitism. Newborns need to play a lot of catch up (which helped contribute to social development.#our collective babies are HUNGRY and they are hungry for this extremely specific thing we now need urgently! We can only pull this off#if we work together! With the power of friendship!!)#I believe Eridians are not immune to concussion. Gotta be careful not to literally break your brain! It could cut up your insides!#Some Eridian worker cells origanate from COMPLETELY unrelated animals. ancient cross contamination becomes modern body plan.#so there are a few cells and interior structures that are literally useless and belong to different creatures entirely#and they still have to feed it or the intrusive cells will starve out the rest. Cant remove them either or an essential system will break!#gotta love billions of years of randomized trial and error!

This whole chapter was so pretty!