#alien ecosystems

Also, all the characters in general in that episode having their moment where they become part of the ecosystem in different ways. Azi in the herd. Kamen hunting. Ursala getting a borderline religious experience of the cycle of life and death. Even sam acting as the True Human amongst the ecosystem, the outlier.

Content warning: A whooooole lotta death (this planet is not a fun place to live on) implied child neglect (Rhyme's parents are huge dicks) and interplanetary conflict. Also I kinda have this headcanon that Planet Lexicon isn't as squeaky clean heroic as Word Girl thinks they are, so already I've potentially pissed off a good portion of the fandom.

General Headcanons

First things first: the name of Rhyme's planet. Planet Cryogon is located in the Literatura Galaxy with Lexicon and Hexagon. It's name comes from "Cryo" which is a prefix that indicates low temperatures, ice and frost (cryogenic, cryokinesis ect) combined with the same "-on" suffix that Lexicon and Hexagon has. Miss Power's planet also almost ends with an "-on" suffix, but we'll get to that later.

Taking a page out of Jack Ferraiolo's other famous cartoon Amphibia, (did you know that this guy wrote for Word Girl AND Amphibia? Totally blew my mind when I found out) Cryogon is abso-f*cking-lutely a death world. Frequent snow storms and avalanches. The surface temperature of Cryogon averages to around -100°C so plant life is basically non existent. Everything gets their nutrients from eating other smaller things, and the more opportunistic or omnivorous creatures are able to eat the snow off the ground if they have to, since the snow on Cryogon is uniquely mineral filled. 

The wildlife on Cryogon is basically Ice Age wildlife, but on steroids. So you got giant armoured mammoths, dire wolves and dire polar bears, terror birds, sabre tooth tigers that can bite through rocks, Megaloceros deer that are actually strong enough to hold up their antlers, giant sloths with razor sharp claws, Kairuku penguins with beaks that can impale you (basically an extinct giant penguin species, Google it, I love them) even small innocent things like mice have scorpion tails. 

Because anything and everything on Cryogon can and will kill you, the locals are pretty desensitised to death. They'd still be sad if someone close to them died, but they'd be a lot more accepting of it. Cryogonians actually celebrate Deathdays on the anniversary of the day that someone died. They throw a party celebrating their life as a way of keeping their memory alive. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Birthdays are a solemn occasion where they reflect on how thankful they are to have survived another year.

There's a pretty popular headcanon that Word Girl, and by extension, Lexiconians in general are basically the apex predators of their side of the galaxy and thus have predatory instincts and adaptations. Well, I say, why don't I take this headcanon and push it somewhere else? I saw this fan art drawn by @mechidraws depicting Rhyme with sharp arctic fox teeth, so I just took that concept and freaking ran with it. 

Cryogonians are basically a predatory pack hunting alien race. Kind of like if you crossed wolves/lions with a sports team. All of their superpowers are special adaptations to survive on such a hostile world. The whole "vibrate before activating super speed" is a natural disorientation/camouflage tactic. (It probably would be a good idea to make yourself blurry if you're trying to hide while in a snowstorm) Their hair colours, ranging from white, to grey, to blue are good for camouflage in the snow and ice. Super strength is for landing blows on tougher prey to break through their armour and freeze breath is for shaping the environment to set traps/create hiding spots or shelter. Rhyme unknowingly uses this skill when she uses her frost breath to create giant ice ramps so she can "fly" by using the momentum of running off of them at high speeds.

A typical Cryogonian hunt usually goes like this. Their hunting party is split into several Chasers and several Strikers. The Chasers will run after their prey with their super speed and will manipulate the path ahead with their frost breath to lure their target into an ambush. The Strikers will then lunge at the target and strike at them with spears or good old fisticuffs and will try to wear them down.

When all else fails, Cryogonians will use their sharp teeth and will go for the throat. After all, you can drop your weapon, but you can't drop your chompers. They absolutely cannot afford to let prey get away or else their families will starve.

Yet despite having freaking superpowers, Cryogonians are still on the middle end of the food chain. They fill in a similar ecological niche as wolves. Yes, they can be scarily effective at hunting, but something bigger and stronger could easily body them, especially if they're caught alone. Safety in numbers is THE biggest life lesson you can learn on Cryogon.

Similar to Lexiconians and their knowledge of language, and Hexagonians with their knowledge of mathematics, Cryogonians area of expertise is physical geography, namely meteorology (the weather), seismology (earthquakes) and glaciology (study of ice in the environment) It's best to know everything about the world around you and all of its dangers if you want to stay alive, after all.

Settlements on Cryogon are basically huge cities carved from ice (well, they have an abundance of it, so might as well use it), surrounded by a gigantic wall of ice with razor sharp icicles on the outside to keep dangerous creatures out. In case you were thinking "This sounds like Attack on Titan?" I was more inspired by the wall with the sharpened logs surrounding the village in Kong: Skull Island. Cryogonians are master ice carvers and can create huge constructs with their frost breath.

Every single person's name on Cryogon is snow/ice related in some way. Rhyme's birth name is Crysta (as in, snow crystal).

Unfortunately, Cryogonians are looked down upon and seen as inferior to Lexiconians. Lexiconians think that language is far superior to geography because geography is a useless subject compared with language and literature (as I've been told by my teachers 👀) and they're also very freaked out by the fact that "Cryogonians hunt and kill their own food instead of farming or owning livestock, you know like civilised people", as a snobby Lexiconian aristocrat would so very rudely put it. Cryogonians think that Lexiconians are a bunch of stuck up nerdy pansies. "They live on a warmer planet! They don't have to work as hard to survive! They would be dead in one day if they had to live here!" as a grumpy Cryogonian hunter just trying to provide for his family would so very bluntly put it. Basically we got an Athens Vs Sparta situation going on between Lexicon and Cryogon.

Rhyme is actually half Lexiconian, half Cryogonian so she has traits from both species. On her father's side, she got Cryogonian cold resistance, pale blue hair, and her superpowers. On her mother's side she got Lexiconian omnivorism (with normal, boring human-like teeth to match) and can survive in warmer temperatures than most other Cryogonians. 

One time during the winter, the heating broke at a Villains Society meet up, so everyone showed up bundled up in several layers of clothing, thick winter clothes, hats, ear muffs, scarves and gloves etc because it was FREEZING, but Rhyme showed up in her ordinary outfit (no sleeve jacket, skirt) showing no signs of being uncomfortable and everyone was like "HOW ARE YOU NOT COLD?!" Reason, while not being biologically cold resistant, spent so much time around Rhyme and her ice powers that all he really needs to do is put on a jacket and he's fine.

On the other hand, Rhyme doesn't do well in hot weather. She gets extremely sluggish and tired when it's too sunny and her frost breath actually melts instantly when she tries to use it, so she's left with a pitiful water gun attack instead.  The Butcher opened his door one day to see a panicked Reason with Rhyme slung over his shoulders, asking if he had a meat freezer he could throw her in. But at least she can actually set foot on Earth without having to wear a special suit to stop her from dying from overheating.

Lexonite has a... unique effect on Rhyme. She accidentally got exposed to some on a heist with Mr Big and Leslie and it made her superpowers 10 times stronger instead of removing them. Leslie theorises that it's because the Lexonite cancelled out her Lexiconian side, her Cryogonian side expanded to fill in the missing space. Rhyme asked how the hell does that work and Leslie just shrugged and said "I don't know, plot convenience?" The Narrator said "We live in a world where people can get superpowers from being struck by lightning from a question mark shaped cloud and fusing with a photocopier. You really want to question the logic of this show?" And Rhyme is like "Yeah, that makes sense."

Rhyme adores penguins purely because they are smaller, cuddlier, and non lethal versions of the Kairukus from Cryogon.

Reason had no idea that Rhyme's species is predatory until an incident when they got locked in a dungeon and left for dead by the evil Dr Murderdeath in one of the 28 cities they've been through. They were close to starving to death when a rat suddenly ran into their cell. Reason notices that all of a sudden, Rhyme has a feral look in her eye and her survival/predatory instincts kicked in and... yeaaaah. On the bright side, Rhyme's extremely sudden savage outburst scared the crap out of the guard, who dropped the remote controlling the power nullifier that was around her neck, which disabled it so Rhyme was able to bust them out and escape. Cue Rhyme giving Reason a well rehearsed explanation of what the fuck just happened (implying that she kinda expected this to happen at some point) followed by a LOT of reassurances that the only reason she lost control of herself was that they were about to die, which will probably never happen again SO DON'T PANIC.

Reason just has to live with the knowledge that his bestie can go feral in a life or death situation. He is surprisingly chill about it, much to Rhyme's relief because her worst fear is Reason being scared of her. Reason wonders if she has ever hunted anything on Earth but Rhyme's like "What no, I don't need to. If I'm hungry I can just get a Mc Donald's or go to the grocery store or something."

Cryogonians get the zoomies. It is a fun past time for them, made even better with super speed and ice ramps. Sometimes in the middle of a crime Rhyme suddenly goes "If I don't run back and forth right this second I will Literally Die ™ and then you would cry." Reason's like "Ok. Just get it out quick before Word Girl shows up."

Cryogon's relationship with other planets

There's a bit of political history between Lexicon, Cryogon and Izgone, (aka Miss Power's planet!) Basically, Izgone is located closest to the sun in the Literatura Galaxy, while Cryogon is the farthest away. Lexicon is in the middle. The temperature on Izgone is boiling hot, perfect for lizard people like Miss Power's people. Basically if an Izgonian set foot on Cryogon they would instantly freeze to death due to their cold blooded-ness. If a Cryogonian set foot on Izgone, they'd burst into flames/melt. But the extreme temperature difference didn't stop Cryogon from trying to offer shelter to the surviving Izgonians when "The Incident No One Shall Talk About" happened.

Izgone was nicknamed The Hostile Planet for a good reason. To generate enough negative emotions to feed the populace, the Izgonians basically trashed other planets and fed on the misery that they caused. Lexicon, fearing that they would be next, developed a planet destroying superweapon to fend off the Izgonians, should they attack. They never actually planned to use the weapon, mind you. That would break so many intergalactic laws and permanently destroy Lexicon's reputation as the ultimate good guys. Except some poor sucker sitting at the control panel accidentally set his coffee mug on the "Press here to blow up Izgone" button.

So Izgone is gone. Basically all life got scorched with this one giant solar ray, and the only survivors are the tens of thousands of people who were in caves at the time. Of course, Lexicon's officials were like "FUCK FUCK FUCK" and immediately created this cover up story. "Well, Izgone got obliterated because all of their supervolcanoes blew up at once! What a terrible tragedy!"

Meanwhile, the Cryogonian officials, you know, the geography experts, were like "Uh, hold up. That's not how supervolcanoes work? They can't just all go kaboom at once? The chance of that happening is so monumentally slim that it might as well be impossible! Also, how come you found out the reason why the planet got scorched so quickly? That's kind of suspicious?"

So Lexicon basically silences Cryogon to stop them from telling the rest of the galaxy that they accidentally blew up a planet. They quietly conquer Cryogon, telling the rest of the galaxy that they're just partnering with Cryogon so that we can exchange knowledge and promote better learning! Nothing suspicious going on here, nope! Cryogonians are not allowed to leave their own planet anymore without a Lexiconian escort. They try to offer refuge to the Izgonian survivors, but Lexicon forbids them from doing so.

The surviving Izgonians decided to form a truce with Cryogon and vowed never to attack them as thanks for Cryogon's attempts to expose the truth about what really happened to their planet. As for Lexicon, however, the young princess of Izgone who was only a child at the time, swore vengeance against Lexicon and spent the next 3-4 decades flying across the galaxy and conquering planets in an attempt to find a new and better home for her people. She later lands on Earth and attempts to manipulate Earth's sole Lexiconian into joining her so they can conquer Earth together, but has to retreat when the Lexiconian becomes immune to her insults. Yeah, take a guess who the Princess (now Queen) of Izgone is.

Speaking of Miss Power, because of the whole Izgone/Cryogon truce, Miss Power kinda doesn't want to go against the wishes of her people, so she when she meets Rhyme for the first time she's like "Aw shit, she's Cryogonian, I can't attack her. >:(" Too bad Miss Power attacked Reason first, so Rhyme goes completely apeshit and beats the ever loving crap out of her for daring to harm her best friend.

Rhyme, of course has no idea who this random, really mean superhero lady is so she doesn’t realise just how shocking it is that she managed to defeat her. And because Rhyme is under the assumption that Miss Power is just some random superhero, she doesn’t think that the incident is important enough to mention. Weeks later, at a Villain’s Society meeting, the topic of conversation is about who came closest to defeating Word Girl and Rhyme just casually says “This isn’t about Word Girl, but actually, a while back I absolutely destroyed this half lizard lady who wasn’t really nice. She hurt Reason, so I froze her under 50 layers of ice!” Cue the record scratch moment and all conversations coming to a screeching halt as everyone stares at Rhyme because she just admitted to kicking Miss Power’s ass like it was nothing.

Rhyme's Early Childhood (it's sad :( )

Following "The Incident No One Shall Talk About", now there's a Lexiconian colony on Cryogon. This is basically where Rhyme's life begins. Her father, a Cryogonian, married her mother, a Lexiconian in order to get ahead in life.  When Rhyme was born, her parents were hoping father was hoping that they could forget about Rhyme's Cryogonian heritage and raise her as a super smart, Lexiconian daughter. 

This caused a lot of conflict between Rhyme's parents, and her Uncle Blizz (blizzard) and Aunt Geli (gelisol) Uncle Blizz is this giant teddy bear of a man who's super boisterous and upbeat. Aunt Geli is sly and crafty, and just ever so slightly feral. But she loves her husband and her family, and will do whatever it takes to protect them, so that's what's important.

They thought that it wasn't healthy for Rhyme to not know anything about Cryogon at all, and that it would only cause problems for her later in life. Rhyme's parents were cold and distant, only really caring about her studies and her appearance. Rhyme was under constant stress to succeed, just to get her parent's attention and have them tell her they were proud of her. Most of the actual parenting was done by Blizz and Geli, who were far more loving than her parents ever were. They made it their mission to teach Rhyme as much about the Cryogonian lifestyle as they could. One time, when they were supposed to be babysitting her, they took her on one of their hunting trips. Was it super irresponsible and dangerous? Yes. Were they really proud of her when Rhyme managed to catch a snow mouse all by herself, even if her method was sloppy? Yes. Was it one of Rhyme's favourite memories of Cryogon? Yes. Years and years later, Rhyme still considers them more like her parents than her actual parents.

Rhyme was taught amongst full blooded Lexiconian children and her parents assumed that she would gain a full knowledge of vocabulary like any other Lexiconian and they could pretend that she wasn't half Cryogonian at all. Well, aside from the little hiccup of her gaining the trademark Cryogonian pale bluish white hair, they assumed that she'd pass as an ordinary Lexiconian. 

But it became apparent that the Cryogonian genes were just more dominant than her Lexiconian ones. Unlike the other Lexiconian children, she was way behind on her vocabulary development. At age five she should have memorised the dictionary, but she was barely able to spell. She couldn't fly and she couldn't hear her teacher from across the playground either. Plus, she couldn't quite control her freeze breath or her superspeed yet, so she ended up freaking a lot of the other kids out. 

Now's the part where I tell you that her parents weren't just arrogant and neglectful. They're were downright evil. They told her to her face that she must be broken and basically decided that they didn't want to raise a Cryogonian child, they wanted a Lexiconian one. So they stuck her on a spacecraft and sent her to the giant off to an orphanage planet in the middle of the galaxy. Unfortunately, on the way the spaceship encountered a meteor shower and Rhyme's sleeping capsule was ejected into deep space, where she later crashed down to Earth. Rhyme grew up on an orphanage on Earth, under the new name Amy White, where she later became best friends with Reason (real name, Darren Labine) and her life is so much better now.

Blizz and Geli were absolutely sickened and devastated when they found out what Rhyme's parents had done. They cut off contact with them and didn't even shed a tear for them when they got trampled to death by a Mega Mammoth that had gotten into the city boundaries. They stole a spaceship, left Cryogon and for the next two decades, they dedicated their lives to finding Crysta and bringing her home. 

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