#anywho that's what got me thinking and otherwise distracted with reading someone else's content

[whatudottu]

Because I’m trying to read something and am constantly getting distracted about my internal thoughts, I wanna talk about petrosapien diets and also about the Alien Force inspired human petrosapien hybrid character that I finally have a design for and how she factors into that... vaguely.

So not keeping you for long, everything now continues under the cut.

A lot of my headcanons around petrosapiens and Petropia centre around the idea that most of this silicone-based planet and the lifeforms it produces spawns from the existence of crystalovores, however is best to spell a word that doesn’t exist. Crystalovorous lifeforms are either plants that grow into many of the crystals and subsequently derive nutrients from the significantly harder to eat rock to soils and sands, or lifeforms that derive some form defense mechanism associated with crystals or otherwise in need of a way to get more crystals.

Petrosapiens, being largely crystalline (a step up from having a crystal exoskeleton even if by technicality that’s what they generally are) are an example of the latter group and get their nutrients and energy from eating and digesting very specifically crystals, rocks being the cheaper and technically ‘unhealthy’ equivalent (think fast food or otherwise not-entirely-good-for-you foods) and metals, what little there is in easy access on Petropia inedible. Maybe you might have metal be the equivalent for gum, but one can’t dissolve it in large quantities so it’s best not eaten at all if not just spat out after.

That being said, a lot of crystalovore species - including that of petrosapiens, of course - have evolved to specifically digest crystals and sneak away what little nutrients it would have, also having to adapt to find, need and desire the nutrients specific to crystals that other species would not and never will benefit from otherwise. This digestive acid - stomach acid for closed system lifeforms like petrosapiens, an acidic poison-like secretion from roots or skin for plants and otherwise open system lifeforms like bugs and certain tunneling creatures in and out of water - is strong enough to break crystals into nutrients to enervate the body and leave dust behind. Open system creatures and life leave the dust behind for non-crystalovorous plants to take root, for fungus wanting to finish things off or for other purposes, but petrosapiens take that remainder crystal waste and use it to grow more crystals.

I suppose the human equivalent may render that idea as being kind of gross, taking the useless parts of your digested food and turn it essentially to skin; were it a shelled creature, waste product shells, but to be fair that’s how snails work on Earth anyway. And that’s mostly how I see it, it’s not a system that can be perfectly paired with a human function, and now (well technically not now, I already had made the connection before) I add snails to my pool of ‘what the fuck is a petrosapien’ biology headcanons- lemme just...

Hahah, you cannot escape my weird inspirations!

But, as a little something something, though that acid is not strong enough (nor built right) to digest metal - no literal bismuth petrosapiens walking around with technicolour crystals - it is more than enough to dissolve what would typically constitute for food, biological plants or meat typical to a diet of herbivores, carnivores or omnivores (hmm that’s a lot of ‘i’s, maybe crystalovore should be crystalivore?). Looking at like, specifically if herbivores can eat meat or if carnivores can eat plants for like... a sliding scale of what can happen or not, there are generally no strict herbivores whereas carnivores cannot digest - and thus cannot be sustained - by plant matter (so feel free to slap a furparent for giving their dog a vegan diet).

With this in mind, this made me think that crystalovores are to omnivores what herbivores are to carnivores, there’s a level of disconnect between the food and the individual that leads to a disconnect of what you can digest. But, though the acid is capable of dissolving plant and animal matter no sweat, unlike herbivores who can eat some form of meat (typically being that of insects rather than a full body, but can in moderation eat carrion and bird chicks) and derive sustenance, it is the difference between organic and inorganic food that simply means that petrosapiens (and other exclusively crystalovorous species) just simply do not have the same nutritional needs that organic food provides.

So, with all that mumbo jumbo out of the way, petrosapiens can and - for those trying what is dubbed ‘human food’ ie, not crystals and named after the introduced idea of humans who eat anything and everything regardless if it will harm them - do eat meats and fruits for all the nutritional value of a garnish. Having a diet of only meats and fruits and whatever other non-crystal based thing will do absolutely nothing for a petrosapien, even if it’s rich in minerals or whatever, because that’s a lot of garbage to sort through to even get to minerals, and by that point the salts and whatever other relatively inorganic part of the food does nothing for sustenance. In fact, speaking of minerals, mineral water does more good than a full course meal of ‘human food’ because even if the minerals are floating around in actual water, there’s no need to sort through any junk to get to those minerals.

And so, sure, have a journey with textures one can’t even begin to make with crystals and try out ‘human food’, petrosapiens eat crystals and maybe cheaper rocks with like pockets of crystals within them if you can’t afford better, because they just built like that.

But I have a petrosapien character who is not built like that, and saying that she’s petrosapien is only half right.

Say hello to the finally drawn concept of a nameless human petrosapien hybrid, a character I’ve been referring to as Abuelita de los Crystales after the Mexican Cave of Crystals because guess what, she’s lived for 180ish years ever since the Victorian era and, if it weren’t for her significantly more human (but still half petrosapien twin) she would have been far more alone than she is and is coping with the loss of a lot of people by being great at Dia de los Muertos.

Because I cannot be trusted with keeping a hybrid character free from angst, I have forced myself to keep her angst be of the typical ‘i live for a long fucking time and the people around me are god damn human’ angst and slightly just ‘i’m very visibly not human’ (this is why i made the mutants and magic au, this great great great great grandaunt of her slightly more human compatible twin’s lineage deals a lot better where non-human beings are a little more common place), I’ve given her more of the human-ish materials part of her genetics as opposed to her twin.

By that I mean, abuelita (genuinely I don’t have a name for her) has crystals made of bone - or at least calcite (crystalised calcium) and bone cells - whereas her fraternal twin had her nails, hair and bones replaced with their mother’s crystals (not to be confused with their human mum, look this has been a whole year of thought and it’s coming out because these thoughts are now impacting reading). This individual right here does not derive sustenance from meat or fruit like full-blooded humans, but because she is made from bone/calcite with bone cells whatever I’m deciding, the simple solution is drinking a lot of milk and straight up eating bones and sucking out the marrow like a grandfather who finds the marrow of an ossobuco is the best part.

Now, from the angst ridden bowels of my mind, this tatara tatara tatara tararabuelita (tía, abuelita or bisabuelita for generally not bullshit long titles) can now be essentially one of the founders or perhaps only member of the family that has, in 180 years of free time, has picked up a hobby to cattle farm. Aside from overseeing something that can have intergenerational workers, she has a very stable source of calcium that can also directly feed the people that she cares about with so much fucking cow products it’s like ‘Tía! I’m tired of having so much beef, can we get more variety?’.

Okay this has turned into Abuelita de los Crystales propaganda (I should REALLY FUCKING decide on a name now that I have a drawing of her) instead of ‘oh petrosapiens eat rocks for breakfast’ bullshit but excuse me for giving my technically not even an adult petrosapien human hybrid a little farming hobby with little pieces of ‘wait what do you mean her sister ‘had’ crystals replace her bones’ insight of what a year of sitting around and doing nothing about it did to this character :)

So, petrosapiens (maybe even Chio my petrosapien therapist that I shove into every circumstance that needs some therapy even if location wise it doesn’t make sense) are confounded that my nameless hybrid sustains herself off of very organic bone and milk to live and humans are thinking how bizarre it is that Abuelita de los Crystales only ever drinks milk and eats bones when her very human looking family eats significantly more meat than she does. My baby’s therapy is cattle farming and Dia de los Muertos ofrendas being full stocked with memories and offering like you wouldn’t fucking believe.

And I believe that is all, for now at least. Now let me get back to what I was reading and hopefully I won’t look anywhere other than the screen and suddenly think of something else to write.