#but at this point basically everything has been through the evolution wringer and developed entirely different to any ancestors along with

[gay-artificer]

Basically everything we see in RW is a direct descendant of heavily modified organisms, with a bit of a split between fully organic genetic modifiers to the introduction of foreign parts. This is undeniable. However I'm begging people to understand that nature routinely produces weird shit on its own and that's so much cooler than just 'anything slightly weird must be the result of modification and meddling in the process'

Please have some whimsy!!! bioluminescence!! Tool use!! Communication via static electricity! Electrical shocks as an attack method!! Beetles that spray caustic acid that can burn skin! Lizards that fire slime out of their tails!! These are all real things that are on this earth just because nature gets weird with it!

#personally i subscribe to the idea that the ancients history of genetic tomfoolery made the genetics of the wildlife very volatile #most of the modern organisms we see are basically 100% natural evolution processes at this point but those evolution processes are INSANE #and messy because the chance of genetic mutation is higher than normal and theres also a lot of dormant shit just thrown in there from the #past that sometimes turns back on and introduces something very random #so you get things like white lizards splitting off from their ancestral lizard line and developing great camouflage way way faster than #it took the like. chameleons to do that. #but at this point basically everything has been through the evolution wringer and developed entirely different to any ancestors along with #throwing out several purposed traits in favor of random junk that was bouncing around in their genomes #trying to figure out what anything was purposed for is a lost cause because they have like literally none of that left anymore. #its all been repurposed or thrown out over time #obligatory statement that im not the arbitrator of lore so you can do whatever you want :thumbs up: some people like the other direction #more. i just think its lame to chalk every single interesting thing up to intentional developments when cmon theres ants that are living #refrigerators that the other ants drink goo out of. that just happened.