#i saw the lights and was immediately like ANGLERFISH??? VOID ANGLERFISH?????

[thursdaylast]

okay just watched Tango's latest episode and like. hole jokes aside, something about those lighting glitches on the bedrock is driving me insane. and i know its not a huge deal, they're just glitches, but like. like. you carve a hole through the bedrock. wings you stole from a ship that sailed a void not unlike this one cling to your back, the only thing that will keep you alive down there. you leave a light in the opening to guide you home, a lifeline, the only spark in an infinite darkness. you fall. below you waits the void, and above you (where there should only be one) dozens, Hundreds of lights mar the bedrock ceiling, drowning out your little spark with their sweet, inviting glow. they call out safety, freedom, home, and they stretch out jagged rocks like teeth that will tear through your wings and rip through your hearts and leave you to drown in the abyss beneath. you are trapped between a wall of fangs and an ocean of hunger, false lights over a void-dark sea. there is only one way out. do not lose track of it.

[cypheras]

thoughts on deep sea creature benrey

because im researching, which is what my adhd makes me do :) it be like that sometimes. most of the links are from wikipedia bc i dont have the attention span to vet individual websites so take all the info with a grain of salt. (Also i use he/him pronouns for benrey during this but he is genderqueer/nonbinary. benrey no care gender but he likes he/him pronouns)

He isnt affected by pressure like how most deep sea creatures are- because he isn’t of earth. he isnt actually a deep sea creature, he’s not from earth oceans he’s from Xen. its just uh convergent evolution. So he has to deal with low-light, extreme cold, and scarcity of resources (like deep sea creatures) but he’s still 100% alien.

obviously benrey is sort of a unique creature to xen, or at least a rare one. we don’t ever see anything similar to him while on xen so either he is very rare and we just haven’t been able to observe any beings like him (think those sharks that live for 400 years), or it’s also possible he is the first intelligent life on Xen. 

Off topic but apparently the lowest most layer of any significant body of water is called the Benthic Layer, and the organisms that reside there are called Benthos- which is a fun lil coincidence. Unfortunately he is technically not Benthos because there is no ocean or floor in which he resides.

As well I believe benrey’s size is sort of similar to how bugs work- but on a more immediate scale. Basically insects respiratory system makes it so they grow in direct ratio to how much oxygen is in the air. This is just a theory for how huge bugs could get but it is semi-truthful. Modern day bugs grow to larger sizes in oxygen rich environments- but it does seem to have an upper limit :/ So in theory benrey does have an upper limit in his size, but being reintroduced to Xen is what made him so super duper big. Idunno it’s sort a loose connection.

The Black Mesa Sweet Voice is a version of bioluminescence, in that he makes his own light- giving him enough light to be able to see in the near void of some of the places on Xen. Not necessary on all of xen so it is a voluntary (or sometimes involuntary) action, not a constant state of being (think anglerfish, who have to hide their light instead of being able to turn it off)

A lot of creatures in low resource/ unique resource environments have to rely on opportunity feeding- which I feel benrey is equipped for. He can become perfectly still, think of when gordon walked right by him the first time he saw him, and only moves or uses energy when absolutely necessary. This is why he seems to be “zoning out” when not directly spoken to, hes conserving energy. 

apparently a lot of fish have oil in them (so they don’t float above the deep pressures) so this is sort of not really a headcanon but it is funney to imagine oily benrey. hes oily! >:( dont make fun of him.