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Dear Flygon Rider,
I promised I'd write you my head canons for the aliens of the DC universe...
Well, let me tell you about them.
A while back, I got to thinking about why all the aliens on Earth and in the majority of the DC universe were so similar to each other. I know the real reason is because of the writers not having a very speculative imagination and for the readers to be able to connect with them more, but this didn't sit well with me.
So I imagined that some of the aliens (Khryptonians, Tamaranians, Martians, etc...) and humans all were of the same tree of life, meaning that they all shared a common ancestor. And yes, this can happen in real life: for life to spawn similarly between planets. So between all these planets, all these aliens were evolving from the same basic starting point and contenting along evolving that way because of shared life transpiring between planets.
This happens in real life, too. Not to that degree, but it happens. Chunks of meteors and chunks of planets get blown off or smashed off of a planet and then go wandering through space and when it crashes into another planet, biology is transmitted.
And that was my head canon for why so many of the aliens were so similar to humans as far as structure goes.
And now onto the alien powers!
I was watching some Neil DeGrasse Tyson videos on YouTube, listening to him talk about human evolution and the endless possibilities of alien life out there in the cosmos. Mostly he talked about how much smarter they would be than us...to have to find life on this planet at least. Something he said really stuck to me.
He was explaining how chimpanzees are the closest relatives to humans, and how are DNA structure differs by only 1%, and how that one percent makes a huge difference. Basically, due to that one percent difference--only one percent!--humans have evolved way past chimpanzees and were able to do extraordinary things. In that difference of a one percent, the smartest chimpanzees were able to do sign language while the smartest humans were able to build space programs.
And how that was only one percent.
He went onto explain how if a race of species or aliens were more differentiated than that enormous one percent, it would be extraordinary the things that they might be capable of doing.
And that's where I think that the alien powers might come from.
We know from the comics and the show alike that Starfire/Koriand'r possesses extreme intelligence beyond any human comparison (telling Robin how to travel faster than the speed of light?) and how the Khryptonians were superbly advances in their technology and science than any city on Earth. So...there's that more than one percent coming into play.
Not only the enormous intelligence they possess, but also their powers.
Say a DNA structure difference of maybe 20% or 30%, and maybe these humans from other planets could fly or have superheat vision or be able to blast starbolts from their hands.
This would probably more accurate for the Martians, since they're so close to Earth. It's most likely that Earth and Mars shared a whole bunch of DNA while chunks of the planets were being smashed around and whatnot.
Another theory I have is that these aliens in the DC universe (some of them, at least) have had space travel for a long, long time, which means that the possibility of the life these space ships contained may have landed on a planet, some of the life got off of the ship, and then went forth onto the planet to evolve into something more.
(Ex: The Gordainians may have had captive humans or Khryptonians some 40,000 years ago and then disposed of them on the Tamaran planet and from there they had no choice but to survive).
Another way that I think that the Tamaranians and Khryptonians evolved more/evolved differently than humans did on earth is because of the life already on these planets. I head canon that a lot of their DNA mixed with the life that was already on these planets. First and foremost, the food. If they ate the food that was on these alien planets, then they would grown into something weirder and stranger because of the food they ate.
On Earth, if a human eats more protein than the protein will go to build their muscles and help their motor skills, and if a human eats more carbohydrates then they'll have more energy (both short-term and long-term depending on the type of carbohydrate). And there may be even stranger nutrients in the alien foods. So, I say, it's so wholly possible that some fruit gave Khryptonians the potential for freezing breath and then the yellow sun of Earth just unlocked it.
Now I have some head canons very specifically about Tamaran.
I always saw Tamaran as a meteor that was wandering around some comet belt that had grown so big that it eventually formed into a planet. It is still a small planet, with many many moons that are smaller meteors that have been pulled in and reshaped into something rounder and smoother like earth's own.
Tamaran has only two colonies on the planet. Whereas Earth has human colonies all over the globe (six out of seven of the continents have human civilization on them, most of the land is covered by humans on those continents, and a good deal of the islands are populated as well), Tamaran has only two major places where Tamaranians live on the planet.
The planet Tamaran has only one language because of the way language is exchanged. The Tamaranians can instantaneously learn any language through lip contact, which makes the transmission of language so easy that there were no need for translators. And as always, languages are a collective thing. As the Tamaranians socialize and kiss, the language is all pulled together as one.
The single language is also easy to maintain not only because frequent kissing and talking help to spread and keep the language alive, but because Tamaran has such a small number of cities across it.
As for Starfire herself, I head canoned a lot about her biology.
First, the fact that she can fly. I imagine Tamaranians to have hollow bones, allowing for flight. Hollow bones, lightweight, and very fragile. Delicate bones. Wings like a bird. So, all Tamaranians have hollow bones, but the hollow bones need to be protected, so Tamaranians developed super strong, super hard muscles to protect their hollow bones, which give them their abnormal strength. Their muscles are as hard as stone, and durable, and thick, able to lift perhaps a thousand times their own weight. The Tamaranians need these super strong muscles to protect their hollow bones, and in return they were given super strength.
And that's how they can both fly and have incredible strength.
Now onto the Martians.
I read somewhere that octopus DNA was the most alien found amongst Earth life. This may be false, but since this is the DC universe we're talking about, let's go with that theory. Since octopuses have some incredible morphing/shape-shifting abilities, I head canon that Martians share some of their DNA with octopuses, which gives them the ability to morph and whatnot. As for the flying and mind reading, probably something along the lines of what made Tamaranians and Khryptonians such abilities.
And then of course there are the White Martians and the Green Martians. And then there's that whole morphing into one another thing (M'gann was able to form into a Green Martian so easily and was able to maintain the look of one for long periods of time). I think that this is a key point in native life and foreign life mixing their DNA sequences together.
If the Green Martians are octopuses, I wanna say that the White Martians are like squid in how similar yet different the two are.
Martians just have a whole lot more talent than squids...
Plus, we have to factor in that in this universe there are metahumans. So since the metahuman is already evolved past the ordinary human of this universe, that sets the potential of all this earthling and alien life even higher up in their genetic potential to have these freakish abilities.
On Young Justice, The Reach was kidnapping ordinary humans in attempt to bring out those potential powers in them, which in that universe I intend to mean that earth people had the same potential as the other aliens, but do to their small difference between their ape counterparts, weren't able to develop them on their own.
And not only this, but this is the universe where gods exist, where demons exist, where reptilian overlords exist, where there's life beneath the earthen crust and thrives on mystical power. So yeah, even from a scientific standpoint, the potential between all of these DNA potential structures is grand!
Onto the Atlantians.
Atlantians probably don't have the sensitive inner ear bones that help to correct their balance. The inner ear bones are good for balance on land but in the sea they are a hinderance as they can make swimmers dizzy quite often. But since Atlantians are amphibious, their inner ear bones are at the in-between stage of development, which makes an Atlantians weakness dizziness. I head canon that Atlantians can get dizzy very, very easily.
Atlantis itself is pretty shallow in the ocean. There is light down there, and the deeper you go into the ocean, the darker it gets. Atlantis is probably in a shallow section of water that is still way off the coast but well hidden, so they probably use a lot of cloaking magic and evolutionary gains to hide their city.
I image Atlantis near a break in Earth's crust, and located near heat vents.
The break in the Earth's crust will almost continually spew out fresh lava and rock, which gives the Atlantians good building stone to work with, as well as good farming soil. As time goes by and the lava stone is crushed down, the lava will be fertile for Atlantian plants that they farm.
Atlantians have mostly blonde hair because of all the fish that they eat, and the amount of salt water that they live in. They eat so much fish, are so immersed in salt water, and live in a place where the sun is stronger than normal, so their hair is predominately blonde to the point where lighter hair is the dominant allele, instead of darker hair.
The vents that Atlantis is near help to keep the city warm. The vents aren't in Atlantis, but they help to heat the water enough that the chill isn't so bad.
I don't have much to say about their whole evolution under the sea goes, as I think most of it was covered in the above. But hey, why not throw a little bit of that in, too.
Atlantians can't hear all that well because of their ears, so they use their noses. There are echo-locaters and highly-sensitive glands in and around their noses that help them to hear instead. They hear the sound vibrating and their nose picks up the vibrations that the sound is making, and it travels from their to the brain where the sound can be processed into words or music or other sounds.
They need super-high calorie diets because of the ocean water temperature. Normally, an ocean mammal will need a sufficient amount of blubber on them to keep them warm enough, but since the Atlantian city is located close to an undersea rift and vents, the water is warm enough that they don't have to have so much on their bodies. Everyone's muscles are well developed because they spend so much time swimming, and they still maintain their human muscular structure which puts a lot of strain on them.
Atlantians have the most amazing singing voices and often join in whale songs or dolphin calls. They can whistle, squeak, and click just as well as any aquatic mammal.
No Atlantian has ever been over three hundred feet deep in the ocean. The ocean is a vast and scary place, and no one knows that better than the Atlantians. Kids take turns daring each other to swim as far down as they can go, deep into the black and cold water and into the monstrous unknown, but they can only get so deep before swimming back.
There are horror stories from the deep just the same as monster stories on land.
Sometimes in the dead of the night, or the quiet of the summer when the whales migrate, people say that they can head the leviathan, deadly and enormous, swimming through the ocean waters so close to them, creating a stir in the ocean currents, making their hairs stand on end.
Only one person has ever seen the leviathan, and they had supposedly been driven made by the sight of it. Their hair had gone all white, their noses bruised and leaving them unable to hear, and their eyes sunken deep into them, unfocusing and bloodshot. Little children refer to them as the kindly but crazed witch.
Atlantis had changed locations several times throughout the decades. Every other decade, the people of Atlantis decide to change the cities location, leaving the former city to ruins beneath the sea. They will build anew, and their migratory pattern sometimes matching that of whales or stingrays. The origin of Atlantis was off of Greece, when the first city sunk beneath the waves. Then it moved onwards, eventually ending up in the Gult of Mexico, the canon Atlantis location in Young Justice.
In the live action movie of Aquaman, I think its supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific, so the city will have moved there to keep with canon. The city folk are quick builders and Atlantis ruins are all across the globe, mystifying anyone who sees them. Even after a good relationship with the land-dwellers had been established, the Atlantians still move often and keep their doings secret.
They almost always settle somewhere on a rift in the ocean, for the warmth and the magma that will pool out far away from the city.
Martians and Atlantians are closely related to each other because of their shared octopus DNA...or something like that.
Let me know what you think, and reply. Please. Love your friendship, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Let me know.