#also warning for:

[trivalentlinks]

there has been a question raised of whether animals can be infected with cordyceps in The Last of Us, and unfortunately I have some thoughts:

so i think we are pretty safe from crows with cordyceps, because the premise in the show is that cordyceps traditionally could not survive at high temperatures, that's why previously only insects and cold blooded animals would get infected, but because of global warming, the fungi mutated to be able to infect humans

most birds (including crows), though, have even higher body temperature than humans (41C for crows vs 37C for humans (106F vs 98F)), so the world would have to warm significantly to encourage cordyceps mutations that would affect them. those lucky birds.

(many bats also have body temperatures close to 41C, which is why when humans get infected by bat viruses, it's often very difficult for our immune systems to cook the viruses, since they were evolved to survive in much higher temperature bodies than ours)

monkeys, though, have similar body temperature to humans and are thus probably screwed :-(

of course, all of this is tlou specific. in real life, the mechanisms for who's more likely to get zombified are quite different

there are certainly many species that can get infected by diseases that control their behavior, ants getting hijacked by cordyceps (like in TLOU), and also by brain-controlling worms, and make them climb stalks of grass so that they get seen by predators. also crickets can have behaviour controlled by hairworms (nematodes)

... but it's not just insects/cold blooded animals, either

rats can be infected by toxoplasmosis, a protozoa parasite that makes them approach cats (so they get eaten and the toxo can reproduce inside the cat). and then there's rabies that can infect larger mammals (including humans), and make them bitey and aggressive, though in some cases they can make them tame and friendly instead, which is why you're supposed to avoid friendly wild animals

so it's not body temperature that's protecting humans so we don't all turn into zombies, so I guess the question is, what is it?

((warning: I have tried to be as sensitive as I can here, but I am a neuro-typical writing about neuro-divergence; I've gone back and forth on whether to post this, but I do find this idea fascinating and thought others might, too. if you're a mutual or a follower, I hope you would do me the kindness of assuming good faith on my part.

that said, i'd be happy to take this down if asked to!))

one hypothesis i find very fascinating is this idea of Del Giudice that what's saving us (and other large, K-selected animals) is weird brain chemistry and neuro-diversity. (also explained in a more down-to-earth way here, which is where if first learned about it)

to illustrate this, let's compare shrimp (called 'gammarids' in the paper if you want to check) to rats in terms of susceptibility to mind-controlling parasites. shrimp are constantly getting their brains hijacked by parasites, whereas rats are susceptible to toxo but this is an anomaly

with shrimp, the parasite controls their brain by increasing serotonin. toxo controls rats by increasing their levels of dopamine.

so far so similar.

where it becomes different is the way that the parasites increase the chemical: shrimp parasites hijack their brains by directly injecting serotonin into them. toxo does NOT just inject dopamine into the host. instead, it takes a much more circuitous route:

toxoplasma cysts do not directly secrete dopamine into the host’s brain; instead, they release a key enzyme in the synthesis of do- pamine (tyrosine hydroxylase) to increase its production by infected neurons (…). In male rodents, toxoplasma also invades the testes, where it stimulates the production of testosterone. Elevated testosterone increases vasopressin expression in the medial amygdala, a neu- rochemical alteration that seems to play a key role in the onset of “feline attraction” (…).

and that's only part of it, because scientists still don't understand the whole picture of how toxo controls rats; the reason that toxo can't just inject dopamine is because it wouldn't work: it actually makes rats avoid cats more:

Injecting serotonin in gammarid crustaceans is sufficient to reproduce the full syndrome caused by helminth infection (…); but increasing the availability of dopamine in the brain of ro- dents fails to evoke the “feline attraction” in- duced by toxoplasma—if anything, it seems to prompt avoidance behaviors rather than approach (…)

(emphasis mine. also when quoting the paper, I have removed their citations to make the text easier to read. you can find the citations in the link.)

The point being, our brains are really freaking complicated and all the chemical mechanisms work differently from what might be expected, because if they were simpler we'd all get hijacked by parasites all the time.

According to this hypothesis, this has the effect of making many mental illnesses very hard to treat: like you would hope that if some feeling is associated with low dopamine, then giving people the enzymes that go into creating dopamine (as dopamine itself can't pass the blood-brain barrier), would simply make them feel better, but, as in rats, this doesn't work, and sometimes causes psychosis

but, of course, there are parasites, like toxo, that can hijack even the brains of animals with complex mechanisms, like rats, so why haven't they zombified all of us?

One possible answer is variations in brains within our species (aka neuro-diversity). Just like how everyone's immune system is different so that parasites can't evolve around them, our brain chemistries are different from each other, so that parasites can't evolve around their mechanisms

To be clear, I am NOT saying anyone's struggles or difficulties with brain chemistry weirdness is a good thing/worth it to save humanity from all being zombified by parasites; i know that for many people brain chemistry struggles can be brutally hard to work with and is sometimes even fatal, and i would absolutely not be so presumptuous as to say someone else's pain is worth it for our species--indeed isn't part of the message of TLOU that saving humanity from all getting zombified may not be worth a child's life? though if you like your particular brain chemistry weirdness, then of course it's a good thing, and i celebrate it with you!

this also manifests in our responses to drugs; serotonin is known to make people feel better, and one major class of anti-depressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which inhibit serotonin reuptake, so that your cells end up with more serotonin around them

but apparently, while they work for many people, they cause some people to be more depressed, and may even cause some people psychosis, which can be very frustrating and terrifying for these patients,

According Del Giudice's hypothesis, if it weren't this way, we'd all have been zombified by some serotonin-reuptake-inhibiting brain parasite millions of years ago;

this variance in human brain chemistry may be a byproduct of our million year war with zombie-ism

.

Anyway, it's just some guy's theory, and many scientists are critical of evolutionary psychology anyway, but I find this idea that neurodiversity is part of what's saving us from all getting zombified somewhat interesting

[gongyussy]

i'll let phie-san say it:

[mylittleredgirl]

that moment when you cross the point of no return with a character should be accompanied by a specific chime i think. like 🔔 congratulations! this one has been installed in the Permanent Collection and you will never stop thinking about them as long as you live

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

"this is a universal queer experience"

>ask if it's universal or white

>they don't understand

>I pull out a diagram explaining what is universal and what is white

>they laugh and say "It's a good experience sir"

>I'm a native american trans woman

>Experience is white

[cozystars]

!!! BUILT LIKE BILBO BAGGINS !!!

[egophiliac]

back at it again with the extremely self-indulgent diafams! I am being emotionally supported by overly-cutesy interactions between anime characters right now, don't judge me.

(also continuing with my headcanons that 1) mustache Bauru, and 2) he'll be hugely tsundere about it but you can, ultimately, convince him to do just about anything via careful application of Sebek.)

[crispy-crust]

was out on a hike today and i found this nailed to a tree.... what the fuck?

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[trekkerac]

Stanley's revival was a very sudden thing because no one wanted to check up on how the revival was going

[night-orchids]

the fact that you can see the exact moment tears appear in his eyes

[acesluvrxx]

NO ONE TALKS ABOUT HIM.

ughh him at 40 is so MMMFHGGFHUJVKUVIFHKDJDSLK the way we're growing old together :3 WE DO IT EVEN WHEN HIS BUSH HAIRS TURN GRAY or idk maybe i really REALLY like him with stubble BUT?? HES HOT WITH STUBBLE LIKE IM SNIFFING THE SCREEN SO HARD UGHH I CAN SMELL HIS MERA MERA

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

How much longer 'til your luck runs out?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[gongyussy]

rattling the bars of my cage screaming for bread

[abyssalzones]

put me to work

[voice crack] hey guys I remembered how to draw

[akanemnon]

I wonder if she takes cash or credit.

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[dykekarkat]

there's something about neil and the ease with which he withstands torture but is fully undone by simple pleasure. 2 weeks in the nest that he can barely remember but his refusal to bend to riko and tetsuji is Easy for him. not even the slightest temptation to sign their contract because pain is something so easily endured. neil kisses andrew and it is the worst thing and best thing that ever happens to him. his father and lola and his mother trained him to endure a million different kinds of pain to survive but it's andrew kissing him that neil decides to die for. he has noo defenses against andrew's touch it breaks him down in a way all the pain and torture was never able to do. makes you think huh.