#and also the brain doesn't allow him to deal w this stuff bc he needs to be the one that keeps us sane somewhat

[woodlandscab1n]

This past weeks have feel like being back at the building again /ref every time I think I'm gonna make it out. BUT it looks like NOW...I am finally getting out...i can finally talk to friends again when my period is over hopefully, i don't know i will probably have a mental breakdown and explode bUT i thinkk i will be able to at least speak to people somewhat normally

[heliianth]

man dont apologize for hijacking i love your ideas!!!!

i've always figured that the name "black arms" and all the subsequent ones like "death leech" and "black hawk" etc etc were names given by humans during the invasion (though that might conflict with some dialogue meant to come from gerald 50 yrs ago, lmfao). i imagine they would call themselves something more... positive?

jumping off that, i love your idea for their hivemind! i have an out there theory that the species as a whole is kind of parasitic, in that a host body is taken over and "transformed" into a black arms soldier or whathaveyou. hard to explain, give me a minute to connect a fuck load of dots w red string ok and this will be Long. forewarning

theres this slimy gooy stuff called red slime (lame, according to shth05 apparently) or conduit gel (fancy and cool, according to archie). its supposedly a fungus and does some gnarly stuff in the shadowfall arc, like trap a bunch of humans for digestion iirc. i think it has multiple uses, and works kind of like that zombie ant fungus (Ophiocordyceps??) in that it infects a host and forces them to travel somewhere better suited for fungal growth and die there so it can release spores or whatever. except the conduit gel doesn't eventually kill it's host, it essentially hijacks its body and it eventually turns into a black arms via... scifi magic. i dunno why a mushroom would want an animal to turn into a lizard alien but let me have this. and because now the host has mushrooms or whatever in its brain, it creates a hivemind effect with other infected organisms mycelium network style.

the conduit gel originates on a variety of planets but the place it takes its host to is almost always a comet, for nomadic reasons. it cant stay on one planet forever bc it will infect too many, not have any more hosts, and die, or for other reasons there can be lots. so in order for it to keep spreading, the comet passes by planets and the black arms go down to fuck it up. and i know black arms have a larval stage, i wouldnt know where that would come in? maybe when the colony is at a certain point of maturation, the conduit gel stops needing hosts to transform and starts just using them as nutrients to create a hive? its aliens mushrooms can have life cycles that mean it creates larvae we can do whatever we want forever

black doom is always a huge obstacle for my ideas bc like why is this motherfucker special? and my best answer would be banking off this explanation for black arms larvae, that the first ones to not be black arms by infection but by actual birth have more free will bc a mushroom isnt controlling their brain, it instead grew a brains for them yippee. and since black doom was the First, he has the oldest and strongest connection over the hivemind. instead of the fungus being parasitic towards him, its more mutualistic, so hes not a zombie. neither would be the other black arms who were also mushroom larvae, but they're still part of the hivemind he controls. same deal with shadow.

why gerald wanted the fucked parasite insect-lizard mushroom in his life is another difficult question but like everything to do with project shadow the answer is probably chaos energy. the black arms fungus does crazy shit with chaos energy (which i guess would be what it feeds on and why it specifically infects hosts, to grab at theirs and do funky stuff with it in order to make more of itself). what larvae born with it have is the closest life has come to organically controlling its own chaos energy. which is why it was necessary to the project.

so basically what im saying is that shadow is part mushroom and gerald was a brave brave motherfucker for allowing that shit on a space colony full of sick people. and very lucky that the freaky hivemind has distance limits on it and couldnt tell shadow to start the zombie apocalypse: earth edition until 50 years later. oops.

ur idea that shadow is also part Other Things is really cool as well! the idea of him being a little freak is immensely appealing and the "worse" it can get the better

i wish we learned more abt the black arms and their freaky hivemind or whatever i have such worldbuilding brainworms over them and their biology/social structure i feel insane