#cordyceps [Hivemind]

[fennel-tea-and-nightshade]

Cordeceyps ending

[wtfgaylittlezooid]

The autism has officially won. Anim vs Bug Fables, lets fucking go

Victim, the mercenaries, Chosen One, and Dark Lord are all going to be in here too as well as Alan. I just haven't gotten around to drawing them yet.

Infodump under the cut

Ive been thinking about this au a normal amount.

Alan will be a more aware Deadlander Omega.

Yes Purple is kind of a hivemind. He's basically the Royal Monarch boss, but if they didn't lure in bugs to kill them. He mostly just wants to protect the abandoned Ant Settlement and keep to himself. Also despite being awakened, he cannot speak Bugnish.

Green, Red, Blue, and Yellow are all a group from the North (aka front yard) and wanted to go to Bugaria for various reasons. Red wants to be an explorer, Yellow wants to study roach technology, Blue wants to make an offering to Venus in hopes of getting her blessing, and Green wants to be with his friends. They decide to go through the Giant's Lair because "haha most people go in there with only two bugs well be fine :)" and run into Second and Alan.

Victim I'm still not entirely sure what I want to be, but he will be a cordyceps zombie, Chosen will be a murder hornet, and Dark will be a red and black mason wasp.

[ntls-24722]

nulgi/western cordyceps tortamica has species dysphoria...

So i need to talk more about this AU, but the Cordyceps Tortamica isn't a human-specific symbiotic fungus, it's actually chimp+bonobo-specific symbiotic fungus. I've been wanting to change the genus to no longer be cordyceps since he's actually related to an in-universe fungus that infects drill monkeys, dissolving their social hierarchies and moving towards a stone age comparable to the one chimps are in - the fungus itself is evolving to be sapient but it has nonsapient hosts that they project their intelligence onto, whom are typicallyv monkeys due to the dexterity they possess.

Tortamica only got caught by humans when being studied right before the zombie apocalypse happened, due to a researcher being loose with their PPE. The same event is the reason why tortamica got introduced to the western hemisphere once that researcher flew back home. (Tortamica's native range is central africa, most concentrated around the northern part of the DRC - following bonobo and chimpanzee ranges.)

Nulgi has only been able to infect exclusively humans during his stay in the Americas, and has been immediately faced with the issue that humans don't like being controlled. Chimpanzees value their free will, but with the promise of mates, food, and the opportunity for a deeper understanding of eachother, they're ultimately indifferent to getting ocassionally controlled. But the average human is actively hostile to the idea, and it's difficult to conduct yourself ethically when controlling other beings is what you were made to do and your only method of directly interacting with the world.

Nulgi's mad that humans have these cultural hangups, that they're uncooperative and won't see the good he could do for them, or as he hears his hosts' grievances he contemplates if his existance is evil and inherently harmful. He wonders how much of his altruism should be abandoned in order to just control humans more often, or if he should coerce or manipulate humans into thinking it's for the greater good. He's not going to choose to not spread and just lie beneath the ground, never interacting with the world at large.

Humans are harder to work with than chimpanzees, and while they're better conversationalists, they ultimately see you as what you are, a threat to their free will that looks just like the one that completely collapsed modern society.

It's an ethical issue he doesn't really get with Music Man, who readily and contentedly gives up his autonomy, and it's him that he connects and identifies with with most, as he's also someone who fully embraces being a zombie and rejects his humanity. Music Man may be under a lot of Nulgi's care but the fact Music Man really does see himself as fungal actually allowed him to be an actual speaking role in the enourmous hivemind as if he were a fungal body compared to the hundred other hosts Nulgi currently has.

("Nulgi" is specifically the western tortamica infecting Music Man - as tortamica develops and grows in different areas or in each of its infected hosts, the environments or needs of its hosts change its psyches regionally, and it's outright different people in personality depending on where you are and which of its hosts you ask. The whole of western tortamica is a lot like the Sansiverse where despite how different each one is, all of them came from and are genetically the same thing and can still work and fuse as a collective.)

[skekthesilly]

what if i gave you guys my spores wouldnt that be soooo funny. wouldnt that be absolutely hilarious. now YOU too can have Fungi! wait fungi are you like one single creature spreading across several people or are you guys like a hivemind -🍞

WE ARE A SUPERORGANISM, CHARLOTTE. YOU ARE A PIECE BUT I AM MANY. -FUNGI

awesome. The Body Cave. hey wait is your second sentence a fucking spookys jumpscare mansio referen -🍞

body c

and then the fungus. uh. ouh. cordyceps

[fisheadz]

Just some thoughts I’ve had about SWTC, specifically about the Shape. Spoilers for the games, and for the fic I made for this AU that you should TOTALLY GO READ IF YOU LIKE ZOMBIES AND CANON-TYPICAL VIOLENCE AND GORE AND THAT STUFF—

The Shape/Cordyceps infection started on an oil rig, ofc! Not OUR oil rig, but an unnamed rig out in the North Sea. It went how you’d expect, with the rig destroyed completely by the Shape. Only they didn’t have a Caz among their crew, so it wasn’t killed. Thus, it made it to the mainland.

There, it found a fungus. Since it likes to take over living things, and plant life and fungi are alive, it bonds with some shrooms. THE shrooms. The cordyceps shrooms. It has less success with regular plants and such, but honestly could you imagine the Shape taking over all of earths plant life? That would suck ass.

Now, this bond between this seemingly eldritch entity and this silly lil ant killer fungus changes the way it works a bit. Instead of being able to infect someone by simply touching their sleeve or something, spreading to their skin by tendrils and stuff, it’s spread is limited to open wounds and such, and if someone gets VERY VERY VERY lucky, they can only get a teeny tiny bit of Shape in their bloodstream and their body’s natural defenses takes care of it before they can get turned. VEEERRRYYY lucky.

But it does turn (most) of the infected into more human sized monsters, meaning they can hide away in buildings instead of being stuck to the outside, meaning it’s harder to simply shelter in place and hope for the best. They’re less inhibited by their size and woobly flesh and more by the tough growths that sprout everywhere, serving as armor.

To get out of the way, they aren’t only able to be killed by head injuries. If you damage their bodies enough to truly do damage despite the hardened skin and flesh, then you CAN kill them. This only goes for, like, half of the infected tho. The Shape changes everyone differently and depending on how someone is turned, they might not have the right bones or organs to target. The brain is usually the best bet to aim for.

Take four legs in my fic, for example: Caz fucked up its spine in a bad spot but that didn’t do much, plus it took forever to kill it with blunt force head trauma. Meanwhile no eyes over with Roy only took a few jabs to the brain to take down, even though its brain was hard to hit with how the growths on its face served as protection. Some are just easier to kill than others, because the Shape can just take away everything that makes a silly little human easy to kill, or just guard it completely with itself. It actively shifts around, not to the extent of the game Shape, but as it does in the fic, it can move to wrap around harming objects like, say, a knife lodged in its ribcage? To stop it from moving around and causing more damage to its horribly malformed host.

It’s hard to describe how the Shape really acts, here. Its main goal is to assimilate and feed, but while it IS a somewhat intelligent being, its connection with the Cordyceps changed that, making it less strategic in its spreading methods. Like we see with Caz in the aforementioned fic, he hears voices in his head when he’s near the mass, but they’re faint and wispy, hard to make out the words or tone or who’s talking. We can deduce just WHO he’s hearing, but HE can’t. He just has a gut feeling on who the Shapes using to infect him.

And everyone has different reactions to it: Caz basically goes through what we see in SWTD, with the funky vision and screwy hearing and headaches. Roy gets extreme vertigo and starts shaking really badly. Suze starts to have really bad muscle spasms and nosebleeds. And Billy is mostly just unaffected, aside from hearing the voices. That’s the one constant, the voices.

It also works like a limited hivemind, like it does in TLOU. More or less the same way it does there.

I can’t think of anything else rn, so I might expand a bit more with all of this some other time.

And, now that all of that is out of the way… there would absolutely be a point where Billy has to guide a blinded Caz through some thick Shape infection. Tightly holding his hand and pressing him against his side and everything. Billy’s silly little down bad ass would be internally screaming so loud.. Caz would just want to get out of the area, and would get mad at himself and Billy over the tummy flutters later.

[talessculpted]

Shout-out to Poison for compromising and starting a truly symbiotic relationship with Jimmy. Like, the Poisons species aren't like the symbiotes Venom belongs to. They're more like the cordyceps fungi than like a symbiote, taking over the body and turning it into a puppet without benefitting the host at all. The Poisons are a hivemind, a bunch of parasitic drones that are born from a single queen to infect, control, consume and take the place of other beings, not to coexist with them. The drones aren't even supposed to have a conscience of their own or to be able to survive without their queen.

But not only does Poison survive, it develops a conscience, it gives itself a name; and even with a conscience it CHOOSES not to completely obliterate Jimmy's own conscience— which it could have easily achieved because it's what it was born to do, by simply consuming Jimmy's brain until there's nothing left. Sure, there is a constant fight for control over the body but it is only because Poison is allowing Jimmy to even stand a chance to resist it. It doesn't let Jimmy's conscience die even when Jimmy is actively trying to kill himself by not drinking, eating or sleeping for weeks. It COULD have full control of the body and it chooses not to.

Something something lonely alien who is the last of its species clings to lonely human who is the last of his bloodline —and who is already dead— and refuses to let go even if it means acting against its very nature. Because without the queen, without the hive, and far away and only getting further away from its home reality, Jimmy is all Poison has.

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

flower hivemind au masterpost (so far)

aight this is long overdue lmao

before i start anything off everyone give a big thanks to @olliesneweyes who's the one who originally came up w/ all these ideas, i'm just the one who posted the asks hskjghkg

below the cut i've linked p much every important post related to info abt this au, though you also should be able to find any relevant stuff under the #flower hivemind au tag on this blog lolol. this might still be messy and so is navigating my blog rip but it should be a better place to find everything

tldr; vocaloid au where flower is a type of hivemind plant parasite thing that's capable of "flowerizing" other people to assimilate them into the hivemind. len tries his best to not let his friends get killed.

content warnings for mentions/depictions of blood&gore, drugging, cannibalism(??)

first mentions of au + initial concepts:

1 -> 1st mention

2 -> (elaboration on previous: spreading thru pollen/spores, ciflower)

3,4 -> cordyceps inspiration, more about drugging & spores

more importantish main plot stuff:

targeting fukase (+ brief elaboration)

trapped in closet scenario: 1, 2

len being the final girl

first mention of the ending

expanded game mechanics/events: main flowers & memesquad boys, primary gameplay style, piko&fukase encounter (+elaboration1, elaboration2), initial notes on oliver & moke, ciflower&fukase encounter (+elaboration), flowerization tied to assimilation tactics, other survivor povs, oliver & moke getting flowerized (+elaboration1, elaboration2), more notes on oliver (+elaboration)

defective flower: 1, 2, 3

james: 1, 2,

hivemind motivations

don't take them from the garden/remind them of their past

do the spores glow

bonus stuff:

rin gets munched

waltz of malice connections

flowerized!piko concept doodle

oliver post w/ funny tags

fear garden vibes

iku

[mleprae]

since you really like diseases and whatnot, what's your opinion on fictional sicknesses like zalgo sickness? like when the disease is a hivemind designed to kill its host slowly on purpose

thank u for the ask! i havent heard about zalgo in a LOOONG time, i had to make a quick check up on it (assuming we're not talking about thr internet entity)

It's certainly very edgy, but I don't mind it :3 I like diseases for their dyanamics and relationships with our bodies.. I like how it causes the symptom and not the symptoms itself if it makes sense?

The idea of an hive mind virus is really fascinating to me, this is what the newborn baby field of neuroparasitism studies. In this case, it's likely that the virus affects the nervous system to alter it's behavior (I know this sounds obvious but cordyceps only manipulates the "muscles" and some people confuse it Dx), a virus is concerned with first and foremost, it's survival, if someone became aggressive due to it, they would likely get shot/killed before they could spread it. There's some evidence to suggest that some viral diseases can make you more social and extroverted! And it's all a strategy for the virus to infect more people,

So the closest thing to a hive mind would be somewhat a bunch of very outgoing and friendly people, I'm not sure how the mutations part would work... I'm going to sound extremely sci-fi and out of left field (and. Anti scientific but it makes sense in my head) here, but an oncovirus (virus that causes cancer) could possibly be behind it, a virus needs cells and cancer is the rapid multiplication of cells. Basically just Free new hosts for the virus, cancer also takes a toll on the body, energetically speaking, loss of muscles, fat, hair, etc are all connected to the cancer sucking all the energy to itself, you can even become more Crazy and say there's a mutualism thing going on 😔 it sounded very cool in my head....

On a side note, did you know there's a conspiracy theory that this happy hive mind parasite is real? And that we're infected with it at birth so the gov can control us?? Yeah

[flourishing-fagopsis]

oh man, elaborate on how mothsgrave deals with the shade? how did you pick that name? has the town always been pestered by shade? as in, was it built somewhere with shade activity or did it encroach them?

slaps a little placeholder graphic down, well i'm GLAD you asked! really good questions!

Mothsgrave as a name was (for me) (accidentally) (I swear accidentally) inspired by @bonepriests' Mothsmantle. no other relation I swear. it's been there longer than anyone can really remember, one of the first settlements out of Dragonhome, and it's been there longer then the Hewn City has been corrupted. when the City fell to the shade—I have my lore for this but it starts to diverge from canon—Mothsgrave simply... stayed. and dealt with the consequences.

the major consequences are the reanimating dead. anything else, as far as anyone is concerned, is minor. actually the walking dead is fine too. that's normal. they can deal with that.

someone else asked a question about this, so I'll delve into it in that answer, but the specific role for dealing with the shade largely involves putting the dead back to sleep. the way the shade works in my lore is that it's a not-quite-sentient, not-quite-hivemind multifaceted living entity that simply adores life on Sornieth so much it consumes everything it touches. I've themed it a bit after fungus/cordyceps in it's network multiplicity, but I imagine it more as something that can be split into the smallest piece imaginable and still remains a connected part of the whole, the shade.

(as an aside— for my lore, shade hunters in my lore deal more with containing the shade and mitigating it's harm than eradicating it, since it's very very hard to destroy it completely. see: Yoran & Tamat.)

[wof-adoption-au]

What's this I keep hearing about a hivewing hivemind?

There's a certain fungus that, when consumed, puts HiveWings into a trance. It seems to be related to the Cordyceps. It also seems transmissible through blood, venom, or saliva, but this is still being studied.

~ Charlie

[fennel-tea-and-nightshade]

Bee: So....uhh....is it now she/her or he/him b-because you just named yourself king-

King Eli: Figure it out.

Bee: ....So, King Eli, he-

King Eli: *gets the Bunsenbrenner* "He" was the wrong answer BITCH

[wtfgaylittlezooid]

Bug Fables AU is too much fun. Ah yes your faves are bugs. Totally. Nothing else. I will hit you with cordyceps locust Victim, mothfly hivemind Purple, puppeteer spider Herobrine, and the last one? Your lucky block entity is a parasitic cloak now. I am winning

[hrodvitnon]

I actually can see this ending being both of what you said at the same time.

Shits great on Earth. Ozzy's back with his family for the first time in millions of years, humanity finally looks to the Titans with an emotion other than fear, and Godzilla's braved a thousand hells to see this new dawn. Through voices and visions of Ghidorah and his brother, the hardest fights of his life, and a smoldering distrust of humans. All is resolved, and above all; for the first time in millions of years, he doesn't feel alone. He can safely say he has a family that loves him, friends that he loves back, and a world of people he can now trust. He's hopeful for the first time in forever.

But the next threats don't come from Earth; they descend from the heavens. What Earth has started will not end quickly. Thousands of years of strife and conflict await down a dark road they've been set upon by defying a God and His people. Gigan, the Reaper Fleet, the thousands of cordycep-infested worlds, and the hivemind itself. A Universe of enemies and an eternity of war awaits them-

But no matter how dark the path ahead; Humans and Titans alike will walk it together, hand in hand.

There's "in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war" and then there's "the whole universe now has its eyes on Earth so let's give them one hell of a show".

[esspurrr]

idk how common of a theory this is but i was in the nether and i think itd be neat if the infection that piglins get is a kind of fungal infection a la cordyceps and the reason zombie piglins will all attack you if you attack one of them is that its a hivemind kind of infection

[bellafragolina]

PhD anon with a quick clarification: recent research has posited the idea that Cordyceps don't actually alter the brain chemistry of the host, but instead use the released chemicals, plus the fungal mycelium (essentially like roots for fungi) to actually take over the "muscles" (insects don't technically have muscles but I don't want to get too scientific lol) and pilot the insect manually, rather than controlling the mind. So instead of a zombie, think of the host more like a puppet. Which I don't know if that's scarier than just having your brain taken over, since the ant, beetle, or cicada is likely fully conscious during the last days or hours of their lives. Hope I'm not rambling too much lmao, just wanted to clarify that point. Let me know if anyone still has questions, I'm happy to talk about Cordyceps and their potential anticancer properties!

oh my god

oh my goddddddd

that's even scarier! i love it!! it's like the hivemind au peach made!!!

please ramble more i wanna know every nitty gritty detail! i have a degree in animal sciences and i'm working on a masters in micro so pls don't worry about jargon!! i wanna know pls plspls

so no nervous system interference? does the mycelium instead release something like calcium to cause muscle contractions, but the insect equivalent? i know the insect nervous system works opposite to humans, where they stop electrical impulses to move whilst we make them to move. it doesn't have anything to do with that tho???

~Renee

[nichknack]

Wandering Witchbreed Au: The Hedge and The Feywood

AU MASTERPOST

Because the Wandering Witchbreed AU is set in a medieval-ish-era, space travel and aliens aren’t exactly cohesive to the setting.

‘The Feywood’

The Feywood as the name suggests, the homeland of the Fey. It is a realm of endless forests and magical creatures that runs alongside the Earthly realm the majority of the AU takes place in.

The Feywood is home to all manner of creatures. Basically any alien from the marvel universe can be found somewhere within its endless landscape.

Some of the Fey within the Feywood include:

The Shi’ar Court. A collection of various fey creatures which is ruled over by the fairy Majestrix, Lilandra.

The Brood. A bug-like hivemind seeking to expand and corrupt all living things, fey or otherwise. No one quite knows where they came from, but it’s theorised to be the darkness between realms. The Brood takes over creatures by implanting them with their eggs, similar to cordyceps.

The Flock. More commonly known as dragons. They are flying reptilian creatures with the ability to breathe fire. Very curious and adventurous by nature and are, as a result, some of the more common fey found on earth.

Note: Asgardians are not from the Feywood. They are from Asgard, a separate Realm all of its own.

The Hedge

The Hedge is the name given to the wall/veil between Earth and the Feywood. To travel from one realm to another is to ‘cross over’ The Hedge. This is most often done through the summoning of portals by Fey or magic users. While it is significantly rarer, it is possible for 'natural' portals to occur without any intervention.