#i might have cancer

[chasing-dreams-since-1995]

So not to scare anyone but there is a slight chance that I might have cancer. It’s blood cancer type related due to my bone marrow problems and my high platelet count and high white blood cell count. I won’t know for sure if I have cancer or not until I get my test results back in a couple of weeks. Let’s pray it comes back negative.

[waywardnewcomer]

A couple of months back (probably more like a year ngl) I found a neck lump and kinda just assumed it was normal. A few months ago it started growing. And then I found one on the other side. I got them checked had some bloods, and apart from a high inflammatory marker no further action. 3 weeks ago I found a lump in my armpit, then 2 days ago I found another one in my neck. I currently have 2 pea size lumps in my neck, 1 small lump in my neck and a pea size lump under my arm.

I finally went back to the doctors today. (I’d left the armpit one as I get boils and thought it was that but it never came to a head). I’ve been referred on the 2 week cancer pathway to get my lumps checked by a specialist. The doctor said it could be reactive lymph nodes but as I kept getting more she wanted me to get checked out.

I’m shit scared - but when dr google told me this months ago I had more of a panic then, I think I’ve now just accepted it could be something bad or it might not be. I was prepared for this outcome. So now we await an appointment over the next 14 days for some more investigations then 2 more weeks for results from then.

Moral of the story get your lumps checked peeps. Don’t delay like I did! The doctor was lovely and checked my armpits and neck thoroughly to find all the lumps she could. Now we wait🥺

[p01son3d-ent1ty]

Guys I have second degree burns on my shoulders and I CANNOT LIFT MY ARM OR ALL THE BUBBLES WILL POP AND I CANT LAY DOWN PROPERLY CAUSE IT TOUCHES MY RAW SKIN AND IT HURTSSSSSS

So wear sunscreen please 🙏

[l3irdl3rain]

there’s been a new visitor to the girl den the last few days

[kittykatninja321]

Very deeply annoyed by the fanon idea that Talia treated Jason like a pet or a tool when he was catatonic, because when you actually read lost days you can clearly see that Talia is literally the only person who looked at Jason while he was catatonic and still saw a person and treated him like a person while everyone else around her (Ra’s and the doctor she hired) was ready to dismiss Jason as an empty shell

[scriblesandbits]

So god created us in his image, right? And that’s cool and all but what if it turns out god, like, hates his own image??? What then????

[venacoeurva]

Hircine help him he’s stuck in that “No I don’t want kids” song and dance, for over 200 slutty, slutty years

Dialogue is in image description if Tumblr ate the quality too much.

-Please do not reupload/edit/use-

[reginamillls]

at the end of the day it's a relationship that inspired me to create again, to making edits and icons and even writing

it's the relationship that helped me get through some really hard times in my life

its the relationship I met really amazing people through who I now have the joy of calling my friends

[slugcatmusings]

What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?

Spoiler Warning and Holy Wall of Text Batman Warning. I got WAY too into questioning the turbo-cancer here, hopefully my rambling makes sense.

So, the Rot is… weird, from a biological standpoint. Really weird, if you stop to think about it. It’s most frequently described as some variation of cancer, and it certainly fits the criteria for it. Caused by damage to DNA? Check. Multiplies uncontrollably? Check. Comes in both benign and malignant forms, one stationary and the other mobile? Big fat check. Heck, even the Rot cysts eating other creatures kind of fits, according to some research I’ve done – there are apparently cancer cells that will eat other cells, which makes sense in hindsight since cancer cells are cells that have lost important genetic restrictions, which may include whatever lets cells identify other cells as “do not eat.”

(I ain’t a biology whiz and I’m doing research on the fly while getting my thoughts out here, so take whatever I say about biology with a grain of salt)

So, Rot is clearly cancer of some kind, right? Case closed. Except when me and a friend of mine were talking Rain World theories on Discord, she brought up some interesting points that got me thinking.

First point: Rot cells obviously mutate in a way that affects FAR more than just cell replication and termination. Some of the cysts can HEAR. As far as I know, cells in the body do not hear sounds. They communicate via chemical signals and maybe, MAYBE react to temperature. Hearing involves complicated, specialized sensory apparatus to pick up on vibrations in the air. Even if you simplify it and say that it’s only vibrations, that’s STILL a multicellular thing, not a single-cell thing. It’s something that took millions of years to evolve on Earth, if not billions.

And while Rain World’s timeline goes on for long enough that it those kinds of mutations might happen eventually, Rot cysts have the ability to hear pretty much right from the start – because even the Proto-Long-Legs react to your presence like the Daddy Long Legs do, and the Rot in Spearmaster’s campaign, where Pebbles has recently contracted it, reacts the same way as it does in later campaigns. It’s already able to hear.

As far as I know, cancer just means the same cell duplicating over and over again. Are more mutations possible with each division, as errors are made in the DNA during splitting? Probably. But not to THAT extent. There’s no way a lump of cancer somehow mutated the exact complicated genetic blueprint needed to grow organs, at least not without outside interference.

Second point: Cases of Rot are way too consistent across the board. Now, we don’t have a huge sample size to work from, but from what we see from both Pebbles’ Rot, and Hunter Long Legs, they’re… pretty similar. Hunter Long Legs is basically a mobile Rot cyst. They move the same way, seem to grow the same way (starts as a growth inside/on the body before eventually freeing itself from whatever wall/flesh it grew from in some capacity and moving elsewhere), they have the same senses, and they even eat the same way, via something like phagocytosis (how white blood cells “eat” invading organisms via engulfing them and breaking them down in a sac in their main “body.”)

Now, this doesn’t tell us much, because cancer, when it does emerge, is pretty consistent in symptoms/what the mutated cells do once they start replicating. It’s pretty much the same regardless of whatever organism the cancer is happening in. But what ISN’T consistent is what causes the DNA error in the cancer cell in the first place. IRL, cancer can be caused by all kinds of things – smoking, radiation poisoning, being out in the sun too long, drinking deadly chemicals and whatnot, anything that damages DNA. But in RW, the only time we ever hear Rot talked about, or see it present, is in the context of an iterator having f*cked up while mucking around with DNA. Pebbles was trying to create an organism that could change his own genome, and No Significant Harassment created Hunter as a messenger and probably mucked something up in the process in his haste to get them to Moon.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes of it, of course, we’re working with a sample size of two in an apocalyptic world with who knows how much potentially DNA-damaging stuff around, but… that’s still awfully consistent.

So, combining these points and everything we know to be canon, Rot is:

an organism that lives inside another organism

Until a certain condition is met, it cannot harm said host organism.

Once said condition is met, it goes out of control, wreaking havoc on the organism’s systems and mutating, giving it sensory capabilities and an appetite

Said condition is apparently someone messing up when re-arranging genomes, in yourself or others

It is widespread across multiple different species, at least iterators and slugcats but potentially other species as well.

Once you have a bad case of it, it is apparently NOT CURABLE. Pebbles tried everything he could think of but apparently exhausted all of his options by the time of the Survivor/Monk campaigns.

So, with all the context FINALLY laid out, here’s my wild theory: Rot isn’t a cancer. It’s a symbiote turned parasite. Specifically, I believe it’s a symbiotic microbe that lives inside the cells that make up every other creature in Rain World, and is held in check by a specific gene that all species share, and altering or getting rid of that gene causes it to go berserk, taking over and eventually mutating the host cells.

Yeah, I did watch Parasite Eve let’s plays as a kid, why do you ask? Anyway, hear me out here.

There is precedence for single-celled organisms living inside of other single-celled organisms. They’re referred to as intracellular endosymbiots (hopefully I got the spelling right there), and the most well-known one is probably the mitochondria. The powerhouse of the cell is thought to be descended from some bacteria way, WAY back that was engulfed by a larger cell and not only survived it, but BENEFITED from it. Since then those ancient proto-mitochondria and eukaryotic cells have mutually evolved to be dependent on each other. So it’s entirely possible for something similar to have happened in Rain World.

However, I don’t think it happened NATURALLY, here. Because something that’s able to take over a cell entirely and begin wildly mutating it is NOT something your average cell wants inside of it. There’s a VERY high chance of extinction if you do that. Which means that of course those funky bio-tech loving Ancients either took a look at a wildly dangerous cellular parasite and went “hmmm we can use this” or made one themselves.

Why did they do this? Who knows! Currently, I’m tied between “they needed a better powerhouse for the cell to power the various weird adaptations they’re building into various creatures,” “there was some sort of disease that this parasite gave immunity against and they wanted to make use of it,” and “it gave their creations massively powerful regeneration factors that made them much easier to maintain.” Possibly it was all three. Whatever the reason, the Ancients either found or created this parasite, and put it into their creations’ cells, hoping to reap the benefits.

Well, they got the benefits, but they also got a microbe that hijacked the cells and harnessed their pre-existing DNA blueprints to build organisms disguised as great big blobs of cancer. Which is not exactly ideal, but hey, they just had to figure out a way of keeping the cell hijacking from happening! And the way they ended up going about it was to alter the thing so that so long as there was a specific DNA sequence in the cell, it laid mostly dormant. All the benefits, none of the risks – so long as that specific string of genes remained intact.

And then BECAUSE it was so beneficial, they spread their artificial symbiote and it’s genetic reins throughout ALL of their creations, from the smallest pipe-cleaning slugs to the iterators. Which meant that as their purposed organisms replaced most of the original ecosystem, they spread the symbiote as well. Thus making it possible for pretty much ANY creature on the planet to come down with a bad case of the Rot. And with the iterators, I wouldn’t be surprised if this symbiote is tied to their self-destruction taboos. Try to cross yourself out? Well, it’s gonna maybe happen now, but it’ll be a slow painful death as you’re eaten alive from the inside and all your own parts turn against you, so was it really worth it?

And they never told their creations this perhaps even actively hid it, because why tell them the cause of the main deterrent to them mucking with their taboos? They might find a way around it. The iterators were left ignorant of how Rot works, and because of this they never figured out that Rot HAD a cure after all: rebuilding that genome that reins in the symbiote. Because why in the name of the Void would they repeat the same mistakes that gave them Rot in the first place, and potentially make it worse?

[mishy-mashy]

Got my hands on a Ultra Analysis BNHA book from a library

Some points I liked (I focused more on 1B since they don't get a lot of attention)

1B once had a Tetsutetsu BBQ. They heated him up and cooked food on him. He proceeds to ruin it when he declares his sweat is the salt to their food

Yui is canonically the prettiest first-year

Mineta has no sex appeal at all, but he thinks being a hero will make him lucky

Class B does respect Monoma. He's sharp-minded, witty, and has a way with words

Monoma sometimes wanders into 1A's dorm just to throw down a mean speech, and heads back to 1B

Juzo probably isn't helping Monoma's confrontations with 1A, since he just always asks him why he can't say it to their faces whenever Monoma complains about them

Shiozaki tries to be polite even in a fight

Pony hosts anime parties, so 1B knows a lot about anime. Vice-versa, they teach her Japanese, and everything nasty is Monoma's fault

Tokage was a gyaru

Tsuburuaba, Kaibara, and Kuroiro get worked up whenever they talk about girls

Manga likes Kenranzaki

Awase's family runs a small factory. He also restrains Monoma whenever Kendo isn't available

1B likes hearing Rin say "Aiyah", so he does it for them

Kamakiri is obsessed with cutting into things

Class B's play was really successful

Tamaki is scared of Kirishima's energy

1C was planning a send-off party for Shinsou for his upcoming hero transfer. They didn't doubt he would make it, ever since the Sports Festival

Shishikura (meatball Shiketsu boy) might've chosen Shiketsu because he likes the uniform's hat

Nakagame and Yo are dating

Tsuyu's family gets to spend a lot of time together now, since their parents' busy jobs have calmed down

Tsubasa (devil wing kid in Midoriya's memories) suspiciously lost touch with Midoriya and Bakugo in middle school (his Wiki page confirms Garaki - his grandfather - turned him into a Nomu)

Torino likes goofy gags. This rubs off on All Might (ex. when Midoriya thought he died when Torino fell with ketchup. People don't know whether to laugh or be concerned)

Nighteye has yellow streaks in his hair as a homage to All Might

Nezu likes worming into tight, dark places, so he likes Aizawa's scarf. They went into detail, describing why Nezu likes it, such as material to crawling in, etc.

Recovery Girl has to travel around Japan regularly to help people with her Quirk (as in, she uses her Quirk to help them. Healing Quirks are SO rare)

Hojo, Tabe, and Sestuno are kept in the same jail, so at least they're not separated

[just-call-me-moran]

I am so normal about these two men. Like completely normal.

[chronodia]

the better animal

[ditznuts17]

Since a lot of y'all want me to make watson on gacha club yesterday so here is it! The silly billy

I'm struggle a bit with his beard but it turned out kinda good!😅

Anyway...

bonus comic:

[qcomicsy]

Marvel writer: Then Wade get involved with monsters! And–

Me:

[munchy-k]

existing is so inconvenient like what do you mean I have to pee multiple times a day and also brush my teeth and wash my hair too??? and sleep??? why cant I just live the way I want to

[thewandererh]

☢️ lots of pluto (radiation iterator) art in my notes!

a continuation of this bc i added more since then :]

pluto! an experimental can-independent iterator model running on a demon core, and a way for me to incorporate my radiation hyperfixation into a character. he suffers, he does some violence, and then he gets better (maybe). onto the art!

i did draw him before we labelled the diagram so…whoops sorta. i love interactive geometry…it’s a reason why i doodled more on my worksheets than i did blank paper because it had structure. and why i like lined/dotted paper more i think

i was playing around with his design on these doodles ^_^ arm colors and mechanics. plus general marker colorcombos and experimentation! it was lots of fun. extra neat because i’m drawing my nuclear iterator on the chem notes that line up with his concept. very special to me :] but i must balance the doodling with paying attention ofc. eek…

there was always a speculative function aspect to him, but i’ve only been beginning to flesh that out recently since i have the time. first it was the initial visual redesign, and now it’s his workings.

how would a plutonium core powering an iterator work? what chemistry is involved? how would coolant work? answer to that last question is that he’s sort of a fish. bam 1/3 done. there’s stages to character writing/creation/redesign! woo creativity ^^

oh yeah he hates the sun or something. he’s very bias because he is powered by nuclear fission. my little greek stinker <33 my atom splitter <333 my mr the missile epper sleeper <33333

speaking of mr the missile, goodnight chat (maybe 🥱)