#john mulaney voice hmmm gross!

[mansion-of-haunts]

speculation on the tgwdlm pathogen

as someone who dearly misses his freshman year biology class and will be taking biochemistry in college i thought i would share my thoughts on what this thing is. speculative biology? maybe!

discussion of death, decomposition, and body controlling “zombie fungi” under the cut. putting the “horror” in “horror/comedy musical” /silly

on what kind of organism it is, i’m thinking the spores themselves are pokey’s sniggles. for how fast it works, i think they would need to be sentient to get to where they need to go so fast, as gastly is explained in the explaining every poison type video by lockstin and gnoggin.

there’s three separate modes of transmission that are seen in the show: oral, inhalation, and post mortem:

oral infection (the people who drink the coffee in cup of roasted coffee): about one minute after ingesting pathogen, victims start coughing violently. convulsions follow almost immediately after coughing starts (32:10-33:20 in the musical). almost immediately after convulsions stop and the victim “dies”, infected “reanimate” (33:36-33:53 in the musical).

respiratory infection (ted in america is great again, paul): there is no psuedo-death period, victims who inhale the pathogen skip immediately to the “reanimated” phase of infection. this method of infection may be less effective, since the only instance we see seems to be less under the influence of the pathogen as those who ingest it (ted is easily overpowered by emma, makes references to jokes he made while alive, and is still fucking gay for paul in the digital ticket version of let it out /silly; paul is able to fight against it for a bit).

postmortem infection (charlotte, bill, hidgens, paul): these seem to be the most under the influence of the pathogen, since it didn’t have to work to kill them first before “reanimating” them.

the infection works like ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the zombie ant fungus (or more well known as the inspiration for the last of us fungus), but buffed to withstand higher body temperatures and to deal with the more complex systems of the human body as opposed to an ant’s. o. unilateralis does not infect the ant’s brain at all, but puppets its body via the muscles and communication via hyphae. in the same vein, the individual spore sniggles are a hivemind of their own, and puppet the body itself instead of mind control. this is supported by charlotte’s line in join us and die, “your own body is your front row seat”. the infected are fully aware of their actions, yet are unable to control it, a captive audience in their own body.

researchers observed in infected ants that before they walked to their death would walk around randomly and have convulsions. this is what i’m using to explain the way the customers in cup of roasted/poisoned coffee fall to the floor after being infected; they’re not killed and reanimated, it’s convulsions that cause them to fall to the ground as the fungus takes over.

because my version of the fungus doesn’t kill its victims, the way they die is much closer to susan woodings from the walten files. those that are killed upon infection are the lucky ones. since those who survive apotheosis no longer have a say in what they do, their death is a slow one of starvation, after which pokey uses the corpse for as long as possible until he runs into the same problem ennard had, being which the human body tends to decompose.

on the same tangent, otho’s powers are slightly different (due to the splicing with human dna) in that he does control the mind, which is easier than a network of sniggles micromanaging the whole body. his minions are somewhat lucky in that he has them keep their body alive. i mean they’re still mind controlled but

as for the blue coloring of charlotte’s guts and sam’s brain, i think the spores have and release anthocyanins, which is the pigment in flowers that makes them blue. or it could be pokey keeping the blue theme going magically, since this is an alien fungus and doesn’t exactly play by our rules.

[olivia-calidamn]

gays before i go ham with this writing i’m gonna mention last Saturday night which was fun and Hot for several reasons

so i was with my guy friends, me n the boys, we were driving around town, which is regular kinda stuff except we went looking for a ghost toddler this time which is a bit weird ‘cause whenever i mention smthn creepy the boys are like “k”

n e ways we went past the watertower and idk if the full moon or creepy vibe reminded me of it, i remembered this death in Maryborough in 1942 where this young woman’s body was found in a watertower ten days after she went missing. which. (John Mulaney voice) hmmm gross because cannibalism but the woman’s name was Molly

and for like. idk. the longest time. i thought Sara Rue’s character in the psych horror movie Don’t Wake Mommy was the main character, Molly who’s the victim or whomstever. and like. i ended up looking up the wikipedia page while the boys n i were parked in my car and apparently i suck at reading comprehension because Sara is the serial killer?!?!?!? slash baby snatcher idk her character Beth’s the evil one here n she steals a baby or something i just know there’s a lot of drugs in that movie. who gave her the drugs. that’s Esme’s thing

and the boys have a habit of saying “that’s hot” to absolutely everything, so i straight up said “that’s hot” ‘cause it kinda is (eye emoji) and the boys were like “what” so i kinda explained and gaysically i was told to make out with Sara Rue. my excuse as to why i wouldn’t wasn’t “i’m straight???” because a) ahaha and b) i didn’t think of that. instead it was “she’s like 40?? and i’m not????” and i almost mentioned she’s bi too

[fedorathexplorer]

*John Mulaney voice* hmmm, gross