#just like cordyceps

[hauntingblue]

Cordyceps in The Last Of Us

[macchitea]

another dnd oc!

his name is Bo and he's a thri-kreen circle of spores druid!!

[xejune]

little horror concept based on cordyceps :3c

with thanks to @cozyqueerchaos for helping me brainstorm!

[dyke-fish]

bleached dedf1sh side order boss?

[powdermelonkeg]

On Wither Roses

I think wither roses function like cordyceps.

For those of you that don't know, cordyceps is this mushroom here:

[Image ID: A clump of bright orange mushrooms being held up, against a foresty background. End ID]

Certain strains of it infect insects' bodies, threading mycelium through their nervous systems, replacing their muscle tissue with its own, flooding their brains with chemicals, and turning them into zombies to more optimally spread. In leafcutter ants, it makes them clamp onto a leaf above their anthill before the fruiting bodies sprout, raining spores down upon their brethren.

Incidentally, this is what the zombie condition in The Last of Us is based on.

Anyways.

[Image ID: A pixelated black rose from Minecraft, planted on magma, with lava in the background. End ID]

We get wither roses from the Wither killing things, and the Wither attacks any mob, hostile or passive, in its line of sight. Then the Wither itself is made of three Wither Skeleton skulls, plus soul sand.

Without cheating to make Potions/Arrows of Decay, there are only four ways to get the Wither effect—a direct attack by the Wither, direct contact with Wither Skeletons, direct contact with a wither rose, or eating a suspicious stew made with a wither rose. Furthermore, wither roses are still dropped when /gamerule doMobLoot is set to false, and fall as items when they have nowhere valid to plant; you can't avoid it happening, no matter what you do to influence the world.

So my theory is this: Wither Skeletons function the way they do, going towards the player rigidly and inflicting the Wither effect, because they're carriers of the wither rose's infestation. They're skeletons of the briar's former victims, repurposed and puppeted to find it better planting grounds somewhere in the Nether.

When you create the Wither, you're weaponizing that infestation. You're taking an infected host, giving the rose the fuel it needs via soul sand to not only survive, but thrive, and with the structure you make, you then give it everything it needs to start replanting itself.

The Wither isn't hostile out of malice. It's hostile out of survival—just not its own.

[mass-convergence]

After finishing (and by finishing I mean watching someone else finish because I'm shit at video games) TLOU2 I can safely say that my theory is that the cordyceps in Ellie's brain is the only reason that young woman hasn't died from massive head trauma

[aquilamage]

[Image Description: a set of five edited bug fables screenshots from the pre-battle zommoth encounter. The first is the same as in-game, Kabbu saying "W-What is that!? Something's coming!" The second is of zommoth appearing on screen with its sprite edited to be various shades of pink and yellow, wings the same pattern as Leif's (but still with the purple blight magic stuff in the chest area.) The next three images have the sprite edited in the same way.. The third image is of Leif's saying "...Wh, Rkejrm-m-Muse!? Kjdrira, mebsrgr...!!!" The next is Kabbu saying "Muse!? Leif, that's..." The final is Vi saying "T-That doesn't make any sense!" End ID]

I thought about one of my fucked up and evil au ideas for five minutes again, so I decided to spend like fifty hours making a thing about it. Basically what if Muse went back into Snakemouth later to try to rescue Leif or at least bring back his body and got caught by the roaches.

Putting just the edited sprites under the cut if you wanna see those without the lab mood lighting:

[sp1resong]

yknow what. re: this ol' post--

[mantisgodsdomain]

Can you tell more about ZB-162 please? It is sorting signals in my brain

...we have a 2.8k fic covering it WIP and scheduled to release by the end of February, if it counts?

We've posted it once or twice before (most notably in the dating poll), but ZB-162 is, functionally, the communications bug of the Snakemouth Den colony. Although its body is of a bee, it doesn't really consider itself to be one anymore - it considers itself to be a cordyceps symbiote that simply happens to inhabit a bee shell, and its former life to have very little impact on it. It is ZB-162, it was named as such pretty much the moment the cordyceps took, and it never really looked back.

Although not one of the first cordyceps to be made (it is, specifically, the 162nd zombee to be created in Snakemouth Den), it was one of the first to be successfully linked in a communication network. It's an "older" colony member due to having been in active communication since close to the beginning of the colony, and is the bug who both engineered most of the communication system in Snakemouth

It is possessed of a handful of Very Specific Traits - it cannot bring itself to stay idle, unable to sit still when there is anything it can do. This prevents it from hibernating, as much of the Snakemouth Den colony did during the time the lab was sealed. It has been up (and working on communications) more or less nonstop since it was connected, and is unlikely to stop any time soon - it prefers upkeep and busywork to any more active jobs.

Due to being more or less constantly active, it's basically always fiddling with things - it keeps the communication network functional throughout the cordyceps colony, which mostly means maintaining relays and keeping conversation threads separate, preventing colony members from "overhearing" private conversations or accessing information or threads of thought they'd rather keep private.

It has more or less unlimited access to the Snakemouth Den computers, having linked itself up to them while the roaches were still alive - it has access to more or less all of the files and controls for the lab, though it's VERY limited on what it can do with them. The main power source for the lab got taken out during the cordyceps breakout, and it's basically limited to what can be done on emergency power - and it completely lacks enough power to actually open the main doors, after they were sealed.

It runs a good amount of its programming through Kjdrira, since they have more processing power and storage space on their crystals, but it still hears a good chunk of the conversations around Snakemouth Den. A good chunk of its colonymembers are very disappointed by the fact that it isn't more gossipy, but the hivemind setup that Snakemouth's cordyceps have set up means that most things eventually get put into circulation, anyways.

It's been active longer than most of the other cordyceps combined, and has gotten a bit... jaded, during the time. You can only do so much, when you have a hundred years awake. Things seep in through the cracks. It's got no desire to be a bug anymore - it was terrible at that, anyways - but sometimes it wonders if this is any better, or if it's just caught in a different cage. It's a bit more positive once the lab gets unsealed, but it... doesn't really leave, regardless. It's spent a whole working on the lab systems. It's not really the kind of bug who would abandon its work for that.

Functionally, it's just one of those "we uploaded a human mind into the system to make this AI" setups, but it's still fully capable of not being an AI and simply returning to the human technician body that it occasionally uses to spruce up its own systems it just has no desire to do that because as far as it's concerned it's more AI than human in the first place and the body attached is mostly something that it can use to fix its cabling so it can go back to being an AI.

[potatoplace]

Starting yet another playthrough of the last of us, I hope this doesn't... reignite a certain story idea (it will. It definitely will)

[ratcandy]

I have a question that's been bugging me since I read musings! I'm sure it's probably obvious, but- was Sozo already being infected with cordyceps before or after he ate the Menticide mushrooms?

Ik his rlly bad itch were from cordyceps spores, but I have been curious if him eating the Menticide mushrooms worsened that process (ie would he have been fine but the Menticides somehow ALSO rooted in him) or was it jusr purely him getting hooked on the drug?

Sozo was infected before he ever ate the menticide! The cordycep spores are airborne, so the moment they touched his exoskeleton, they just had to extend hyphae inside that was It For Him.

aka He was pretty much doomed the moment he set foot in Anura

BUT eating the menticide certainly did not help matters!! I think the Menticide either 1) Is the cordyceps-adjacent thing, and is an opportunistic pathogen (capable of living without a host but will infect if given a chance). So it infected him via spores but ALSO screwed him over upon ingestion, OR 2) Was just drugging the shit out of him as he ate it which didn't do wonders for allowing his body to fight off the cordyceps, AND/Or, 3) The cordyceps and menticide have some sort of mutualistic symbiosis going on

In Musings I sort of hinted that this is something menticide/the cordyceps (if separate things) only does to insect folk, hence why followers/the Mushroomos themselves are not infected. And also hence why there aren't many insect folk present in Anura.

(Though I know there is at least one insect follower form,,, and they probably should also suffer pretty bad, but this is why I also suggest perhaps the menticide and cordyceps are different - though perhaps mutualistic - organisms? Because if the insect followers can eat them/be near them but remain uninfected, that may be due to them not being in Anura, and therefore not getting Got by the cordycep airborne spores)

For mutualism I think the cordyceps cause their host to start eating the menticide, which seems to thrive upon being eaten, which then also allows the cordyceps to better infest its host. Which would explain why we revive Sozo via the parasite on his head (the cordyceps) but he returns to "normal" when deprived of Menticide. Like he's still infested by the parasite but he's not Drugged anymore

Does that make sense? I hope so I'm answering this in the middle of class and my ideas are sort of cluttered and not solidified, though I can say for 100% certainty my intention in Musings was that he was already infected before eating the Menticide

[daddy-joel-miller]

I believe in Gabriel Luna as Tommy supremacy

[cordycepsbian]

wake up zombug enjoyers new zombugs just dropped

zombee is named checkers, zombeetle is mint, zombiant is latte

+ zommoth but slightly more accurate to irl moth-targeting cordyceps

[dragonbleps]

Mixed the Cordyceps + Cinnamon berry tea with French Vanilla Chai and Hot cocoa powder, with Sweet Cream flavored creamer

Jokes aside it, it was fine. I was hoping I would taste the cinnamon berry more, but it was too subtle to fight through the chai AND chocolate, so it kinda just ended up a muddled hot chocolate with no real flavor benefit from the other two except a bit of clove from the Chai.

who knows how much caffeine I just consumed in like 4 minutes though

[sharpilu]

looked in the nature wives tag for inspo and all i got was annoyed at the lack of muscular esmp2!Katherine. it's literally canon c'mon guys sobs

[sotvtaughtmehowtofeel]

it drives me crazy when people in this show talk about a vaccine and a cure interchangeably. Those are two VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.

You're talking a vaccine. Infected that have turned are for sure dead. You're not bringing back a person that's been being eaten by fungus from the inside. Come on.

But given what we're told about Ellie's immunity, a vaccine would be super unlikely too. The reason it works for Ellie is because she has the fungus in her brain constantly pumping out whatever chemical messenger is confusing new cordyceps infections. Even if you WERE able to mass produce the chemical, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flushes (it flushes through the central nervous system and then is reabsorbed as the chloroid plexus makes more), it's not constant. You'd likely have to get the vaccine VERY frequently (likely by intrathecal injection- injection to the spinal cord directly- which is super invasive and kinda risky even right now). Even if you COULD get systemic injections (to presumably stop the fungus from spreading peripherally, before it even gets to your brain), you'd have to get multiple ones. Vaccines work longterm by getting your body to make its own antibodies to the invading agent. The fireflies weren't gonna be able to do that.

I think it'd be much more realistic for them to try to create a treatment. Maybe if you treat someone soon after being bitten you could stop the spread of the fungus (like with Ellie). The problem with this is, again, CSF flushes, so who knows if cordyceps would just start spreading again once the treatment was cleared.

TLDR: the fireflies wouldn't have been able to do shit with Ellie.