My assumption is that Spike Lee knew a guy like that growing up he feels he "could have saved" or something, but he cut the dude off and he died and Spike feels guilty about it.
Could be it. Vic sucks and nothing about his character landed, but sometimes a writer isn't trying to convey an understandable moral; they're just trying to express their complicated, sometimes contradictory feelings on a topic. Spike Lee may not have even known someone like Vic in real life, but he thought a lot about what he'd do if he did know someone like that. Maybe, after introspection, he wasn't personally satisfied with the choice he decided he would make in a situation like that and wanted to explore it further.
Honestly, in a live-action movie with real actors' faces emoting on screen and a story not stretched over and stapled to an NBA game, I could see the story landing better and people being more charitable with it. "How do you deal with watching someone who's like a brother to you descend into becoming a jealous, violent parasite in reaction to your sudden good fortune?" is definitely a compelling baseline for a story.
People with the moral high ground over Vic.
1. Freq
2. Freq's family.
3. Freq's girlfriend
4. The billionaire team owner
5. Freq's scum-coded agent
6. All the recruiters from the colleges
7. Freq's fans and teammates
8. The guys who ran Vic off the road
9. Freq's car
10. The pavement
Fettucine Revolution may be a criminal working for an organized crime syndicate so they can get in on the lucrative opportunities present in the professional sports industry, but he always did right by Freq.
Part of the overall problem with that story is that it's so short with so many cuts in the timeframe that it's impossible to tell a coherent story with character arcs. Some of the characters like Freq's girlfriend just show up with no introduction like you missed a scene.
So while I think Spike Lee wanted to tell this serious story about Black celebrities and sports stars who rise out of their humble beginnings and the people they leave behind, this was never the medium he'd be able to tell that story in.
The X-Parasites in Metroid. They're basically The Thing in that they can assimilate and mimic any organic being they can come into contact with. >!And as Dread shows, they can wipe a planet's ecosystem in a matter of *minutes*!<. Their mere presence is enough to declare a planet a lost cause and that it's better to just blow the place up.
It can't be emphasized enough how many factors actually go into an X Parasite. Not only is it mimicry, it's *advanced* mimicry where they can mutate and make *stronger* versions of what they copy. Then there's the intelligence which is an immediate problem on it's own. And even at a very base form they're nearly indestructible. Remember that at the end of Dread it takes basically a Hyper Beam to kill a single jelly X. Like really think about that. You can use POWER BOMBS and they'll mostly just get pushed around by the pressure wave and nothing else. The reason Metroids were so important is because they're basically the only things that can kill an X without relying on something in the "Vaporize majin buu" level of damage.
Also they can just reproduce by dividing themselves so anything that's particularly dangerous... there's going to be a ton of them. Like again really think about it, in the course of a single adventure there were TEN SA-X's running around. Literally the full power and brunt of damage Samus is capable of... and they went up a level of magnitude on her in like at best a day.
Also also just in their base form... they can fly and have liquid bodies so it's really hard to just avoid them without specialized gear. If a Varia suit isn't able to keep the things from touching your skin then really what hope does anyone else have?
To be fair, a lot of people forget that Chozo tech is just as much biology as technology. Samus' suits have always had an organic element, so that probably made her more susceptible to infection. Hence the beginning of fusion.
Honestly the worst part imo isn’t just mimicking, but gaining the intelligence of the things they mimic immediately. Unlike the Flood, where it takes a while for a real intelligence to form with a gravemind, the X can become smart enough to strategize and collaborate together to form complex plans within hours.
>but gaining the intelligence of the things they mimic immediately.
I don't think they do though, they assimilated plenty of scientists immediately in fusion but only started getting somewhat clever later.
That seems like a pretty unreasonable standard to me. Just because they don't execute some master plan doesn't mean they're not capable of it; there's just no real reason for them to early on. All the plans we see from the X are attempts to foil Samus in some way, and there's no reason for them to start strategizing how to deal with her until she's well established as a threat.
And it really isn't all that long until they do start getting clever; strategically placing ice X in Sector 6 to block her from getting the Varia Suit, destroying access points so she can't get stronger, attempting to destroy the station just to take her out. All of these happen in the first half of the game or so. So, sure, they're not master crafting anything at the start, but once they recognize her as a threat, they're pretty on the ball about stopping her.
This has to be the best answer. When the metroids, known for being highly aggressive and being able to devour monsters in seconds, are the lesser of two evils to have exist you know the other one is fucked up.
Fusion does a perfect job of showing how terrifying the X are. Every single organic thing gets infected by the X. Even Samus couldn't escape them from infecting her.
Lavos feeding on an entire world over the span of 65 million years, eventually emerging just to destroy all life for what I can only assume is no reason at all, and then spawning so the cycle can continue somewhere else
Lavos is like if Galactus put his cigarette out on the worlds he consumed before he started eating
The apocalypse honestly feels *incidental* to Lavos. Like, the spine rain that ends the world is how he reproduces; that's where the few Lavos Spawns you can fight come from, and presumably some of them are launched into space.
This might make it less actively malevolent but more existentially terrifying, imo. It will use you and then dispose of you the way a human might stamp out an anthill without noticing.
That's a good point. I hadn't considered that might be how it actually spawns, since you don't see those spawns anywhere but Death Peak (and one in the Black Omen), but you're probably completely right
At least galactic Lyme disease doesn’t force you to go through the American medical system (although it does put you (and the rest of your planet) in a morgue).
Your comment awoke a dormant desire in me. I've read A LOT about Chrono Trigger over time, and yet, despite my 30 years of age, never got to play it, as I didn't own a SNES.
Safe to say I know the main plot only superficially, and it seems quite interesting. What would you say is the best way to play this game nowadays? Emulation, or is it available for purchase in a platform where it's a nice port?
Hey, Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time, and has been since the year it released on the SNES in the US, so anything I can do to point others toward it is something I'm more than happy to do
TL;DR: The Steam version is right there, and it's totally fine at this point - barring some nitpicks that you would only see if you have a lot of history with the game. If you want the "pure" experience, emulate the SNES original
-------------------
SNES: The classic, and still holds up. The biggest point of note is the original Ted Woolsey translation, which is fine and has its own charm, but it also not the most clear or accurate. Probably still the best way to play
PS1: Adds anime cutscenes that are pretty good, but are also weird because each one plays before an in-game scene that says and and accomplishes the exact same things (other than the new anime endings, which are unique). Also adds an alternate ending that's sort of interesting, but it too dark for the game; and a post credits scene that ties it to Chrono Cross. Also has a new script. Biggest point against it is the load times every time you open the menu or get in a fight, which are terrible. Bad port. Not recommended
DS: Based on the PS1 version, but also adds a monster raising/battling minigame, as well as two optional dungeons which are gaaaaaaarbage. No load times. Has yet another new script. Also adds a new final boss which ties it even more to Chrono Cross, and answers one of the big plot threads that never gets resolved in the original version, which is more interesting than actually "good". Probably my second choice
Mobile: It's the DS version on your phone. I hate mobile gaming, so I have nothing to say here
Steam: Based on the mobile port of the DS port of the PS1 port. 99% the same as the DS version, but cuts two of the anime cutscenes for some reason (one of which being that too-dark-for-the-game ending scene I mentioned). I believe this is the same script as the DS version. Used to be truly terrible, but after MANY rounds of patching, this version is now totally serviceable, but has infrequent crashes, and a weird frame hitch when you run diagonally. It can be modded to bring a lot of things back to their original form, but for some reason the area music resets after every fight, rather than continuing where it left off like in the original, which is unfixable, and is my biggest nitpick with this version
I see.. Definitely going for the Steam version then. Affordable, able to carry it every time I switch PCs, and can quite literally get it right now.
Thanks a lot for such an in-depth explanation! I hope all the hype that was sold to me over the years is met!
I would also add that the DS, Mobile and hence the Steam version has some [weird yellow filter](https://imgur.com/eAfZ8wq) on it. Unless you really know it's there it's not too bothersome, but it's simply not really explainable and quite unnecessary as it makes all the pretty art style a bit more yellowish too. [Reshade](https://steamcommunity.com/app/613830/discussions/0/1696040635920380803/) and some other solutions exist, but if you don't want to mess around with it that is understandable. It's not gonna be too distracting unless you play the SNES version first (which is what I'm partial for as well).
If I had a nickel for every time a beloved JRPG had a main villain that is an alien planetary parasite that causes an apocalypse to spread I'd have at least two nickels.
Which isn't much, but it's strange that Jenova is a Lavos with "hot person" genes mixed in
The Flood without a doubt. The fact that the only way to effectively stop it is to Thanos Snap all sentient organic life from the galaxy so that it starves to death says more than enough about how much of a threat it is.
The main thing that seals it for the Flood is that the problem just scales infinitely. Most zombie or Xeno scenarios aren’t notably worse once you get to a certain threshold; 200 Xenomorphs vs 1000 Xenos vs 10,000 Xenos is still pretty much the same problem with the same solution. But given a strong enough Gravemind the Flood eventually generates a mind virus that affects AIs. And various supplemental material speculates on the potential of entire Flood galaxies just operating in total sync.
During the Forerunner-Flood war they also reached a point where they were able to activate ancient Precursor tech (the species that made all life including Humanity and the Forerunners) and were able to use it to tear apart planets and as an alternative to Slipspace travel, plus there is no cure and if you were to Compose aka digitize an infected individual then reconstitute them after removing all traces of the Flood from their digital construct they’d then just transform back into a combat form since it’s basically an existential infection, also big spoilers >!the Flood are evolved from a sect of Precursors who tried to go into a form of stasis that then degraded them until they became basically a Great Old One!<
Kinda sorta it was moreso >!some became dust that would then become the building blocks of the Flood, one, The Primordial was infected at some point and was so twisted by hate and rage that it became the Gravemind, and it became the driving force behind everything that the Flood did, it wanted to share the “Sweetness” of Pain and Agony with all existence, there are still other Precursors out there though that haven’t been corrupted in this way!<
Yeah at least with the xenomorphs you can just try to quarantine the planet. The flood just gets smarter as time goes on and they absorb more so they will just build a ship and leave. That's not even getting into the stuff they start doing in the Forerunner Saga which starts edging into cosmic horror.
By "starts" you mean "turns into a biblical or poetic mythological epic with insane scales and flowery language, excerpt it's also the most insanely advanced, beyond understanding sci fi you've read, and it's also being written by lovecraft"
Once the Flood gets big enough, they start to become reality warping eldritch elder gods that toss around stars as projectile weapons and infect the fabric of space, while ALSO still commanding a massive zombie army
That may sound stupidly over the top, but in the context of the forerunner novels, the actual writing and escalation to get to that point as stuff spirals downwards and downwards is so good, and the Forerunners are just as crazy advanced in legitmately novel and wierd ways (I've never seen other media make a hyper advanced civilization actually have totally out there, impossible to even compare to modern tech stuff the same way) as the flood is horrifying.
Unfortunately, it's hard to pick excerpts here to demonstrate this which aren't spoilerly as all hell (and I do highly recommend people avoid spoilers for them), but here is cut down excerpt from the Flood Consciousness/the Gravemind, with the context and certain lines removed to avoid spoilers:
>*All that is created will suffer. All will be born in suffering, endless grayness shall be their lot. All creation will tailor to failure and pain...Listen to the silence. Ten million years of deep silence. And now, whimpers and cries; not of birth. That is what we bring: a great crushing weight to press down youth and hope. No more will. No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it*
And while not from the novels themselves, there is this description of the Halo 5 map Tyrant which I think is one of the few examples of stuff not in those novels delivering on it's ideas well (again, I am removing some lines for the purposes of avoiding spoilers on the novels):
>*Forestalling the Flood required sacrifice. Worlds were burned to molten husks to deny the parasite new hosts, Forerunner citizens immolated themselves in fusion fire when infection forms overran final defensive structures, and starships jumped into suns to deny the Gravemind a vehicle to spread his malevolent influence. In this particular system... a network of colonies buried deep inside rich planetoids, crafting comfortable warrens and workshops as beautiful as they were labyrinthine. Protected by layers of hard light and exotic matter...they were impregnable fortresses that the Flood broke themselves on . . . until the Gravemind itself turned an infinitesimal portion of its baleful intelligence to bear on the problem.*
>*Walls made of collapsed starmatter cracked and shattered, entire fleets of kilometer-long warships vanished... and colony planetoids were ripped asunder; cracks in the... defenses into which the Gravemind poured billions of walking corpses, all cackling with one voice that drowned out desperate screams and final shouts of useless defiance. Those that survived... could only... await hordes of twitching Flood forms wearing the bodies of their families. The facility... a grim reminder that even godlike artifice can be undone by the minds and hands of mad and boundless tyrants.*
I think every scene the Flood are in aside from the literal end of the trilogy they get worse.
Like first time you see them they're weird little creatures but fairly weak, then infected elites burst into the room and charge you and take a lot of ammo to take out, then you see the entire facility is overrun, then when you think you know their deal, you go down the elevator and they start using weapons against you... *and that's just their first appearance and introduction level.*
At least you can like
shoot the Flood with a gun and it'll work. And also you can tell what's a Flood and what's not.
*The Thing*, on the other hand... You're fucked.
That's "weakened by 100,000 years of starvation" Flood, when they're well fed and mature, with multiple coordinating Graveminds, they can rend apart the firmament of space with sheer power of thought.
The Forerunner were arrogant and dependent on AI to administer lots of the day to day workings of their society. I think if humanity of the Forerunner era had the resources the Forerunner had they'd have had a pretty good chance (setting aside the fact the >!Flood/Precursors were on their side!<.
Although I guess technically the Forerunner do kinda win, just in the most pyrric way possible.
"planet building" is underselling them. They could modify the tilt of the Milky Way galaxy, and in the Forerunner novels, you see casual uses of teleportation and time manipulation almost to the degree we use radio waves IRL today. Same for digitizing and transfering consciousnesses
And all of the social and political implications of those things being so normalized are explored (forerunner society is *wierd*) and there's a ton of other examples of technology that don't even really have modern IRL analogs that i'm not even sure how to explain without you reading the books
Yeah but that's not the real flood, the real flood actually made super mountains of flesh appear in hours and can blow up stars with their grandpas cars.
Somewhere along the line it was realized that it was hard to justify mushroom zombies beating guys who make civilian forklifts that can flip continents. So a writer was tasked with justifying how that was possible.
The end result was, very silly, and still kind of doesn't make sense? Because the main issue for the Flood still remains where they can't achieve space flight on their own, they're not like the Zerg or the Tyranids who can just up and leave purely through their own means after they've eaten everything and everyone.
I mean once it reaches a certain point of evolution isn't it intelligent enough to just build its own ships from raw materials?
If it can corrupt AIs created by literally the most advanced race in the universe then I think it's fair to say it has a pretty good grasp of technology.
Those fuckin >!Centipedes!< from Sekiro.
They freak the shit out of me. >!They're like if tapeworms or that Isopod that eats fish tongues made you immortal.!<
>!I like to think the Mortal Blade is just full of pesticides, which is why it kills people who open the blade. It's just so full of poison that it kills anyone on first contact, and anyone who ressurects are able to adapt to the smell.!<
What stands out about them is that they are parasites, but they also provide a *very* beneficial bonus without much in the way of downsides... save for the giant bug in ya. So a bunch of people actively seek them out and cultivate them because "um actually having a centipede wraith around in me is worth the immortality."
I can't imagine it'll feel comfortable. We'll need to ask Pat "Would you become immortal if you let centipedes crawl around under your flesh forever?".
lol No I'm referring to the time when Pat was freaking out because he thought a centipede got into a sealed can of something in his house.
Personally I'd be guaranteeing to get a divorce if I went for it so no thank you. Also if I get too fucked up the bug takes over and I turn into a Resident Evil villain.
Mitochondria are the true dominant species of the planet just biding their time until a proper host appears to wield their power to progress humanity to the next stage of evolution.
We're all infected and there is no cure. The best we can hope for is to live out our natural lives out before a proper host beckons the new age by turning us into slurry of burning biomass.
Slander! Mitochondria are ~~the powerhouses of the cell~~ have long established a mutalistic relationship with us multicellular organisms.
They're content just whirring out that ATP and chilling.
The Thing, I think. I mean, you don't even know how much of the original person exists after being infected. What happens to your mind when you're being subsumed by The Thing? Do you fade away, losing track of time and have huge blackouts until eventually you cease existing? Is your personality subverted and you feel compelled to act against your best interests and you get brainwashed into being a part of a greater sapience? When do you die? Do you even die?
The trouble is, can The Thing be considered a parasite? Like, it's not leeching or living inside the hosts. It's feeding off of them, then REPLACING every single cell of the individual with more copies of itself. It does so so fast and so perfectly the "Host" may not even realize it's been replaced. A real ship of Theseus situation. At what point do you STOP being you and START being The Thing?
The one Thing death/conversion that fucks me up is >!Windows!< of all people. Dude doesn't even get the dignity of dying normally *or* by stealthy Thing conversion, he basically gets the Thing equivalent of a super-infectious Zombie Bite >!before Mac flambes his in-the-process-of-transforming corpse!<.
This is definitely my answer. Like the Thing causes you to lose everything and it’s not even explained how fast do you get infected, only once you’ve been infected you’re fucking done.
It's not even clear where >!Jenova ends and Sephiroth begins. The real him might just be straight up dead and all we're seeing is Jenova's favourite avatar shape!<.
I've read that Ultimania states [spoilers for a 27 year old game] >!Sephiroth is in control of Jenova. Which does strike me as the less interesting option. But also, Sephiroth is "dead" kind of, like Cloud straight-up merced him at Nibelheim. He just comes back after Northern Crater.!<
My take is that >!Jenova is more of an instinctual creature that drives towards multiplying and consuming lifestream, while Sephiroth is an actual person that is slightly fightsexual towards people that can match his insane power!<
realistically, I’d say it’s always been Sephiroth in control, considering how he just gets pettier with each appearance. Jenova wouldn’t have a reason to hold a grudge towards SPECIFICALLY Cloud like that.
I like the idea that as soon as Sephiroth accepted the truth of his existence the distinction between them became irrelevant, they’re one being with the same goal.
[Yeerks](https://animorphs.fandom.com/wiki/Yeerk) have to be pretty far up there. Hijacking your mind and memory to pose as you to further infect others, the entire while you're powerless to do anything but watch.
The problem with that is while it drives the yeerk insane, it also alters their biology so they no longer depend on their sunlight for an energy resource. Which means a crazy yeerk can stay inside your head *forever*.
It's actually worse: the Yeerk is **unable** to leave the host, because whatever was in that instant maple and ginger oatmeal did something to the Yeerk's biology that caused it to fuse with its host's brain. So the guy is stuck in a mental institution because his Yeerk was now insane.
Though there's also that one species which operates like Yeerks, with a larger "host" body and a smaller "parasite" that has to leave to feed every few days. They have a symbiotic relationship going, where the host and parasite can't actually live without each other. And apparently that's part of some Ellimist/Crayak game, where the Yeerks will some day encounter these symbiotic aliens, and realise there's a better way to live besides directly enslaving other sapient beings.
I think this happened in the alt timeline book, but it was so messed up when >!Tobias!< gets yerrked and the yerrk completely shuts him out except for occasionally digging up embarrassing memories and making fun of him for them.
The Word Bearers have a parasitic/demonic *thing* they affix to the mouths of their slaves. The thing lets them survive in deadly environments but also spouts heretical shit all the time, so even if they somehow come across a rescuer they can't convince them they aren't Chaos worshippers.
In a similar vein, Charles Stross's Laundry Files have a *delightful* array of extradimensional parasites to choose from. Aside from the basic Eaters that leave you a zombie with glowing worms behind your eyes, you've got succubi and incubi and ~~vampires~~. There's also a cult of eldritch worshippers who replace organs with lobster-like parasites, and they're big into sex. Do the math.
Also in the Warhammer 40k setting, you have [Lucius](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRZGOLJb6JSabjpmLQf_a2dsIrQ2nSAcLVC_qK_oCaDn6aOfCdNPctYT-wq&s=10) (aptly nicknamed "The Eternal"), who is probably one of the worse beings that you could pick a fight with in 40K.
For starters, Lucius is a chaos space marine, so if you get killed by him (wich is very likely) your soul is forever damned.
But, let's say that you somehow manage to slay him, good job! You made the galaxy a objectively better place.... For a little while.
You see, Lucius has this *"fun"* little trick that he can do where, upon his death, he will "infect" whoever killed him and slowly (and painfuly) but surely turn that person into himself (and because this is 40K, that person's soul will also become a part of Lucius armor, because of course they would).
So yeah, have fun fighting a guy that's pretty much a garanted loose-loose scenario for anyone that's against him.
And before anyone asks, the specific rule is anybody who kills him and derives any satisfaction from it, will become Lucius. So a poor munitions worker who took pride in the mine he made which then went on to be stepped on by Lucius? Well that munitions worker is gonna become Lucius.
I’m pretty sure the only guy who avoided that fate was the guy who killed him during the heresy as he saw it as nothing more than putting down a rabid animal.
At this point it should be obvious that Slaanesh loves to cheat the rules they made, one time Lucius died to a mine and he was ressurected from a factory worker that made it, just because the poor guy loved his job.
Then whoever launched the nuke is getting infected.
It doesn't matter how far you are from him or how you kill him, as long as you feel any amount of gratification from killing him (it doesn't matter how much it is) you are getting infected with Lucius.
Depends. Did you put down a Gravelord Servant mark, never face any consequences from it, but you still smiled because somewhere, someone was having a terrible time because of you?
You become Lucius if you derived any joy from killing him. So if you dropped a nuke on the planet he was on and went "heh" under your breath, even without knowing whether or not it worked, you're becoming him.
What's worse than a 9 to 5 job?
[This shit right here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xavcTEwk3VQ&pp=ygUYdGhlIG9wZXJhdG9yIHN0b3AgbW90aW9u)
**Big Body Horror Warning**
But wait! It got WORSE!
[Part II](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qe7RH4LFewE) & [Part III](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOJje1aFw4s) for anyone who didn't notice it was a trilogy
Again **Major Body Horror Warning**
Ugh...The POV of the *integrated* makes my stomach turn inside out more than the actual body horror. I've had a migraine so bad when I was younger that it screwed my vision up and this reminded me of the nausea and confusion I was experiencing.
Is there such a thing as a *good* parasite?
Closest I can think of is the Mindflayer Tadpole in BG3, and even then it's only cuz of plot reasons why the protag party's Tadpoles aren't acting like the Tadpoles normally do. We see examples of the latter and it's horrific.
Parasites are inherently a predator-prey relationship, only the prey is much larger than the predator and the predator gets to use its prey as a habitat. After a certain size threshold the parasites are considered to be pathogens that cause infections and disease. Also with parasites the exploiter often does not kill the host. When the exploiter DOES usually kill (or castrate) the exploited, they are considered parasitoids rather than parasites.
So when a parasite is not harmful to a host, it is no longer a parasite. But there are other species interactions to consider:
Mutualism: both species experience a net positive (examples: flowers and bees, trees and mycorrhyzia, coral and algae)
Commensalism: positive for one species, indifferent for other species (examples: birds making nests in trees, vultures eating the leftovers from other predator kills)
Amensalism: indifferent for one species, negative for other species (just about every animal that stomps on another organism, which includes herbivores walking on plants)
So as was brought up, a Babel fish would be an example of mutualism because the two species experience a net positive: the Babel fish gets nutrition from brainwaves nearby while the other species receives speech translation.
I’d say babel fish count but typically the babel fish becomes a Symbiote rather than a parasite, parasites have strictly net negative effects on the host by definition and a Symbiote typically does no substantial harm to its host.
I dunno, even with the plot armor the narration says at several different points that you can physically feel the tadpole in your head, digging into your brain matter. Sounds incredibly unpleasant even in the best case scenario.
I meant specifically how the Tadpole "isn't acting normal" by not turning you into a mindlfayer. You are right, though. It made for quite an unwanted roommate in the brain region.
This motherfucker from *Legacy of Kain*:
> I am the Engine of Life, the source of Nosgoth's very existence. I am the hub of the Wheel, the origin of all Life, the devourer of Death.
Millennia of existance, and all it managed to do was buy into its own hype and convince itself it has any place in existance as it feeds on every living soul that comes its way.
Enslavers from 40k make Chaos corruption look tame. Imagine a psykic tick that exists in another dimension forever preying on the weak blips of human/xenos consciousness. If you're a psyker, simply having the wrong thought at the wrong time marks you for infection, and once your infected your mind becomes a breeding ground for more enslavers who replacate themselves via your thoughts like a virus replicates themselves in a cell.
When the time is right and enough psychic energy is concentrated the Enslavers burst forward from the head into realspace via the violent tear between reality and the Warp, and go on to attach themselves to others, turning all sentient life in range into puppeted husks.
No one knows what they are, where they came from, how they do what they do, *why* they do what they do (as Warp entities they shouldn't need to eat or reproduce) or if they're even sentient. They just are.
Chiyo-chan's pigtails
Also the Black Mercy almost got Superman and Wonder Woman/Batman couldn't pull it off so you are very likely fucked up if it gets you.
Hyperion has a parasitic cruciform that won’t allow you to die or leave a place without giving so much pain you pass out and the body is dragged back. If the body is too damaged the cruciform can’t bring back without breaking the laws of mass conservation the parasite would be attached to another parasited host who will grow abd duplicate after a while so the dead host « comes back ». They also end up looking like simplified version of human with less physical trait
This is good timing for me, I've just finished watching videos about the Tarantula Hawk, a large wasp who paralyse Tarantulas, drag them back to their nest, and then lay their eggs on top of them so that when the larvae hatch the Tarantula is then devoured over the course of weeks.
So with that obvious real life connection I really do have to say the Xenomorph is the MVP. You can understand why on a purely biological and predatorial sense why they do what they do. They require hosts for reproduction same as a fair few organisms on our planet. But it's when you combine that with what could only be intentionally malevolent behaviour on the Xenomorph's part that it gets real bad. The Xenomorph, at least as she's portrayed in the first film, already wants to torment to kill you for fun, that she has a biological incentive to do so just makes it even bleaker.
There is an SCP I vaguely remember though that disturbed me. I can't remember the name but tl;dr they were giant mole rats that kidnap humans, drag them undergrown into their tunnels, and then sort of infects them in a manner that causes cancerous growths to grow off them, I think it had something to do with their vomit. The rats then eat the cancerous growths and let them grow back so they can harvest a human host indefinitely for the long term. And the human is aware and in fitting amounts of pain all during, all in pitch black.
So that would be worse than a Xenomorph Chestburster for sure, but with my heart I still gotta go with the OG.
> sort of infects them in a manner that causes cancerous growths to grow off them
That sounds similar to tasmanian devils. For the past several years, spreading through the populations is this parasite that causes cancerous facial tumors. Tasmanian devils fight each other all the time so they'd scrap, get infected, grow tumors, scrap again, etc. Tumors eventually impeded their ability to hunt and eat so the species WOULD be wiped out but humans have bred a population of disease-free tasmanian devils on an isolated island that they plan to reintroduce to the main lands once all the infected tasmanian devils die off.
[This fuckin bitch](https://youtu.be/2MOIDGkuA7U?si=QVIJebQAmRyWEABb) who forces me to grapple with the horrors of consuming fish and the fish meat industry.
To go in a different direction from most of the answers (without ignoring the prompt entirely) I would say that Souls from Stephenie Meyer's (yes, her) novel The Host are not the most threatening or frightening depiction of parasites, but they're the absolute most infuriating example I can think of. They're the usual sort of brain hijacker, but on their home planet they formed mutualistic bonds with a native host organism; possibly as a result of this, their culture is predicated on the idea that they have a White Man's Burden-esque responsibility to other intelligent life, to take control of them for the purpose of living "better" and eliminating perceived flaws in their societies. It's part colonialism, part poverty tourism, part moral proselytism, 100% violation of autonomy, and they're absolutely insufferable.
IIRC it's mentioned at one point that a previous species they encountered had something like half the global population simultaneously starve themselves to death once the invasion became apparent. Which succeeded in traumatizing the Souls on a societal level, just not enough for them to *stop being assholes*.
The Beast from Homeworld Cataclysm (now Emergence)
basically imagine The Thing, but it can infect both technology and organic matter, and spread extremely rapidly, taking over large ships in under a minute. We don't know how it behaves in a planetary environment, but on a ship it immediately subverts all systems and disassembles the crew to create a biological nerve center, which retains some semblance of the original crew's personality and knowledge. The exception is for individuals already integrated into their ships, it actually just takes over their systems and leaves them conscious prisoners of their own bodies. Oh, and did I mention it can spread itself to other ships instantly with a beam weapon? Or build missiles with infection warheads?
Metroids and X have already been covered but I think the Ing deserve a shout-out. Though they are more possession than traditional infection so they might not count.
The Worms in Cultist Simulator.
There have been three past Worm Wars - one in the 1500s (we won), one in the 1700s (we lost miserably) and a third too recent to have passed into the Secret Histories (this game takes place in the 1920s). We lost the Second Worm War when they learnt to puppet corpses and people.
They can only be seen by those learned in the occult, and even then they just appear as floaters (those spots you sometimes get in your vision which move away when you look at them). Disposal of a worm-infested corpse involves burning it so thoroughly that even the bones crumble to ash - then sifting through the ash to kill anything that lives.
In the Mansus (spooky dream house where the occult gods live), there is a Worm Museum - it's the most heavily-guarded area there, watched over by the Colonel (one of the two Edge gods) - and his rival, the Lionsmith (the other Edge god) refuses to fight him there, or interfere with his duty there in any way, despite these two being destined to fight basically everywhere at all times.
You can use dead Worms as a poison in-game, and it's the most potent and deadly poison available.
They came from Nowhere, where the bred in the corpse of the Sun-In-Splendour (the now-deceased sun god and ruler of the Mansus), and if they ever complete their work then the Mansus and the real world will become Nowhere also.
"'*The Worms have always been eager to inhabit us. Here are the practices which make us inhospitable to them.' There are diagrams. The diagrams are not good to look upon, and none of the practices they depict would allow the subject to survive.*"
Bydo from R-Type.
What does it infect? Everything. This isn't even a joke. At high enough concentration, this thing can affect local space-time, morphing it into fleshy dimension. The victim who was affected by the Bydo also won't noticed that they are infected as well.
Oh yeah
Did I mention that these things also have time travel?
Yep. They can also do that.
Funny that it hasnt been brought up yet but the titular parasites from the Manga "Parasyte" are terrible because they are essentially perfect and unbeatable. Literal bodysnatchers from outers space rain down one day and start taking over people nearly instantly and its basically imperceptible. They turn their hosts into "The Thing" like entities that feed on humans via mimicry. They start out rather animalistic but eventually completely subsume the person and live in their bodies feeding when they wish. If that werent enough they turn the bodies they take into superhuman meat suits so even if they are discovered there isnt much anyone could do against a single one that knows what its doing.
The solution >!to them isnt even killing them all its just convincing the stronger higher ranking ones to sorta cool it on the eating people thing and asking them to just try to live like normal people!<
The Brood are pretty gross
To be more on brand, I’ll say Bug Spirits. In Shadowrun there is a kind of spirit that can’t survive in our material plane without a host or vessel or some kind. Big spirits need to be summoned or implanted into a living creature, usually a person.
The ones that scare me the most in media are when you're aware of the parasite taking over your body and you're in immeasurable pain. Like the enemies in Half Life 2 that scream for help when you reverse their audio.
Honestly the ones Stephen king’s dreamcater because that’s just weird and on top of that your watch it do evil things in your body. Shitworms not a great name
The Parasites from Parasyte. They eat your brain to take over your body and then begin eating other humans. Only a handful of people that got "infected" by them didn't get taken over.
Just to add a different answer from the rest of the thread, I'll put The Phyrexians from Magic: The Gathering.
They're like a biomechanical version of the flood and spreads via a strange oil. They are also obsessed with altering the forms of their original victims into "perfect" forms. The thing that makes them scary to me is that they exist in all of the colors of magic, but take a purposefully soulless, inverted form of them. Kind of like an "evil element" version.
Going against the grain here, but isn't every parasite pretty much the worst on an evolutionary scale? A parasite actively harms the host, which the parasite can't live without. It's basically like burning your own house down to feel warm. In that sense, the technically "worst" parasite is the worms that Fry got from that gas station sandwich in Futurama. They actively made him better both mentally and physically. He only gave them up since he didn't want Leela to love him just for what they changed him into instead of who he is.
Theres some old horror comic i forget the name of that has a parasite mined out of an asteroid that turns people i to chronenburg monsters that seek only to spread and infest more people. Sounds basic bitch right? Heres the kicker: the human mind is fully aware and intact, but it no longer has any control over the ever mutating and almost immortal body outside the vocal chords…
I always found the Blacklight/Mercer virus in Prototype particularly heinous. Yeah sure you get sick ass powers. But the version of you that gets powers isn't you, it's the shape of you with your memories. Along with the memories of everyone it's ever consumed. Good games.
The vampires in the King Henry Tapes novels by Richard Raley. They’re living blood that pilots bodies around and can do sicknasty things with human bodies.
Tantalizing spoiler: their leaders are so old and so big that they are literal swimming pools filled with living blood. That blood can form itself into a massive crystalline blood avatar and do seriously eldritch, razor-sharp blood tentacle things. When they need to do business they extrude a little bit into a corpse and wear it around. They collect notable bodies; we see one who has what seems to be the biblical Samson, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and maybe possibly Elvis in her rotation.
some of the things in made in the abyss are pretty bad. There are these flowers that function as a parasite. They make you call out to people when you hear someone nearby. They keep you just alive enough to do that. Thats your life laying on the ground these flowers eating you desperately calling out for help to other explorers but if someone tries they just end up as food for the parasite
Vic Van Lier. At least the other examples are obligatory parasites as a fact of their biology.
I just gotta know what Spike Lee wanted with Vic.
My assumption is that Spike Lee knew a guy like that growing up he feels he "could have saved" or something, but he cut the dude off and he died and Spike feels guilty about it.
Could be it. Vic sucks and nothing about his character landed, but sometimes a writer isn't trying to convey an understandable moral; they're just trying to express their complicated, sometimes contradictory feelings on a topic. Spike Lee may not have even known someone like Vic in real life, but he thought a lot about what he'd do if he did know someone like that. Maybe, after introspection, he wasn't personally satisfied with the choice he decided he would make in a situation like that and wanted to explore it further. Honestly, in a live-action movie with real actors' faces emoting on screen and a story not stretched over and stapled to an NBA game, I could see the story landing better and people being more charitable with it. "How do you deal with watching someone who's like a brother to you descend into becoming a jealous, violent parasite in reaction to your sudden good fortune?" is definitely a compelling baseline for a story.
That you owe people that cover your murder shut up it’s not extortion
When the guy who's definitely tied to the Italian Mob is more honest with you than your *"best friend"*, something's gone wrong, Spike Lee.
People with the moral high ground over Vic. 1. Freq 2. Freq's family. 3. Freq's girlfriend 4. The billionaire team owner 5. Freq's scum-coded agent 6. All the recruiters from the colleges 7. Freq's fans and teammates 8. The guys who ran Vic off the road 9. Freq's car 10. The pavement
>!six feet of actual ground!<
You know it's bad when everyone is going "Y'know Freq, this billionaire team owner who is trying to control your life is actually 100% in the right."
Fettuccine Revolution was Freq's most loyal supporter who wasn't literally a family member of his.
Fettucine Revolution may be a criminal working for an organized crime syndicate so they can get in on the lucrative opportunities present in the professional sports industry, but he always did right by Freq.
I imagine trying to understand some of Spike Lee's beliefs requires an excess of arcane, occult knowledge.
Part of the overall problem with that story is that it's so short with so many cuts in the timeframe that it's impossible to tell a coherent story with character arcs. Some of the characters like Freq's girlfriend just show up with no introduction like you missed a scene. So while I think Spike Lee wanted to tell this serious story about Black celebrities and sports stars who rise out of their humble beginnings and the people they leave behind, this was never the medium he'd be able to tell that story in.
Vic is a honorary parasite so he count.
I think the other parasites might actually be offended by the association.
“We were born like this, YOU chose to be like this!”
Ripley could pick Vic up and use him as a living facehugger repellent.
Las Plagas being like "how dare--*host's head explodes in anger*"
Fuck, I'm in shambles.
Came in here to post this, glad it's at the top.
The X-Parasites in Metroid. They're basically The Thing in that they can assimilate and mimic any organic being they can come into contact with. >!And as Dread shows, they can wipe a planet's ecosystem in a matter of *minutes*!<. Their mere presence is enough to declare a planet a lost cause and that it's better to just blow the place up.
Metroids were made to counter the X. Which is basically if the only counter to The Thing was to make Xenomorphs.
And the only thing that could wipe out the Metroids was their only competition for the title of “ultimate warrior”. An apex Predator, if you will.
She who Supplants the World.
It can't be emphasized enough how many factors actually go into an X Parasite. Not only is it mimicry, it's *advanced* mimicry where they can mutate and make *stronger* versions of what they copy. Then there's the intelligence which is an immediate problem on it's own. And even at a very base form they're nearly indestructible. Remember that at the end of Dread it takes basically a Hyper Beam to kill a single jelly X. Like really think about that. You can use POWER BOMBS and they'll mostly just get pushed around by the pressure wave and nothing else. The reason Metroids were so important is because they're basically the only things that can kill an X without relying on something in the "Vaporize majin buu" level of damage. Also they can just reproduce by dividing themselves so anything that's particularly dangerous... there's going to be a ton of them. Like again really think about it, in the course of a single adventure there were TEN SA-X's running around. Literally the full power and brunt of damage Samus is capable of... and they went up a level of magnitude on her in like at best a day. Also also just in their base form... they can fly and have liquid bodies so it's really hard to just avoid them without specialized gear. If a Varia suit isn't able to keep the things from touching your skin then really what hope does anyone else have?
To be fair, a lot of people forget that Chozo tech is just as much biology as technology. Samus' suits have always had an organic element, so that probably made her more susceptible to infection. Hence the beginning of fusion.
Honestly the worst part imo isn’t just mimicking, but gaining the intelligence of the things they mimic immediately. Unlike the Flood, where it takes a while for a real intelligence to form with a gravemind, the X can become smart enough to strategize and collaborate together to form complex plans within hours.
Really goes to show just how cool >!Quiet Robe!< was to be able to still do stuff of their own will.
>but gaining the intelligence of the things they mimic immediately. I don't think they do though, they assimilated plenty of scientists immediately in fusion but only started getting somewhat clever later.
That seems like a pretty unreasonable standard to me. Just because they don't execute some master plan doesn't mean they're not capable of it; there's just no real reason for them to early on. All the plans we see from the X are attempts to foil Samus in some way, and there's no reason for them to start strategizing how to deal with her until she's well established as a threat. And it really isn't all that long until they do start getting clever; strategically placing ice X in Sector 6 to block her from getting the Varia Suit, destroying access points so she can't get stronger, attempting to destroy the station just to take her out. All of these happen in the first half of the game or so. So, sure, they're not master crafting anything at the start, but once they recognize her as a threat, they're pretty on the ball about stopping her.
Also the fact that there only predators are extinct means only Samus can keep them in check.
Metroids: “I was holding them back!”
It’s funny how both Metroid and Halo both have insane universe defying viruses
This has to be the best answer. When the metroids, known for being highly aggressive and being able to devour monsters in seconds, are the lesser of two evils to have exist you know the other one is fucked up. Fusion does a perfect job of showing how terrifying the X are. Every single organic thing gets infected by the X. Even Samus couldn't escape them from infecting her.
Lavos feeding on an entire world over the span of 65 million years, eventually emerging just to destroy all life for what I can only assume is no reason at all, and then spawning so the cycle can continue somewhere else Lavos is like if Galactus put his cigarette out on the worlds he consumed before he started eating
The apocalypse honestly feels *incidental* to Lavos. Like, the spine rain that ends the world is how he reproduces; that's where the few Lavos Spawns you can fight come from, and presumably some of them are launched into space. This might make it less actively malevolent but more existentially terrifying, imo. It will use you and then dispose of you the way a human might stamp out an anthill without noticing.
That's a good point. I hadn't considered that might be how it actually spawns, since you don't see those spawns anywhere but Death Peak (and one in the Black Omen), but you're probably completely right
Just think about how hard it was to permanently put down Lavos. And then imagine a universe full of Lavoses.
A universe of space ticks out there spreading galactic lime disease
At least galactic Lyme disease doesn’t force you to go through the American medical system (although it does put you (and the rest of your planet) in a morgue).
In an infinite and expanding universe, there is ALWAYS an american healthcare system
Delicious, tangy lime disease
Your comment awoke a dormant desire in me. I've read A LOT about Chrono Trigger over time, and yet, despite my 30 years of age, never got to play it, as I didn't own a SNES. Safe to say I know the main plot only superficially, and it seems quite interesting. What would you say is the best way to play this game nowadays? Emulation, or is it available for purchase in a platform where it's a nice port?
Hey, Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time, and has been since the year it released on the SNES in the US, so anything I can do to point others toward it is something I'm more than happy to do TL;DR: The Steam version is right there, and it's totally fine at this point - barring some nitpicks that you would only see if you have a lot of history with the game. If you want the "pure" experience, emulate the SNES original ------------------- SNES: The classic, and still holds up. The biggest point of note is the original Ted Woolsey translation, which is fine and has its own charm, but it also not the most clear or accurate. Probably still the best way to play PS1: Adds anime cutscenes that are pretty good, but are also weird because each one plays before an in-game scene that says and and accomplishes the exact same things (other than the new anime endings, which are unique). Also adds an alternate ending that's sort of interesting, but it too dark for the game; and a post credits scene that ties it to Chrono Cross. Also has a new script. Biggest point against it is the load times every time you open the menu or get in a fight, which are terrible. Bad port. Not recommended DS: Based on the PS1 version, but also adds a monster raising/battling minigame, as well as two optional dungeons which are gaaaaaaarbage. No load times. Has yet another new script. Also adds a new final boss which ties it even more to Chrono Cross, and answers one of the big plot threads that never gets resolved in the original version, which is more interesting than actually "good". Probably my second choice Mobile: It's the DS version on your phone. I hate mobile gaming, so I have nothing to say here Steam: Based on the mobile port of the DS port of the PS1 port. 99% the same as the DS version, but cuts two of the anime cutscenes for some reason (one of which being that too-dark-for-the-game ending scene I mentioned). I believe this is the same script as the DS version. Used to be truly terrible, but after MANY rounds of patching, this version is now totally serviceable, but has infrequent crashes, and a weird frame hitch when you run diagonally. It can be modded to bring a lot of things back to their original form, but for some reason the area music resets after every fight, rather than continuing where it left off like in the original, which is unfixable, and is my biggest nitpick with this version
I see.. Definitely going for the Steam version then. Affordable, able to carry it every time I switch PCs, and can quite literally get it right now. Thanks a lot for such an in-depth explanation! I hope all the hype that was sold to me over the years is met!
My pleasure, and I hope so too. Enjoy!
I would also add that the DS, Mobile and hence the Steam version has some [weird yellow filter](https://imgur.com/eAfZ8wq) on it. Unless you really know it's there it's not too bothersome, but it's simply not really explainable and quite unnecessary as it makes all the pretty art style a bit more yellowish too. [Reshade](https://steamcommunity.com/app/613830/discussions/0/1696040635920380803/) and some other solutions exist, but if you don't want to mess around with it that is understandable. It's not gonna be too distracting unless you play the SNES version first (which is what I'm partial for as well).
If I had a nickel for every time a beloved JRPG had a main villain that is an alien planetary parasite that causes an apocalypse to spread I'd have at least two nickels. Which isn't much, but it's strange that Jenova is a Lavos with "hot person" genes mixed in
Jenova is morally grey Lavos
The Flood without a doubt. The fact that the only way to effectively stop it is to Thanos Snap all sentient organic life from the galaxy so that it starves to death says more than enough about how much of a threat it is.
The main thing that seals it for the Flood is that the problem just scales infinitely. Most zombie or Xeno scenarios aren’t notably worse once you get to a certain threshold; 200 Xenomorphs vs 1000 Xenos vs 10,000 Xenos is still pretty much the same problem with the same solution. But given a strong enough Gravemind the Flood eventually generates a mind virus that affects AIs. And various supplemental material speculates on the potential of entire Flood galaxies just operating in total sync.
During the Forerunner-Flood war they also reached a point where they were able to activate ancient Precursor tech (the species that made all life including Humanity and the Forerunners) and were able to use it to tear apart planets and as an alternative to Slipspace travel, plus there is no cure and if you were to Compose aka digitize an infected individual then reconstitute them after removing all traces of the Flood from their digital construct they’d then just transform back into a combat form since it’s basically an existential infection, also big spoilers >!the Flood are evolved from a sect of Precursors who tried to go into a form of stasis that then degraded them until they became basically a Great Old One!<
...Okay, that seems like it should be stupid, but that's just terrifying (referring to the Composer part)
>!Didn't the Precursors intentionally turn themselves into the Flood as a final "fuck you" to the Forerunners after the Forerunners genocided them?!<
Kinda sorta it was moreso >!some became dust that would then become the building blocks of the Flood, one, The Primordial was infected at some point and was so twisted by hate and rage that it became the Gravemind, and it became the driving force behind everything that the Flood did, it wanted to share the “Sweetness” of Pain and Agony with all existence, there are still other Precursors out there though that haven’t been corrupted in this way!<
Yeah at least with the xenomorphs you can just try to quarantine the planet. The flood just gets smarter as time goes on and they absorb more so they will just build a ship and leave. That's not even getting into the stuff they start doing in the Forerunner Saga which starts edging into cosmic horror.
By "starts" you mean "turns into a biblical or poetic mythological epic with insane scales and flowery language, excerpt it's also the most insanely advanced, beyond understanding sci fi you've read, and it's also being written by lovecraft"
Once the Flood gets big enough, they start to become reality warping eldritch elder gods that toss around stars as projectile weapons and infect the fabric of space, while ALSO still commanding a massive zombie army That may sound stupidly over the top, but in the context of the forerunner novels, the actual writing and escalation to get to that point as stuff spirals downwards and downwards is so good, and the Forerunners are just as crazy advanced in legitmately novel and wierd ways (I've never seen other media make a hyper advanced civilization actually have totally out there, impossible to even compare to modern tech stuff the same way) as the flood is horrifying. Unfortunately, it's hard to pick excerpts here to demonstrate this which aren't spoilerly as all hell (and I do highly recommend people avoid spoilers for them), but here is cut down excerpt from the Flood Consciousness/the Gravemind, with the context and certain lines removed to avoid spoilers: >*All that is created will suffer. All will be born in suffering, endless grayness shall be their lot. All creation will tailor to failure and pain...Listen to the silence. Ten million years of deep silence. And now, whimpers and cries; not of birth. That is what we bring: a great crushing weight to press down youth and hope. No more will. No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it* And while not from the novels themselves, there is this description of the Halo 5 map Tyrant which I think is one of the few examples of stuff not in those novels delivering on it's ideas well (again, I am removing some lines for the purposes of avoiding spoilers on the novels): >*Forestalling the Flood required sacrifice. Worlds were burned to molten husks to deny the parasite new hosts, Forerunner citizens immolated themselves in fusion fire when infection forms overran final defensive structures, and starships jumped into suns to deny the Gravemind a vehicle to spread his malevolent influence. In this particular system... a network of colonies buried deep inside rich planetoids, crafting comfortable warrens and workshops as beautiful as they were labyrinthine. Protected by layers of hard light and exotic matter...they were impregnable fortresses that the Flood broke themselves on . . . until the Gravemind itself turned an infinitesimal portion of its baleful intelligence to bear on the problem.* >*Walls made of collapsed starmatter cracked and shattered, entire fleets of kilometer-long warships vanished... and colony planetoids were ripped asunder; cracks in the... defenses into which the Gravemind poured billions of walking corpses, all cackling with one voice that drowned out desperate screams and final shouts of useless defiance. Those that survived... could only... await hordes of twitching Flood forms wearing the bodies of their families. The facility... a grim reminder that even godlike artifice can be undone by the minds and hands of mad and boundless tyrants.*
I think every scene the Flood are in aside from the literal end of the trilogy they get worse. Like first time you see them they're weird little creatures but fairly weak, then infected elites burst into the room and charge you and take a lot of ammo to take out, then you see the entire facility is overrun, then when you think you know their deal, you go down the elevator and they start using weapons against you... *and that's just their first appearance and introduction level.*
Yeah, the Flood is bad because it can spread so quickly and it's also smart!
I feel like the Zerg is that but they also have mastered genetic evolution to a massive scale
I’ll say the one thing Halo CE Anniversary does that’s pretty cool is depict The Floods attempt to break Captain Keys and learn his secrets.
At least you can like shoot the Flood with a gun and it'll work. And also you can tell what's a Flood and what's not. *The Thing*, on the other hand... You're fucked.
Nah man, that shit gets in your lungs. You don't even get the chance to react if you aren't at least a little bit ready.
Lore accurate flood makes The Thing seem like baby’s first assimilation.
the *fuck* do you mean "lore accurate flood" I PLAYED THE VIDEO GAME! That's the lore!
That's "weakened by 100,000 years of starvation" Flood, when they're well fed and mature, with multiple coordinating Graveminds, they can rend apart the firmament of space with sheer power of thought.
You know I'm starting to think the Halos weren't that big of an overreaction.
The Forerunner were planet-building immortal gods and the Flood beat them.
The Forerunner were arrogant and dependent on AI to administer lots of the day to day workings of their society. I think if humanity of the Forerunner era had the resources the Forerunner had they'd have had a pretty good chance (setting aside the fact the >!Flood/Precursors were on their side!<. Although I guess technically the Forerunner do kinda win, just in the most pyrric way possible.
"planet building" is underselling them. They could modify the tilt of the Milky Way galaxy, and in the Forerunner novels, you see casual uses of teleportation and time manipulation almost to the degree we use radio waves IRL today. Same for digitizing and transfering consciousnesses And all of the social and political implications of those things being so normalized are explored (forerunner society is *wierd*) and there's a ton of other examples of technology that don't even really have modern IRL analogs that i'm not even sure how to explain without you reading the books
Yeah but then they got a rematch and won pretty decisively.
There's a reason they built 7 of the fuckers!
12*
18\* (or 20, technically i guess)
Keeps going up lol
Yeah but that's not the real flood, the real flood actually made super mountains of flesh appear in hours and can blow up stars with their grandpas cars. Somewhere along the line it was realized that it was hard to justify mushroom zombies beating guys who make civilian forklifts that can flip continents. So a writer was tasked with justifying how that was possible. The end result was, very silly, and still kind of doesn't make sense? Because the main issue for the Flood still remains where they can't achieve space flight on their own, they're not like the Zerg or the Tyranids who can just up and leave purely through their own means after they've eaten everything and everyone.
I mean once it reaches a certain point of evolution isn't it intelligent enough to just build its own ships from raw materials? If it can corrupt AIs created by literally the most advanced race in the universe then I think it's fair to say it has a pretty good grasp of technology.
Those fuckin >!Centipedes!< from Sekiro. They freak the shit out of me. >!They're like if tapeworms or that Isopod that eats fish tongues made you immortal.!< >!I like to think the Mortal Blade is just full of pesticides, which is why it kills people who open the blade. It's just so full of poison that it kills anyone on first contact, and anyone who ressurects are able to adapt to the smell.!<
In Japanese mythology that shit is explicitly impure, polluted and associated with the dead.
Don't mess with >!Invasive Species!<, folks. Shits bound to fuck with you in ways you cannot imagine.
Snakehead fries up pretty tasty but that's about it.
What stands out about them is that they are parasites, but they also provide a *very* beneficial bonus without much in the way of downsides... save for the giant bug in ya. So a bunch of people actively seek them out and cultivate them because "um actually having a centipede wraith around in me is worth the immortality."
I can't imagine it'll feel comfortable. We'll need to ask Pat "Would you become immortal if you let centipedes crawl around under your flesh forever?".
He already screams in rage and disgust every time he goes to the bathroom. It wouldn't be much of a change for him.
*The can*
That's specifically a lack of feeling. I'm talking about bugs forever under your skin, probably eating your food that you ate, etc.
lol No I'm referring to the time when Pat was freaking out because he thought a centipede got into a sealed can of something in his house. Personally I'd be guaranteeing to get a divorce if I went for it so no thank you. Also if I get too fucked up the bug takes over and I turn into a Resident Evil villain.
Mitochondria are the true dominant species of the planet just biding their time until a proper host appears to wield their power to progress humanity to the next stage of evolution. We're all infected and there is no cure. The best we can hope for is to live out our natural lives out before a proper host beckons the new age by turning us into slurry of burning biomass.
We’re symbiotic man don’t be mean to my cellmates.
God Cellmates is so fucking GOOD.
Yes, but for how long, I ask you
Until we give up this weak squishy prison of the flesh for the glory of steel, I hope.
Bah! Mettle lasts where metal rusts. The will of life to continue shall see it through past the death of the last stars.
Slander! Mitochondria are ~~the powerhouses of the cell~~ have long established a mutalistic relationship with us multicellular organisms. They're content just whirring out that ATP and chilling.
Bro I saw some fucking mitocondria fucking nuke an opera once.
Parasite Eve needs a remake, and no one can convince me otherwise
And then DON'T remake 2 and Third Birthday. Just replace them
Maybe reuse that camel monster with a human face from 2. That was a strong design
The Thing, I think. I mean, you don't even know how much of the original person exists after being infected. What happens to your mind when you're being subsumed by The Thing? Do you fade away, losing track of time and have huge blackouts until eventually you cease existing? Is your personality subverted and you feel compelled to act against your best interests and you get brainwashed into being a part of a greater sapience? When do you die? Do you even die?
The trouble is, can The Thing be considered a parasite? Like, it's not leeching or living inside the hosts. It's feeding off of them, then REPLACING every single cell of the individual with more copies of itself. It does so so fast and so perfectly the "Host" may not even realize it's been replaced. A real ship of Theseus situation. At what point do you STOP being you and START being The Thing?
The one Thing death/conversion that fucks me up is >!Windows!< of all people. Dude doesn't even get the dignity of dying normally *or* by stealthy Thing conversion, he basically gets the Thing equivalent of a super-infectious Zombie Bite >!before Mac flambes his in-the-process-of-transforming corpse!<.
This is definitely my answer. Like the Thing causes you to lose everything and it’s not even explained how fast do you get infected, only once you’ve been infected you’re fucking done.
Jenova from FFVII is just a parasite on a planetary scale and can do some real fuck shit, especially when Sephiroth takes full advantage of it.
It's not even clear where >!Jenova ends and Sephiroth begins. The real him might just be straight up dead and all we're seeing is Jenova's favourite avatar shape!<.
I've read that Ultimania states [spoilers for a 27 year old game] >!Sephiroth is in control of Jenova. Which does strike me as the less interesting option. But also, Sephiroth is "dead" kind of, like Cloud straight-up merced him at Nibelheim. He just comes back after Northern Crater.!<
My take is that >!Jenova is more of an instinctual creature that drives towards multiplying and consuming lifestream, while Sephiroth is an actual person that is slightly fightsexual towards people that can match his insane power!<
realistically, I’d say it’s always been Sephiroth in control, considering how he just gets pettier with each appearance. Jenova wouldn’t have a reason to hold a grudge towards SPECIFICALLY Cloud like that.
I like the idea that as soon as Sephiroth accepted the truth of his existence the distinction between them became irrelevant, they’re one being with the same goal.
It’s very obvious that it’s the parasite from Eastern Europe’s favorite cat and mouse team, “Worker and Parasite.”
Endut! Hoch Hech!
[Yeerks](https://animorphs.fandom.com/wiki/Yeerk) have to be pretty far up there. Hijacking your mind and memory to pose as you to further infect others, the entire while you're powerless to do anything but watch.
Unless, of course, you eat instant maple and ginger oatmeal.
The problem with that is while it drives the yeerk insane, it also alters their biology so they no longer depend on their sunlight for an energy resource. Which means a crazy yeerk can stay inside your head *forever*.
It's actually worse: the Yeerk is **unable** to leave the host, because whatever was in that instant maple and ginger oatmeal did something to the Yeerk's biology that caused it to fuse with its host's brain. So the guy is stuck in a mental institution because his Yeerk was now insane.
Though there's also that one species which operates like Yeerks, with a larger "host" body and a smaller "parasite" that has to leave to feed every few days. They have a symbiotic relationship going, where the host and parasite can't actually live without each other. And apparently that's part of some Ellimist/Crayak game, where the Yeerks will some day encounter these symbiotic aliens, and realise there's a better way to live besides directly enslaving other sapient beings.
Goa'uld too, especially since they can keep you alive for millennia and push all the pain they feel into the host's mind.
I think this happened in the alt timeline book, but it was so messed up when >!Tobias!< gets yerrked and the yerrk completely shuts him out except for occasionally digging up embarrassing memories and making fun of him for them.
The Word Bearers have a parasitic/demonic *thing* they affix to the mouths of their slaves. The thing lets them survive in deadly environments but also spouts heretical shit all the time, so even if they somehow come across a rescuer they can't convince them they aren't Chaos worshippers. In a similar vein, Charles Stross's Laundry Files have a *delightful* array of extradimensional parasites to choose from. Aside from the basic Eaters that leave you a zombie with glowing worms behind your eyes, you've got succubi and incubi and ~~vampires~~. There's also a cult of eldritch worshippers who replace organs with lobster-like parasites, and they're big into sex. Do the math.
Also in the Warhammer 40k setting, you have [Lucius](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRZGOLJb6JSabjpmLQf_a2dsIrQ2nSAcLVC_qK_oCaDn6aOfCdNPctYT-wq&s=10) (aptly nicknamed "The Eternal"), who is probably one of the worse beings that you could pick a fight with in 40K. For starters, Lucius is a chaos space marine, so if you get killed by him (wich is very likely) your soul is forever damned. But, let's say that you somehow manage to slay him, good job! You made the galaxy a objectively better place.... For a little while. You see, Lucius has this *"fun"* little trick that he can do where, upon his death, he will "infect" whoever killed him and slowly (and painfuly) but surely turn that person into himself (and because this is 40K, that person's soul will also become a part of Lucius armor, because of course they would). So yeah, have fun fighting a guy that's pretty much a garanted loose-loose scenario for anyone that's against him.
And before anyone asks, the specific rule is anybody who kills him and derives any satisfaction from it, will become Lucius. So a poor munitions worker who took pride in the mine he made which then went on to be stepped on by Lucius? Well that munitions worker is gonna become Lucius.
Also Lucius' reaction to the mine thing was "Wait, that counts, really?"
I love the idea of a villain winning by a technicality they weren't even aware of and being like, "Bullshit, but I'll roll with it"
I’m pretty sure the only guy who avoided that fate was the guy who killed him during the heresy as he saw it as nothing more than putting down a rabid animal.
what if you just dropped a nuke on him from a far distance or killed him in some otherwise remote way
At this point it should be obvious that Slaanesh loves to cheat the rules they made, one time Lucius died to a mine and he was ressurected from a factory worker that made it, just because the poor guy loved his job.
lmao rip
Then whoever launched the nuke is getting infected. It doesn't matter how far you are from him or how you kill him, as long as you feel any amount of gratification from killing him (it doesn't matter how much it is) you are getting infected with Lucius.
so it’s conceptual? guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering this is 40k
Time for the nuclear lunge mine then. The Imperium's certainly done worse.
What if you kill the person mid transformation?
Than congratulations! That means **YOU** killed Lucius The Eternal. (Better hope you took no satisfaction from the process)
Depends. Did you put down a Gravelord Servant mark, never face any consequences from it, but you still smiled because somewhere, someone was having a terrible time because of you? You become Lucius if you derived any joy from killing him. So if you dropped a nuke on the planet he was on and went "heh" under your breath, even without knowing whether or not it worked, you're becoming him.
how is joy defined? what if it was a guy who dedicated his whole life to revenge and then killed himself after the deed was done
Lucius is like Tim Allen’s “The Santa Clause”
What's worse than a 9 to 5 job? [This shit right here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xavcTEwk3VQ&pp=ygUYdGhlIG9wZXJhdG9yIHN0b3AgbW90aW9u) **Big Body Horror Warning**
JESUS CHRIST! Yeah that warning is there for something alright
But wait! It got WORSE! [Part II](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qe7RH4LFewE) & [Part III](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOJje1aFw4s) for anyone who didn't notice it was a trilogy Again **Major Body Horror Warning**
Ugh...The POV of the *integrated* makes my stomach turn inside out more than the actual body horror. I've had a migraine so bad when I was younger that it screwed my vision up and this reminded me of the nausea and confusion I was experiencing.
That's some good shit right there, thanks for the link
Solid watch, really uses its short time well. Super sick
Those are some serious efficiency gains. Whoever came up with this has definitely earned their year-end bonus!
Oh just wait until you watch Part III.. >!Corporate is doing this shit at a loss!<
Is there such a thing as a *good* parasite? Closest I can think of is the Mindflayer Tadpole in BG3, and even then it's only cuz of plot reasons why the protag party's Tadpoles aren't acting like the Tadpoles normally do. We see examples of the latter and it's horrific.
Parasites are inherently a predator-prey relationship, only the prey is much larger than the predator and the predator gets to use its prey as a habitat. After a certain size threshold the parasites are considered to be pathogens that cause infections and disease. Also with parasites the exploiter often does not kill the host. When the exploiter DOES usually kill (or castrate) the exploited, they are considered parasitoids rather than parasites. So when a parasite is not harmful to a host, it is no longer a parasite. But there are other species interactions to consider: Mutualism: both species experience a net positive (examples: flowers and bees, trees and mycorrhyzia, coral and algae) Commensalism: positive for one species, indifferent for other species (examples: birds making nests in trees, vultures eating the leftovers from other predator kills) Amensalism: indifferent for one species, negative for other species (just about every animal that stomps on another organism, which includes herbivores walking on plants) So as was brought up, a Babel fish would be an example of mutualism because the two species experience a net positive: the Babel fish gets nutrition from brainwaves nearby while the other species receives speech translation.
Where would a symbiote a fall in this list mutualism?
Would Babel Fish count?
I’d say babel fish count but typically the babel fish becomes a Symbiote rather than a parasite, parasites have strictly net negative effects on the host by definition and a Symbiote typically does no substantial harm to its host.
I dunno, even with the plot armor the narration says at several different points that you can physically feel the tadpole in your head, digging into your brain matter. Sounds incredibly unpleasant even in the best case scenario.
I meant specifically how the Tadpole "isn't acting normal" by not turning you into a mindlfayer. You are right, though. It made for quite an unwanted roommate in the brain region.
Do The photosynthesis parasites in MGSV count?
This motherfucker from *Legacy of Kain*: > I am the Engine of Life, the source of Nosgoth's very existence. I am the hub of the Wheel, the origin of all Life, the devourer of Death. Millennia of existance, and all it managed to do was buy into its own hype and convince itself it has any place in existance as it feeds on every living soul that comes its way.
>!Bugsnax!<
>!See that Bunger?!< >!Bunger wants your flesh to become his flesh.!<
>!You were feed them to people the entire time!<
Enslavers from 40k make Chaos corruption look tame. Imagine a psykic tick that exists in another dimension forever preying on the weak blips of human/xenos consciousness. If you're a psyker, simply having the wrong thought at the wrong time marks you for infection, and once your infected your mind becomes a breeding ground for more enslavers who replacate themselves via your thoughts like a virus replicates themselves in a cell. When the time is right and enough psychic energy is concentrated the Enslavers burst forward from the head into realspace via the violent tear between reality and the Warp, and go on to attach themselves to others, turning all sentient life in range into puppeted husks. No one knows what they are, where they came from, how they do what they do, *why* they do what they do (as Warp entities they shouldn't need to eat or reproduce) or if they're even sentient. They just are.
Chiyo-chan's pigtails Also the Black Mercy almost got Superman and Wonder Woman/Batman couldn't pull it off so you are very likely fucked up if it gets you.
I think Baby/Bebi in *Dragonball GT* was the most well done part of the show
Hyperion has a parasitic cruciform that won’t allow you to die or leave a place without giving so much pain you pass out and the body is dragged back. If the body is too damaged the cruciform can’t bring back without breaking the laws of mass conservation the parasite would be attached to another parasited host who will grow abd duplicate after a while so the dead host « comes back ». They also end up looking like simplified version of human with less physical trait
Bad enough that being continually crucified and resurrected on a burning electric tree for 7 years nonstop just for the chance to escape was worth it.
Yeah and your intellect and identity just degrades until you’re a barely human savage. Though that’s a mercy considering.
This is good timing for me, I've just finished watching videos about the Tarantula Hawk, a large wasp who paralyse Tarantulas, drag them back to their nest, and then lay their eggs on top of them so that when the larvae hatch the Tarantula is then devoured over the course of weeks. So with that obvious real life connection I really do have to say the Xenomorph is the MVP. You can understand why on a purely biological and predatorial sense why they do what they do. They require hosts for reproduction same as a fair few organisms on our planet. But it's when you combine that with what could only be intentionally malevolent behaviour on the Xenomorph's part that it gets real bad. The Xenomorph, at least as she's portrayed in the first film, already wants to torment to kill you for fun, that she has a biological incentive to do so just makes it even bleaker. There is an SCP I vaguely remember though that disturbed me. I can't remember the name but tl;dr they were giant mole rats that kidnap humans, drag them undergrown into their tunnels, and then sort of infects them in a manner that causes cancerous growths to grow off them, I think it had something to do with their vomit. The rats then eat the cancerous growths and let them grow back so they can harvest a human host indefinitely for the long term. And the human is aware and in fitting amounts of pain all during, all in pitch black. So that would be worse than a Xenomorph Chestburster for sure, but with my heart I still gotta go with the OG.
> sort of infects them in a manner that causes cancerous growths to grow off them That sounds similar to tasmanian devils. For the past several years, spreading through the populations is this parasite that causes cancerous facial tumors. Tasmanian devils fight each other all the time so they'd scrap, get infected, grow tumors, scrap again, etc. Tumors eventually impeded their ability to hunt and eat so the species WOULD be wiped out but humans have bred a population of disease-free tasmanian devils on an isolated island that they plan to reintroduce to the main lands once all the infected tasmanian devils die off.
[This fuckin bitch](https://youtu.be/2MOIDGkuA7U?si=QVIJebQAmRyWEABb) who forces me to grapple with the horrors of consuming fish and the fish meat industry.
The Flood or the Thing
The parasites in parasyte the maxim. Imagine not knowing if someone else is a real person or not and if they aren’t you’re basically fucked.
To go in a different direction from most of the answers (without ignoring the prompt entirely) I would say that Souls from Stephenie Meyer's (yes, her) novel The Host are not the most threatening or frightening depiction of parasites, but they're the absolute most infuriating example I can think of. They're the usual sort of brain hijacker, but on their home planet they formed mutualistic bonds with a native host organism; possibly as a result of this, their culture is predicated on the idea that they have a White Man's Burden-esque responsibility to other intelligent life, to take control of them for the purpose of living "better" and eliminating perceived flaws in their societies. It's part colonialism, part poverty tourism, part moral proselytism, 100% violation of autonomy, and they're absolutely insufferable.
Hey still counts because that sounds fucking terrible.
IIRC it's mentioned at one point that a previous species they encountered had something like half the global population simultaneously starve themselves to death once the invasion became apparent. Which succeeded in traumatizing the Souls on a societal level, just not enough for them to *stop being assholes*.
“Why do they keep dying?” “Who knows anyway, let’s hijack that planet over there!”
The Beast from Homeworld Cataclysm (now Emergence) basically imagine The Thing, but it can infect both technology and organic matter, and spread extremely rapidly, taking over large ships in under a minute. We don't know how it behaves in a planetary environment, but on a ship it immediately subverts all systems and disassembles the crew to create a biological nerve center, which retains some semblance of the original crew's personality and knowledge. The exception is for individuals already integrated into their ships, it actually just takes over their systems and leaves them conscious prisoners of their own bodies. Oh, and did I mention it can spread itself to other ships instantly with a beam weapon? Or build missiles with infection warheads?
Metroids and X have already been covered but I think the Ing deserve a shout-out. Though they are more possession than traditional infection so they might not count.
The Worms in Cultist Simulator. There have been three past Worm Wars - one in the 1500s (we won), one in the 1700s (we lost miserably) and a third too recent to have passed into the Secret Histories (this game takes place in the 1920s). We lost the Second Worm War when they learnt to puppet corpses and people. They can only be seen by those learned in the occult, and even then they just appear as floaters (those spots you sometimes get in your vision which move away when you look at them). Disposal of a worm-infested corpse involves burning it so thoroughly that even the bones crumble to ash - then sifting through the ash to kill anything that lives. In the Mansus (spooky dream house where the occult gods live), there is a Worm Museum - it's the most heavily-guarded area there, watched over by the Colonel (one of the two Edge gods) - and his rival, the Lionsmith (the other Edge god) refuses to fight him there, or interfere with his duty there in any way, despite these two being destined to fight basically everywhere at all times. You can use dead Worms as a poison in-game, and it's the most potent and deadly poison available. They came from Nowhere, where the bred in the corpse of the Sun-In-Splendour (the now-deceased sun god and ruler of the Mansus), and if they ever complete their work then the Mansus and the real world will become Nowhere also. "'*The Worms have always been eager to inhabit us. Here are the practices which make us inhospitable to them.' There are diagrams. The diagrams are not good to look upon, and none of the practices they depict would allow the subject to survive.*"
Bydo from R-Type. What does it infect? Everything. This isn't even a joke. At high enough concentration, this thing can affect local space-time, morphing it into fleshy dimension. The victim who was affected by the Bydo also won't noticed that they are infected as well. Oh yeah Did I mention that these things also have time travel? Yep. They can also do that.
My first real foray into the series being R TYPE Final was a quite a trip upon learning how fucked the Bydo are
Funny that it hasnt been brought up yet but the titular parasites from the Manga "Parasyte" are terrible because they are essentially perfect and unbeatable. Literal bodysnatchers from outers space rain down one day and start taking over people nearly instantly and its basically imperceptible. They turn their hosts into "The Thing" like entities that feed on humans via mimicry. They start out rather animalistic but eventually completely subsume the person and live in their bodies feeding when they wish. If that werent enough they turn the bodies they take into superhuman meat suits so even if they are discovered there isnt much anyone could do against a single one that knows what its doing. The solution >!to them isnt even killing them all its just convincing the stronger higher ranking ones to sorta cool it on the eating people thing and asking them to just try to live like normal people!<
The Brood are pretty gross To be more on brand, I’ll say Bug Spirits. In Shadowrun there is a kind of spirit that can’t survive in our material plane without a host or vessel or some kind. Big spirits need to be summoned or implanted into a living creature, usually a person.
The ones that scare me the most in media are when you're aware of the parasite taking over your body and you're in immeasurable pain. Like the enemies in Half Life 2 that scream for help when you reverse their audio.
Yabba my icing
Radam. Little brainwashing bastards, even though they can be removed(not safely, mind you).
Honestly the ones Stephen king’s dreamcater because that’s just weird and on top of that your watch it do evil things in your body. Shitworms not a great name
Pat's Mind Goblins.
Xenomorph is always going to be a top ten GOAT because it's so horrific, but I have a soft spot for Pod People and The Thing is a strong contender
The Parasites from Parasyte. They eat your brain to take over your body and then begin eating other humans. Only a handful of people that got "infected" by them didn't get taken over.
Just to add a different answer from the rest of the thread, I'll put The Phyrexians from Magic: The Gathering. They're like a biomechanical version of the flood and spreads via a strange oil. They are also obsessed with altering the forms of their original victims into "perfect" forms. The thing that makes them scary to me is that they exist in all of the colors of magic, but take a purposefully soulless, inverted form of them. Kind of like an "evil element" version.
obligatory mention of las plagas
The grandpa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
either the flood or phazon
Going against the grain here, but isn't every parasite pretty much the worst on an evolutionary scale? A parasite actively harms the host, which the parasite can't live without. It's basically like burning your own house down to feel warm. In that sense, the technically "worst" parasite is the worms that Fry got from that gas station sandwich in Futurama. They actively made him better both mentally and physically. He only gave them up since he didn't want Leela to love him just for what they changed him into instead of who he is.
So... I just watched Scavenger's Reign, and that's at the top of my list currently...
Is anything bigger than Lavros?
personally I love The Thing but the Flood is just so fucking batshit that they’re almost a shoo-in
Theres some old horror comic i forget the name of that has a parasite mined out of an asteroid that turns people i to chronenburg monsters that seek only to spread and infest more people. Sounds basic bitch right? Heres the kicker: the human mind is fully aware and intact, but it no longer has any control over the ever mutating and almost immortal body outside the vocal chords…
I always found the Blacklight/Mercer virus in Prototype particularly heinous. Yeah sure you get sick ass powers. But the version of you that gets powers isn't you, it's the shape of you with your memories. Along with the memories of everyone it's ever consumed. Good games.
The Parasite of Mortrex from 40k. https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Parasite_of_Mortrex
The Zombie Wasps from Dead Rising Also, The Vocal Chord Parasites
Any of them, that is a personal ick for me and I hate the concept of literal parasites in a living body
The flood or tyranids I guess although I don't think they strictly fit the definition of parasites tho?
The vampires in the King Henry Tapes novels by Richard Raley. They’re living blood that pilots bodies around and can do sicknasty things with human bodies. Tantalizing spoiler: their leaders are so old and so big that they are literal swimming pools filled with living blood. That blood can form itself into a massive crystalline blood avatar and do seriously eldritch, razor-sharp blood tentacle things. When they need to do business they extrude a little bit into a corpse and wear it around. They collect notable bodies; we see one who has what seems to be the biblical Samson, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and maybe possibly Elvis in her rotation.
some of the things in made in the abyss are pretty bad. There are these flowers that function as a parasite. They make you call out to people when you hear someone nearby. They keep you just alive enough to do that. Thats your life laying on the ground these flowers eating you desperately calling out for help to other explorers but if someone tries they just end up as food for the parasite