Just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean that I cant learn more about it or have to be angry about it.
I don’t understand furries. Doesn’t mean that I have to be angry when I see one of them in a fursuit or drawing.
I dont know the ins and outs of every vaccine. Doesn’t mean I get angry when I go and get a flu shot.
I don’t understand folks who see some monsters or inhuman characters as sexy. Again, doesn’t mean that I need to be mad when I see someone talking about the character’s charm.
Don’t see why something deserves my malice just because of my own lack of knowledge. I have many things that deserve my ire and spite, but I don’t need to give something my irritation just because “Oh, I don’t know it.”
Every day I think about Tenno who get too used to the capabilities of one Warframe or another and attempt to draw upon them even when they're in Transference with someone else, or even in their own human bodies.
Uriel and Titania mains who try to fly. Nidus and Inaros mains who walk straight into clouds of poison gas. Loki mains who instinctively try to turn invisible when they're in a tight spot. The brief moment of disorientation when the body they're in just won't work the way they expected it to.
Gameplay has honed certain instincts and reflexes into us based on the frames we love, and I think the Tenno are the same.
The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.
The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.
one if my favorite gifs right now the blankest eyes ive ever seen the lights are on but no ones home. and the other thing like grooming its snout but i don't think its even aware of what its doing. i dont think either of them know anything or know that theyre alive
@sevastiel genuinely interesting question considering the Infestation CAN be cured, (in the Origin System, hi Alad) but the Helminth Strain at least transcends TIME to an extent and seems to be a bit more difficult to dislodge. Do the Hiveminds cancel eachother out? Does the Helminth and its Hivemind of Void-attuned Warframes eat The Blood’s or do they compare notes?
Also: everyone who’s been infected has never managed to get UN-infected. The same goes for The Blood but that’s arguably ONE case that’s on-screen.. so we wouldn’t know now difficult it would be to cure
Then again, the people who could’ve held the cures in both settings didnt really want them to be uninfected. So.
So. What we know about both is where I'll start, because off the bat
I'm going to assume Helminth takes the win, with the Blood AND the guy getting assimilated by it.
So so... Doesn't matter who gets em first, Helminth ends up on top in the end. For reasons I'll specify below.
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NOTES BELOW CUT. THIS IS GONNA BE LONG. Spoiler warning for Iron Lung and Warframe. TLDR at the veery bottom.
BLOOD
Going over what I know about it first, since I don't have anywhere NEAR as much info.
1- It takes a long time to really 'kick in' and start showing physical effects. Simon got a strip across his face and it took about a day or more for the area to redden, iirc. It didn't REALLY start mutating him until there was a fair amount of it on him either, and it had a long while to work.
2- It took the sub cracking under pressure for blood to get in at all, and then it grew off of itself rather than growing INTO the things. If assimilation did occur, it was mostly due to and with living flesh. It's hard to say how much of the Blood effect on the sub towards the end was 'real' but in lieu of that answer I'm going to assume all of it.
3- Once it is in an area, it congregates to itself RAPIDLY. It needs its own mass to do this.
4- How much of a hivemind it actually is seems a bit... up in the air. The only minds we hear are from the science team, so if there is one it's not connected to the "light", any of the dead souls that make up the ocean, etc.
5- It's not a hivemind that seems capable of forcing control. If Eli could have forced Simon to do things, it would have. Moreover, the mutations that Simon ultimately suffered were geared towards him, meaning that getting connected to the blood doesn't 'add' you to the hivemind as much as it just creates a sort of empty link. So, you can still 'use' it and grow in a separate way that would hurt the 'hivemind' (Just Eli and the science team), even if it tries to enforce it's own idea of what you should be onto you. (Fishimon -> tree)
6- It's power source, or... 'origin,' definitely isn't connected to the hive. Whatever the light's goal is/whatever it wants, is definitely not what Eli wants, is definitely not what Simon wants. Eli hivemind actively changed its thoughts on what it wanted using information it learned through Simon, too, which means it's bound to local time/space.
7- It's unclear how much of the mind the Blood actually alters if it does at all. Aside from creating connection, Simon was still Simon till the end that we know of. It was exposure to the light that actually made Weird Shit Happen, and how much Simon was hallucinating/out of it can more directly be attributed to the known symptoms of dehydration+extreme stress+starvation+overheating+Did I mention stress+SEVERE radiation exposure+Sleep deprivation+multiple concussions+Multiple other injuries+Drinking Fucking Rubbing Alcohol
8- I don't know whether the vision of future Simon was blood related time fuckery, god related time fuckery, or just time fuckery time fuckery. We don't see time fuckery at other points so I assume it's not the blood.
So, this all leaves me with the conclusion that the Blood functions more like a mycelium network.
It is neutral, and manipulatable by the minds that tap into it to a certain degree.
Eli/the science squad got directly tapped in and grew/mutated, and used it as a way to contact Simon, (and later seemed to try and mutate him into something like them) but didn't seem to control the Blood as much as they were aware that the Blood Wanted To Tap In. Because the Light wanted to see, yk?
If they could actively control it I think Simon would have been dead/assimilated WAY faster, as they were in a similar sub themselves and would have been able to 1, get/corrupt the blackbox, 2, mess with the controls more directly, 3, interrupt other systems, 4, mess with the power, etc etc etc. The fact that Simon was able to dive into a giga puddle and get the blackbox and get back out alive is proof of this. If the blood could grow on itself, and they could control it, they coulda locked him in there so easy.
Now.
HELMINTH. (Lizzie! Yay!)
1- If you don't know already, Warframe's Infestation probably sweeps every other bio-plague on the block, if you grant all strain usage. (Some of the strains might solo, also. Grey and common specifically.)
It is made to assimilate EVERYTHING, to constantly adapt and grow. It can survive in space, it can consume and manipulate code and any other form of energy, and it can infest and subsume and actively utilize basically every material we've come across in some form or another given time. This shit eats planets. Literally. And did I mention the core of it's split hivemind exists outside the realm of reality, in the void, where it can reach all time and space? Also I don't know where the hell it gets it's mass from but it doesn't seem completely limited to shit it can ingest. Or it can manipulate what it does eat at an obscene level.
The only reason Warframe's universe isn't uberfucked is because every single faction in the solar system shakes hands over "fuck that and kill everything you see and abandon any ship that gets taken and please god get the tenno on site" and have been doing so for the last thousand years. The amount of shit that's been thrown at it, only for it to survive somewhere and regrow, is comedic. Earth nuked itself into oblivion trying to get rid of the first outbreaks and failed. (Hello, 1999! And then 1899! And... Duviri??? And then- Albrecht stop fucking instating that shit back further in time and farther in space whaT ARE YOU DOING-)
Our final saving Grace (and also the biggest problem) is that it's split into multiple smaller hiveminds with different specialties, intelligences, and growth types, that don't always get along.
2- The Helminth is one of those hiveminds. It is, specifically, extremely old, extremely intelligent, and tailor made to infest specifically people. It's more than capable of subsuming/running right on over other forms of infestation, and is capable of consuming basically everything and using it. It also has connections to many other forms of infestation already, iirc, and the void itself in general.
(Source: We can and do feed it most materials in the game, including infested ones, it's the thing that makes/operates/is/upkeeps warframes, which are biomechanical super soldiers who can wield the power of the void itself to truly ridiculous usage. With frames like Nidus and Caliban it shows that it can take normally living other forms of infestation or biomechanical life (I do think the sentients are a form of infestation) and take sole control over manipulation. And through visions I believe we see it having connections to the grey strain and further, as well as Eleanor (a protoframe granted telepathic connection via Helminth) being able to reach so far out into the void she can find alternate versions of herself. In different. Universes. Eleanor can reach farther than the Man in the Wall can, do NOT tell her (wally) she will be so jelly and like 203987x as mad we took 1999 man-
3- It is not limited to humans whatsoever. It infests our spaceship, grows huge manipulatable flesh masses, and makes pretty flowers. <3 Nor does it 'need' humans to create any sentient, organic life. Just material.
4- Infestation does seem easier when it's directly transmitted by fluid, (see: serums, Flare's guitar getting infested with a chunk of their own brain through shredding until their fingers bled, etc) but whether or not this is an actual limitation is currently unknown to me. It also seems to require quite a bit of itself to allow full scale biological changes (complete mutation) and propagates quite slowly, and is generally non infectious. (Possibly by choice, possibly by design, entirely unclear.) I'm not ENTIRELY sure why multiple doses of the serum are needed to warframe a person, but I'd assume it's actually pretty bad at 'growing' itself without specific things. Warframes take 3 days to build from scratch, after all.
(I believe it took at minimum 1 serum dose to completely alter the protoframe's externals, and another to alter the internals/allow for void usage.)
5- It's also good to note that the Helminth IS capable of communication with us, and has full control over everything that is "Helminth". Down to the spores. We are very, VERY lucky it likes us. This control allows it to custom alter how its infestation affects people physically, allowing it to, say. Infest someone, change their bodies to it's whim, and then alter it's biological programming to preserve consciousness and memory despite warframes being made to lose big chunks of specifically that. (See: Flare) It can force control, it doesn't want to.
So...
Helminth subsumes/alters with conscious intent, and has few limits if any aside from that which it imposes on itself.
FINAL TLDR!!!
Helminth goes "nom" and eats both.
What the fuck is the blood gonna do, man? It can eat the guy but like. Unless another conscious mind in the network reaches out its just Getting Bloodified.
There's literally nothing that we genuinely know of stopping the Helminth from waltzing in, taking a good gander, and going "Cool shit! New new for My Me! :D"
And if there was another mind in the network, if it cant control the blood physically and can only loosely impose a possible growth path- which can be overridden by the subsumed guy and/or any other living thing- then how the Fuck is it gonna override however many minds are in the Helminth?
Helminth is Weird in that I’m not sure how much of it was intentionally created and developed by the Orokin or how much of it was already Like That.
Or even if this whole line of thought is redundant because the moment it touched the Void it T R A N S C E N D E D time and then retroactively became Void-touched/Like That.
Anyway. Part of me wonders if the ‘Serum injected in Stages’ part is an intentional limitation in the process. As in: Helminth is specifically designed to infect others slowly and in stages as opposed to IMMEDIATELY.
Both because it would allow someone to terminate the process if they wanted, and because it means that the process could probably be modified Stage-by-stage
(Albrecht if I recall correctly altered his serum to be less severe? Regardless, the Garuda Lore implies there are different Methods to the Strain, and Ainikki’s was probably one that also allowed for Sentience considering Kullervo)
Also- for Eleanor Vs Wally in the ‘Can reach AUs’ bit!
To be fair to them, Wally seems to be capable of (if that’s what they’re doing in the scene) One-Hit KO’ing literally every other instance of The Operator and Drifter upon making a deal, presumably reaching through to THEIR AU selves then committing Mass Driftercide or something.
^ which mayyy be where the Fragmented ones come from considering Isleweaver dialogue. Wally is literally making us hit ourselves.
And Wally also seems to be capable to f Conceptually Embodying the timelines of Sirius and Orion then proceeded to throw them at eachother. For Fun, I guess. And this is IN THE WORLD OF DUST ITSELF, unlike Eleanor, who only managed to get to her AU self Mentally
so tbh I think their reach can, at least, potentially get on par with or is far greater than Eleanor’s…
it’s just that Wally usually doesn’t give much of a Shit, or can’t transcend Reality/Causality themselves due to getting it’s fingies stuck in the door
Like. Wally can definitely weaponize different Timelines as that’s how they use the Murmur- the Fragmented Ones specifically tie down or create Strands on which Wally can travel and influence things.
I’d guess Wally KNOWS about them all
(though imo I take Wally as NOT being the Void itself but rather being an aspect or avatar of it heavily influenced by the Orokin, or even it’s Child birthed through it encountering Albrecht and reacting to that. So. I don’t think Wally knows as much as what the Void IS, if that makes sense)
..but isn’t capable of using or putting that knowledge into practice.
Wondering why grocery prices are so high? One reason is that minimal competition means maximized price gouging. And now some of the biggest egg producers in the country are getting a mere slap on the wrist after years of ripping us off.
currently reading a funny manga where historical Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga is reincarnated in the modern day as a cute teenage girl with twintails, resulting in what I'd call, conservatively, The Girl Of All Time. she's the worst I love her
