there are a few key points about rose : one, she is not human, she only looks human and is classified as a molded ; two, that she is a completely unique strain - a combination of the original black god mold and the e-series mold ( ethan is the closest molded species to her, but there are differences since ethan was human ) born from two molded ( unlike eveline, who was an embryo injected with mold, rose was completely made from it ) ; three, she is, effectively, immortal as her body can recreate itself from the mold - her consciousness is strong enough to travel through the megamycete's realm without fracturing and acts more as a "change in location" than death until her body is repaired.
despite all of that, she still ages, breathes, gets tired, suffers from thirst and hunger, so on and so forth - this is because the mold, having existed throughout history, has fed on enough people that it recognises what the natural biological processes of humans are and can replicate this ( to varying degrees of success ). however, where eating is concerned, rose is heterotrophic like most humans, but has a wider range of organic matter she can sustain herself on, like fungi. none of these things are crucial to her life, however, ( though she does not know that ) : everything internal is mold mimicking the human body. whilst rose herself does not have any human dna for the mold to mimic / replicate, it is mimicking that of her parents - it just so happens that it choses superficial traits at random much like genetics ( such as ethan's hair colour or mia's eye shape ) but processes like eating and sleep are entirely formed from the "memories" of her bodies - the same way ethan and mia, despite being molded, still eat and sleep out of habit ( as the mold is replicating biological functions it once had - rose does not have any of these, as mentioned, so it is copying its predecessor ).
given that the molded it is pulling from ( ie, the bakers and villagers - which includes the lords ) are all adults, rose will continue to age until this aging process begins to slow down - not completely, she will still age, but will do so at an extremely slow rate which, combined with the immortality gained through the mold, appears to "freeze" her physical appearance as it has all other molded - as unlike the other victims, she has no "default slate" ( aka, the moment she was infected ) to return to. the youngest victim that we know of is zoe baker - who was infected at twenty years old - meaning that this slowing of aging process will likely begin at twenty for rose ( much to my own chagrin i hate the forever young trope ).
were rose to be taken apart ( again ) one would see that her organs are entirely mold and do not look like normal human organs - they are a shifting organism with a bleached tone. similarly, her veins are hyaline ( but can appear white ), as they are closer to the hyphae of a fungus than human, meaning the cell wall is a hyphal wall made of mostly chitin rather than a tunica externa made of connective tissue. she also does not bleed like a human : her blood is viscous, hyaline ( or white ) and clots almost instantly when it leaves the body - it may, on occasion, take on a slight milky red hue once it leaves the body ( for minor wounds ) as the mold is attempting to replicate the appearance of human ( once again, it is working off the "expected state" of human from her parents ) but mostly serves as a camouflage / protective instinct of the mold. should she suffer a great or fatal wound, it will not do this and will instead clot, immediately attempting to regenerate what was lost and removing all signs of damage.
she does not actively scar as her body regenerates any lost tissue when wounded ( the scar-like "veins" on her hands, chest and neck are slightly raised, but not actual scars ) but she does have scars from her dismemberment as a child : one around each glenohumeral joint, one around her neck, and one around each acetabulum joint. these particular wounds scarred due to the crystallization process around the edge of each dismembered part, making it harder for the mold to seamlessly reintegrate the pieces.
rose identifies as nonbinary and uses she / they pronouns ( i am using she specifically in this post to avoid confusion when talking about molded / aspects of the megamycete ), but biologically her body reflects this - as a being made completely from mold, she does not have an actual gender ( it would be more accurate to say that like fungi, she has a "mating type" but not a gender ). she does have external sexual characteristics / organs that most would consider to sex her as "biologically female", but they do not serve any reproductive function, she does not menstruate, and she has a flat chest - the closest equivalent would be like her own, moldy version of turner syndrome. she is, once again, all mold and therefore human terms are as suited to her as they are to any other fungi - they aren't - and her "physical sex" is merely coincidental ( "although different sexes are not present within fungi, sexual selection can act due to the presence of different sex roles as well as different mating types as most fungi are hermaphroditic [ ... ] currently, sexual selection has been studied to occur more predominantly in the ascomycota and basidiomycota phyla", as rose is considered the white mold - like the aforementioned sclerotinia sclerotiorum ( an ascomycota ) - her sexual characteristics are would be considered a part of this sexual selection - which the mold imitates from her parents ). if rose did reproduce, it would be through mycelial fragmentation.
however, rose is not completely aware of her biology and assumes herself to be human-but-infected-by-mold, like her parents, rather than the complete offspring of two molded individuals resulting in a molded child.
rose's powers may not seem as strong as other molded ( such as eveline / miranda / ethan ) at first glance, but her power comes from her ability to control the mold - which includes a "destabilisation" effect which appears as white, fluffy growths similar to the fungus sclerotinia sclerotiorum ( or white mold ), as the mutamycete network is disrupted and destroyed, leading to the mold to undergo rapid cellular disintegration. inside the realm of consciousness, this has a greater effect on the more solid structures of mold like the sclerotia or on the liquid mold ( referred to as "liquid void" ). this disruption effects the auto-inducers of the mold, which activates a retreat instinct as it believes the area ( whether a physical location or a host ) is no longer viable for habitation. this, however, is not limited just to these two forms of mold but effects the molded themselves : essentially placing a "block" on communication through the mold which can range from reducing their ability to communicate ( through the mycelium network, such as telepathy / shared consciousness ) to destabilizing and "neutralising" the mold within their body - for example, "turning off" the mold so that wounds do not regenerate, or powers cannot be used - to more extreme cases such as complete disruption and disintegration causing death ( though this is incredibly rare ), in the same way that s sclerotiorum is a necrotroph and can cause cell death. the most common effect on other molded is a "freezing" effect, which causes the molded's movements, speech and thinking to slow down.
this is, in part, why heisenberg wanted to use her against miranda - by disrupting miranda's ability to communicate with the mold, she would have been much weaker and would be unable to call on the megamycete's memories ( which would have greatly limited her shapeshifting, knowledge and strength ) or its powers ( which would render her unable to control the mold around her / summon and create molded structures or enemies ).
these autoinducers allow the mold to communicate through quorum sensing, which facilitates a variety of behaviours such as symbiosis, virulence and motility. they also allow the mold to communicate with the megamycete and thus, access the memories / consciousness / genetic data absorbed by it, which would allow her to pull from the powers of anyone inside of it - though this is much, much harder to do than accessing raw data ( ie, memories ) stored inside it.
whilst not contagious, rose does have an effect of those around her, particularly plants : if around them for an extended period of time, or when stressed, the plants around her will become chlorotic, losing their chlorophyll and turning white or but may also initially show water-soaked lesions with a distinct margin, followed by wilting, bleaching, and shredding. when stressed ( in the literal definition, so any kind of stress, positive or negative ) rose can release spores - these spores are, mostly, non-infections and take on a white, "glowing" or "glittering" appearance. her mold - particularly her veins, which can be seen through the skin - are bioluminescent. the "white sweat" that forms on her body when negatively stressed is a form of biofilm - the mold in her body responds to this stress by activating this dispersal of biofilm in an attempt to colonise and control the source of stress. whilst it is possible that rose can infect someone, either through this biofilm or spores, it is somewhat restrained due to her own fears about such an event ( as it is well established in this series that the mental state of the host effects the virus / mold / etc ), and therefore is less virulent than the black mold possessed by eveline or miranda.
however, if left unattended, these white spores will eventually congregate into hard, black clumps of mycelium - the sclerotia - which act as a "reserve" of resources for molded and if these are left alone, will germinate to form fruiting bodies that will begin to colonize the space or host.
as she is connected to the megamycete, rose is able to connect to, view, absorb and enter the memories of those whose consciousnesses are inside of it, as all molded are connected in the mutamycete network. however, the longer a consciousness remains inside the megamycete, the thinner it becomes - diluting with other consciousnesses and memories until it is unidentifiable and unable to be separated - meaning the older the memory, the less information can be gathered from it ( excluding exception individuals, but i will talk more about this in a post about the realm of consciousness ). in short, rose has access to a lifetime of memories and knowledge, but not so much so that she could access every bit of knowledge for the entire lifespan of the megamycete and its predecessor.
since both her parents were infected and colonized by the e-series mold, she has a much stronger connection to e-series molded than the black god strain and, in particular, to eveline. as an entirely unique species, eveline cannot control or manipulate rose, but they are tethered together as reflections - rose is the "perfected" version of eveline : both scientifically, as a child born from the mold and perfectly adapted, and socially, as a child of the winters who was wanted and loved.
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