#parasite rex

[enddaysengine]

Let’s Read: Parasite Rex - Introduction (Chronicles or Darkness)

Over on @theonyxpath ’s forums, some is doing a Let’s Read of the Chronicle of Darkness core rulebook, which inspired me to do some reading of my own. The book I’m reading, though, Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer, isn’t part of the Chronicles of Darkness at all. Rather, it is a nonfiction book about real-world parasites that was listed as an inspiration in Hunter: the Vigil. I thought it might be interesting to give it a read and record some thoughts on using it as inspiration for Chronicle Why Parasite Rex? I’ve had this book sitting on my iPad for a while, and the very first time I picked it up with that my grandparents will I was still in University. I don’t think I ever got past the first chapter, and I certainly don’t remember much of it. The immediate cause for me to pick it back up again was that I got to see Anand Varma’s presentation with National Geographic Live today, entitled Beauty and the Bizarre, which opens with Anand’s incredible photography of various types of parasites. I had actually misremembered which book listed Parasite Rex as inspiration, so I had thought a couple of times through the lecture about the obvious link between Anand’s work and Requiem. Since I’m contemplating a Vampire Chronicle, now seemed to be as good of a time to read Parasite Rex as any. ***************** Introduction The introduction starts with a description of the effects of Sleeping Sickness in what is now South Sudan and at the time was held by the Rebel forces in the civil war. Zimmer picks up on how slippery the definition of a parasite is in scientific circles. I confess I run into this one as well when trying to differentiate for my students between a parasite and a pathogen. There is so much overlap between the two that a Venn Diagram between them could almost show a single circle. Is that the relationship between Hunters and the supernatural? One of the central conceits of Vigil has always been that those who take up the Vigil are different from regular mortals. The second that you hit Tier Three level Conspiracies you are dealing with organisations who either have explicitly supernatural powers or who access to those who do. It is also interesting how Zimmer describes scientists (and himself) as being morbidly fascinated with the beauty and elegance of parasites like Sleeping Sickness’s source, Trypanosoma brucei. I can see Hunter organizations being enthralled with the supernatural in similar ways, but it was also striking to me on a meta level. Scientist’s fascination with parasites is very the same curiosity that I suspect most horror fans feel towards the genre. For CofD even more specifically, I suspect that all of us who play the game feel something similar. We are enchanted and enthralled by the deadly world that we set this games in and the macabre beauty of organizations like the Ordo Dracul or the Guardians of the Veil. Moving over to Costa Rica, Zimmer is helping to collect frogs with parasitologist documenting the many unknown parasites they find withing frogs. They are pulling flukes, hookworms, and nematodes out of lungs, guts, and kidneys. It reminds me of a line from Batman Begins; “You are defending a city so corrupt, we have infiltrated every layer of its government.” A similar sentiment is used to convey how dark the world of Chronicles is, especially with Vampires. The Kindred have their fangs in everything, but does that mean the world is utterly corrupted? I mean, vampires in this game are social parasites, and parasites are goddamned good at getting past every last defence you can throw at them. Zimmerman had earlier mentioned that the parts of the world which aren’t crawling in parasites are far more unusual and abnormal than those that are. So a strong supernatural presence doesn’t mean doom for any one city. In fact, that’s normal; it’s just that mortals choose to ignore the paranormal. Ourorld is bursting with evidence of parasites right in front of our noses, and we manage willfully remain oblivious to it. Is it really that surprising that everyone in a supernatual modern world would ignore the ghost in the alley? They aren’t jaded by the supernatrual, quite the opposite. If they were conscious of the bizarre world around them, most people wouldn’t be able to cope. It also makes me wonder what evolutionary forces drove the supernaturals in CofD to exist in their current forms. Obviously, I could brush the evolutionary question off via magic, and for some creatures like Changelings and Beasts, that may be appropriate. Vampire, Werewolves, Prometheans, and Mages all have featured various social and lineage factors that could act as Dawkins Memes in the same way that genes do biologically. It’s an interesting question, especially since Anand talked about hyperparasites today, parasites that parasitize other parasites. Sound much like the Strix or Claimed to anyone? Those were certainly my thoughts. ******** I like this idea, I think I can get some pretty good ideas out of it. I don’t know how often updates will be, but I want to keep it up. If you have any thoughts on what I have said, or have read/start to read Parasite Rex, feel to chip in and post your own thoughts. Chapter 1: Nature’s Criminals is next.

[gianttankeh]

Rob Churm & Kathryn Elkin / City Vegetables / Blood Stereo at The CCA, Glasgow: 16/6/17.

Malcy Duff will perform as City Vegetables at Rob Churm’s ‘Parasite Rex’ exhibition this Friday. You can find out more about this show and the exhibition here.

[enddaysengine]

Let’s Read: Parasite Rex - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Nature's Criminals

The opening quote first chapter is taken from John Brown's Parasitic Wealth or Money Reform: A Manifesto to the People of the United States and to the Workers of the World. It's an interesting quote, explicitly join the connection between the perversion of justice and the larva of parasitic flies. Unsurprisingly, it frames the rest of the chapter, join steadily towards the political ramifications of the biology of parasites. We will get into that later, though.

The broad outline of the chapter is that it covers the history of scientific thought on parasites. One idea that stood out to me was the belief of European physicians in the Renaissance that parasites were either a result of foul air, unbalanced humors, or excessive heat or cold. The clear tie-in for Chronicles of Darkness is with Prometheans. If you want to up the body horror component for the Created, an easy way to do it would be to have Prometheans who have fallen into the grips of Torment spontaneously generate parasites. If you really wanted to up the creepy factor, these parasites could even mass together to form swarm-based Pandoran once they hit a certain critical population.

Next, there is a discussion of the concept of spontaneous generation and the discovery of microorganisms. There's a very interesting section where Zimmer discusses the problems that spontaneous generation posed for the Abrahamic creation myth, namely if parasites in microorganisms could spontaneously generate from blood, why was their need for God to create the universe? Furthermore, if God created them, what was the motivation for doing so? The same question exists for monsters in CofD. Different organizations have different answers in-universe, ranging from unholy scourges to evolutionary enigmas. The truth is up to the Storyteller, but it does touch on one of the things I love about CofD. It's awesome that the setting is so flexible, and that it poses these challenging and almost unknowable questions to ask, just like the real world poses its questions to scientists. It's easy to create a setting where all of the answers are laid out for you. It's also easy to just avoid answering questions. It's a difficult to ask questions, and only give partial clues towards their answers, to create ambiguity that implies a greater master plan and conductivity. That is one of my favourite things about Chronicles of Darkness. Speaking of blood though, what other parasites could be generated within the Vitae of the Kindred?

Moving on, there's a discussion of how the Danish zoologist Johan Steenstrop and the German doctor Friedrich Kuchenmeister established in the 1830s and 40s the lifecycle of parasites. It's gross, it's disgusting, it involves feeding immature tapeworms to condemned criminals without their knowledge. Peak Ordo Dracul or Mad Mage right there.

This is when evolutionary for science finally enters the picture, in the form of Ray Lankester. Lankester had the good fortune to have been a family friend of Darwin, who filled his mind with stories of adventure in biology as a child. Lankester saw the Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection as finely unifying biology and making to into a hard science. He is also responsible for some of Darwinism's greatest shortcomings. Lankester saw evolution as a constant march towards progress, a concept that many other biology teachers and I work hard to debunk nowadays. Lankester, however, believed that if evolution can march towards progress, it is also possible for it to slip away into degeneration.

I wonder if this idea of degeneration could play a role in the ecology of spirits in Chronicles. Spirits don't play by the same Darwinian rules that living creatures do, so the twisted hybrid magath could certainly be seen as degenerate spirits. Perhaps they were more common in regions that subscribe to Lankester's hypotheses? I expect no few Ivory Claws have also latched on to Lankester's ideas and have tenaciously held on them like a dog with her favourite stick.

Switching to another game line, I would be shocked if there weren't a large number of Heros who viewed Beasts and other supernaturals this way. To the Hero's twisted logical, all they are doing is "pruning" away the sagging branches of the tree of life. Zimmer hasn't hit the point in the chapter where he talks about how wrong and backwards this degeneracy idea is, but he's been hinting at it. All of the self-righteous mental gymnastics people do to justify their bigotry is the perfect note for a non-sympathetic, complete bastard of a Hero.

There are also some passages in which the Lancea et Sanctum and Ordo Dracul would find common ground, like this one:

"Since there was no divide between the ascent of life and the history of civilization, Lankester saw in parasites a grave warning for humans. Parasites degenerated "just as an active healthy man sometimes degenerates when he becomes suddenly possessed of a fortune; or as Rome degenerated when possessed of the riches of the ancient world..." To Lankester, the Maya living in the shadows of the abandoned temples of their ancestors, were degenerates, just as Victorian Europeans were pale imitation of the glorious ancient Greeks."

An ahistorical and unscientific outlook? Indeed, from our modern vantage point, but you'd be hard pressed to find a vampire or mage that these thoughts wouldn't resonate with. For the Lancea et Sanctum specifically, they are the last true reminant of Kindred Rome, and as that remnant, they may feel the pressure to continually evolve or risk falling into patterns and routines that would destroy them. That is where the Ordo Dracul comes in. The Ordo is all about evolution (scientific rigor, not so much). Lankester's "adapt or wilt" philosophy speaks to them both and I suspect would bind them together in those early modern domains where they got along.

Another biologist, Henry Drummond, as a quote that drives this convergence of philosophies even further home:

"...[Parasatism] is one of the gravest crimes in nature. It is a breach of the law of Evolution. Thou shalt evolve, thou shalt develop all thy faculties to the full, thou shalt attain to the highest conceivable perfection of thy race - and so perfect thy race - this is the first and greatest commandment of Nature."

If that's not Lancea meets Ordo talk, I don't know what is.

From here, the discussion turns to the politicization of evolutionary theory, and of course, that means talking the horrors of eugenics and Nazism. I'm not going to dwell on those too much, although there is some decent fodder for the more horrible Carthian-Ordo cooperative works.

Zimmer's final words in this chapter are tearing apart all of the crap people used to believe about parasites. So many scientists got parasites so horribly wrong, not realizing they were at the very centre of life's story rather than being worthless freeloaders. A lot of that came down to arrogance, the arrogance to think you know or understand everything. Zimmer specifically says, "they did not respect the depths of their own ignorance." This is one of my favourite sentiments about human nature, and it speaks to something I love about Chronicles of Darkness. There are no easy answers, no tidy boxes. Even as we drive back the perpetual darkness of ignorance, that just increases our knowledge of what we don't know. Each answer just creates more questions. It a lesson lots of CofD's occultists and monster hunters could take to heart. The world is more complex than we can ever know. We can choose to bulldoze our way through it blindly, or we can opt to revel in shedding a little more light on the mystery. What would you choose?

Next up: Chapter 2 - Terra Incognita

[arthropooda]

Bacteria and viruses have their own tricks, but many of the most intriguing strategies are found among the "classic" parasites— the protozoa, flukes, tapeworms, and other eukaryotes. They can evade the immune system, distract it, wear it out, and even take control of it, confusing its signals into a weakened state or, if need be, a heightened one. One sign of the sophistication of these parasites is the fact that there is still no vaccine for them, while there are many vaccines for viruses and bacteria. If Lankester had known any of this, perhaps he wouldn't have given parasites the bad reputation they still haven't been able to shake.

Parasite Rex, by Carl Zimmer

[a-christmas-fruitcake]

Alright, so under the cut is a random but interesting fact about tapeworms. In case you need to know things about tapeworms for Jeopardy or random conversation topics/ice breakers or whatever it is you kids do these days. [It's in a read more in case y'all don't like icky things]

[dinodrifterdarsh]

CRAAAAAAWLING IN MY BRAAAAAAIN THIS WASP IS PRETTY WEIRD/AWESOME

CRAAAAAAWLING IN MY BRAAAAAAIN THIS WASP IS PRETTY WEIRD/AWESOME

SADLY THIS IS BUT A MERE ARTICLE LINK AND IT IS HARD TO MAKE A NOT TERRIBLE LINKIN PARK PUN HERE

Looks pretty kinky. Don’t try this at home kids.

Well, cockroach brain, but the reference had to be made.

Ampulex compressa is a name that (literally) strikes fear (and a stinger) into the minds of cockroaches everywhere. Well, just in South Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands.

This wasp is what is…

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[jenniferleesexton]

We still go through life pretending that we are exalted above other animals, but we know that we too are collections of cells that work together, kept harmonized not by an angel but by chemical signals. If an organism can control those signals—an organism like a parasite—then it can control us. Parasites look at us coldly—as food, or perhaps as a vehicle. When an alien bursts out of a movie actor’s chest, it bursts through our pretenses to be more than brilliant creatures. It is nature itself that is bursting through, and it terrifies us.

-Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures. By Carl Zimmer

[jillal0pe]

It'd be nice if the library got something other than Parasite Rex.

It's a great book, but I've read it twice, and there's nothing else on the subject of parasites or parasitology in the system.  Besides a couple outdoor manuels and kids' books, it's alone.

I loved that the book was so easy to understand as well as broad in its spectrum, but some of its evolutionary ideas felt biased to me.  The idea of Red Queen evolution is both fascinating and logical, but I felt as if the concept was being applied too hard.

But the point of this post is, any suggestions?  I'm currently reading Infections and Inequalities, but it doesn't quite cut it.  Any good parasite books I could look up?