Jumpscared by new pfp like a baby or perhaps a dog who starts crying when someone they know change their appearance and in their mind this means their loved one is just gone from the world+
Assumption about you: you had a warrior cats phase
Yes and no.
I never read the books but I did roleplay it on the playground because my friends were in their warrior cats phase. So I like know a lot without having ever read the source material
exactly what it says on the tin. varying levels of how canon based they are. please enjoy my brainworms #mybrainworms
The bug sexes are queen, drone, and worker, much like typical bees and ants, though there is a lot of variation between different kinds of workers and drones.
The queen is self-explanatory, she commands the hive and kind of makes the hivemind actually function and make sense you know? like without her they would all get overwhelmed with too much information from every hive member all at once, so the queen controls what info everyone gets and stuff. The hive can technically survive without the queen, but it would get very overwhelming and confusing.
Next up are the drones. Unlike in bees where the drones only exist to reproduce and then die, these drones are more like middle management. They're more intelligent than a typical worker and can pretend to be a human intentionally. On top of being more intelligent, drones are also stronger than workers and less expandable in terms of the hive's survival.
And lastly there are workers! They are the most common type of hive member and are not very intelligent, on-par with an intelligent animal, mostly driven by instinct but able to reason somewhat, although they prefer not to. Thinking is stressful and they would rather just receive and follow orders. They have two distinct separate sides, the bug side and the human (or other intelligent race idk if its specifically humans kinda depends on if we hc that the bugs are aliens or like interdimensional beings, I haven't decided) side, and while the human is in control they are unaware of the bug. As we see with Rolan!
Next on the headcanon chopping block: reproduction, and how these different kinds of bugs actually come to be. Previously my hcs have included the workers being asexual like worker bees are but I kind of want to go back on that? I think their sexuality is very controlled ofc so they can only reproduce with permission but I think they should be able to do it in case of a situation where the hive desperately needs more workers quickly due to a bunch of them dying or something. I do believe however that the bugs are still asexual in terms of them being able to reproduce on their own, and them all having both male and female reproductive organs. They can have sex but they don't need to.
Whether a bug becomes a queen, a drone, or a worker, is not determined by chance or genetics, but rather by how they are raised.
For workers, before the bug is fully grown, its larval form is made to resemble a human and put in their place (again, like what happened to Rolan). The idea is similar to a cuckoo bird, trick another species into raising your young. While the human side of the new being is unaware of the change, the bug is able to mature and grow and eventually can be called upon by the hive to fulfill its duties as a worker.
Drones, however, are not made to replace a person immediately; instead the hive has to raise the larva until its grown. This process obviously takes up more time and effort and resources from the hive, which is why drones are considered more valuable, since they are harder to replace.
Raising a queen is similar to a drone, but there's a process similar to how bees have a royal honey that when given to baby bees will make them grow into a new queen. This process takes even longer than raising a drone does, and obviously is done pretty rarely. Once a new queen is fully grown, she will either inherit leadership of the hive (in cases where the old queen is overthrown, too old, ill, has gone away, died, etc), be given their own branch of the hive to rule (in the case of particularly large hives that span whole planets and stuff) or are sent out into the universe to start their own hive. The queens don't replace humans unlike the drones and workers, and rather need one to keep them tethered into the world and to have an understanding of how things work and such.
The one exception to these rules set out is within an established hive that does not need to hide itself among humans anymore. These hives still need dumb baby workers ofc, I'm not sure exactly how the way they would be raised would differ from the drones but there would be some kind of difference. Maybe something similar to the royal honey but opposite, or their DNA getting combined with a human's, or something? Unsure.
I mentioned that I have hcs for more specific roles within a hive, so what are those? We know a couple from Charlie's notes, particularly "Larva Attendant" and "Warrior" (Officer Dudes being a warrior). I think in a typical hive there would be more roles, HOWEVER I think not in the specific one we see in BITB, at least not yet. With time as they would have been able to settle and live more comfortably they would have gotten more different kinds of workers and drones, but during the campaign the hive is still establishing itself. I do also think that the particular hive we see may not have been the healthiest one but that's honestly mostly passive influence from source memories by our Kian and Rolan introjects and doesn't have much canon basis to it.
But, in a healthy and established hive, the roles I think the hive would have (also heavily derived from our Kian's source memories) are:
Warriors, who fight threats and defend the hive and nest from threats
Guards, who do much of the same but are less aggressive and more like bodyguards. Warriors will go out and kill a threat before it can get close, guards will stay at the entrances and make sure nobody slips past
Larva Attendants or babysitters, who care for and watch over the larvae and the unhatched eggs in the nursery
Nest Builders, who work on maintaining and caring for the nest, keeping it structurally sound, safe, comfortable, and nice
Entertainers, who keep the morale of the hive up and, well, entertain
Medics, who care for the physical well-being of the hive, treating injuries and illnesses
Comforters, who help keep the hive feeling okay especially during harder times, comforting and offering guidance to others
Farmers, who watch over the food storage, making sure no illnesses can get through from there to the hive and feeding all the members
Diplomats, who help both when it comes to in-hive relations, like when two members might get into a fight, and in relations between different hives. Let's say a planet has two hives and they want to join forces, or maybe two queens from different branches in the same large hive have gotten in a fight, or maybe the hive has fallen on hard times and needs aid from another hive. These are jobs for the diplomat
Rangers, who travel further out of the hive to find possible threats, other hives, food sources, places to expand the hive, etc. They are the only ones who will leave the safety of the hive for extended periods of time, and if a diplomat needs to do something farther away a ranger will be the one to escort and keep them safe
And last, Helpers. These bugs don't have any specific job and are rather more like a jack of all trades, helping a little with everything and keeping the hive's everyday life functioning. These types of workers are probably the most common, and it's what Rolan was meant to be
I imagine all of these groups would have one or two drones leading and watching over them, and then a bunch of workers following their lead. Some of the roles (warriors, helpers, farmers) are more common, while others (diplomats, entertainers, rangers) there are only a few of in any given hive. Also, any member could theoretically do any of the given jobs, even if that wasn't what they were specifically designed for; hence bug Kian being sent out to fight and bring in Rolan and Rand even though I don't HC him as being a warrior (more on that later)
The different jobs would all have some physical differences between them, I like to imagine that they would resemble different kinds of insects. They are all the same species, but different, both physically, and a little bit mentally. Some of these differences would be from birth (or I guess hatching) while others would be dependent on how they are raised, there would basically be different kinds of larva that would have the possibility to grow into one of a few types of member. I don't have fun names for them but let's just call them by numbers.
Type 1 includes warriors, guards, and rangers. These are the most physically strong and capable of the hive members
Type 2 includes larva attendants, medics, and comforters. These are the gentlest members who are typically more intelligent than others
Type 3 includes entertainers and diplomats. They are more social than the other members
And lastly, type 4 includes nest builders, farmers, and helpers. They're more well-rounded than the other three groups, stronger than types 2 and 3, more intelligent than types 1 and 3, and more sociable than types 1 and 2.
Back to reproduction for a moment, the type of member that reproduces would determine what type of larva would be born. A queen can birth any kind of larva, while a drone can create a larva that has the possibility of becoming any kind of member within the same type, and a worker can only create a larva that is the same kind of member as them (to put this into maybe clearer words, a queen can create anything, a medic drone can create a larva that can grow into a larva attendant, a medic, or a comforter, while a worker who's a farmer can only create a farmer larva). Any type of larva can grow into a drone or a queen under the right circumstances. If two members reproduce rather than doing it on their own, the larva created combines the parents' types/roles (so if a drone diplomat and worker ranger reproduced, the result would be a larva that can grow into an entertainer, a diplomat, or a ranger. If a drone helper and drone guard reproduce the resulting larva can grow to be anything from types 1 and 4. If a worker nest builder and worker comforter reproduce the larva can grow to be a nest builder or a comforter).
This post is already so long but who cares we're going longer. What kinds of workers/drones were the characters we saw in BITB? First, obviously, Rachel was the queen, and as I said, Rolan would have been a worker helper, so basically the most basic and common type of bug. Officer Dudes, Becky, and Richie were all drones, we ofc know that Dudes was a warrior, Becky I imagine was a diplomat, and Rat I'm not 100% sure but probably something in group 4.
Then there are the workers, the main named ones being Kian and Dickman. Dickman I imagine was a larva attendant with some guard attributes (what happens to the larva from non asexual reproduction, they have a main job but maintain some attributes from their other parent) and Kian was an entertainer. Or, well, would have been. If he wasn't a fucking baby. Yes according to my HCs since Kian was a worker the bug inside him was like. A day old. Actual fucking infant. Yes I plan on using this for angst. You can't stop me.
Anyways we've talked a lot about the hive dynamics and roles and reproduction so here's some more miscellaneous things!
The bugs' diet consist of meat, fruits, and honey (they obviously make the honey themselves, basically what people mistakenly thought vulture bees did with their "meat honey" aka combining meat paste and nectar to create their honey. I think this honey would be blood red in color, maybe a little thicker than regular honey and it would taste sweet with a bloody undertone)
The hive would keep humans as pets :) particularly humans that the hive had a strong emotional connection to. Specific pets would have been the Rand family because Rachel's love for them would have leaked through to them, and Kian since Becky and Rolan cared for him (Becky's love matters because she's a drone and Rolan's does because he was the first one and the queen cares for him more than her other workers because of that). I think that's why Becky taught him the spell to come back to life :) her love for him wasn't enough to spare him from the horrors but the hive would have brought him back to life post-canon once things had settled down more. At least two important hive members would need to care for someone in order for them to be spared (unless the member was the queen she can do whatever she wants) which is why Rolan's or Becky's parents wouldn't have been safe but in the end Kian would have been even if he died
I think it should take anywhere between a year and five years for a worker to reach maturity, not sure on the specifics. Long enough to warrant having a whole role to care for the littles but shorter than a human and also short enough that most of the workers could reasonably be fully grown by the time of the campaign. A queen reaching maturity probably takes way longer, definitely longer than a human, maybe like fifty years or even more, and a drone would be about the same as a worker, maybe a little longer since bigger brain needs more time to grow or something.
The clicking they do is used to communicate between longer distances where the hivemind isn't able to reach, they can also buzz and it has an effect similar to a cat's purring on other bugs. The effect would also be there for humans but not as powerful
The hive's nest is ofc built from human bodies, but more specifically most of those bodies aren't actually dead (which I actually do think Charlie may have intended for since he described the flesh strings moving and Kian's body was able to sing), they're kept alive by the queen to keep the nest from just... rotting away. So basically if the queen dies the humans the nest is made of will start dying for real without her there to keep them alive. If we read the ending as them actually being able to kill the queen and Rand surviving this is my reasoning for him not being able to bring Kian back again. Because I want him to suffer <3
Honestly there's way more but this is way too long so. I am leaving off here. If anyone made it to the end of my yapping feel free to ask me questions or whatever lmao I am going to take a med for my headache and go rest for a moment now
HEY. TIP. IF YOU’RE STRUGGLING WITH WRITING AND ARE EXPERIENCING WRITER’S BLOCK. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HELPS???? READING! READ!!!!! REREAD YOUR FAVORITE FICS! YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS! YOUR OWN WRITING!!! READ THAT BOOK THAT’S BEEN COLLECTING DUST ON YOUR SHELF FOR YEARS THAT YOU SWEAR YOU’LL GET TO EVENTUALLY!!!!! READ SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES!!!!! READ MYTHS AND FAIRYTALES AND WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU CAN THINK OF! READ A FUCKING DICTIONARY IF YOU WANT!!!!!! JUST!!!! READ!!!!! I PROMISE IT HELPS!!!!!!!! Okay thank you bye <3
