I Took My Second ADHD Pill A Little Too Late I Guess Because It Was Suddenly 4 Am And I Made This Thing

I took my second ADHD pill a little too late I guess because it was suddenly 4 am and I made this thing about why parasitic organisms are shaped like ways and how to consider that for your fiction settings. Raw text version below the cut for people with busted seeing:

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The (N+1) Little Pigs

Where N is a comically large number.

From: Fairy Tales To Tell Other People's Children To Get Out Of Being Asked to Babysit In the Future: An Anthology

Once Upon A Time, there were (N+1) little pigs, who lived in a house with their mother. One day, their mother kicked them out to seek their fortunes in the world, because they were unemployed losers who turned their rooms into pigsties.

The First Little Pig saw a farmer selling bales of straw. "Aha!" he thought, "That looks like the perfect material to build a house for the minimum amount of effort!" He told his brothers this. They all looked at him like he was an idiot.

"A straw house is easy to build, but it's also easy to tear down!" said the Third Little Pig. "What if a wolf comes?" He started to show his brother studies about the maximum wind loads of straw houses, but the First Little Pig wasn't listening.

"Wolves are a hoax," said the First Little Pig. He bought the straw anyway, and built a rather ramshackle house.

The Second Little Pig laughed at the first little pig's foolishness, but when he saw a woodcutter selling sticks, he thought: "I want a big house, but I don't want to waste too much time building it. These will be perfect."

The Third Little Pig saw a bricklayer selling bricks, and thought: "These will make the strongest house possible. I'd like to see a wolf break into this!"

Soon, the Big Bad Wolf came along. He saw the houses the pigs had built, and he came up with a plan. He knocked on the door of the First Little Pig's straw house.

"Good Morning," he said to the First Little Pig. "Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior -"

"Go away, I'm playing Minecraft!" shouted the First Little Pig, and slammed the door in the Big Bad Wolf's face. So the Big Bad Wolf thought of a better plan.

"Hi, I'm installing Rooftop Solar, do you have a moment to talk about -"

"Go away."

So the Big Bad Wolf thought of a better plan.

"We've been trying to reach you concerning your car's extended warranty -"

"Die in a fire, Big Bad Bitch."

So the Big Bad Wolf thought of a better plan. He knocked on the door one more time.

"Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in!"

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

The Big Bad Wolf peered in the window, and decided the hair on the pig's chinny chin chin wasn't much of a threat. It was kind of unimpressive actually. A neckbeard, even.

"Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in!"

Then the Big Bad Wolf huffed, and puffed, and blew the straw house to pieces, and that was the end of the First Little Pig.

He moved on to the Second Little Pig's house, and repeated the process, only without the several ineffective scams. He went straight to the threats and demands, which is an admirable quality in a villain.

"Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in!"

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

"Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in!"

Then the Big Bad Wolf huffed, and puffed, and blew the stick house to splinters, and that was the end of the Second Little Pig.

The Third Little Pig watched his brothers' demise from his brick house, and made a smug FaceBook post about inferior construction methods. When he heard a knock on his door, he said without even waiting for the wolf to speak: "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

"Uhh, this is your neighbor Bob. I just wanted to check in and see if you're okay, I saw on NextDoor there were two houses blown in by a wolf, and my neighbor Dale said both the victims were pigs, so it seems like there's a pattern."

"Oh. Sorry," said the pig. "Don't worry about me, I've got the strongest house in the whole town!" and he patted the brick walls.

Bob the Neighbor left, and the Big Bad Wolf came along.

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

"Aww, come on, man, you didn't even give me a chance to knock!"

"This story's getting too long."

"Fair. Ahem… I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in!"

The Third Little Pig waited smugly in his armchair, waiting for the wolf to tire himself out. But what he didn't realize was that his attic windows had blown in. The Third Little Pig had built his house with a gable style roof for aesthetic reasons, and he had neglected to install hurricane ties as required by building codes in many areas prone to high wind disasters. With wind blowing inside the attic and over the roof, it acted just like a wing! The whole roof lifted off the house and blew away, and without the structural support, even the sturdy brick walls collapsed, crushing the Third Little Pig armchair and all.

The Fourth Little Pig built his house out of stone, with structurally adequate roof design. The wolf huffed and puffed with all his might, but the house just wouldn't budge!

So the Big Bad Wolf waited for the Fourth Little Pig to leave the house. After a few days, this little piggy went to market, when this little piggy should have stayed home. But this little piggy had to buy roast beef, because this little piggy had none. This little piggy saw a familiar shape in the parking lot, and cried WEEE WEEE WEEE WEEE, half of the way home. Not all the way home, because he only got halfway there before the Big Bad Wolf caught him and ate him.

The Fifth Little Pig purchased a 7500 sq ft McMansion in a gated community. But the house soon began to fall apart due to its subpar construction, and the Little Pig lost all his money in the subprime mortage crisis. The bank foreclosed on him, and threw him out in the streets, where the Big Bad Wolf had an easy meal.

The Sixth Little Pig built a sturdy wooden house: not a flimsy stick one, but solid timber framing. The wolf huffed and he puffed, but he could not blow the house in. Instead, he poured gasoline all over the exterior walls of the house and lit a match. The house caught fire, and turned the Sixth Little Pig into fried bacon.

The Seventh Little Pig built another stone house, and a very nice one it was. In fact, it was a castle. But he'd built it on a swamp, so his castle sank into the swamp. So he built another castle. That one sank into the swamp. So he built a third one. That one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one stayed up! And that's what the Seventh Little Pig's son inherited: the strongest castle in all of Pigland. However, when Wolfram the Conqueror invaded in 1066 AD, the Seventh Little Pig's castle proved incapable of withstanding the ferocious assault of the Warwolf Trebuchet. The Seventh Little Pig tried to surrender before the monstrous siege engine was even completed, but the Big Bad Wolf just laughed, and said there was no way he was going to all that effort to build such a large trebuchet and not use it. Soon the castle lay in ruins, and the Noble House of the Seventh Little Pig was broken.

The Eighth Little Pig built his house out of reinforced concrete. "I'd like to see you huff and puff this house down!" he boasted. "And I've got enough supplies in here to last for two years!"

But the Big Bad Wolf knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy, and the guy who a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy knew a guy who knew was an armadillo who worked in the demolitions industry. The armadillo set up several very large explosive charges all around the fourth pig's house.

"Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in!" said the Big Bad Wolf.

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

The armadillo laughed, and said: "Then Fire In the Hole! I'll blow your house in!"

With an almighty BANG! that stone house went away, And what happened to the pig isn't pleasant to say. The locals claim porkchops and cutlets rained down On Roofs, streets and sidewalks for three blocks around And windows were broken all over the town.

A-hem! Enough rhyming, back to the story.

The Ninth Little Pig didn't build a house at all. He just wasn't into it, man. Building houses meant being part of the system! He crashed on other people's couches and smoked weed all day. One day there was a knock at the door.

"Hey, man! Wanna buy some weed?" asked the Big Bad Wolf, who was wearing a clever disguise: he had a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a t-shirt that said "420." The Ninth Little Pig stared at him through bloodshot eyes. He scratched the hairs on his chinny chin chin. "Sure, man. Totally radical." He let the wolf in. The wolf was planning to eat him, but the smell of weed was so overpowering that he immediately became high, and they talked about metaphysical philosophy for three hours. Sadly for the Ninth Little Pig, after that the wolf got the munchies and ate him. Due to the sheer quantity of The Devil's Lettuce the pig had partaken in, the Big Bad Wolf was tripping balls for several weeks.

The Tenth Little Pig decided to move to a faraway land where there were no wolves and build his house there. On his journey he came to a bridge, where a troll was waitin for passerby.

"Ha ha!" said the troll. "You must pay the troll toll! I will eat you, delicious pig!"

"Wait!" cried the Tenth Little Pig. "My big brother is coming, and he has a house made of sticks! Wouldn't you rather eat him instead?"

"What." Said the Troll, and there was a long, awkward silence. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I think this is the wrong fairy tale," said the pig.

"I agree," said the troll, and ate him, so the Big Bad Wolf lost this round.

Later, the Big Bad Wolf came to a train track, where he saw a speeding trolley heading towards a switch. On the track ahead were five little pigs tied to the train tracks, on the other track was a single little pig. By pulling a lever, the wolf could make the trolley switch to the other track, saving the five little pigs but dooming the single pig. The Big Bad Wolf didn't pull the lever and allowed the five little pigs to be run over, because he was a Big Bad Wolf and killing more pigs was a desirable result for him. The Mad Philosophy Professor who had tied the pigs to the tracks and sabotaged the trolley's brakes lost his funding due to the lack of conclusive results, which just goes to show the importance of sound experiment design.

The Seventeenth Little Pig holed up in his house and refused to leave. The wolf waited and waited, but as he was waiting, he saw a little girl in a red hood wandering through the woods with a picnic basket. The Big Bad Wolf decided to try to eat her instead, but that is a story for another time. The Seventeenth Little Pig seemed safe, but little did he know that a deadly swine flu pandemic was spreading throughout the community.

The Eighteenth Little Pig built a very grand and sturdy house of brick and stone, but it had large windows that were easy to break into. One night, a pack of four Big Bad Wolves broke into his house. "What the Devil?" cried the Eighteenth Little Pig as he grabbed his powdered wig and Kentucky Rifle. He huffed, and he puffed, and he blew a golfball sized hole through the first wolf, shooting him dead on the spot. He drew his pistol on the second wolf, but it missed him entirely because it was smoothbore and nailed the neighbor's dog. He had to resort to the cannon at the top of the stairs loaded with grapeshot. The grapeshot shredded two wolves in the blast, and the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. The Eighteenth Little Pig fixed bayonets and charged the last terrified wolf, who bled out waiting for the police to arrive because triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. "Ah," said the Eighteenth Little Pig, "Just as the Founding Sounder intended."

The Nineteenth Little Pig went to college to become a Marine Biologist. This had many benefits, including living on a research vessel far away from any Big Bad Wolves. Sharks, on the other hand, were a different matter.

The Twentieth Little Pig didn't build a house: he hid in a cave, where he survived on a diet of 10,000 spiders per day and never left. He survived the Big Bad Wolf, but he is an outlier and should not have been counted.

The End

What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?

Spoiler Warning and Holy Wall of Text Batman Warning. I got WAY too into questioning the turbo-cancer here, hopefully my rambling makes sense.

So, the Rot is… weird, from a biological standpoint. Really weird, if you stop to think about it. It’s most frequently described as some variation of cancer, and it certainly fits the criteria for it. Caused by damage to DNA? Check. Multiplies uncontrollably? Check. Comes in both benign and malignant forms, one stationary and the other mobile? Big fat check. Heck, even the Rot cysts eating other creatures kind of fits, according to some research I’ve done – there are apparently cancer cells that will eat other cells, which makes sense in hindsight since cancer cells are cells that have lost important genetic restrictions, which may include whatever lets cells identify other cells as “do not eat.”

(I ain’t a biology whiz and I’m doing research on the fly while getting my thoughts out here, so take whatever I say about biology with a grain of salt)

So, Rot is clearly cancer of some kind, right? Case closed. Except when me and a friend of mine were talking Rain World theories on Discord, she brought up some interesting points that got me thinking.

First point: Rot cells obviously mutate in a way that affects FAR more than just cell replication and termination. Some of the cysts can HEAR. As far as I know, cells in the body do not hear sounds. They communicate via chemical signals and maybe, MAYBE react to temperature. Hearing involves complicated, specialized sensory apparatus to pick up on vibrations in the air. Even if you simplify it and say that it’s only vibrations, that’s STILL a multicellular thing, not a single-cell thing. It’s something that took millions of years to evolve on Earth, if not billions.

And while Rain World’s timeline goes on for long enough that it those kinds of mutations might happen eventually, Rot cysts have the ability to hear pretty much right from the start – because even the Proto-Long-Legs react to your presence like the Daddy Long Legs do, and the Rot in Spearmaster’s campaign, where Pebbles has recently contracted it, reacts the same way as it does in later campaigns. It’s already able to hear.

As far as I know, cancer just means the same cell duplicating over and over again. Are more mutations possible with each division, as errors are made in the DNA during splitting? Probably. But not to THAT extent. There’s no way a lump of cancer somehow mutated the exact complicated genetic blueprint needed to grow organs, at least not without outside interference.

Second point: Cases of Rot are way too consistent across the board. Now, we don’t have a huge sample size to work from, but from what we see from both Pebbles’ Rot, and Hunter Long Legs, they’re… pretty similar. Hunter Long Legs is basically a mobile Rot cyst. They move the same way, seem to grow the same way (starts as a growth inside/on the body before eventually freeing itself from whatever wall/flesh it grew from in some capacity and moving elsewhere), they have the same senses, and they even eat the same way, via something like phagocytosis (how white blood cells “eat” invading organisms via engulfing them and breaking them down in a sac in their main “body.”)

Now, this doesn’t tell us much, because cancer, when it does emerge, is pretty consistent in symptoms/what the mutated cells do once they start replicating. It’s pretty much the same regardless of whatever organism the cancer is happening in. But what ISN’T consistent is what causes the DNA error in the cancer cell in the first place. IRL, cancer can be caused by all kinds of things – smoking, radiation poisoning, being out in the sun too long, drinking deadly chemicals and whatnot, anything that damages DNA. But in RW, the only time we ever hear Rot talked about, or see it present, is in the context of an iterator having f*cked up while mucking around with DNA. Pebbles was trying to create an organism that could change his own genome, and No Significant Harassment created Hunter as a messenger and probably mucked something up in the process in his haste to get them to Moon.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes of it, of course, we’re working with a sample size of two in an apocalyptic world with who knows how much potentially DNA-damaging stuff around, but… that’s still awfully consistent.

So, combining these points and everything we know to be canon, Rot is:

an organism that lives inside another organism

Until a certain condition is met, it cannot harm said host organism.

Once said condition is met, it goes out of control, wreaking havoc on the organism’s systems and mutating, giving it sensory capabilities and an appetite

Said condition is apparently someone messing up when re-arranging genomes, in yourself or others

It is widespread across multiple different species, at least iterators and slugcats but potentially other species as well.

Once you have a bad case of it, it is apparently NOT CURABLE. Pebbles tried everything he could think of but apparently exhausted all of his options by the time of the Survivor/Monk campaigns.

So, with all the context FINALLY laid out, here’s my wild theory: Rot isn’t a cancer. It’s a symbiote turned parasite. Specifically, I believe it’s a symbiotic microbe that lives inside the cells that make up every other creature in Rain World, and is held in check by a specific gene that all species share, and altering or getting rid of that gene causes it to go berserk, taking over and eventually mutating the host cells.

Yeah, I did watch Parasite Eve let’s plays as a kid, why do you ask? Anyway, hear me out here.

There is precedence for single-celled organisms living inside of other single-celled organisms. They’re referred to as intracellular endosymbiots (hopefully I got the spelling right there), and the most well-known one is probably the mitochondria. The powerhouse of the cell is thought to be descended from some bacteria way, WAY back that was engulfed by a larger cell and not only survived it, but BENEFITED from it. Since then those ancient proto-mitochondria and eukaryotic cells have mutually evolved to be dependent on each other. So it’s entirely possible for something similar to have happened in Rain World.

However, I don’t think it happened NATURALLY, here. Because something that’s able to take over a cell entirely and begin wildly mutating it is NOT something your average cell wants inside of it. There’s a VERY high chance of extinction if you do that. Which means that of course those funky bio-tech loving Ancients either took a look at a wildly dangerous cellular parasite and went “hmmm we can use this” or made one themselves.

Why did they do this? Who knows! Currently, I’m tied between “they needed a better powerhouse for the cell to power the various weird adaptations they’re building into various creatures,” “there was some sort of disease that this parasite gave immunity against and they wanted to make use of it,” and “it gave their creations massively powerful regeneration factors that made them much easier to maintain.” Possibly it was all three. Whatever the reason, the Ancients either found or created this parasite, and put it into their creations’ cells, hoping to reap the benefits.

Well, they got the benefits, but they also got a microbe that hijacked the cells and harnessed their pre-existing DNA blueprints to build organisms disguised as great big blobs of cancer. Which is not exactly ideal, but hey, they just had to figure out a way of keeping the cell hijacking from happening! And the way they ended up going about it was to alter the thing so that so long as there was a specific DNA sequence in the cell, it laid mostly dormant. All the benefits, none of the risks – so long as that specific string of genes remained intact.

And then BECAUSE it was so beneficial, they spread their artificial symbiote and it’s genetic reins throughout ALL of their creations, from the smallest pipe-cleaning slugs to the iterators. Which meant that as their purposed organisms replaced most of the original ecosystem, they spread the symbiote as well. Thus making it possible for pretty much ANY creature on the planet to come down with a bad case of the Rot. And with the iterators, I wouldn’t be surprised if this symbiote is tied to their self-destruction taboos. Try to cross yourself out? Well, it’s gonna maybe happen now, but it’ll be a slow painful death as you’re eaten alive from the inside and all your own parts turn against you, so was it really worth it?

And they never told their creations this perhaps even actively hid it, because why tell them the cause of the main deterrent to them mucking with their taboos? They might find a way around it. The iterators were left ignorant of how Rot works, and because of this they never figured out that Rot HAD a cure after all: rebuilding that genome that reins in the symbiote. Because why in the name of the Void would they repeat the same mistakes that gave them Rot in the first place, and potentially make it worse?

I Took My Second ADHD Pill A Little Too Late I Guess Because It Was Suddenly 4 Am And I Made This Thing

More Posts from Musical-fish and Others

The (N+1) Little Pigs

What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?