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general-dweebous · 5 months

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I love the idea of meeting the infamous Halsin your friends boast about, and he’s just smitten with you

Everyone always described him as such a flirt- charming, handsome, the whole package so to speak. Granted you underestimated what they meant when describing how giant he truly is. But most of all, you didn’t expect him to be so.. wonderful.

You knew your friends keep good company, so you expected you’d get along, but you didn’t expect to be sitting next to the giant bear of a man enthralled in conversation for hours. Had it truly been hours? It’s easy to make friends, but more of a challenge to find others you truly connect with, and Halsin was checking off all of those boxes.

And of course, his looks and overall stature combined with this personality make it difficult not to swoon over, but at the moment, you’re too elated simply connecting so well with someone else again. Who else would let you ramble about cute critters for 45 minutes straight?

What you weren’t catching on to, however, was that Halsin was absolutely taken with you. His eyes would drink in your features when it was your turn to speak, a smile stuck on his face as he listened to your nonstop train of thought, rambling on about another fascination of yours. Others tend to find these conversations a bit goofy, laughing them off, but you were invested. Even about the silly little things. And he loves it. He truly feels that he could watch and listen to you for hours and he wouldn’t get tired of your company.

The way his cheeks would flush a warm pink when you laugh at a silly nature joke of his.

How he would feel his chest warm as you seem to unknowingly lean in closer to him, letting your knees touch his without moving away.

Let alone the way his heart would beat faster as you take his hand in both of yours, turning his palm to face upwards as you trace lines on his hands, “I’m serious- you have earth hands”

“earth hands?” he’d repeat with a slight chuckle

“well don’t laugh at me!” you’d reply with a taunting smile, “it’s all in the shape; broad, large, square hands. It’s positive, don’t worry. It means you have strong values, or something.”

“Does it? What else does it mean?”

You’d pause, holding his one (large..) hand in both of yours, “Responsible, practical.” you’d say, your thumb almost massaging his palm. “comfortable working with your hands,”

Halsin’s face would flush again, subtly. He’d notice the way yours does, too, which doesn’t help his ever growing infatuation. His eyes are locked on yours, he’d be happy if you held onto his hand forever. He is almost instinctively flirty, following up with “to put it lightly, I suppose.”

There would be a moment of shy silence. You, trying to hide your embarrassed smirk by staring at his palm longer.

Halsin would be the type to forget anyone else is in the room, lifting the palm from your hand to hook a finger under your chin to get you to look up at him. Even sitting down he’s still double your size. His thumb would graze your lower lip as his eyes gaze into yours.

Unfortunately, there are other people in the room, and they ruin the moment.

“Halsin, have you seen- of course.” your mutual friend would say, rolling their eyes with a laugh. “Stop flirting with my ride home!” They’d tease as they grab your arm and pull you away. You know he’d be wanting to chase after you like some silly romantic novel. Another mutual friend from the group would plop down next to him, smacking him on the back with a laugh. “Careful, your eyes are practically turning into hearts.” They’d taunt. “They’re great, right?”

“An understatement.” He’d say with a warm smile, watching you leave, already hoping for the next encounter.

#I’m sorry I’m such a mess #he makes me so mushy #it’s ridiculous #but I can’t help it #I just want to flirt with him #amongst other things #I love halsin #):#halsin could ruin my life and i’d be fine with it #halsin fluff #halsin headcanons #daddy halsin #halsin x reader #baldurs gate 3 halsin #halsin bg3 #halsin

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slugcatmusings · 5 months

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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?