/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>In The Thing, the macrovirus is shown to have a dual nature of individualistic survival and some sort of crazy genetic memory collectivism - but! - it gained the language and motivations of the organisms it mimicked.
Each of the hosts behaved as if they were still themselves until, acting as if surprised, they were reminded of their inhuman nature.
The hosts behaved in that manner because the macrovirus essentially absorbed and digested them in the process of infection. There was still some time before they were fully assimilated by it. Part of the reason why they tend to look so startled and such during their own transformations is because while they are inherently at that point anything but human, the remaining parts of their humanity believes they are, rather than the chameleon macrovirus.

>So what would happen with a whole city of them who never came under direct threat? Or had a benign baseline of memory?
If you had a Thing waifu could you maintain your selves without devolving into some conjoined mass of flesh? Do you think she could become conscious of her nature and still hold together; perhaps with amorphous modifications, or is she really just a ravenous bacterial colony keeping up her brain patterns for as long as convenient?
The main objective for The Thing is its survival. Allow me to elucidate. While the macrovirus can perfectly mimic the bio-mass of its host, it cannot stop the imperfections like Norris' faulty heart condition. While the electro-stimulus of the defibrillator would normally jump start the heart of a human being, it was essentially sending a shock through the entirety of the Norris-Thing, provoking a self defense reaction from it. The head split from the main body in order to maintain its own survival. In may ways, The Thing can be best described as a more sci-fi/horror squick creature to the colony villain of Parasyte/Kisejuu.

As for an entire city being attacked, the Things would act in their own interests. The only reason why it appeared as a pillar of flesh at the dramatic climax of the movie is because it needed to forego all preconceptions of remaining hidden and needed all the mass it could muster to kill and/or assimilate the remaining humans in order to secure its escape from the hellish, frozen deserts of Antarctica.

Fire also poses the biggest existential threat to The Thing because it destroys cells and its ability to shift its bio-mass around like it usually does. The only way to guarantee it is killed, however, is to blow it up after burning since it can only reform itself from whatever bio-mass is available.

>And could this sort of thing fit into a world as nice as KC's?
Not really, no. Shoggothes are about as close to The Thing as we're going to get, lest KC decide to stir shit up with the western autistic audience with confirmed yuri corruption and furries in his settings AGAIN.