Basic Trope: One consciousness, but many bodies sharing the same consciousness.
- Straight: The Great Mind Queen, Alice, has one overwhelming consciousness, with hundreds of bodies being controlled by her.
- Exaggerated:
- All bodies share the single mind, and exclusively that mind, and that of the Great Mind Queen's. They have no opposing opinions, information, concepts, etc. They have no differing individuality, and no dissent. Meaning, nobody and nothing can be at odds with each other, have absolutely no free will, and anything the bodies do and say, as well as think in way that is uncharacteristic of them is truly irrelevant.
- Every single consciousness in the entire multiverse, from the most basic ones to those inscrutable to even the most advanced galaxy faring beings, becomes an extension of the Great Queen's will.
- All beings, human and non-human, and those who don't have a consciousness of their own, even death itself, are an extension of Alice's absolute will.
- Downplayed:
- The Great Mind Queen shares the same consciousness, but sort of has control over the bodies of several people.
- Turns out the so-called "Hive Mind" is more of a permanent biological Internet that automatically stores every single knowledge, memories, experiences and ideas of the whole species have perceived so far.
- Single-Minded Twins
- Justified:
- The Great Mind Queen is an inherently higher-dimensional, conceptual being of unity. Therefore, she considers excessive egotism and individuality to be a serious problem that needs to be permanently taken care of by melding their thoughts into a singular mind of its own that has no conflict and is in perfect harmony, or she has her consciousness taking over their bodies beyond all timelines.
- Alice is a creator goddess of her own people, and are deliberately made to be literally mindless. When she controls them, no resistance is possible, because they never had their own mind to begin with. If she doesn't control them, they will be just bodies who have no mind, personality, and consciousness of their own.
- The Great Mind Queen is the ruler of a telepathic species and the majority of them are nonsapient. They cannot resist her control and have no personhood or any real purpose, thus reducing them to easily-used tools.
- Inverted: The Great Mind Queen wants to gather people into one body, but with different types of consciousness.
- Subverted: At first, the Great Mind Queen was going execute the "completely meld people's minds into one" plot, but she decided to not do that.
- Double Subverted: ...But then the Great Mind Queen herself decided "Screw that!", and meld all of their consciousnesses into fewer minds, but still many bodies to control for each of them.
- Parodied: The Great Mind Queen casts hypnosis and make them speak all at the same time, do fifty push ups, fight each other, and literally go to sleep for 24 hours.
- Zig Zagged: It turns out the Great Mind Queen's Hive Mind was very flexible as it was an "individualist" variant: Each of the members of the hive has preserved some of the basic concepts of free will or individuality-Say, other hives minds often refer themselves as "We the (insert hive species name)", but the Queen's members refer themselves as their names first before emphasizing their collective species (I am XXX of the Hive of XXX). Moreover, the members also can generate their own opinions and ideas, but they cannot walk the talk: The final decision rests upon the Queen herself, and once her decision is set, all members will 100% comply with no exceptions.
- Averted: The Great Mind Queen does nothing to control the people.
- Enforced: To prove that entitled individualism can be so annoying that it's problematic and unlikable to not only the audience, but in-universe, the characters themselves. So there will be a being who actually has both the means and abilities to erase the problem.
- Lampshaded: "I am the ultimate monarch of my own universe, free will has always been a privilege, never a right. You never were entitled to do whatever you like in the beginning."
- Invoked: Great Mind Queen Alice irreversibly eliminates all forms of bigotry, slavery, greed, boredom by rewriting beyond time and space.
- Exploited:
- Queen Alice fully knows that since they have no true mind of their own whatsoever when they are made extensions of her will, she obliterated any and all criticism and opinions of her fans and followers, and since she knows opinions aren't everything, this doesn't bother her in one bit. Not only that, she rigged them so that if they aren't influenced by anyone of her level of power, they will immediately respond with terrifying faces, either driving off and/or destroying the offender.
- The Federation ally themselves with Queen Alice and use her as a form of Subspace Ansible due to her ability to send messages between her bodies at FTL, gaining a massive communications advantage over The Empire, or vice versa depending on who manages to get to her first.
- Defied: The Great Mind Queen decides to not bother with the "unite all of humanity's mind into one, then blow up in their faces" situation and do something else.
- Discussed: "Hive-Minded civilizations are so weird to me. I've never been able to wrap my head around the concept." "Well I've been to a planet with sapient microbes who have similar trouble with us multi-cellular lifeforms."
- Conversed: "Why do characters who exist as one person across many separate bodies so frequently have an expansionistic desire to assimilate others?"
- Deconstructed:
- Because they are all extensions of Alice, and any uncharacteristic behavior is quite irrelevant, nobody can be themselves however they wish. All mental conflict when they are under control by their queen is nonexistent, as the Great Mind Queen has literally power over their entire lives, and none of them are ever able to overcome it, since she obliterated their original personality beyond time and space, with no magical way of fighting back.
- Since they have no personality of their own, and therefore, zero potential of developing their own character, when the Great Mind Queen, Alice, is done with them, they don't suddenly act on their own. They can't even inwardly scream. They are bodies entirely with neither any right, privilege, nor will of their own. Since Alice made sure their immortality is inseparable, and can never override her will for any unrealistic reason, suicide is literally impossible and cannot independently speak. They are incapable of any suppressed emotions, and there aren't any bottled whatsoever.
- Galith is a hivemind species of spacefaring Starfish Aliens whose individual brains are interlinked via Quantum Entanglement between special naturally-evolved neurons. Before developing space travel, Galith had to spend thousand and thousands of years in crushing loneliness, without even knowing what loneliness was, the very concept of "other people" being completely foreign to it. But now that it has encountered other civilizations, far from wanting to assimilate anyone, Galith is eager to make friends with as many people as possible.
- The Communion of Alice expands throughout the galaxy and declares war on the Federation of Bob, eager to prove the inherent superiority of hivemind species. This comes back to bite her in her billions of asses when she realizes that though her organizational skills in military and communication areas are unmatched, the cluster of individual and dissenting viewpoints of the Federation's member species gives them plenty of opinions and theories to consider, resulting in them being extremely adaptable. Meanwhile, Alice has much difficulty doing so because she had no one else to tell her when she is making the wrong decisions.
- Rebecca controls the entire Hi’va species, keeping them united in a singular purpose and an era of peace. However, the lack of other sapient life to interact with and dissenting opinions to consider leaves her lonely, bored and lacking any social skills. When other species land on her planet, things go horribly wrong and she can’t defend herself on account of having literally never had a single battle outside of her wargames and not having any military technology or specialised bioforms.
- Implied: Alice has an impressively loyal Keystone Army that does anything she says.
- Reconstructed: "Terry" is a sapient and self-aware network of millions of radio-linked robots that pool processing power the same way the neurons in a human brain do. The individual robots no more have any distinct personality than the neurons in your head do, and jamming transmissions in order to separate one robot form the rest has the same effect as surgically pulling a single neuron out of a human's skull.
- Played For Drama:
- After a First Contact Faux Pas that cost countless lives on both sides, peace is finally reached between humanity and Rebecca. However, many soldiers from the war are scarred by the experience and distrust Rebecca, viewing her as a monster to be killed. Meanwhile, Rebecca herself cut down countless civilians without realising the consequences of her actions and struggles with self-loathing from the realisation.
- After a relatively peaceful meeting with a hive mind, attempts are made to integrate them into The Federation but are hampered by their lack of understanding of most different concepts.
We shall meld back to the Hive Mind, for we are always one, never anything below that.
