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Playing With / Puppeteer Parasite

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Basic Trope: An organism that controls other organisms, usually for malevolent reasons.

  • Straight: The St. Troper is infiltrated by an alien who parasitises Bob. This results in Bob becoming devoid of emotion and a direct extension of the alien’s will (which is usually to kill off the rest of the crew).
  • Exaggerated:
    • The parasite ends up killing Bob, and he becomes a Parasite Zombie.
    • The parasite fuses its victims together into one horrifying Body of Bodies, tied together by mycelium or some equivalent.
  • Downplayed: Bob isn’t being explicitly controlled by the alien, but it uses suggestion to make Bob distrustful of his crewmates and more willing to do things that go against the crew’s ultimate goals.
  • Justified: The alien has a very weak or even nonexistent physical form, so parasitisation is really the only way it can actually do things.
  • Inverted: Bob has an ability that allows him to control things that parasitize him.
  • Subverted: When the doctors test Bob for the parasite, he shows up negative, and it turns out Bob was evil.
  • Double Subverted: ...But it turns out that the alien is a master of disguise by nature, and Bob was being controlled the whole time.
  • Parodied: No-one suspects that Bob is being controlled, despite him explicitly acting out of character and even attempting to kill them in plain view for everyone to see.
  • Zig-Zagged: Bob seems to be fine in front of everyone, but Alice later catches him sabotaging the ship’s food supply. The crew believes that Bob is being controlled by an alien, but it turns out that Bob killed the alien earlier and was Evil All Along. Except Alice actually did have the parasite, but she seems fine, except for the fact that she was seen spinning a knife randomly in the background. As it turns out, the alien isn’t hostile, and just wants to join the crew.
  • Averted:
    • There are no parasites in the work.
    • All the parasites leave their victims' minds intact.
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: “Hm. Bob seems quite invested in his new goo hat, and didn’t really care when we found Louie’s mutilated corpse...must be having a bad day.”
  • Invoked: Bob deliberately lets himself be controlled in a Heroic Sacrifice, and Alice has to put him out of his misery.
  • Exploited: Charlie, who never really liked Bob due to his relationship with Grace, takes this as an opportunity to kill off Bob without scrutiny so he can have Grace all to himself.
  • Defied: Bob kills the alien the minute he’s alerted to its presence on board.
  • Deconstructed:
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

Back to Puppeteer Parasite, meatbag. Want some goo?

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