BoM/TWS Message Forum

So with Seuzz having done some more Student Bodies stuff, it got me thinking that ultimately part of the problem with Student Bodies is that there's just not a lot there. The mechanics of things are, frankly, a bit absurd and nonsensical and David himself is incredibly OP almost right out of the gate. So I figured I'd at least try and come up with something a little more codified, taking the bits and pieces I could find throughout the different branches and making them into something a little more fully formed for anyone who has any interest in writing something series for Student Bodies some day. Most of this would apply to anyone else affected by SX-2 as well, like Dana in some branches.

I'm aware it's probably a lot to take in for something that most people might not have an interest in.


To start with we have the basics that everyone is familiar with: David Johnson, after his accident, is a gelatinous blue worm that is able to enter a person's body and take them over. He can split parts of his body off which maintain his will and personality and through these pieces he can take over additional people. Those he takes over become a sort of hivemind with David being able to move his perspective and control between any of his hosts. This comes with a couple of other side effects. For instance, there's a sort of telepathy through the hivemind and he does not really need to have them talk in order for them to communicate with one another.

Through his mental connection with his hosts he is able to do things like rearrange and alter their short term memories or approximate something like body swaps via perspective and control shifts between his hosts. As shown with Adam Karter in the branch where he "takes over" David, with more experience in using his abilities and running people, David (or another SX-2 affected being) should be able to alter more than short term memories. Through an exhausting and laborious process, it's possible for him reshape their entire mind as he sees fit, adding, removing, and altering not just short term memories but long term ones as well, reforging their entire personality into what he wants it to be. But this is not something easy and requires David (or whoever) to have extensive use and experience in accessing a person's mind, altering their short term memories and such.

My thought: Jung was right and some form the collective unconscious is, in Student Bodies, a very real thing. David is himself of course but he also exists on a deeper and inaccessible part of the collective psyche. This is why he can jump between bodies he's possessed, why he can share information telepathically between them, how he can do "body swaps" and such. His diffused pieces are connected on a much deeper and subconscious level where "David Johnson" now exists.

The bodies that David inhabits are personae. When he takes someone over, they cease to exist as themselves and have instead been added to David's Self. If David possesses Dana Pak, then Dana is effectively a mask that David wears as she now exists as part of his collective identity. If he then places a worm into Sarah, and Joanna, and Yumi and so on then they too are added to his collective identity and become masks he can put on and remove. They are still controlled by him on a subconscious level at all times but if David shifts from Dana to Yumi then he's simply exchanging his Dana mask for a Yumi one. If David leaves Yumi's body, then Yumi exists once more as an independent being and not merely as a part of David's collective identity.

As shown in the branch where Will takes over/works with Mark Taylor and Jillian Harding, their experiments lead to a... thing that, as its fed nutrients, grows and can absorb people, creating fully formed replicants that David's mind occupies. He can also, once he has his own body back, shapeshift and alter his body, adding new forms via acquiring someone's genetic information. Skin, hair, even something as simple as sharing lipstick is enough to add their genetic information to his own. This is due to him being a sort of unstable genetic code himself. He's still technically the blob but in a more coherent shape and thus can still absorb things.

My thought is that, essentially, the same thing is true on a smaller level for David normally. When he enters somebody, he's not merely puppeting them but slowly consuming and melding with them. This happens on both a physical level with his body becoming part of the body he inhabits and a psychological level, where each time he sleeps he takes over more and more of their identity. After a period of time, they've been completely digested though the time period varies based on how much of him is in the person.

As an example, David is inhabiting Dana and moves a single worm into Yumi to take her over as well. From the moment his worm has taken over, the melding process begins. How long does it take? Again, it varies by how much of himself is inside another person. Let's say that at the minimum needed to take someone over, a sigle worm, the process takes around a week and if it's his full self the it would likely be a few months. So after a week, David decides he wants to move from Yumi into Chelsea... but he can't. The melding process has been completed and there is no more getting back that worm or the "real" Yumi. Yumi Saito no longer exists as a separate individual but as a part of David's collective identity.

This could partially explain why David is so keen on body hopping, spreading himself, and whatnot. It's, in part, an instinctual thing. One part external protection (if he's in more places, he can watch and control more and thus keep himself safe) and but on a subconscious level he also knows that he must move so as not to risk permanently merging with and absorbing someone. Because the more he spreads himself out, the more he's risking identity issues. Mixing them up for a start but identity death in one of his bodies on the extreme end as well.

One thing that never sat well with me was the idea that Karter can resist David taking him over and overpower/absorb him. There's no real reason for why that can happen in-story and it makes it feel a bit like favoritism; Karter can do it because he's cool and unique so he just can. My thought instead is that some minds are going to be stronger or more chaotic than others and that trying to absorb these minds runs the risk of David's identity falling victim to them. We see something sort of like that in BoM when Will copies Jeff Spencer but it takes a while for him to get his bearings because Spencer's mind is like quicksand.

So again, this is especially true the more David spreads himself out. Since his identity and sense of self is diffused among more personae, his grasp on his identity in a given body can potentially weaken and so if he tries to absorb the wrong person then their identity will overpower and absorb his own instead. Thus in the Karter branch, Karter himself didn't actually turn the tables on David. Rather, he's an exceptionally strongwilled individual with a chaotic mind and David was diffused enough to where trying to absorb his mind backfired. Instead, that piece of David believed itself to be Karter as his own identity was subsumed in the tidal wave that is Adam Karter's.

There should, then, be a way for David to get his identity back in a case like that but it would mean reabsorbing the rogue element back into the larger one. So if David is in 10 bodies, tries for an 11th but that fragment gets overpowered by the host's identity then David would likely have to exit four or five of his bodies and absorb them back into one of his other ones, then take what's in that body and force it into the 11th which should probably be enough to overpower the rogue identity and fix things.

So people it would be bad for David to try and take over if he's already taken over quite a number of other people? Adam Karter of course. I'd also say that people like Gary Chen, Gordon Black, Steve Patterson, Maria Vasquez, and Gloria Rea could also be dangerous if David tries absorbing them when he's already got a number of bodies as could plenty of others. In reality the risk exists in any body if he's spread too thin, but some are going to be even riskier.

There is also one more part of this. As said, when David is possessing someone he is absorbing and melding with them on both a physical and psychological level. So to go back to the Yumi example where the process has completed, again Yumi Saito is now a part of David Johnson and thus, if David wanted to he could switch from being David to being Yumi; sort of like if Will could swap anima at will without risking losing himself. On a meta level, this would allow the writer to make Yumi the main character or have a way of "bringing her back" in some form. She would be able to do the same stuff he does, know the same stuff, and so on because Yumi, remember, is no longer a separate entity from David but a part of him. She is not simply a mask now but a fully formed separate identity in the overall self that is David Johnson.

This would mean that identities could be freely swapped around. Let's say David has fully absorbed both Yumi and Chelsea while still having most of himself in Dana's body. Chelsea and Yumi exist as identities within him so if he wanted he could call up Yumi's identity into Chelsea's body and Chelsea's identity into Yumi's, or his identity into Chelsea's body and Chelsea's into Dana's and such. Thus this would be as close to real, actual body swapping as one could get not simply a perspective and sensation flip and mix up where each "thinks" they're swapped.

One more thing as well. In the Keyserling branch (maybe in others, but I most remember it there), David is able to change the vocal chords of one of his bodies to match another of his bodies and impersonate their voice. He does this a few times in that branch. So what's the deal? This is probably the iffiest and most out there assertion but I'll go with it anyway.

It goes back to him being able to shapeshift in the Jillian/Mark branch. Again, as said, what David likely does when taking someone over is a smaller scale version of what happens in that branch so as his goo body physically becomes one with the body it inhabits he's able to manipulate his host's body more and more. It can be simple stuff at first i.e. changing their voice, but as it goes he can change other features like eye color or their hair, add or remove stuff like freckles and moles, change their height and body shape, nose, etc. Once fully melded into a body he has complete control over it and can (within reason) change it as he pleases.

The most extreme version of this goes back to that branch as well. David is able to shapeshift into Jillian and Mark and others whose bodies he'd occupied prior to getting his new one. So this applies to that and the whole "David's self exists in a sort of collective unconscious for his inhabited bodies" idea. David is in Dana, puts a worm into Yumi, and the worm fully melds with Yumi. During that time, worms have also been placed into Sarah Pak and Chelsea Cooper. Yumi's body, having been completely melded with David's, can be reshaped into anyone else David is inhabiting as all of his bodies are—until he leaves them—part of him so again, collective uconscious. So if David wanted to, he could change Yumi's body into a copy of Dana, into Sarah, or into Chelsea. The same would be true of any other body he's completely melded with.