You probably need a quick break from *gestures broadly* EVERYTHING, so here's ~2 minutes of a tardigrade (species unspecified) frolicking with Paramecium bursaria, a single-celled protist known for its mutualistic relationship with river algae in the Chlorella genus
YouTube video by Dr. Ralf Wagner
That's a few of the things that go super dark within my lore :) I even have an entire page detailing this protist's horrible disease that may either a. cause its host's death via slow mummification or b. turns them immortal with a side effect of "loss of brain control to said protist at times". Joy!
There are creatures who embody these protists, harnessing very powerful abilities at the cost of needing to absorb the latent energy ['Aura'] of other creatures for survival. Eating food does not keep the protist energized at all. This forces those creatures to do dangerous things to keep 'fed'. [+]
Since it requires a symbiotic relationship with its host, you cannot remove it. It will integrate itself into your RNA. The "stronger" the protist is, the more control you will have of it; the more you control it, the more energy you need to burn. Food will stop being a viable source of energy. [+]
For me, #LateNightWrite, it's my vector of "magic": a protist that ends up finding a host and, through that symbiotic relationship, grants them the abilities that it emulates. Unless it becomes carcinogenic (which it can), it's relatively harmless in most creatures. There are drawbacks, however: [+]
Yes, this was a hard one for me. Kelp really seems like a plant but it is a protist.
🚨SCIENCE ALERT🚨 I have just been informed that kelp is *not a member of the plant kingdom* It is a PROTIST - a kingdom of life that includes certain algae, amoebae, and slime molds. I repeat: KELP, which is all over the goddamn place, IS HELLA WEIRD
Also dog vomit mold is not even a fungi, it’s a protist more related to amoeba.
Like it SHOULD be a plant. But no it's just a protist that STRONGLY RESEMBLES plants and fulfills its niche as if it was a cousin to seagrass. But it also isn't.