[quote=@6slyboy6] There is one thing I am not a 100% sure about: your race is nothing more than spores that get into together living beings, and then effect them like the mind controlling fungi that target ants. The difference is that the whole lotta you form a network which is now sentient, and that you can choose to activate the spores in a human to take control of them if you wish to.

This is how I see it. Please correct me if I am wrong.[/quote]

Like a normal fungus the spore is just the method of reproduction. The Perennials as a race are the collection of things the spore has infected. Once infected the spores mature and grow complete fungal systems inside a host and convert them into a creature befitting the name Perennial. This need not always represent itself as a total conversion, or require total mind control as you list in your examples, but functions in that manner. 

I think the part you're getting hung up on is "The Spore" which is as much a name for many different kinds of spores and sub-species of fungal spores as 'the Perennial' is a collection of many species of fungi. In almost every case so far every xeno and alien species has been a single species that has ascended to dominance: the human being the chief among them. 

This is not the case of "The Perennial" who use "The Spore" to reproduce. Those words are titles for an idea within the culture of the species rather than an identifier of an individual species. "The Perennials" are a collection of hundreds and thousands of unique species all controlled by the consciousness they make up. "The Spore" is basically plant jizz that makes more "Perennials" by pollinating converting other species.

As an example, in this chart of genetic diversity the Perennials would be the the combined yellow (fungi) green (plant) and blue (archaeplastida) sections, and the spore would be the requisite reproductive process, while humans would be just one single black line of ancestry. Despite the collective genetic diversity they all form one mind, and one "race/species".

[img]https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/graphicsciencemarch2016.jpg[/img]