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The Plutionian Others


sweetsunray

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Reading OP gets me thinking whether the corpse bride of the Night's King was a wight. First read I thought she was a sorcererous servant of the Great Other or something. Now I think she was a wight with those star-like blue eyes. And she's literally a "corpse bride." (Considering GRRM wrote a short story about necrophilia, I'm very inclined to believe this.) We are getting used to the idea that the wights are mindless zombies (kinda on account of the show), but maybe they aren't? Maybe the WW have more control over them than what appears. In GoT, the wights do trick the rangers into taking them inside the Wall. 

Anyway, the essay is very interesting. But I would not rush to find scientific explanations for what GRRM writes in his books. It's fantasy, not sci-fi. GRRM would just say "it's magic, man," like what he said with people trying to explain the weird seasons with dwarf stars. But it is fun to speculate (and I learned something new about our blood types!)

On 5/31/2019 at 10:48 PM, Ice Queen said:

Have you considered the (remote) possibility that the Others aren't native to Planetos? I have nothing to back that up, just tossing it out there. 

I always thought, what if the Others are the natives and the humans are the alien interlopers? Maybe that's going too far into 1000 Worlds. Perhaps rather than "aliens," maybe interdimensional arrivals? Fire and Ice could be two realms on one planet that isn't necessarily connected like our one is. 

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13 minutes ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

Reading OP gets me thinking whether the corpse bride of the Night's King was a wight. First read I thought she was a sorcererous servant of the Great Other or something. Now I think she was a wight with those star-like blue eyes. And she's literally a "corpse bride." (Considering GRRM wrote a short story about necrophilia, I'm very inclined to believe this.) We are getting used to the idea that the wights are mindless zombies (kinda on account of the show), but maybe they aren't? Maybe the WW have more control over them than what appears. In GoT, the wights do trick the rangers into taking them inside the Wall.

More leaning towards an actual female Other, perhaps the only one. One big momma spider to breed the rest.

14 minutes ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

Anyway, the essay is very interesting. But I would not rush to find scientific explanations for what GRRM writes in his books. It's fantasy, not sci-fi. GRRM would just say "it's magic, man," like what he said with people trying to explain the weird seasons with dwarf stars. But it is fun to speculate (and I learned something new about our blood types!)

Yes and no. You're right that it ultimately does not have to be scientifically workable, or real. The Others would still require magic to be who they are and traipsing around in the Haunted Forest during a summer season (the setting of the Porlogue), on a planet with pressure and temperatures comparable to ours, even though it has whacky seasons due to magic. That is why the proposal of the matter is partially concentrated on the symbolic relevance of nitrogen and carbon monoxide, and Pluto has mythological symbolic relevance as well, both for the Lovecraft inspiration as well as his own Chthonic mythological use of various gods for the North. Basically, the speculative idea here is "Ok, so I write my Ned Stark with Hades and Osiris allusions. And Lyanna as a Persephone, etc... hmm... the Others too are icy and north and stand for deadly. With the Starks it's benevolent, but these guys not. What allusion can I incorporate with these Others that is also a god of death?" At this point Pluto is a close idea, because it's a cold planet and a another mythological far colder version of Hades. Looking up what the surface would be like is easily found, including in 1993, and the deadly impact of nitrogen and carbon monoxide as well. Basic chemistry HS handbooks explain their reactions and he has his Plutonian Others. For someone who did write sci-fi for so long that's likely something he already knows in the back of his mind.   

It's also true that this is fantasy, and not sci-fi, but George also wrote sci-fi for decades and he's borrowing story concepts from his sci-fi period such as the example of This Tower of Ashes with the dreamspider idea re-used in the House of the Undying (but in a different setting, outlook and outcome).

Does it truly physically matter for the reader what the chemical elements are for the Others? None whatsoever. Does it matter for people who debate about the origin and nature of the Others? Yup.

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The female Other.

A key moment in history, judging by humanity's reaction to it, burying the incident deeper than the Church covering up a schism.   Odd.   Was she a unique bride of Frankenstein specially crafted by the Others' version of Qyburn?    Or was she the more naturally arising phenomenon....and the other Others are the artificial ones, the products of magecraft?   Or was it always a risk that Others could start reproducing via the genders method......which is why the NightsWatch is so staunch about their Dudes Only!  policy.... because by keeping it all men on the Wall they're depriving the Cold of any chance to turn a woman Otherish, staving off the nightmarish day when the Others can reproduce at a geometric rate.

I even wonder if the Others were participating in the dudes only thing by choice as well.  Like, maybe the green men were turned to Others when humanity betrayed the pact and their souls were forfeit and their bodies soured and froze accordingly to how bitter the betrayal was for the children, like a wiernet mood shift that effected their minds and bodies went worse and worse like when the stock market plummets and nobody has even the illusion of control over the process anymore.   

But the point was... if the Others used to be green men, or brothers of the Watch, they could remain aware of how monstrous they've become and not want their 'species' to increase in number, choosing instead to continue enforcing the watch's rules about taking no wife and fathering no children.  True to the oath while playing the role of bad cop exiles on the Other side of the 'wall experience.'  That would mean the corpse queen + night king ordeal was truly a schism for both sides?!?!    Would the Others have sent some sherriffs of their own kind to help clamp down on the night king?!    Or were the Others giddy at having infiltrated the wall and in the end it was about that and not reproduction?  Eh.  

I guess the presence of so many wildling women north of the wall kinda disproves this theory as the Others have had lots of opportunity to biologically reproduce if all it takes is turning humans of both genders and then having an OO (Other Orgy).   

And if the Others are truly Other then they're an independent species of their own and there is no such thing as turning Craster's babies into Others.   That's my preferred way to think of Others- -separate Ice Life genesis, different mode of existence.  It's only when pondering night queen and craster babies that I wonder if the Others are Us made into ice vampires & whatnot.

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18 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

And if the Others are truly Other then they're an independent species of their own and there is no such thing as turning Craster's babies into Others.   That's my preferred way to think of Others- -separate Ice Life genesis, different mode of existence.  It's only when pondering night queen and craster babies that I wonder if the Others are Us made into ice vampires & whatnot.

Well, I think the clue is "giving seed and soul". The Others are "white shadows". Mel makes shadow babies with "seed and shadow". Dany makes dragons with "blood and fire".

It's curious that Will notes that the 5 other Others look like the first one's twin. That's not "turning Craster sons into icy things" but "using Craster sons for soul and it's the same seed - Craster's". So, I do not believe that Craster's sons are physically turned. Mel's shadowbabies and Dany's dragons aren't physically turned people either. They're just used for the required ingredient to make ice baby Others, and if Varys's castration is any hint, I'd say that's what happens to Craster's sons sort of. This makes sense for spiders, as they do not physically copulate with their genitals. A male spider produces sperm, binds it in a mini-web and then deposits it with his pedipalps in her genital opening. It's sort of artificial insemination almost.

As for why the ones we see are all male... if you think of insects, males of a hive are often neutered or sexually inactive and worker-soldiers. That's how I picture the Others we see. And the queen? She's safe and far away in her nest.

So why did she come out and approached the Wall? Because I think that when the Others (and their Ice Spiders) were defeated at the end of the Long Night, she may have been without men to insimenate her. So, when she was ready to have babies again, she required a man to inseminate her, and has to entirely resort to magic, using human seed. (The initial true ice spiders are dead I think) And I think it very suspicious that while we learn the NK is dead, we have no such confirmation about the Corpse Queen.

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21 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

The female Other.

A key moment in history, judging by humanity's reaction to it, burying the incident deeper than the Church covering up a schism.   Odd.   Was she a unique bride of Frankenstein specially crafted by the Others' version of Qyburn?    Or was she the more naturally arising phenomenon....and the other Others are the artificial ones, the products of magecraft?   Or was it always a risk that Others could start reproducing via the genders method......which is why the NightsWatch is so staunch about their Dudes Only!  policy.... because by keeping it all men on the Wall they're depriving the Cold of any chance to turn a woman Otherish, staving off the nightmarish day when the Others can reproduce at a geometric rate.

I even wonder if the Others were participating in the dudes only thing by choice as well.  Like, maybe the green men were turned to Others when humanity betrayed the pact and their souls were forfeit and their bodies soured and froze accordingly to how bitter the betrayal was for the children, like a wiernet mood shift that effected their minds and bodies went worse and worse like when the stock market plummets and nobody has even the illusion of control over the process anymore.   

But the point was... if the Others used to be green men, or brothers of the Watch, they could remain aware of how monstrous they've become and not want their 'species' to increase in number, choosing instead to continue enforcing the watch's rules about taking no wife and fathering no children.  True to the oath while playing the role of bad cop exiles on the Other side of the 'wall experience.'  That would mean the corpse queen + night king ordeal was truly a schism for both sides?!?!    Would the Others have sent some sherriffs of their own kind to help clamp down on the night king?!    Or were the Others giddy at having infiltrated the wall and in the end it was about that and not reproduction?  Eh.  

I guess the presence of so many wildling women north of the wall kinda disproves this theory as the Others have had lots of opportunity to biologically reproduce if all it takes is turning humans of both genders and then having an OO (Other Orgy).   

And if the Others are truly Other then they're an independent species of their own and there is no such thing as turning Craster's babies into Others.   That's my preferred way to think of Others- -separate Ice Life genesis, different mode of existence.  It's only when pondering night queen and craster babies that I wonder if the Others are Us made into ice vampires & whatnot.

A couple of random things occur to me, neither of which is probably relevant.

1) The story of the NK and his chase of his queen reminds me of the story of Rhiannon and Pwyll. The thing about the Celtic Otherworld is that one minute you're in this world and in the next you're not. 

Martin likened the Others to the sidhe. I don't think that's accidental. 

2) The story goes that when the NK gave her his seed, he gave her his soul as well, and they produced half human, half Other offspring. That's exactly what Stannis did with Mel to produce shadow babies. Each time he did it he looked worse and worse. Think Voldemort--every time he tore his soul he became less and less human.

The concept of an external or torn soul is very common worldwide, from Irish myth to aboriginal. Another book recommendation: Fraser's The Golden Bough. From Tolkien to Rowling to Martin, it's a very old, very common motif. 

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5 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Well, I think the clue is "giving seed and soul". The Others are "white shadows". Mel makes shadow babies with "seed and shadow". Dany makes dragons with "blood and fire".

It's curious that Will notes that the 5 other Others look like the first one's twin. That's not "turning Craster sons into icy things" but "using Craster sons for soul and it's the same seed - Craster's". So, I do not believe that Craster's sons are physically turned. Mel's shadowbabies and Dany's dragons aren't physically turned people either. They're just used for the required ingredient to make ice baby Others, and if Varys's castration is any hint, I'd say that's what happens to Craster's sons sort of. This makes sense for spiders, as they do not physically copulate with their genitals. A male spider produces sperm, binds it in a mini-web and then deposits it with his pedipalps in her genital opening. It's sort of artificial insemination almost.

As for why the ones we see are all male... if you think of insects, males of a hive are often neutered or sexually inactive and worker-soldiers. That's how I picture the Others we see. And the queen? She's safe and far away in her nest.

So why did she come out and approached the Wall? Because I think that when the Others (and their Ice Spiders) were defeated at the end of the Long Night, she may have been without men to insimenate her. So, when she was ready to have babies again, she required a man to inseminate her, and has to entirely resort to magic, using human seed. (The initial true ice spiders are dead I think) And I think it very suspicious that while we learn the NK is dead, we have no such confirmation about the Corpse Queen.

Well damn, you beat me by like 30 seconds!

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11 minutes ago, Ice Queen said:

Well damn, you beat me by like 30 seconds!

Great minds.... ;)

It's great you brought in the sidhe part as well. George combines both for me. Which is certainly allowable within fantasy context. After all fairies used to have "butterfly wings", or "dragonflies" are skinchanged fairies and stuff like that. Or we have the dual meaning of a "nymph": a water spirit, or an immature form of an insect that has not yet completely gone through its metamorphosis.

Of course those are all lovely looking insects we like looking at and cutesy fantasy females. The Others are not cutesy of course, and many people freak out when they see a spider on the wall. I remember two insect horror movies that I saw as a child. One was a black-white movie with giant spiders conquering New York (when I was in elementary), and there was another one with scientists in the desert and red fire-ants that were smart and built geometrical things and infiltrated the lad in the desert. One of the scientists got stung and his arm tripled in circumference. But eventually those ants lured the young female and male scientists into their gigantic hive and did them no harm. They wanted them for something. Can't for my life remember what. Those are all pre-Fly horror movies. (must have been 12-13 maybe at the time I saw it, on some rainy Saturday afternoon)

So, instaed of cutesy elves with dragonly or butterfly wings, you have icy cold Sidhe that are spiders.

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3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Great minds.... ;)

It's great you brought in the sidhe part as well. George combines both for me. Which is certainly allowable within fantasy context. After all fairies used to have "butterfly wings", or "dragonflies" are skinchanged fairies and stuff like that. Or we have the dual meaning of a "nymph": a water spirit, or an immature form of an insect that has not yet completely gone through its metamorphosis.

Of course those are all lovely looking insects we like looking at and cutesy fantasy females. The Others are not cutesy of course, and many people freak out when they see a spider on the wall. I remember two insect horror movies that I saw as a child. One was a black-white movie with giant spiders conquering New York (when I was in elementary), and there was another one with scientists in the desert and red fire-ants that were smart and built geometrical things and infiltrated the lad in the desert. One of the scientists got stung and his arm tripled in circumference. But eventually those ants lured the young female and male scientists into their gigantic hive and did them no harm. They wanted them for something. Can't for my life remember what. Those are all pre-Fly horror movies. (must have been 12-13 maybe at the time I saw it, on some rainy Saturday afternoon)

So, instaed of cutesy elves with dragonly or butterfly wings, you have icy cold Sidhe that are spiders.

I remember that movie--it was called Phase IV. 

I'm too tired right now to give the rest of your post justice.

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12 minutes ago, Ice Queen said:

I remember that movie--it was called Phase IV. 

I'm too tired right now to give the rest of your post justice.

Thanks. Just looked it up. It was indeed Phase IV. It's actually from the year I was born, but back then it often took a decade before a movie was screened on TV.

ETA: the spider movie was the 1955 Tarantula :lmao:

 

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1 hour ago, Prince Yourwetdream Aeryn said:

So Roose Bolton, ice spider wanted to kill Barristan Selmy, servant of dragons?

Where did you get that idea? Did you miss the mention that parallelling characters have their own arcs.

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On 6/4/2019 at 7:37 AM, sweetsunray said:

Where did you get that idea? Did you miss the mention that parallelling characters have their own arcs.

About paralleling characters. 

Ice and fire are mirror images of each other, not opposites. There should be an ice parallel to Mel. Where is she? Is it Val? Dalla? Someone we haven't seen yet? 

The Night Queen could have been an ice priestess for all we know. 

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50 minutes ago, Ice Queen said:

About paralleling characters. 

Ice and fire are mirror images of each other, not opposites. There should be an ice parallel to Mel. Where is she? Is it Val? Dalla? Someone we haven't seen yet? 

The Night Queen could have been an ice priestess for all we know. 

As forces they oppose one another, but as parallels they can be mirror images, yes. Val and Dalla are associated with bears, so I do not regard them as ice priestesses, no. Like the weirwoods they are the blending third way (the green way). The Night Queen could have been an ice priestess yes. And I suspect that Mel's shadow magic, ruby glamor with a bone suit (exoskeleton) and fire watching has a mirroring ice counterpart. You have fire seers, greenseers, and I suspect ice seers. I suspect that the Others' armor is a glamoring exoskeleton. And I suspect seed and soul is used to make white shadows.

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I like how necromancers were on that list of magicians who go to Asshai but they didn't come home with the trophy for Most Sinister Group thanks to that town being rigged in favor of shadowbinders, Asshai being next to the Shadow and all.  (Whatever the frick that is.)

Aeromancers must get bored.  Cuz at some point... you'd realize air is empty and that limits your options.  Then you make a tornado out of frustration and other people have to suffer because you picked the wrong major.

This way of looking at craster babies as souls to transfer to the Ice to quicken an Other to life (like with the dragon eggs) is groovier than picturing them raising the stolen baby and distorting it into an Other using the werewolf model.  They'd do poorly at keeping up with diaper changes.  Night King waves hand and magics the poo into an icicle with no more odor than a fresh biscuit?

  yeah I'm of the opinion the corpse queen was Mel's witchy opposite number from the world of Ice, but the only opponent for melisandre who's presently on the board is Bloodraven from the Nature arena , and hopefully before they throw down events will slap them into becoming teammates.

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17 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

This way of looking at craster babies as souls to transfer to the Ice to quicken an Other to life (like with the dragon eggs) is groovier than picturing them raising the stolen baby and distorting it into an Other using the werewolf model. 

Agree. But then again, anything would be groovier than the WWs taking Craster’s boys and raising them into adulthood. I mean, would they have a day care or nursery? Or what? So, yeah, out of all the possibilities for what happens to Craster’s sons, the WWs becoming surrogate parents and raising them is the least satisfying IMO.

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On 6/3/2019 at 8:59 PM, sweetsunray said:

More leaning towards an actual female Other, perhaps the only one. One big momma spider to breed the rest.

I was about ten when I saw Arachnaphobia. And I still get shivers remembering Peter Jackson's 'it's how they move' explanation. The Others have that repetitive pattern of motion. Slow and measured, then fast and exact. From them to the Wights.

Also, the naphta thing? Somewhat out of left field, but us sci-fi geeks, right? Weren't there alien lifeforms inside a comet/meteorite (can't remember but I think it was a comet impact) in an old X-Files episode? Not that I have enough background in the area, but your theory of a base block organic residue developing into an inhuman lifeform gells more with the collective memory 'fear' aspect than having the Others simply be a botched weapons experiment by the CotF. Calling them Other, for one?

How that then would develop into a hive awareness is even scarier, once I considered that our primordial soup new lifeform, as a seed or heart, could copy from any organic lifeform? Adapt an advanced lifeform, like a gifted human with extras and an efficient lifeform, arachnid, and I totally creeped myself out.

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I just hammered out one source for hive mindedness on another (Comet related) topic:

What if the oily black stone came from space because it used to be the moon that blew up, where it existed as one united brick of living malice.   Then, when it shattered, it didn't really accept that.   All its peices kept calling out and resonating with each other across the world and in space.  (Empowering the Glass Candles to ignore distance and enabling the hive aspect of the weirnet, because that weir species of tree is deeply contaminated with the alien oil that wants to link with itself.) 

(Also mankind's empires are hive minds of a sort, imposed on us by oil-deranged despots like BSE.  Our empires were inspired by the stone so that as our population toiled people would have an opportunity and excuse to mine the Oily Black Stone and recombine it again into a single brick of malice, be it a castle or a system of roads that radiate outward like a network of tree roots.  Demon Roads.  ....maybe the lost masonry trick of making a castle look like a single fused monolith of stone is that the black stone wants to fuse together again, the bits of a broken malignant moon rushing to be whole once more, no matter how many nations have to burn in the process.)

( And the Others, who hang out by one of the biggest concentrations of the stone from outer space, emerged as hived minds under its influence.  They show our dead the way to join in with that hive mind by way of getting rid of our previously independent minds through death.)

It's ludicrous, yet provocative, this fear of meteorites bringing the Other to us.  I feel myself being seduced by the oily stone.  It's just so..... slick.

- - - - 

I suppose the other likely reason for calling the Others "The Others" is Denial.  Denying the truth and not facing it, just as the Wall keeps us from having to deal with the Others and/or the truth about them:  that they're us and it's our fault they were transformed and made to haunt our guilty species for some past transgression we're blocking out of our memory because.... "some truths are too horrible to face and would burn right through us."- -wesley wyndham price.

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14 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

I just hammered out one source for hive mindedness on another (Comet related) topic:

What if the oily black stone came from space because it used to be the moon that blew up, where it existed as one united brick of living malice.   Then, when it shattered, it didn't really accept that.   All its peices kept calling out and resonating with each other across the world and in space.  (Empowering the Glass Candles to ignore distance and enabling the hive aspect of the weirnet, because that weir species of tree is deeply contaminated with the alien oil that wants to link with i.)  (Also mankind's empires are hive minds of a sort, imposed on us by oil- deranged despots like BSE.  Our empires were inspired by the Oil so that as our population toiled people would have an opportunity and excuse to mine the Oily Black Stone and recombine it again into a single brick of malice, be it a castle or a system of roads that radiate outward like a network of tree roots.  ....maybe the lost masonry trick of making a castle look like a single fused monolith of stone is that the black stone wants to fuse together again, the bits of a broken malignant moon rushing to be whole once more, no matter how many nations have to burn in the process.)

( And the Others, who hang out by one of the biggest concentrations of the stone from outer space, emerged as hived minds under its influence.  They show our dead the way to join in with that hive mind by way of getting rid of our previously independent minds through death.)

It's ludicrous, yet provocative, this meteorite fear.  I feel myself being seduced by the oily stone.  It's just so..... slick.

Omf. Was the second moon like the evil planet from Fifth Element?! Genuinely creeped out by your awesome skeevyness, Your Motherness!

Edit: I don't mean like an actual aware being. But the more I thought about this the more I creeped myself out. (Kudos for that.) The areas around volcanos would be exposed to more of our mistery element or organic building block of life. Same as less eroded areas in reverse, where older elements are exposed due to a lesser rythm of terrain alteration. Or hidden under ice?

So, say the Shadow lands and old Valyria would facilitate, via food chain, for the locals to be infused, so to speak, with more of it.

Even further, we could consider, a la Carl Sagan Cosmos, that a few lipidic strands formed an enclosure as proto-life, per random chance. Or was it chance? 

What if it was deliberate? And now we have potentially all life on Planetos developping from our original malicious ooze, per the express purpose of reforming the initial form.

That's what you did to my evening. Amazing!

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On 6/3/2019 at 1:30 PM, Ice Queen said:

I haven't read that yet, but I would have to say that inorganic life (that is, life that does not use carbon) is possible, not just on exoplanets but possibly right here on Earth. There are seemingly inert forms that do a number of very lifelike things, like some crystals. 

The link includes life without carbon. Here's a relevant section:

Quote

Suppose we abandon carbon as the major component of the giant molecules of life. Are there any other elements which have the almost unique property of carbon — that of being able to form long atomic chains and rings — so that giant molecules reflecting life's versatility can exist?

The atoms that come nearest to carbon in this respect are boron and silicon, boron lying just to the left of carbon on the periodic table (as usually presented) and silicon just beneath it. Of the two, however, boron is a rather rare element. Its participation in random reactions to produce life would be at so slow a rate, because of its low concentration in the planetary crust, that a boron-based life formed within a mere five billion years is of vanishingly small probability.

That leaves us with silicon, and there, at least, we are on firm ground. Mercury, or any hot planet, may be short on carbon, hydrogen and fluorine, but it must be loaded with silicon and oxygen, for these are the major components of rocks. A hot planet which begins by lacking silicon and oxygen as well, just couldn't exist because there would be nothing left in enough quantity to make up more than a scattering of nickel-iron meteorites.

Silicon can form compounds analogous to the carbon chains. Hydrogen atoms tied to a silicon chain, rather than to a carbon chain, form the "silanes." Unfortunately, the silanes are less stable than the corresponding hydrocarbons and are even less likely to exist at high temperatures in the complex arrangements required of molecules making up living tissue.

Yet it remains a fact that silicon does indeed form complex chains in rocks and that those chains can easily withstand temperatures up to white heat. Here, however, we are not dealing with chains composed of silicon atoms only (Si-Si-Si-Si-Si) but of chains of silicon atoms alternating with oxygen atoms (Si-O-Si-O-Si).

It so happens that each silicon atom can latch on to four oxygen atoms, so you must imagine oxygen atoms attached to each silicon atom above and below, with these oxygen atoms being attached to other silicon atoms also, and so on. The result is a three-dimensional network, and an extremely stable one.

 

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6 hours ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

I was about ten when I saw Arachnaphobia. And I still get shivers remembering Peter Jackson's 'it's how they move' explanation. The Others have that repetitive pattern of motion. Slow and measured, then fast and exact. From them to the Wights.

Also, the naphta thing? Somewhat out of left field, but us sci-fi geeks, right? Weren't there alien lifeforms inside a comet/meteorite (can't remember but I think it was a comet impact) in an old X-Files episode? Not that I have enough background in the area, but your theory of a base block organic residue developing into an inhuman lifeform gells more with the collective memory 'fear' aspect than having the Others simply be a botched weapons experiment by the CotF. Calling them Other, for one?

How that then would develop into a hive awareness is even scarier, once I considered that our primordial soup new lifeform, as a seed or heart, could copy from any organic lifeform? Adapt an advanced lifeform, like a gifted human with extras and an efficient lifeform, arachnid, and I totally creeped myself out.

Went and looked up Peter Jackson's interview: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/return-king/

Quote

 

Except this spider has been a tall order. Peter Jackson, master of zombie-horror, purveyor of Nazgûl, Uruk-hai and Balrogs, and conqueror of Hollywood, is a big girl’s blouse when it comes to tiny little arachnids. “Oh, I hate them,” he confesses. “Always have.” There’s a story to this. The boyhood Jackson would love to play Matchbox car crashes on the earth banks beneath his house — that was, until he dug up a nest of irritable spiders. Years later, when he called upon best friend Richard Taylor (now head of Weta Workshop) to help clear a garage, it was only because the place was infested with spiders and the chronic arachnophobe wouldn’t go near them.

“We just enjoyed playing it up and throwing these spiders at him,” laughs Taylor on his boss’ delicate foibles, “and I’ve always remembered that. So when we came to design Shelob we basically delved into what gave him the heebie-jeebies!”

The main offender is yet another Kiwi native — the Tunnel Web, a spider that has become the blueprint for their lady. “She’s always been depicted a bit too science-fiction for my liking,” Jackson says. “There is a tendency to make her look more spiky, like a crayfish or something. I wanted something organic, so we hit on Tunnel Webs — they were always the spider I was most scared of. It’s just the way they move — they scuttle and then freeze. Everything about spiders that scares me is in Shelob’s performance.”

 

Shelob was very well done. My dad screams for help whenever he sees a spider. I'm the one who tends to catch them and put them outside. So, I'm not afraid of them, though Shelob was freaky. Hahaha I remember Arachnaphobia. Great spider movie. But yeah, you make a great point that I hadn't considered yet. They can stand frozen, creep up on someone, and then move rapidly. That is spider-like.

Yeah, "Others", the name alone... They're so different, and so weird, they don't really have a species name.

And they should creep us out!

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