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The Plutionian Others


sweetsunray

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6 minutes ago, Lady Dacey said:

Sorry, I missed this! I'm not very versed in chemistry myself, my field is closer to human biology. 

I guess my fellow portuguese speaking poster got a cool answer for your inquires. 

My problem with the Others having hemocyanin in their "blood" is that I can't see any organic material in the elemental body you described, which I loved, and we agree is sort of held together by magic. While the elements can melt and evaporate and sublime, organic compounds don't desintegrate and will always leave residue behind, which se don't see when Sam slays one of them. The other problem I see os that oxygen transport proteins exist in the lifeforms we are aware of in order to diatribute oxygen needed for complex redox reactions inside mitochondrea. Because the flesh and bones of the Others is not made of regular cellullar tissue, why would they need to transport oxygen through their bodies? I think the spider and the blue blood connections still stands, and you haver convinced me that Martin, who is a very intentional writer, meant for us to compare the Others to spiders, and that the blue blood is one of the parallels that hints at that. But in my mind, I think the Others are a completely inorganic form of "life" whose structure in mantained by magical forces.

 

That's a good conflict you name, and I myself am not yet sure which side I fall on that myself.

On the one hand Tormund's comment on how the Others are always there, even during the day when you can't see them, has given me this idea that they might also "exist" in other states, as in "not solid", but perhaps in a gaseous mist form. If that's the case, then they must be entirely elemental and non-organic.

Then I find a high suggestion that the Others we see, might actually be a "glamor" (or something like it). That the perception is different than their actual form.

But I cannot rule out they are always solid and not glamored. And even if they are a very different lifeform, I wouldn't say they are "inorganic". There is carbon in methane after all. But it might be they don't need oxygen to be transported.

I rather think that the blue blood isn't so much necessary to transport oxygen for energy, but might actually be the provider or source of their body temperature. That's why I thought of liquid hydrogen. It's our blood that regulates body temperature, and makes sure it remains high. With the Others you'd need blood that is basically a cooling liquid.

I think the magical part is important, not to hold them together as in "bonded", but to prevent entropy in a much warmer climate from melting them. That is imo the spell that Samwell broke. Notice too that he wounded the Other in the neck, and its blood was the first to gush. That's when we witness the rapid "decomposition" of the Other.

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1 hour ago, Lady Dacey said:

Sorry, I missed this! I'm not very versed in chemistry myself, my field is closer to human biology. 

I guess my fellow portuguese speaking poster got a cool answer for your inquires. 

My problem with the Others having hemocyanin in their "blood" is that I can't see any organic material in the elemental body you described, which I loved, and we agree is sort of held together by magic. While the elements can melt and evaporate and sublime, organic compounds don't desintegrate and will always leave residue behind, which se don't see when Sam slays one of them. The other problem I see os that oxygen transport proteins exist in the lifeforms we are aware of in order to diatribute oxygen needed for complex redox reactions inside mitochondrea. Because the flesh and bones of the Others is not made of regular cellullar tissue, why would they need to transport oxygen through their bodies? I think the spider and the blue blood connections still stands, and you haver convinced me that Martin, who is a very intentional writer, meant for us to compare the Others to spiders, and that the blue blood is one of the parallels that hints at that. But in my mind, I think the Others are a completely inorganic form of "life" whose structure in mantained by magical forces.

 

Couldn't resist. Day off. Brain churning away. 

I'm sort of with you? The fact that nothing but ice is left when they're killed, makes me think the characteristics this hypothesis make relevant are remnants of the organic forms adapted to 'make' the Others.

Like humans have abdominal muscke segmentation or an apendix that's not exactly useful anymore, but it's still there?

They look like living, organic beings, but they aren't quite so anymore.

They look humanoid. Then you have the insectoid hints as 'improvements' to make them more efficient both as individuals and as a hive like entity. So they would have a circulatory system but not necessarily as an O2 transport system?

Then the 'web' and the 'now you see me, now you don't' call magic, but even those might be designed scifi style. Like the web used by the silicone rock spider from Martin's earlier work or a game of mirrors and light reflection as ice is repeatedly used in verse. Magic as a factor would make this work as a coherent being.

Say, origin story of the Night King's Queen as Ungoliant? She who had such a voracious apetite she would eat Light itself?

Fire for Morgoth, Ice for the Spider.

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57 minutes ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

I'm sort of with you? The fact that nothing but ice is left when they're killed, makes me think the characteristics this hypothesis make relevant are remnants of the organic forms adapted to 'make' the Others.

Leftover: a white (nitrogen) gas mist and mr.puddles.

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1 minute ago, sweetsunray said:

Leftover: a white (nitrogen) gas mist and mr.puddles.

Thanks. 

That's where your 'entropy' cloak comes in, yes?

A physical body made of a material that should only be frozen at a much lower temperature held together by a 'blue blood' like liquid that stabilises it. Broken balance and = Instant sublimation of solid material and the liquid stabilizer leftover puddle.

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Just now, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

Thanks. 

That's where your 'entropy' cloak comes in, yes?

A physical body made of a material that should only be frozen at a much lower temperature held together by a 'blue blood' like liquid that stabilises it. Broken balance and = Instant sublimation of solid material and the liquid stabilizer leftover puddle.

Yes, at higher temperatures these would turn liquid or gaseous and have a chemical reaction forming water. Hence, on the one hand they evolved an internal cooling system to maintain low temperatures and thus be solid, as well as a magical spell to prevent the ambient temperatures from interfering.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey. I was lowkey haunting the latest Heresy thread and the notion of an either/or stance as to the Plutonian Others and the Musgrave Ritual posited there and I went: why can't it be both? 

Do you know that urban myth about spiders laying eggs in people? It's bogus, yes. But provocative enough for a little bit of the 'magic' factor to make my brain tingle.

 House Stark, founded in the Age of Heroes by a Brandon the Builder with a part in raising the Wall. Known Kings of Winter. Primarily, it's the North that remembers, or should remember, but it's on the Starks to warn and guard. Winter is Coming. Indeed.

New tinfoil. The Night’s King was a Stark and the Corpse Queen, the Spider Queen, chose the thirteenth LC because he was a Stark. The magic trait of House Stark could be a 'winter' magic, a hint of the Others, given to them on the aftermath of the 'pact' that ended the Others' invasion during the previous Long Night and their famous hunt for other House's magic traits a way to dilute that influence? Like skinchanging and the connection to the Direwolves is a balance and holdoff to the seed of Winter in the line.

But the idea for the Plutonian Others would be that for a weird moment I wondered if the 'egg' in the Stark line, would be 'woke' upon death without the ritual (is it Winterfell itself, also built by Brandon the Builder? Is it their godswood? So there must always be a Stark in Winterfell? Is it the Singers' influence in the world, waning now?) once magic returned fully, post comet, much like the seal that holds the Others together is broken through dragonglass or VS? The breath of cold in the crypts?

It would make the Starks' origins as Kings of Winter a kind of, pardon the possible offense to some, Slayerlike inkling of the thing they fight against and defend mankind from, both organic and magically. Also, it would make them truly the ones who can and must break the Others enough to force a new Pact or Watchful Peace. On the far end, must House Stark be ended should someone find a way to end the Others permanently? World saved, job done, here's your reward?

And if truly the Others are a completely separate lifeform type, society, culture? It would make the implied otherness of the Starks when set against even the other Northern Houses of First Men descent or the Free Folk themselves more organic in the logic of to fight monsters it might take becoming a monster or at least a bit of one. The Others take a generally human shape and they're anything but, the shape is only that, a carcasse. A vestigial renmant of a 'scanned form'. The Starks would have the same vestigial bit, only in their blood magic and not in their shape.

Sorry if I went a bit off the rails as to the original premise of your awesome essay, but the 'brain tickle' wouldn't leave me alone. 

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