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The Shooting Star: Why are Tintin and Snowy unaffected?

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tuhatkauno
Member
#1 · Posted: 16 Apr 2007 10:31
Hi

On the meteor everything seems to grow very fast and big, everything except Tintin and Milou. Can anyone explain the phainomena?
Tintinrulz
Member
#2 · Posted: 16 Apr 2007 15:21
They weren't organisms that were native to the biology of the meteor? I don't know, I'm just making it up.
Balthazar
Moderator
#3 · Posted: 16 Apr 2007 15:32
Hmm. Good question, tuhatkauno. I've been giving it some thought and have come up with two possible theories.

Theory 1:
Maybe the growth-stimulating substance given off by the meteor only affects small life-forms (similar to the the way that farmers' pesticides kill insects but not people). This is why, once the spider has reached its mammal-like size, it stops growing any bigger. After its initial rapid growth, it reaches a point where it's too big to be affected further by its continued exposure to whatever the meteor is giving off.

Theory 2:
Tintin and Snowy (and their friends throughout the books) are clearly already affected by some elixir of eternal youth that prevents them from aging during the series. Maybe it's some mystical substance that Tintin was secretly given in China, which he shares with Snowy and all his friends thereafter. (China seems a likely place for him to have got hold of this stuff, especially as he does look a bit younger at the start of his earliest black-and-white adventures, and ages normally - between about 14 and 18 - up to the time of The Blue Lotus.) Anyway, a coincidental side effect of this youth-elixir is that it somehow makes Tintin and Snowy immune to the effects of the meteor. According to this theory, if that float-plane pilot had set foot on the meteor and lingered awhile, he'd grow to the size of King Kong (unless Tintin had been sharing his Chinese youth-elixir with everyone on the expedition, of course).
Ranko
Member
#4 · Posted: 16 Apr 2007 15:58
As an aside, both Phostlite and Calculon have made it here: http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemistry/Fictional_element

Another round of congratulations then!
tuhatkauno
Member
#5 · Posted: 16 Apr 2007 16:16
Hi balthazar

I prefer the theory 2, it solves the dilemma. All the organism, ours or exrtaterrestal, grow. The skincontact doesn't explain anything, both Tintin and Milou touch the meteor. Maybe Herge tought it is not very good idea that Tintin and Milou would grow enormously and eventually explode.


Herge is normally very careful with this kind of details, and I admire his logic. I mentioned former that he even pays attention to the spinning of the earth in Explorers.

Perhaps it's better that Tintin is normal sized instead of being a 30 feet long giant. he,he
Isabel a marche sur la lune
Member
#6 · Posted: 20 Apr 2007 06:08
i just read every 'element' on that list. I am *such* a nerd!

Perhaps it's to do with an immune system; the only things being enlarged were really tiny to start with, parhaps Snowy and Tintin are too sturdy, so to speak, (or big) to be affected by it.
fuzzle
Member
#7 · Posted: 25 Apr 2007 19:04
It's the metal in the soil. the trees are taking nutrience out of the soil and they probably suck up the mutated metal stuff too. the bugs get big because the eat the apples of the tree.
tuhatkauno
Member
#8 · Posted: 25 Apr 2007 20:53
hi

That's a good one, fuzzle, but what about the spider. What has he eaten, probably not apple, he prefers animals. That is a mystery. :-)
labrador road 26
Member
#9 · Posted: 26 Apr 2007 00:06
Aside from growing, the caterpillar needs to go through the chrysalis stage before becoming the butterfly. Did it grow before going into chrysalis or after becoming the butterfly? Strange and wonderful places created by the master. But I'm not sure I want to meet it's inhabitants.

Could Hergé have been inspired by Gulliver's Travels for the giant creatures?
TheBlueLotus
Member
#10 · Posted: 28 Apr 2007 03:23
I know in a couple of pictures Tintin's touching the ground directly but most of the time it's only his shoes or clothes. Or maybe when he does touch it hes not touching it for long enough I'm not sure I haven't read the book in a while. Just trying to help out!

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