Sooo I read the Market of Monsters series by Rebecca Schaeffer and have been going insane about it for the past two weeks.
Mainly because I absolutely love the series’ characters, but also because of how grounded the worldbuilding feels inspite of the supernatural elements.
For example, I’ve been thinking about Zannies and their relationship to pain. The more pain they eat, the less pain they feel. The hungrier they are, the stronger they feel pain to the point they begin feeling the pains they last ate in increasing intensity. At the same time their blood contains a strong analgesic that works almost instantly to relieve pain.
Now how would that work on a biochemical level? This for some reason is what my biochemistry loving brain latched onto and I’ve come up with a theory: Since their blood seems to always have the same effect (at least the story doesn’t state otherwise), the analgesic concentration would remain the same regardless of hunger. So maybe Zannies are just as receptive to their own analgesic as others. When they’re well fed they rarely feel pain at all- the analgesic is taking full effect.
But pain is important for monitoring bodily functions and completely inactivating it doesn’t seem sensible, so what if they, alongside the analgesic produce a competitive inhibitor that blocks the analgesic’s effect. The longer they go without eating pain, the longer the inhibitor accumulates, until they reach a pain level that would be assumed normal.
This also means that the body must be adapted to a base presence of analgesic and tune the pain receptors’ sensitivity accordingly.
Now if the Zannie starves? Inhibitor accumulates further, dropping analgesic activity below the baseline and the pain worsens until every single neuron is firing.
This would also go in accordance with Zannie’s ability to feel the pain of those surrounding them. If they’re hyperreceptive, is the analgesic a way to dampen the external sensations? That would explain why they produce such a substance in the first place.
Soooo maybe I’ve been working in the pharmaceutical area for too long, but I love thinking about this concept and the mechanics. If this theory even makes sense at all.
Anyways, I’m losing my mind. Help.
