Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lammin. This is The Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. Once
Speaker 2: more we return to the rich, magical world of Jim
Speaker 2: Henson's nineteen eighty six classic Labyrinth, having previously covered two
Speaker 2: other of its creatures here on The Monster Fact and
Speaker 2: the film itself on Weird House Cinema. Today, I want
Speaker 2: to talk about the most terrifying denizens of the Goblin
Speaker 2: King's Labyrinth, creatures that have unsettled children for almost four
Speaker 2: decades now, The Fieries of the Fire Gang. You remember them.
Speaker 2: Do not tell me that you don't, because I know
Speaker 2: even now you're picturing their lanky, vulturelike bodies, their huge ears,
Speaker 2: their bright red and orange fur, and those piercing mad eyes.
Speaker 2: The Labyrinth Bestiari by st. Bindet, with illustrations by Iris Complete,
Speaker 2: devotes no fewer than eight pages to illustrations of the Fieries,
Speaker 2: along with notations that describe them as chaotic, unhinged, good
Speaker 2: natured troublemakers. And that is essentially correct. But Bende also
Speaker 2: points out that quote, anyone adverse to combustion, disorder and
Speaker 2: the possibility of dismemberment is advised to steer clear of
Speaker 2: their revelry. Yes, because for starters, the Fieries are so
Speaker 2: named not only for their brilliant, flamelike colorization, but also
Speaker 2: for their innate pyrokinetic abilities and even more terrifying, they
Speaker 2: possess the ability to detach and reattach their own limbs
Speaker 2: and heads at will. They can also remove their own eyeballs,
Speaker 2: roll them as dice, and then swallow them in order
Speaker 2: to return their eyeballs to their sockets. But all of
Speaker 2: this reaches a fever pitch when these inhuman hedonists engage
Speaker 2: in what I can only describe as a dismemberment party.
Speaker 2: Fieries will dance around the great fire and pull themselves
Speaker 2: apart with gleeful enthusiasm. They'll employ their disembodied legs and
Speaker 2: heads as clubs and balls in morbid games of croquet.
Speaker 2: They will even swap body parts with each other and
Speaker 2: reconstitute themselves into multi limbed forms that cavort through the forest.
Speaker 2: The only rule they keep is thou shalt only throw
Speaker 2: thine own head and all that is well and good
Speaker 2: for the Fieries, except, as we see in Labyrinth, they
Speaker 2: can scarcely comprehend beings that don't have these strange powers
Speaker 2: of bloodless living, dismemberment and instant regrafting. We're to understand
Speaker 2: that many an outsider guest to their festivities winds up
Speaker 2: as a pile of body parts that puzzlingly refuse to
Speaker 2: graft back together. Way to kill the vibe and welcome
Speaker 2: also the guest. But it's a detail I always appreciated.
Speaker 2: The Fieries are indeed good time party creatures, but their
Speaker 2: inability to understand other beings makes them a very dangerous
Speaker 2: encounter in the world of Labyrinth. Naturally, we don't have
Speaker 2: anything quite like the Fieries in the natural world. Certainly
Speaker 2: we have some amazing examples of regeneration, from C stars
Speaker 2: and C cucumbers to the Axolotel, but they regrow, they
Speaker 2: don't reattach. Humans alone have developed the medical knowledge of
Speaker 2: limb reattachment, and even this has its limits, and in
Speaker 2: the best of cases, is far from instantaneous. And as
Speaker 2: for the grafting of another's individual limbs onto your body,
Speaker 2: and even the zeno tissue of other organisms such as pigs.
Speaker 2: Humans face severe limitations due to the body's autoimmune response
Speaker 2: to transplanted limbs, tissues, and organs. This generally requires the
Speaker 2: use of immunosuppressive medication to prevent rejection of the donor limb, tissue,
Speaker 2: or organ, but the lowering of the body's immune response
Speaker 2: in general can then open the door for other infections.
Speaker 2: Donor recipient matching can also help, and a host of
Speaker 2: more advanced techniques, including stem cell therapy, genetic engineering, biomaterials,
Speaker 2: and more, may provide additional possibilities in the future. Now
Speaker 2: with the Fieries, we might imagine, well, it's possible that
Speaker 2: their own immune systems would reject another Fiery's head or
Speaker 2: limbs if it remained attached for too long. Human rejection
Speaker 2: can play out over days, months, or even years. The
Speaker 2: Fieries might simply not remain attached to other limbs long
Speaker 2: enough for it to be a problem, something maybe they
Speaker 2: only do during these games and festivities. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: knowing nothing about their deeper biology, it's also possible that
Speaker 2: they're all genetically identical and therefore perfect donors for each other.
Speaker 2: It's also possible that the fieries boast an overall reduced
Speaker 2: autoimmune response to allow this sort of fusing, and evolves
Speaker 2: some other form of complementary autoimmune strategy to make up
Speaker 2: for it, which may well be the case with the
Speaker 2: natural world anglerfish, in which the bodies of genetically disparate
Speaker 2: male and female counterparts are able to fuse together without
Speaker 2: invoking a strong anti graft immune rejection response, a rejection
Speaker 2: response that we see in pretty much all other vertebrates.
Speaker 2: The fieries don't seem particularly concerned with predators or anything really,
Speaker 2: which raises the question of why they might have evolved
Speaker 2: to be like this. If such logic even applies to
Speaker 2: the labyrinth, one can imagine there could be a survival
Speaker 2: advantage in simply being able to graft on the limbs, tissues,
Speaker 2: and organs of other members of your group, perhaps even
Speaker 2: in a role based way, sharing particularly healthy or strong
Speaker 2: body parts for particular tasks. One can also see where
Speaker 2: this could easily get out of hand. But then again,
Speaker 2: perhaps it also benefits the fieries as far as group
Speaker 2: cohesion goes. Not only can they share information and resources,
Speaker 2: they can share body parts and adapt their forms to
Speaker 2: different tasks. Hey, after all, there's no reason to domesticate
Speaker 2: a horse when you can just make a horse like
Speaker 2: body out of your own assembled limbs. If this is
Speaker 2: all the case, however, clearly they overcame their natural obstacles
Speaker 2: long ago and now devote their natural talents exclusively to
Speaker 2: self enjoyment and celebration. Tune in for additional episodes of
Speaker 2: The Monster, Fact, The Artifact, or Animilius Dupendium each week.
Speaker 2: As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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