Looking for a hot, flat place to live.

starrystorm said:

Well, it's not the snow that kills her, it's the coldness. She could go out in -3 degree weather and die within minutes. I suppose I was just struggling on how to describe it. Thanks, I'll refrain from calling it an allergy from now on.

ETA: If she ate snow (for it being so cold), however, it would kill her.

2nd ETA: I also know nothing about snow because it doesn't snow where I live.

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I'd call it an extreme intolerance of lower temperatures, since it has nothing to do with snow, but rather the cold.

starrystorm said:

Sorry, Fahrenheit (American here), but her body is sensitive to the cold, being an alien and all.

And for eating snow, the aliens use it as a type of poison.

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Again, that gets a raised eyebrow for 'how is that poison, but other water is okay?' Water is water. Do assassins drop a pocketful into someone's hot soup, and hope that the target has a mouthful of that dangerous frozen H20 in the few seconds before it melts in their soup? Or their mouths?

If she orders an unsweet ice tea, no ice, at a restaurant, and the server accidentally brings it with ice, is there going to be a dramatic scene of someone leaping across the table and slapping it out of her hands before she can have a sip of the deadly tea?

You see the problem.

Temperature-sensitive Alien Invasion Fleet, never heard from again:
They landed near Winnipeg in the winter months, opened the hatches to fire off a demonstration round, and everybody on the ship diiiiied. Pretty much instantaneously.

And that's why you always check the thermometer before opening the hatch.

starrystorm said:

Yeah, I see now. If I was to slip snow into hot tea before serving it, it would be water...Hmm...I'm going to have to think this over.

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I think I see what you're getting at here - a fairly mundane, common earth chemical is something that the character must avoid. While snow might very thematic or visually striking, it's hard to employ in a way that isn't going to make readers go, 'hey, wait a second...'

On the other hand, there are plenty of other substances that are common around the earth that could be a fatal poison for the alien. Examples include grapes/raisins causing renal failure in dogs, aspirin being particularly poisonous for cats. IIRC, there's an enzyme in pineapples that makes it hazardous for pretty much anything except humans to eat. Lots of different vectors for something that her species has weaponized to be common and harmless earth-side.