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Triple Slartifer, Part 8


Slarti

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361. Displacer Iguana-Other side of my secret identity, maybe.

Because im sure you're a drakon overlord xD

362. Oracle of the Pills and Raves-Beats fall appart. You lose sense of rythm if you do too much drugs on a rave?

 

355. Dam Canals-Paper airplane domination? Ignore the fact that any water related things would be the death of paper planes.

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362. Oracle of the Pills and Raves - Paper airplane domination?

Oracle is a company known for creating applications that deal with "the cloud," thus metaphorically putting them in the sky where airplanes would be. Doing things electronically also tends to reduce the use of paper. Together, then, one could stretch and see how that is "paper [and] airplane domination." The question mark in the clue shows how unsure I am about this explanation. The PDN also seems to be a reference to the Matrix movies, which had the famous Red / Blue Pill choice, weird rave scenes, and an Oracle character (who was a computer program, probably not coincidentally).

 

I keep thinking of different oracles, present, past, and fictional, and this is the best I've got.

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The PDN also seems to be a reference to the Matrix movies, which had the famous Red / Blue Pill choice, weird rave scenes, and an Oracle character.

 

I keep thinking of different oracles, present, past, and fictional, and this is the best I've got.

Thought the same thing but there are no matrix related clues :/ a bit disapointing tbh. I would have gotten most matrix references including plato's alegory of the cave.

 

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334. Angel of Cacophony??/? -- Ironic art and translation mix-ups

 

336. Immovable Lump of Heart -- Just a pile of unhappy words

 

337. Devoid Man Devoid -- In context, an expression of overintellectualized pain

 

345. Heart like swords and pool on the -- Beats fall apart

 

350. Hard Dorothy Hardware -- Paper airplane domination?

 

361. Displacer Iguana -- Saunders writes a story about baby's first PDN change

 

362. Oracle of the Pills and Raves -- Other side of my secret identity, maybe

 

Dikiyoba.

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355. Dam Canals - Saunders writes a story about baby's first PDN change

 

oh right how did i miss this one, this must be the one you meant when you said there was one on the list that only i would get. ok so yeah a long, long time ago, forum poster Saunders once wrote this story with the working title of "The Guy by the Canal" that i was, despite appearances, really much too young and innocent to appreciate at the time. which should tell you something about just how long ago this was. i hope she's doing okay for herself these days

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361. Displacer Iguana - Other side of my secret identity, maybe.

362. Oracle of the Pills and Raves - Beats fall apart

You lose sense of rythm if you do too much drugs on a rave?

355. Dam Canals - Paper airplane domination? Ignore the fact that any water related things would be the death of paper planes.

361 - NO

362 - YES +2

The actual reference here is to Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and Caves in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, and (I suppose) the correlation between high pythias and ravers. (And Triumph... lol)

 

355 - NO

 

334. Angel of Cacophony??/? -- Ironic art and translation mix-ups

336. Immovable Lump of Heart -- Just a pile of unhappy words

337. Devoid Man Devoid -- In context, an expression of overintellectualized pain

345. Heart like swords and pool on the -- Beats fall apart

350. Hard Dorothy Hardware -- Paper airplane domination?

361. Displacer Iguana -- Saunders writes a story about baby's first PDN change

334 - NO

336 - YES +2 -- there was no particular inspiration behind either the PDN or the clue, I'm afraid

337 - NO

345 - NO

350 - YES +2

 

This is a reference to John Calhoun's old Mac paper airplane game, Glider. Though eventually published by Casady & Greene, the first public release was put out under the name Soft Dorothy Software. This old black and white version had a particular soft picture of Dorothy on a few levels; in later versions this was replaced by a picture of Ozma, and there were some other Oz references in it as well. Anyway, I just inverted the company name; the hardware in the context of Hard Dorothy provided the domination.

 

361 - NO

 

355. Dam Canals - Saunders writes a story about baby's first PDN change

 

oh right how did i miss this one, this must be the one you meant when you said there was one on the list that only i would get. ok so yeah a long, long time ago, forum poster Saunders once wrote this story with the working title of "The Guy by the Canal" that i was, despite appearances, really much too young and innocent to appreciate at the time. which should tell you something about just how long ago this was. i hope she's doing okay for herself these days

355 - YES +3

I remember the title as "The Canaliste" but I'm not sure if that means she later changed it, or I'm just thinking of her old account's old custom title of La Canaliste. Saunders, probably still the most beloved member here despite being gone for about a decade.

 

Diki identified the other half of the reference above -- to Dame Annals, my first PDN change said decade ago (and a nickname acquired by Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji).

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Remaining clues:

 

334. Angel of Cacophony??/?

337. Devoid Man Devoid

345. Heart like swords and pool on the

361. Displacer Iguana

 

An unhappy beginning

In context, an expression of overintellectualized pain

Ironic art and translation mix-ups

Other side of my secret identity, maybe

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345. Heart like swords and pool on the - Ironic art and translation mix-ups

Because in addition to the lyrical meaning of the PDN when it occurred with its preceding and succeeding PDNs, it could be misinterpreted in a vacuum to talk about swords shaped like hearts and the game played with cues and colored, numbered balls?

 

334. Angel of Cacophony??/? - Other side of my secret identity, maybe

Is there a connection to Slartifer here, with an allusion to Milton's Pandemonium or something like that? Or else an allusion to being the "Demon of Good Taste," where the "other side" is, A. angelic, and B. something usually considered in bad taste (cacophony)?

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361. Displacer Iguana In context, an expression of overintellectualized pain.

Reptiles have no feelings in the usual sense. Humans feel pain in various forms including emotional. But usually think that they can rationalise it away etc...

 

 

 

On a side note. I actually have chinua achebe's all things fall appart for about 2 years but never bothered to read it. From this i will say two things. One; i'll read it starting after i finish the book im in now. Two; *slow clap* you make on the list of the most ( is it cult or cultured?) People im aquainted to. Kudos.

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345. Heart like swords and pool on the - Ironic art and translation mix-ups

Because in addition to the lyrical meaning of the PDN when it occurred with its preceding and succeeding PDNs, it could be misinterpreted in a vacuum to talk about swords shaped like hearts and the game played with cues and colored, numbered balls?

 

334. Angel of Cacophony??/? - Other side of my secret identity, maybe

Is there a connection to Slartifer here, with an allusion to Milton's Pandemonium or something like that? Or else an allusion to being the "Demon of Good Taste," where the "other side" is, A. angelic, and B. something usually considered in bad taste (cacophony)?

345 - NO

334 - YES +3

 

You're on the right track. That PDN, the first change since my last my title became what it is now, is indeed an allusion to the Demon of Good Taste. Cacophony literally means bad sound. As for the punctuation, remember that the Demon is known for ending sentences with variants of !!!1!! (The Angel, clearly, is less the exclamatory one and more questioning/questionable.)

 

361. Displacer Iguana In context, an expression of overintellectualized pain.

 

On a side note. I actually have chinua achebe's all things fall appart for about 2 years but never bothered to read it. From this i will say two things. One; i'll read it starting after i finish the book im in now. Two; *slow clap* you make on the list of the most ( is it cult or cultured?) People im aquainted to. Kudos.

361 - NO

TFA is one of my favourite books. It's not for everyone, but it's definitely one of those novels I go back to every few years only to find it's still fresh and rewarding.

 

And it's cultured, although in my case, cult might be more appropriate ;)

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361. Displacer Iguana - Ironic art and translation mix-ups [EDIT: sniped by owenrus]

337. Devoid Man Devoid - An unhappy beginning

 

These are the only ones left, so I might as well just blindly guess. If this isn't correct, then they must be

 

361. Displacer Iguana - An unhappy beginning

337. Devoid Man Devoid - Ironic art and translation mix-ups

 

It seems sort of poetic that "An unhappy beginning" should be one of the last two clues to remain unsolved.

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Displacer Iguana-Ironic art and translation mix-ups mostly because it makes no sense.

I'm going to guess that the explanation for it is the displacer beast from DnD and this thread. And if the explanation isn't that thread, it should be.

 

(Here's

to replace the broken one in the old thread.)

 

Dikiyoba gives Triumph one fluffy point for his effort with the Oracle name. It is utterly worthless, but it is fluffy, and who can resist fluffiness?

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345. Heart like swords and pool on the - In context, an expression of overintellectualized pain

Process of elimination; nothing else it could go with (this PDN has been guessed with the other two remaining clues already).

345 - YES +1

I know I said two or more points, but when there's no actual guessing involved and no attempt made to connect the PDN and the clue, meh.

 

Displacer Iguana-Ironic art and translation mix-ups mostly because it makes no sense.

361 - YES +2 - (and in the future please try to use the numbers and paste the clues directly, it makes my life easier)

The actual connection is below.

 

337. Devoid Man Devoid - An unhappy beginning

It seems sort of poetic that "An unhappy beginning" should be one of the last two clues to remain unsolved.

337 - YES +1

The last clue, in fact. This is mainly a reference to a line that began many C programs once upon a time:

 

void main (void)

 

defining essentially the base level of the program code (you have to define that function) as type void (i.e., it doesn't return a value when run) and as having no parameters. But I humanized it and made it empty and unhappy. Hooray.

 

I'm going to guess that the explanation for it is the displacer beast from DnD and this thread. And if the explanation isn't that thread, it should be.

LOL. The explanation isn't that thread, but you are partly on the money with the displacer beast. Allow me to explain.

 

One of AD&D's more inspired original monsters was the displacer beast, a "puma-like creature" with tentacles:

 

https://en.wikipedia...Displacer_beast

 

As the Monster Manual (1977) explained: "The molecular vibrations of the displacer beast are such that it always appears to be 3' left, right, ahead, or behind its actual position." As a result, it is especially hard to pinpoint where it is and what it's doing.

 

The picture on that Wikipedia page comes from that Monster Manual entry, and it's important. Fast forward to 1987, when a small Japanese company called Square decided to quietly adapt -- at times loosely, but often quite rigidly -- the AD&D rules for their last attempt at a successful video game, Final Fantasy. The monster list in FF1 is taken straight out of the Monster Manual, with a remarkable faithfulness to tiny details of the descriptions there. Most of the monster images were directly based on the manual's illustrations, too, to a point well beyond what you're imagining by reading this. When you put them all next to each other, it's pretty crazy.

 

However, in just a few cases, pictures from one monster ended up on a different monster in FF1. I don't know if that was intentional or not. The Displacer Beast's picture seems to have been the inspiration for FF1's lizard ("Rizaado" in

Japanese) -- its stats and placement in line with the manual's "Giant Lizard" entry -- and which was translated, in the NES release, as "IGUANA." Of course. Here it is:

 

http://vignette2.wik...=20110921123108

 

Characteristically for these images, they changed a few details but retained the exact pose, angle, etc. For example, in the manual, there's a long tentacle in front; on the NES, it's a tongue. But you can see that the overall composition is pretty much identical.

 

There are other monster images that are even more egregiously copied. (LICH may be the worst of all.) But the inspired displacer beast makes an even more inspired emblem for what happened here: its image shifted, perceived as something it's not, and even its name rendered inaccurately.

 

I think we all have days where we feel like a Displacer Iguana.

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Final scores for part 8:

 

Lilith 3

Dintiradan 6

Owenrus 7

Nalyd 12

Dikiyoba 15

Triumph 35

 

Triumph is defending well. Looking at the thread, his ridiculous score is partly due to persistence -- his willingness to make guesses even if he wasn't sure about them -- and partly due to his willingness to supply explanations.

 

Next round, Great Justice and Great Vengeance points may be returning...

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Final scores for part 8:

 

Lilith 3

Dintiradan 6

Owenrus 7

Nalyd 12

Dikiyoba 15

Triumph 35

 

Triumph is defending well. Looking at the thread, his ridiculous score is partly due to persistence -- his willingness to make guesses even if he wasn't sure about them -- and partly due to his willingness to supply explanations.

 

Next round, Great Justice and Great Vengeance points may be returning...

 

Sigh, no points for my very blunt anatomical match-ups....I'll just hand in my mensa card now.

 

Fun game though, and you clearly do this regularly.

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