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[Avatrix]

[SPEC] Magic Words

[TridenT]

Having all of those name meanings is well and good... but none of them seem too closely related to strike a match...

I'm not so certain we would want to look for names, anyway. Dana never mentioned names as "magic", so I don't know if we should, either. However, the word associations you've come up with are very neat, and may come in handy for future reference. Good researching!

[Alzheimers]

Two other interesting interpretations of names:

Durga, by way of dictionary.com: can also mean "The Inaccessable"

Janissary, from m-w.com: while generally refering to a group of elite soldiers, comes from the Turkish yeniçeri, from yeni new + çeri soldier

[Kahnawake]

Re: [SPEC] Magic Words

[bcriswell]

From my wife

[ThunderRazor]

I think another point made my Dana is that as the game went on, her and her mother would add words, such as the word lemon meaning to get kissed soon.

She is saying to pick out Magic Words and ADD to the list of them as you hear more conversations. This very directly applies. But I am not sure if names are the key here. Everything is worth looking into though.

[krystyn]

My speculation is that Dana's story about 'magic words' is not for those of us who are fully entrenched in this game, and

- know what the word axon means
- have dents in our heads from arguing over whether to make pretty maps, or go to the locations that appeared on links.html
- have gone to the payphones, answered them, and learned how the file names correspond to the overheard information within

I think Dana is telling new players, or people who might not have glommed onto a larger resource group like Unfiction (or even the long, spirally threads at the Halo fan forums) to use the locations and the times to 'eavesdrop on the future' - in other words, answer the phone, enhotenate the axon (hee!), and hope that enough people in each group do so that Melissa lights up that file on the website for more perusal and clarity.

Her blog, thus far, seems like a Story So Far repository, a very basic primer nudging us in the right direction, but not giving us complete answers. She gives us metaphor, and from that, we can follow the game at our leisure, or seek out the collective and play a little harder.

[sherpa]

I agree with krystyn. It seems Dana is at least partially aware of what's going on over here - probably through emails - and summarises it on her blog, with frills and stories to make it pretty. There seem a lot of folks who 'play' by just commenting on her blog - she needs to give instructions to them, because any comment she makes directly would be lost in the flood instantly. I don't think her posts are really hints for us. I think they come from us. Sure, the bits of our work that she picks out - e.g. going to the axons in person - and puts on the blog is like giving us a biscuit for the right thinking (good dog!) but it seems to be reactive rather than active.

Also wanted to point out a slight correction to Avatrix's original post. Jersey isn't exactly an 'area of England'. It's one of the Channel Islands, islands in the south of the English Channel that are British but not part of the United Kingdom. They have their own currency, stamps and laws, and used to speak a dialect of French (I don't even think they're part of the EU)... if they heard you say they were part of England, they'd be knocking on your door soon enough!

[Kahnawake]

Well, even if the "magic words" thing is a red herring I still think it's cool the way all the character and place names are being analyzed here. It shows that someone put some intelligent thought into writing this whole script and didn't just pull names out of their butt because they sounded "science-fictiony".

[Avatrix]

Well, I stand corrected on several points. I knew Jersey was an island, but I didn't know more than that--just what I found online

[ThunderRazor]

I think that Dana's blog could be directed at newbies, oldbies (x_X), or both.

Before I feel that she as pushing us to answer the phones, and now I feel that she is pushing us to look for something in the wav files. If that is not what she intends, I still don't think that it would hurt to look into them.

However, I do know from interviewing people technically that they usually think that answers are much more complicated then they are and add a lot of work to the problem that doesn't need to be there. I am constantly aware that this may be the case here. What could seem to be very complex is really all too simple. Both ways are just as tricky.

[sherpa]

[vpisteve]

That is definitely the tendency from a player standpoint. Looking for puzzles and hidden meaning everywhere, we can tend to overanalyze and then end up not seeing the obvious because we're so focused on the minutae. As a wise man once said, "Not everything's a puzzle."

It's good once in a while to try to step back and see the big picture. I think Kyrstyn's post is spot on.

[raw19]

from evesdropping topic:

[krystyn]

raw19, that's an interesting idea - I wonder if it's true!

My gut is telling me, though, that the bees connection was established long before they sent the honey containers out - after all, it has always seemed meaningful that this A.I. has landed on a site about bees, and that the Widow's Story featured a Queen, and that the A.I. just happened to be named Melissa ...

The power of suggestion seems pretty strong in this game. I remember Grout pointing out the Busy Bee boardup over the windows near one of the Chicago axons to me and zero1, and it just makes me grin. I like the limitless possibilities, and the logic we try to use to contain it all in our head.

So while I'm still thinkin' that these may not be actual magic words, a lot of these words are definitely magical.