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[madeillegal]

well-now we have 2 user pics of people drinking from straws.

maybe beth dies first.
then lenadia.

[Evil]

Methods for finding clues

[Melampus]

tmerch & tinag222 - House Of Leaves MUST be related. I think that might be the starting point - or, at least, a big 'hint' about method, etc. It better be a good book, b/c now I must read it. Hurm...

Evil - good points about Jamie.

I still think, w/regard to the myspace pages that the most profitable method would be: (1) to be thinking in terms of a lateral riddle, i.e., don't try to go right for the 'answer' and figure it all out at once, but just flesh out backstory and let the 'answer' reveal itself; (2) messaging between now and January is our chance to get more info. from them; and, note: limited time frame!! So, use it wisely, and note the apparent rule: you can't ever let on that it's not real.

In terms of content of the pages: we should be on the lookout for anything that we can figure out by cross-referencing information, e.g., the relative ages of each person (just an example). And, the pics on each page probably conceal some clues/puzzles. Finally, some relation between the Slusho 7 and the flavor robots? This has been done to death and w/no results as yet, but there might still be something there (esp. considering the recent awesome find re: J.J. robot tshirt from the LOST season 1 special features DVD). The connection seems pretty striking, just look at that pic of Beth drinking from 3 drinks w/star-light patterns behind her - doesn't that seem to point to the Flavors page on Slusho.jp?

Until anything new surfaces, I think our best bet would be to just treat this as marketing and get to know the characters - start fleshing out each of the 7's life story, relations, family, etc. IF there's an ARG surrounding this, it will probably take some time to develop; and, when it does, it will most likely involve fake and real websites about whatever science is behind the monster (it's development and/or discovery, awakening, etc.). At this point, we should just be fleshing out whatever bits of this alternate reality (/lateral riddle) we can get.

So, some questions to answer:

1. Rob's tshirt - wtf? (and, what kind of butterfly is it?)
2. where is Lil' in each of her pictures?
3. what's Hawks' "augie" shirt?
4. Who are the girls w/Hud in his pics?
5. Where's the 'you owe my $11' guy? Is it Lil's roommate, Niles?
6. What's on "gramps"'s tie? (Rob & Hawk's 'gramps' - Hawks' pics).
7. Hawkins family tree generally.
8. Who's in the picture on the tree in the middle of the pic of the radio in the back window of the car (Jamie's pics)?
9. Are the songs on each page significant, and if so, how/why?
10. Are each person's pets or former pets significant?
11. Apart from Hawk mentioning "chugging a Slusho" in his blog, does anyone have any connection w/Slusho?

Those are the first (11) that came to mind? Maybe a thread should be started w/a list of questions we can (realistically) get answered about the characters and their backstory? Also, we should be keeping each other informed about the conversations we have w/each character? We should be measuring their response-behavior.

[triforceguyver]

i like that little idea of yours, it might just work

[tinag222]

Indeed.

Evil - have you kept track of all the instances of 63 at all just to have something to work with?

I can safely say that your theory here hasn't been touched so far, least that I've seen...and it's entirely plausible and reasonable and keeps within the frame. It also does work extremely well with tmerch's notion of House of Leaves. Thinking laterally would definitely have to include common sense. Why bring in arbitrary elements when nothing suggests it? Instead, look at what's obvious and then look at those incidentals.

In a large way that's exactly how slusho got fed to us. It's in your face but the answer isn't immediately obvious. You'd have to think about this as an actual product and if so, would it have a website or a company headquarters, etc....and find it that way. Nobody did, of course, they went at it from the OOG sense and the fliers from the shoot in LA. Had nobody caught that connection I wonder how long we'd be sitting here without knowing squat about slusho.jp!

BUT...the hubs got on the ball and finally ordered the tshirt (and a cap too he said! woo), and I guess he got into it because he said he got one for himself too, which is funny...but pretty cool (he's in Iraq is why it's funny...like dude, pay attention out there, kay?) so hopefully it'll be here soon and hopefully I didn't also get left out of the japanese papers.


Jamie: she was the one who started adding friends right off the bat. She's the one who supplies the ms page clues. She's got some curious things in her survey. Isn't she one of the two with comments about wanting to see who they are in the future, or being able to move into the future?

[Melampus]

She also "destroyed the dinosaurs." What the hell is that anyway? It sounds like a reference to something - a line from song maybe? Some hipster pop culture reference?

Also, tinag222, that's a really good point about the way slusho.jp was discovered. I don't think they intended it to go that way. We found the myspace pages just the way they wanted it w/the writing on the back of the new photo on 1-18-08. Even then, it seemed like we found those myspace pages faster than they had planned (So there! HA! Bring it, JJ!).

So, my question is this: if nobody had noticed the on-location signs that said "slusho" - if we hadn't found 'slusho.jp' that way, how would it have been discovered? How else would we have found slusho.jp? Or, was that the plan all along? Did they call their shoot "slusho" for just that reason?? Seems unlikely.

If slusho.jp was discovered earlier than they had intended, then they presumably scrambled to patch the damage (so to speak). That could explain why it wasn't fully up and running at first - the recent 'update' that opened up Happy Talk & the FavorBots, etc. Their original plan (which they would still be trying to stick to) might have been Myspace first, Slusho second. If that's true, it would explain why nobody's found anything at Slusho! so far. It's a dead-end, b/c it's not ready to be brought into play yet; but, it was found, so there it is - a red herring... for now.

Any ideas about diff. ways someone might have possibly discovered Slusho.jp, if that name had never been spotted on a sign at a filming location? There's the t-shirt in the trailer, but would that have realistically been spotted and recognized for what it was if people didn't already know to look for "slusho"? Other than the tshirt Hawk is wearing in the trailer, is there any other ways we might have found Slusho.jp?

[Craig007]

Hi everyone, my first post, woohoo!!

Don't know if this will help, or if anyone has spoken to him already about this (quite a lot of pages on this thread to go through lol) but have been talking to Hud on myspace, had quite a few messages going back and forth now. been talking about japanese films mainly, don't know if there's anything to go on with that. the messages are bellow, if anyone could help come up with a good reply i could send then that would be great.

haven't seen Ghost, is that another japanese flick?

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Craig
Date: Aug 10, 2007 1:21 PM


Yeh have seen Howl's moving castle, but i didn't really like it as much as the others. thought visually it was amazing, and I love the idea, but thought the ending let it down a bit. are there any other animations your into? 'Ghost in the Shell' is amazing if you havn't seen it.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: HUD
Date: 09 Aug 2007, 10:15


Yeah, I need to see it again though. The only time I saw it was on the bus going to ski club in high school. I remember digging it, though. Have you seen Howl's Moving Castle? Very interesting, so unique. I coulda done without billy crystal's irritating dubbing in the US version, but other than that, really cool.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Craig
Date: Aug 9, 2007 1:13 AM


Hey Hud, how it going? just looking at your page at saw that you listed Spirited Away as one of your favourite films, good choice lol. do you like any of his other work? I love 'Princess Mononoke'.

Craig.


The reply I was thinking was maybe to ask him what japanese films he's into, if any. could try and move the convo to films like 'the host'. would that be to obvious?

Craig.
P.S. you need to read the myspace message from the bottom, up. forgot to swap it round.

[Guest]

tinag222

[jajs]

i thought slusho.jp was found off the shirt from the first pic on 1-18-2008.........

[deletia]

HoL

[tmerch]

Ask, and you shall receive.

[SisBear]

I agree that the Slusho.jp that we found was exactly what they wanted us to find. The "Customer Feedback" page was active from the very beginning, and they used our e-mails to Satoshi to come up with the quotes in "Your Happy Talk", which was activated later.

[Nighthawk]

If this is a game (I'm still not convinced that it is), it wouldn't make sense for the to make *everything* available from the beginning. With the amount of people following this, if the entire "game" was made public day one it'd be done within hours.

They have given themselves two vehicles for periodic updates:
- "Real time" MySpace pages
- Periodic pictures on the 1-18-08 site

I don't think there's any secrets around here. I think, for now, this is an ARE more than an ARG. After all, they do have to keep this going for the next five months...

[worngmike]

but from what jj said way back there are still other sites out there that havent been found yet. but how the hell do you go about finding something in amongst all this mess, without any concrete clues to what you are actually looking for.
i don't think they are anywhere near done yet on releasing stuff but i still want to know what these other sites are.

[SisBear]

For what it's worth: