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[GinGa]

[SPEC] The Spider and the Flea (Grimm's Fairy Tale)

[No one]

Question...

Has the flea been mentioned in anything else but the Queen/Widow story? I mean to say that if the flea hasn't been made reference to in the same context as the SPDR (or in the same story "thread") then any connections drawing them together seem might thin IMHO.

[GinGa]

Yeahp. A mite thin it is The relationship is that they are both considered to be 'child processes' of the 'main processes' for the Queen and the Sleeping Princess AIs.

Another Grimm fairytale: The Glass Coffin

And another: Queen Bee - mention of a princess' sleeping chamber.

They seem unrelated, tho. I think this is a dead end.

[Roc]

Speaking of the Brothers Grimm, there's also a fairy tale called 'The Glass Coffin'.

In it a brother and sister are such close friends, they vow never to wed. One day a magician comes by and attempts to woo the sister. She rebukes him and in retaliation he seals her in a glass coffin, transforms her brother into a great stag, reduces her castle to ruins and her servants into smoke, which he then captures into bottles. A 'lucky' tailor happens across a bull (magician) and a stag (brother) fighting. The stag defeats the bull and then charges teh tailor, lifts him upon its horns and takes him to a cave. There the tailor is instructed to take a secret passage down to the Princess's chamber, where he releases her from the coffin, her subjects from their bottles, and opens another glass chest which breaks the enchantment on the castle, and restores it to its former splendor.

Of course, glass coffins are pretty common in fairy tales (Sleeping Beauty), but I digress.

[Roc]

The Operator referred to seeing 'the print of a Flea's naked foot upon the shore'.

[Anton P. Nym]

Maybe I'm looking at this with too much Halo on my mind, but that rising streamlet that swallows up all the other characters at the end of the tale gave me chills...

This is way-out-there speculation, but in-Halo dialog has an AI character called "the Monitor" refer to escaped samples of a multi-adaptive parasite as the Flood. This has become their official name.

The dialog that matches this is "The Flood will consume all!" And, if given half a chance, they will... when I refered to biological rampancy, it was the Flood I had specifically in mind.

IF (and that's a mighty big "if") the choice of "Spider" and "Flea" as character names were references to this fable, then it could be a metaphor for the Flood exploiting the miseries of the other species to expand and fullfil their biological imperative. This would be initiated by some catastrophic blunder by the Spider, which triggers a reaction from the Pious Flea, etc-etc, until the Girl (Princess?) breaks something and releases the Streamlet/Flood.

Of course, this is pretty tenuous stuff. We need a more concrete link between this fable and the ILB storyline before we build much on this, such as character analogs for the Door (Dana's web host?), Broom, Cart, Ashes, and Tree. Too many broken links in that chain right now.

Gah. So tired. What a time to catch a stupid chest cold.

-- Steve's crawing back into bed for a nap until the room stops spinning.

[Partnerz]

That part is after the crash, But BEFORE the queen has been isolated by Dana.

[Roc]

Dana isolated the Queen?
What's the spec behind that?

[Partnerz]

Sorry i may have been using the queens thoughts that she was trapped/attacked by Dana.

I should of said the assassin

[ThatOtherGuy]

Hey, lets get back to the topic of the Grim Fables! I don't think this is just a coincidence. I mean, look at the fable of the glass coffin...

[CoffeeJedi]

i know what you mean Anton, the flood, definitly, it shows how small minor actions and over-REaction, can result in catastrophe

hey, i can't think of a more perfect time to be sick! you can call off work and stay inside all day working on this!

[GinGa]

Just a quick £0.02 from me - I like the theory of the pious flee bieng in some way related to the Covenant/Flood. I have posted some speculation (maybe I shouldn't, but what the hell) on the Wiki about this link. The thing that keeps nagging at me is that the flea's footprint on the beech statement is from Robinson Crusoe, and there is a character in another story called 'The Castaway.' Now, I can't help but think the two are related in some way??

Also, I have posted some more speculation in there about what 'The Castaway' being a 'Sailor with Odysseus' could mean - it's tenuous, but it could possibly mean that The Castaway is one of the enemy - and so could have something to do with the pious flea... Don't think that'll stand up, though. Just casting about

[Roc]

The thing with Odysseus is that in the Odyssey (which is about Odysseus trying to return home after the trojan war) Odysseus himself is referred to, and takes the role of, a castaway (when he meets Nausicaa in the lands of the Phaeacians).

In the Illiad (about the Trojan War, including Odysseus' trojan horse allowing Spartan's to breach the walls of Troy), I don't remember any castaways.

So, I think our Castaway is indeed from an Odyssey parallel. After the Trojan War, (he had stories of war, soldiers fighting up to their waist in water, backs to the sea -- much like the way the spartans were forced to fight against the trojans.)
After Odysseus had worked his deception (it refers to the castaway as having been out setting buoys of sound to confuse the enemy).

Yet it seems odd that Melissa would know him as "a sailor with Odysseus", because not long after Odysseus told the Phaeacian king about the deeds of Archilles and Odysseus, he revealed himself and his full story.

[GinGa]

This is all moving away from the topic of the Grimm fairy tale connection and the spider and the flea. Shall I (or someone else) start another thread with thoughts about the 'a sailor with Odysseus' comment - and what it could mean?

On topic- nice work with the streamlet/flood connection from the spider and the flea tale. So you think there's a possibility that the SPDR could set off a chain of events that leads the flood/covenant to earth? This would then provide the start of the storyline for H2 (though of course, the time-line is wrong!). The flea could still be involved by it's own volition (an enemy agent) OR accidentally.

[Shadrach]

Going back to the fairy tale, I think you're looking at it too literally. What it breaks down to is basically a chain reaction, one event causing another and another resulting in an overwhelming flood that engulfs everyone. Could this be an allusion to the events leading up to the flood being released in Halo? Or is it an omen of things to come in Halo2? Its still a very tenuous link back to the original Widows story however...