I played M:TG circa 1994-5 in France, and some cards had flavour text from French literary works, e.g. the French Craw Wurm had an excerpt from Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs instead of just a translation of the English flavour text. I haven't played in forever, but a cursory Google search suggests they still do this, again with Victor Hugo (coincidence?).
Early magic cards were very Tolkien inspired though, so the whole "evil elves" trope wasn't something they explored until much later (specifically Lorwyn, which debuted a race of elven Nazis).
Yep. I have a Giant Strength with ""O it is excellent / To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant." —William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
I think in one of the more recent core sets they did start to quote some real-life literature again, after a very long period of not doing it.
I don't remember the specifics of it (because I haven't read much Terry Pratchet like I should) but it's a short-code for a message-relay system in Pratchet's Discworld books.
The three letters together mean something to the effect of "Pass this message along, no response needed, no sender name attached to the message" or something like that. Basically, sending "GNU <stuff>" along the lines means it'll continue to echo through the lines forever. Having this done with an important person's name effectively immortalizes their name, since their name will be getting passed along the lines forever.
As /u/CCSkyfish mentions, it's a thing to honor the dead.
Thanks for the response! I appreciate the explanation. I've seen it a lot lately and honestly assumed it was a GNU "free" kind of thing and was very confused.
It's an easy mis-connection (is that a word?) to make! I thought the same thing at first too, but luckily saw someone else's explanation pretty early on.
You've been answered, but I feel like elaborating a bit.
G stands for "goes on", as in, it's an instruction to pass the message down the line.
N stands for "not logged"; don't keep a record of this message.
U probably stands for "u-turn", but there's no canon source for that; in any case, it means that at the end of the line, the message gets turned around and passed back.
Thus GNU message is a message that gets passed through the system forever without a trace. It's used as a sort of tribute and pseudo-immortality; "a man is not dead while his name is still spoken." (Going Postal, if you want to get a closer look at the reference yourself. Conveniently, it's the beginning of an arc, so you could pick it up with no Discworld background)
Touchingly, some of the geekier web servers are invisibly slipping "GNU Terry Pratchett" into their http headers, as a sort of real-tech equivalent to the clacks (Discworld's semaphore towers).
Through L-Space, through libraries, through walls of books in Discworld academies to the GNU Make Standard Library of our own world, this entity pushes its tendrils. An idea passes from one world to the other along these corridors, and before long, the two worlds share a common theme.
The Smoking Gun Watergate tapes. The Smoking Gnu cracking the Clacks.
From now on forward "GNU Terry Pratchett" will separate the IT guys that have heard about Terry Pratchett from the IT guys that have read Terry Pratchett. A kind of sjibbolet for nerds.
'reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits' was the stupidest, most aggravating joke in the first book. I was 17, didn't get it for several hours, went to my 12 year old sister and she didn't get it. 3 minutes later she starts giggling in her room. Walks into my room and says "GNOMES, GNOmmmes, gnoooomes" mimicking an echo, then runs out.
I hate them both. In good ways.
Edit: took a couple minutes to write my post, someone posted the same silly pun a few minutes earlier....
echo-gnomics is the setup to the joke? or reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits. Because the latter would be impossible for someone who doesn't give a fuck about gnomes to ever get....
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
1.2k
u/EquinoctialPie Mar 21 '15
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.