First of all, I wanted to manifest all of my respect for your Gunnerkrigg Court’s Jack avatar _
Then, to return in topic: could it be that “amber-coloured” means more reddish than blonde? Because I thought that actually the “hair” could be not head air at all, but body hair.
In the Genesis, Jacob, with the help of his mother, enacts a ruse to get the blessing of his father Isaac instead of the rightful heir Esau, his twin brother (but born immediately before him). The central part of the ruse involved covering Jacob in goatskins, to emulate Esau’s extreme hairiness, his most defining trait to his father Isaac who was blind in his last years. So, a fake goat hair made Isaac mistake Jacob for Esau… Now, in absence of any accurate description, it’s quite safe to assume Jacob’s actual hair was black (as for the majority of his people), but Esau is explicitly described at the moment of birth as “red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment”.
[quote=streetfelineblue]Or it was just Glimworm - the mistake being killing and stuffing the poor fella XD
EDIT: Wait, wasn’t there a two-headed bat in Kingdom of Loathing?[/quote]
Haha, when I googled “two headed bat” Glimworm was the first thing to come up… I was like, “Mmmh, maybe not exactly EB-related!?” ;)
I’m afraid I don’t know Kingdom of Loathing, but apparently there are more two headed bats around than one would’ve thought…
[quote=streetfelineblue]Then, to return in topic: could it be that “amber-coloured” means more reddish than blonde? Because I thought that actually the “hair” could be not head air at all, but body hair.
…
Too much of a longshot?[/quote]
Why thank you; it’s his grin especially that made me want this avatar.
As to your idea, that does seem a very plausible theory – it does seem likely that amber, in terms of hair color, would be more red than blond, and it does make the two hair colors seem both appropriate. That only difficulty being, what is the mistake here?
[quote=BenTGaidin]Why thank you; it’s his grin especially that made me want this avatar.
As to your idea, that does seem a very plausible theory – it does seem likely that amber, in terms of hair color, would be more red than blond, and it does make the two hair colors seem both appropriate. That only difficulty being, what is the mistake here?[/quote]
Being Isaac blind, his only means to distinguish the two twins was their respective hairiness. Jacob used a goatskin to induce Isaac to mistake him for Esau and bless him in his stead.
Well, yes, but it hardly seems on the same scale as the others; it does lead to some rivalries between their respective families later, but they do end up reconciled. It didn’t, as the other seem, cause the death of a king and father, or lead to a fall from grace for all humanity.
Hm…perhaps we’re looking at this from the wrong direction? If the black cloth is from Classical literature and the fruit is from the Bible, perhaps the locks are from a different set of mythology? Oriental, maybe? That would explain why most people here aren’t familiar with it, since most of the people here are English speakers…
Good point. From the things I’m familiar with the Electra story still fits best but of course this might relate to something none of us has ever heard of.
Hmm. Dido and Aeneas has all the ingredients, except that the Aeneid says Persephone clips Dido’s golden hair and doesn’t mention Aeneas’ hair colour. Later sources say Aeneas was auburn-haired. Does that count as ‘dark’, relatively speaking?
By the way! A paragraph quoted in the wikia Fallen London wiki about the Planning a theft from the Museum of Mistakes action goes like this:
You slip across the roof and down the twisting staircase to the Museum’s second floor. You have a copy of the key in your hand. You pad through the darkened galleries, surveying the Museum’s exhibits. What a lot of junk they seem to like here. A scrap of black sailcloth, supposedly three thousand years old? A cabinet full of recovered musket balls? A half-eaten fig?? Never mind - here are the coins! And here’s a tray of diamonds that will go some way towards covering your expenses. Oops, distant bell ringing. Time to go. [You’ll need to click on the First City coins in your inventory to give them to your friend.]
Black sailcloth and fig, but a cabinet of musket balls instead of the locks of hair. Is there a reason for this being the only different exhibit, while the other two are the same? Does anybody have the exact paragraph mentioning the locks of hair?
“The exhibits are fascinating. It is hard to believe even half are genuine. A tray of thirty First City coins. A stuffed two-headed bat almost the size of a man. A scrap of black sail-cloth labelled ‘Achaean, c 1200BC’. Two locks of hair, one dark and the other amber-coloured. The centrepiece of the Museum is a single half-eaten fig. It is unlabelled.”
Guess they just didn’t want to describe the exact same exhibits twice.
And no, I have absolutely no idea about those musket balls!
If you traded Compromising Documents for Stolen Kisses you might get this:
[font=Arial, Tahoma]
[color=rgb(119, 119, 170)]A damp alley two streets from the Museum of Mistakes. At last, the Muffled Intriguer.[/color]
[color=rgb(119, 119, 170)]’…took longer than I’d planned. Sorry. Most of the coins are gone. But look at these.[/color]
[color=rgb(119, 119, 170)]The kisses that built Rome and killed the queen of Carthage. Romance, eh?[/color]
[color=rgb(119, 119, 170)]
[/color]
[/font]
I must admit I do not find the Electra-Orestes theory valid.
In Aeschylus’ plays The Orestia, Electra mourning her father infers Orestes being nearby by recognizing a lock of hair on the tomb, a lock of hair she describes as a perfect match for her own. Which obviously means they didn’t have different hair colors.
Moreover, the trilogy, ending with The Eumenides, concludes with the alliance of Argos and Athens, the founding of the Areopagus tribunal, Orestes being acquitted by it, his tormentors, the Chthonian deities known as Erinyes, becoming guardians of Athen’s law and prosperity, and, of course, a feast. Too much of a happy ending to be considered a mistake.
I believe this play to be the original, as Aeschylus was involved in theater years before Euripides and Sophocles. Of course, the mistake itself could be the inauthenticity of the locks of hair, but wouldn’t this be overly convoluted ? edited by Alexander von Brennenburg on 4/6/2012
Though I have to say that the theory is wildly clever, I’m inclined not to believe Mr. Burandt for the reasons Mr. Brennenburg articulated. There just doesn’t seem to be a grave or obvious mistake involved, regardless of the hair color of the characters. The theories that seem the most valid to me just from reading through are Samson and Delilah, Isaac and his sons, and Dido and Aeneas.
I’m inclined to reject Isaac only because there isn’t any kind of romantic link or a serious tragic element, both of which seem to be strong motifs in the museum and the game in general. Not that this alone rules it out, I think it’s still a reasonable theory.
Mr. Brythain’s evidence is obviously a reference to Dido and Aeneas, however I don’t think it’s safe to link that text to the hair. The Intriguer’s words could easily be a reference to the kisses alone, and nothing to do with the two locks.
Which leaves Samson and Delilah - my personal favorite; Love story, mistake (revealing the secret to Delilah) with disastrous results (Samson is blinded and lead to slavery in chains), overpowering significance of the hair. My only complaints are; first, the color seems only a plausible link and second, Why both locks of hair? Surely Samson’s would have been enough.