Shadow Government Org Chart
Shaenon: Here’s the image I used for Jonah’s and Nera’s charts of the Conspiracy. It’s about half callbacks to things from past storylines, and half children’s book references.
In addition to Project Skin Horse, the code name we all know and love, this chart includes a Project Silvereye. Project Silvereye is… AG-I, the government superhero team. Everyone who’s been wracking your brains trying to figure out what “AG-I” stands for, I’m sorry. It’s a terrible piece of periodic table/YA novel wordplay.
(P.S. Just over a week left in the Narbonic Kickstarter Drive!)
Channing: Even I didn’t know that, and I’ve been working on this thing for like ten years now.
It didn’t even occur to me to wonder what AG-I was. I figured (correctly, it seems) that the “I” was “eye”, simply based on Panoptica’s uniform. But beyond that, I wasn’t concerned. I knew if the meaning was important enough, it would work its way into one of the stories.
I always thought there was something suspicious about those cobras…
Not sure if spelling it AgI would have made the pun more obvious, or just made us wonder why a bunch of superheroes would name themselves Silver Iodide.
The inclusion of “Walter Cronkite” makes me imagine Jonah and Nera rampaging through the streets screaming his name, as Evan Dorkin’s Milk & Cheese did with “Merv Griffin!”
Mrs. Zarves is behind everything.
Don’t be silly. There is no Mrs. Zarves.
And still, look at him! There! Behind that, uhm, everything!
I was wondering whether the men with the attaché cases were the ones who hang out with the dead rats living in the basement, and the nod to Miss Zarves confirmed it.
Yay! Thank you Shaenon for posting this! 🙂
I know they’re operating off of incomplete information, but if those are the connections they’re making, so are we.
Is the Teen Sea near the Ween Sea?
I still don’t get the AG-I joke, sorry. Would someone who does be willing to explain it? Thanks.
Another name for silver is Argentum, and therefore its periodic table symbol is Ag. And I is pronounced the same as eye.
I had assumed it was an acronym.
I was thrown off because for some reason I had assumed that the “I” was a Roman numeral, so until now I always thought it was “Argentum One”.
My clue that the “I” was an “eye” was Panoptica’s uniform. All the other AG-I uniforms have “AG-I” emblazoned on them, on assorted backgrounds (on the collar of the cape for Pan’s partner in SH’s office; on a shield on Red Knight’s chest; and in an oval on the breastplate of the battlesuit Virginia wore to defeat the Red Knight). Panoptica, however, has just the letters “AG” on a silver background shaped like an eye. (Panoptica is Greek for “all seeing”.)
Same; I kept thinking it was a one.
So they haven’t researched the Robot Sea Monsters yet? o_O
I need to break out my INWO set.
Well, no wonder we had so much trouble.
I appreciate that “Mermaids” are connected to “Fiji” (a region known in certain circles for its totes legit mermaids)
Sorry about the double posting, but I’ve been going through it in more detail, and some of those “references to past storylines” are even more obscure/further abroad: there’s at least two references to Smithson in there, and possibly one to Lil Mell.
Is the “Invisible Island in the Great Lakes” a reference to anything other than Nick’s LiveJournal? That’s the only place I have seen it.
No idea, sorry.
That and Walter Cronkite are both references to Daniel Pinkwater’s YA novel Lizard Music.
Deamonreach!
That chart won’t make sense until you model it in 3D and rotate properly about the x,y, and z axes.
No idea what you would find, but I suspect that there’s a spider at the center of the web.
A robot spider named Sweetdaddy Jupiter Velvet?
“The Cure” seems pretty close to the centre of the conspiracy. I never did trust that Robert Smith…
Possibly the Narbon Cure for Mad Genius. Of course, the Empress may have meant the Vyvyan Basterd Cure for Not Being an Axe-Wielding Homicidal Maniac…
Am I the only one who thinks it odd that Narbonics Labs is nowhere at all on the chart? Nor is the Dave Conspiracy.
I’m wondering if the Dave Conspiracy is part of Poughkeepsie, so it doesn’t get its own block.
I’m intrigued by the Invisible Island in the Great Lakes. Reminds me of the backstory in “Selkie.”
(TUNE: “Underdog” theme song)
When villains, with an evil gleam,
Make innocent civilians scream,
Then heroes form a super-team,
And like a frickin’ laser beam
Comes Silvereye! (Silvereye!)
Silvereye! (Silvereye!)
Salve, Oculus Argentum!
Never break the rules, just bent ’em!
Silvereye ….
(Don’t ask why)
SILVEREYE!
Very nice. English and Latin.
It should be ‘Salve, Ocule Argenti’. The Eye is being addressed, so it goes into the vocative case, as in The Life of Brian; it’s an eye _of_ silver, so ‘argentum’ takes the genitive.
Sorry for the pedantry, and for breaking your rhyme scheme.
In that case, we could change to, “Salve, ocule argenti / Knuckle sandwich? We’ve got plenty!”
It works!
And here I figured it was a reference to the Sierra Adventure Game Interpreter…because if anything has more ridiculous ways to die than a Choose Your Own Adventure book, it’s a Sierra game.
Need a box for “Bigly”……(Which works on SO many levels…)
Have we seen the 19th Story yet? It’s directly connected to Anasigma AND Skin Horse there.
(For those who don’t know, it’s a Wayside School reference.)
I’ve heard of the Wayside Chapel…
No Jack Paar fans here, darn it…
Had to look it up. Turns out I’ve heard the joke, but never connected it with Paar, as he was a few years before my time.
And didn’t connect “Wayside Chapel” with the joke, since I have personally been to a couple places that are actually called “Wayside Chapel”. (So I have also heard of the Wayside Chapel, but not in the sense you meant.)
Funny how NBC’s censoring the joke without any warning to Paar prompted him to quit The Tonight Show — without any warning to NBC. And then a critic claiming Paar was “washed up on television” prompted him to return to The Tonight Show less than a month later. Flighty booger, wasn’t he?
Huh. And here my brain just read AG-I as AGI (Artifical General Intelligence) and didn’t think twice about it. Go figure.
SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier to read this way. I thank you, and my eyes thank you. Quietly.
After studying this chart extensively, I’ve decided to go to Fiji to investigate further.
Ahhh! Thank you!
I’m still disappointed that the Robot Sea Monsters have no place upon this chart. T_T
I was so pleased when I bumped into a Toynbee Tile “in the wild” here in DC.
“Cobras” really should read “Hugging Cobras,” which, thanks to Skin Horse, is the term my wife and I use to refer to a Chain of Deals.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainOfDeals
I love that the entire super hero group is a reference to the YA novel “The Girl With Silver Eyes”
I would have connected the Mole People to the reverse vampires and the Rand Corporation.