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Exactly what was the inspiration for the green logo from "Someplace Else" that's now in the upper left-hand corner of the Forum?

What of the possibility that it's a doodle? Something Adam drew on a napkin at 9 pm on dark and stormy night? He needed an alien-looking handle and he created one, just like that. That satisfies me completely. He's created many elegant things, and the Xen handle or switch is just one of them.

I remember that the inspiration was mentioned... somewhere. It's a pity I cannot remember much more. Damn you Adam for brainwashing me to conceal your secrets!

I think he said that it was inspired by a logo used in the game Marathon or the sequels. Then again that could have just been us that decided that. If you look in the old locked topic "tri-lobal symbol?" there is a brief discussion about the origin of it.

Don't be ridiculous, EVERYTHING'S a conspiracy here. ;)

It's supposedly inspired by both the logo from Marathon, and something from System Shock 2.

Conspiracy, hidden messages and even more obscure meanings.
From the design of the handles in S.E. to the exact number of crows flying over the beach in metastasis_1, not to mention the anagrams on the French and German Minerva pages...

I think it's secretly a flux capacitor. It makes much more sense.

Presumably you've never seen Adam's "birthmark"...

Sir, to even mention it in poliet company! Of course I haven't, I'm not that kind of girl!

Okay. And when you use it in SE and it turns upside-down and red, I imagine that's reversing the polarity on the neutron flow?

True insipiration is not something that can be explained or defined. Sometimes things that are not yet in existence are, suddenly in a particular's mind, there. The things you see, the pseudo-existence of reality that stops just out of your own skull defies any explanation. It doesn't exist, none of it does, but only what you perceive to exist finds itself appearing an reappearing. One shouldn't worry where the inspiration came, the fact that it did come and now something beautiful exists should perhaps be enough. When God makes man would you dare ask "Why?" You question your own existence and threaten that of all the reality you've made in your mind.

Lovely, isn't it?

You went a bit further than I did, but I imagine we share a similar weariness of excessive deconstruction. I enjoy figuring out what it is in Adam's work that gives me so much enjoyment, but I see little point in hunting down all the similarities with previous works and I'm opposed to the assumption that everything he does is necessarily a multi-layered and cabalistic enterprise (see my sarcastic post above).

Curiosity is human nature. Even when it comes to disassembling a work of art into tiny pieces to see "how it's made" or "how it works" it still is what drives human ingenuity. I dare not confront and defy this all-powerful instinct. Especially when it's the one Minerva represents.

Of course, I never see any fault in the search for how something but rather how people choose to indulge themselves so in trying to find out what was the inspiration. No one thing can lead to another and, as a writer myself, find my inspiration coming from different things and ideas. Even so, I cannot safely say that, "Oh, this particular moment inspired me to do this," or "This/That person," or "This/That event". In the end, it's a combination of it all and also something unspoken and unconcious from the inner corners of a person's mind. While the concious experiences may trigger some deep, recessed idea from the dregs of your mind, the idea itself may as well always of been there, but simply out of concious grasp.

You'd be surprised how often a seemingly simple idea can twist and turn unconciously as it goes along, the unintentional addition of layers upon layers with blatant allusions your concious mind may not even register at the time. It happens - oh yes, it does - and the result is beautiful.

If anyone could so easily tap into such inner energies, I doubt we'd ever see anything of 'low quality' again. But what fun would a world be when everything intrigued us as much as Minerva? Things of true value are received with a dear respect due to their sheer rarity - too much of a good thing is a bad thing, it seems.