Do you believe in magic or science? Mathematical probability or mind boggling coincidence?
Or like me… are you in that grey area, where both could exist?
I’m going to give you some examples of some very strange coincidences that have arisen ever since I’ve been developing Elements Kapa.
In the beginning
First – a bit of background of how it all began….
Twenty years ago, while I was working in Australia on the Gold Coast, I was over at my boss’s house having a barbecue and I was watching with interest as his son and his friend were deeply engrossed in a game of Pokémon. I didn’t know much about the game but I was amazed at how much useless information they were absorbing and I instantly thought that it was a shame that the information that was flooding their mind was fictional rather than fact. Why couldn’t the characters be superheroes with powers of something like… like… the elements? Something real, something scientific, something that could really help them when they step into their first chemistry lesson.
I thought: “Okay… I’ll do it.” So I bought a book about the Periodic Table of the Elements, a sketch pad and pencils… and I was off.
Now there’s a coincidence
So… there is your first coincidence. “Gold Coast”… gold is an element… no? …. Ok, don’t worry, I can (and will) do a lot better than that!!!
Anyway, I had the idea and I started developing conceptual sketches over a period of months. My boss had a small fleet of Mobile blood screening vans that roamed the outback of Australia, raising the awareness of Heart disease.
I’d often be sitting in the van waiting for the next victim to arrive so I could steal a drop of blood from them, wait a few minutes for the results and then waffle on about the benefits of antioxidants and a Mediterranean style diet. So during those lazy minutes (sometimes hours) I would read and sketch… and the more I worked at it this new project the more I thought that I was onto something!
On the back burner
Anyhow… I’m the king of unfinished projects. I was young, restless and wanted fun, adventure and really wild things. So the sketch pad stayed at the bottom of my rucksack and finally after 13 years of travel I returned home and the sketch pad made its way to the bottom of my wardrobe. But the idea was not forgotten!
Time marches on
About 6 years ago go when my partner (Ruth) and I were home schooling our two children (Logan and Harry) I had the idea that my superhero/elements card game could be a great project to finally get stuck into, so I dug out the old sketches, put them up on the wall and start developing the game in earnest. Six years later the final game was printed.
But, enough of the background… You want to know about the weird coincidences!
More coincidences
So, here’s the first one…
While developing the game, I discovered that the last element to be named at the time was element 112 – Copernicium (my surname is Cope). Now, of course I haven’t discovered any elements, but I must admit I thought it was rather cool to discover my surname hidden in the last element on the Periodic Table. Furthermore… the name ‘Cope’ means ‘a maker of capes and cloaks’. Well I always thought that was rather dull, but once I had made the connection that my game was based around superheroes and the number one piece of costume attire for a superhero is a ‘Cape’!
What’s in a name?
This in turn lead me to want to discover the origins of my surname, and it turns out to have its root in old Norse, (Thor’s native language – Thor wears a cape, is a superhero in Marvel and there is an element names Thorium). And that word is Kapa… so this nice triangle of coincidences lead me to choose the name Kapa for the game. It was only later that I discovered that ‘Kapa’ is an acronym for ‘Knowledge At the Point of Action’ and the whole game is based around knowledge, and what is more point of action than an atom?
It was at this point that I realised a few strange coincidences were taking place and these bizarre happenings began to increase and over the next few months I’m going to put them down in this blog and I will let you decide if it is just a pure mathematical coincidence or whether something more magical is moving.
The coincidences are based around 4 things:
The number 42, Nordic mythology and of course Superheroes and Elements.
To be continued…
So… I hope you liked this first instalment. I’m off to start trying to remember all the weird connections! Cos there is a lot of them and they get stranger and stranger…
On a foot note: Kapa, according to the Urban Dictionary means ‘a scruffy individual’, and I’ve never been known for my sense of fashion…!