The Invisible Protis Sniper

About

The Invisible Protis Sniper is a mutation of Interruptors spawned by Blizzards’ Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty PC game. The Interruptor works similar to Candlejack in that the person speaking of or about the Protis Sniper is interrupted mid-sentence; however it is notable that some people claim to see the Invisible Protis Sniper before their demise.

Origins

On July 27, 2010, Activison-Blizzard released Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty for the PC, and it was the long awaited sequel to Blizzards’ 1998 hit Starcraft and its expansion pack, Starcraft: Brood Wars. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is a Real-Time Strategy Game revolving around the conflicts of three races: The Space-faring humans known as Terrans, the beast-like Zerg, and the technologicly advanced Protoss. The original Starcraft also gave rise to three other memes: Zerg Rush , Construct Additional Plyons , and In Ur Base . ^[1]

Sometime in August, a frustrated user went onto the Starcraft II forums to seek help against what they called “The Invisible Protis Sniper”, with Protis being a misspelling of Protoss. The “Sniper” in question is actually a Melee unit known as the Dark Templar. The Dark Templar is a permanently cloaked unit available to the Protoss, who specialize in assassinating worker units (units that collect resources to contribute to a players’ economy). Due to its’ high power and stealth, the Dark Templar can wreck havoc on a players’ economy if left unchecked. A Dark Templar can only be detected by Base Defenses and each races’ unique stealth detection unit (The Terran Raven, the Zerg Overseer, and the Protoss Observer). ^[2]

The frustrated player asked how to deal with “The Invisible Protis Sniper”, due to the fact that a Protoss player had snuck in a few Dark Templar and surgically struck, or “Sniped” his worker units. Other players were not considerate to his plight and began to mock the player by beginning to offer advice, only to have it cut off by the “Invisible Protis Sniper”.

The name of the player and date of his original cry for help have been lost to the internet ether as the original forum post was deleted. Most retellings are the same: that a Terran Noob came on and asked about defeating the “Invisible Protis Sniper” and was ridiculed in the aforementioned manner.

Usage

The Invisible Protis Sniper is generally used on the Starcraft II forums to annoy and mock other players, particularly when issues of balance, a hot-button issue among players, is brought up. It is also used to point out, rather tongue-in-cheek, about how silly a discussion has become.

Because there is no actual unit called the Invisible Protis Sniper, any depiction of the character is shown as a dotted-line silhouette with the body structure of a Protoss, while wielding a sniper rifle, a nod to the Terran Ghost, who fulfils the role of a sniper in the game.

Like all Interruptor memes, Invisble Protis Sniper is tied to its originating culture, while occasionally breaking out into the mainstream or other cultures, in the same way that Candlejack is for those nostalgic for Freakazoid! Or Hypnotoad is for fans of Futurama.

References

^[1] Starcraft II Wiki

^[2] Starcraft II Forums