Why is there so much Iggy Pop in this Bowie book?

If Seabrook has established one thing about Bowie's life in the 70s, it's that Iggy Pop was a substantial part of it. He's written about Bowie's working to bring Pop's career back on track and already gave his 1976 album, The Idiot, the old song-by-song Seabrook treatment.

Now here comes Thomas Jerome again, because Iggy's put out a Lust for Life.

What's strange about Seabrook's writing about this album though is that he has a great deal less to say about it.

On one hand, based on the context that Seabrook builds for the album, his dearth of commentary could just be because there really isn't much to say about Lust for Life.

Having given it a listen as I read his track-by-track write up, I can say myself that there's not much to it. Maybe I've not listened to enough pop albums lately, but it definitely sounds like it's an eclectic mix of styles with very little direction.

On the other, I'm not convinced that, however trite, there's as little to say about something like Lust for Life as Seabrook claims. Any work of art is open for analysis of any depth. Though, if I'm reading the implication properly, I do agree with Seabrook in saying that Lust for Life as a whole isn't that artistic. Measured against The Idiot specifically and other albums in general.

My biggest problem with this part of Bowie in Berlin though is that it doesn't seem justified.

Within the context of a book about Bowie, I feel like Seabrook just doesn't give enough attention to what Bowie did on Lust for Life. Crediting him to vocals or instruments in the headings to his write ups is one thing, but it's definitely not enough to merit a whole section about the album.

The Idiot is much more clearly a collaborative effort.

At best, it seems that on Lust for Life Bowie was just plonking away (very artfully, of course) on this or that instrument. And plonking's just not deserving of the full write up that Seabrook attempts.

Testing Truegold Tower

In a place called "Truegold" I was expecting more fire. I had figured that this would be a tower were gold was smelted, tested, and then shipped out to be used in Aios' armaments. Instead, it's another weapon manufacturing-type tower, where there are a ton of giant hammerheads slamming into the walls.

Giant hammerheads that you can jump onto and use to get to different areas. That is, from which you can, as they say, "platform." To use the non-performative form of "platformer," of course.

But being true to its nigh-on last dungeon status, Truegold Tower doesn't just offer up four-chains' worth of platforming. The place is also teeming with servant beasts that come equipped with swords that are a cross between great swords and Cloud's Buster Sword. These gents seem to attack in pairs, as well.

This combination of platforming and combat makes this is a very fitting "final" dungeon (quotation marks included, since there are still those locked doors in every tower).

In any case, one chain of this tower's four has been taken out already, but judging from what I've seen it looks like this tower might take a while to clear.

Tolstoy on the madness of a jealous heart

In an earlier entry I wrote that Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata" reminded me of Poe stylistically. Having finished the story, I can now say why.

It's because it focuses entirely on the emotional state of a single person while calling attention to the stability and reliability of that person.

Podnyshev is not saint turned from a pure life to one of hatred and vileness by some temptress or temptation.

Throughout the retelling of his life story he mentions the fact that he had lived a life of debauchery, like the men that he grew wary of as his wife stopped having children (after having five) and started focusing more on making herself noticeably beautiful, before marriage and thus knew their thoughts and feelings when they looked upon her.

Podnyshev also admits to being a jealous husband. Much of the final quarter of "The Kreutzer Sonata" is spent in his comparing this jealousy to a beast that he had to shackle to keep in check.

This combination of assumption and jealousy makes for a narrator who is much too much in his own head. So much so that there isn't enough room for readers to get in there with him. Yet, his thinking that his wife is having an affair with a travelling violinist is nonetheless something that we can see but that we doubt and hope against as much as he does.

We're lead to ask questions like "as an admitted owner of a jealous heart, surely he is remembering something incorrectly or embellishing words and actions, right?"

Probably.

Maybe.

Whatever the truth of the matter is, after having finished this story, I don't see it as Tolstoy's raging against the establishment of marriage or the ideals of love. I see it more as a cautionary tale.

Before you can love another in the ideal way you need to not be Podnyshev with his rushing into marriage. Nor can you be someone who sees the opposite sex as simply objects for animal release. Instead, you need to slowly build a relationship with another person in which you recognize and acknowledge that they are, in fact, another person.

I think that could be seen as a pro for pornography. As much as it denigrates its subjects, it also separates them from the people that you interact with every day, leaving you with the room to realize that those other people in your life are people. Ultimately, you could then go on to see those performing for the boudoir camera as people too, but that's much less likely, speaking generally.

Podnyshev's problem isn't that love as the poets sing of it doesn't exist, but that he has closed himself off from it making women into objects of sexual desire first rather than regarding them as fellow human beings.

Tolstoy's granting him this revelation in the climax of his story seals this interpretation for me. If you go down the road of Podnyshev, the only way you'll realize that the opposite sex are people too is if you exercise the ultimate power over one of them and look into his/her eyes as you plunge a dagger into his/her chest. Otherwise jealousy, a product of possessiveness, will lead you to madness. The madness that breeds murder in the mind.

Though that internal struggle is ultimately what makes "The Kreutzer Sonata" so much like Poe's stories in my mind. To the point where I have to highly recommend it, in fact.

Grinding into Gittingham

So the next phase of Dragon Quest IX requires me to go to Gittingham Palace. Since a convenient doorstep stop has been created for the Starflight Express, that's an easy enough task. So easy that I figured I would do some dawdling first. I had recently found a key that can open any lock, after all, and there were doors that needed opening.

After opening those that I could remember, I got back onto the game's main track.

So I show up at Gittingham Palace's gates and see two guards on the door. I was geared up for a relatively easy fight. Instead, however, one of the leaders of the Gittingham Empire appears when you near the palace: Hootingham-Gore. Then he challenges you.

This is like going to fight Magus in Chrono Trigger and having him challenge you after the iconic cutscene of the exterior of his castle. Although that game does an exceptional job of evenly pacing out your characters' levels with its difficulty curve.

Dragon Quest IX does not do the same.

Hootingham-Gore threw out Frizzles and Swooshes like a pitching machine throws out baseballs, and his flanking guards swung their halberds for never less than 30 damage. Not expecting a mini-boss before the dungeon even started, I was not only taken off guard I was taken out. Reduced first to my two party members who have no means of reviving the others, and then to my powerful (in one on one encounters) thief, my party crumbled then and there on the doorstep of Gittingham Palace.

Realistically, should I have expected a different outcome? No. Not at all.

Since the journey to Upover, the game's not offered any direct means of level building.

I could've left the prison break for a session to grind around the Gittish Empire or elsewhere. Or I could have done some grinding before or after going to the Realm of the Almighty. But since Upover, I've only been facing a series of bosses (mini and otherwise) without the monster-filled, and subsequently level-boosting, dungeons they usually go with.

Because I'd been facing this string of bosses I had no real sense that I needed to level up before heading into Gittingham Palace.

And maybe I don't, but I have a full quest queue so why not kill two mecha-mynahs with one stone?

Seabrook on Low

Reading Seabrook's in-depth analysis of Low, and of the situations surrounding its creation leaves me feeling like I should pick up the violin again.

Reading about Bowie's particular methods for putting his albums together and realizing just how much thought and consideration went into it along with how much improvisation and spontaneity makes it seem, paradoxically, like music theory isn't really needed.

Though talent definitely is.

Talent and technical know how. I never knew there were so many different synthesizers and loopers and devices involved in the album's production. Or that so many were even in existence in the 1970s.

Aside from opening up the world of music producing for me, reading so much of Seabrook's analysis of an album I'm fairly familiar with made me realize that music is the only thing that can be criticized and written of in a technical fashion simultaneously while still appealing to a popular audience.

If book reviewers wrote about how an author uses the subjunctive mood or subordinate clauses, or Oxford commas, most readers would not get much out of their reviews.

Similarly, if video game reviewers included details about the programming language and techniques that a company used to make their game in their reviews most gamers might be intrigued but would likely regard that discussion as irrelevant.

Music (and art, to some degree) is the only thing in which popular criticism can involve technical language that is directly about its subject's creation. What's more, I think including that technical speak does increase the enjoyment of what's being criticized.

Reading Seabrook's song by song breakdown while listening to Low definitely made some things I'd missed much more apparent (like the funeral bell in "Warszawa"). At the same time, though, a little more conviction in his linking the characteristics of Low to Bowie's point and life would be appreciated.

A gimmicky Master in the Blazing Citadel

The Master of the Blazing Citadel was definitely the toughest boss yet in Pandora's Tower. However, I feel like part of its difficulty is artificial.

Another mech-type monster (so far as I could tell from its design and its appearance after the fire wreathing it about had died down), this Master makes insistent use of shields. Arranged around it in a half-circle, it will either bring them out one by one to attack or spin them around it in a move that blends offense and defense. But should you try to strike its entirely exposed Master Flesh while even one of these shields is around your attempt will be blocked.

So I spent much of the fight dealing with these shields, using either the chain or the scythe. And that, I feel, is what's artificial about the difficulty of this Master.

Taken alone, it would be a push over (even if it does have one, nearly unavoidable, massive attack), but because of its shields it takes quite a while to finish off. Especially since, once again, you don't get much opportunity to power up the chain. In almost every instance of connecting with the Master Flesh, I tightened the chain until its indicator stopped flashed red and then pulled. Had I tried for more the connection probably would have been (and often was) snapped.

Nonetheless, this fight reminded me of my favourite bout from No More Heroes: the fight with Bad Girl.

That fight is also against a boss with very tight defense. But in the fight with Bad Girl it's very easy to feel like Travis (the player character) and Bad Girl are physical equals. Plus, the way that you wind up circling each other, looking for a weak spot in her defense or blocking her attacks, really ratchets up the tension.

The latest Master in Pandora's Tower, doesn't offer any sense of being Aeron's equal. At one point it was definitely human, but certainly isn't any more. Even so, its regular scream is eerily human-like. It definitely adds a certain chill to the fight, but those shields really slow down the pace and axe any feeling of being on an equal footing.

At any rate, what follows the boss fight is a series of scenes that hints at what's really been happening with the curse and that shows just how close Elena is coming to losing herself to it.

So, it's great that the battles are continuing to get more challenging and that the story behind the curse is slowly being revealed. But I really hope that Truegold Tower's Master doesn't hide behind some kind of gimmick.

Heaven's no place for animation (spoilers below)

Things are slowly drawing to a close in Dragon Quest IX.

Having been to the Realm of the Almighty (this game's heaven) only to find it empty and in ruins it became obvious quite quickly that something was up. The trip wasn't a total wash, however, since it lead to the revelation that Yggdrasil, the world tree that the Celestrians tend to, had been the Almighty's only daughter, Celestria, all along. 

Oh, and that the source of the destruction of heaven is to be found in the revived Gittish Empire. Of course. 

But what I found most interesting amidst all of the plot development and cutscenes were those scenes' style. Like almost all of the other cutscenes in the game they're all rendered with in-game sprites. It seems that even a visit to heaven isn't enough to merit another hand drawn animated scene. Though there's a brief five second animation of Celestria's transformation into Yggdrasil. 

That scene leads me to believe that there's more. Maybe they were cut from the final version of the game for legal reasons. Maybe they're only unlocked after some sort of "New Game+" is started. But a five second animation isn't something that just gets made and tossed into a cutscene. 

Setting Celestria's transformation in such a style definitely makes it stand out. But it also begs the same question that the animated scene of the dragon fight does: Why aren't all of the game's cutscenes animated?

Tolstoy's mad man on a train

"You know I am a sort of lunatic" (190).

Unlike most people on the far right, Tolstoy's Pozdnyshev (I'm reading it "Paused-nyeh-shev") at least admits to his madness. And he certainly lives up to his own admission.

Claiming that the Jews pull the strings of business in Russia. Claiming that love is perverse because, despite all of the ideals spoken of around it, its end is sex. Claiming that marriage is selfish. Claiming that children are a nearly intolerable source of worry and sparking point for spousal strife. Claiming that doctors conspire together to cure things that need no curing in any other animal. Claiming that the end of humanity is to come to a peaceable generation in which point the selfish and passionate need to love and be loved will cease and humanity will end. 

I won't say that it's all crazy. As a mouthpiece for Tolstoy's own beliefs about marriage and love, his thinking that love and marriage are at the least curious alternatives to what we still hear of the ideals of love on all media fronts. 

Though Pozdnyshev's reasons for believing what he does are to be found in his own experience - and there alone. That is, he does so, and readers are free to do so as well. His experience has not been very positive, however. 

He rushed into a marriage with a women that he really only had physical interest in. 

Not knowing much about her own desires he was left with little choice other than to agree reluctantly to having children with her. 

And these things done, his opinion of the doctors with whom he interacted fell to that of leeches. 

To top it all off, he has extrapolated from his own experience and painted everyone else with the same brush. 

So this short story about a random pulling aside our nameless "reader-stand-in" character and sharing his story has changed from being about someone pulling you aside to tell you about their day to being about someone pulling you aside to tell you how the world is run by lizard people via supersonic frequencies emitted by smartphones. 

Thomas Jerome Seabrook: Writing (mostly) rightly about music

Thomas Jerome Seabrook must've just chosen his words poorly when he used "blistering" to describe Bowie's "Stay." I've now read a better sample of his writing about music, having gone through his song-by-song break down of Iggy Pop's The Idiot. 

Yet, I find Seabrook's adjectival descriptions of the songs to be a strange thing in print. For some reason, I have an easier time imagining them being spoken by a music critic sitting at a piano or keyboard in a documentary than reading them on a page.

Maybe this disconnect exists for me because I never learned to read music, and so in reading about it I just don't make the connections between the adjectives and their precise meaning. In the case of a documentary, just what a critic means can be demonstrated on whatever basic instrument they have to hand.

I find Seabrook's name dropping to be quite a bit more helpful. Even his categorizing of the songs on The Idiot into genres that I know little about, like Industrial, is evocative for me. Much more so than drumming being described as "taut" or bass chords as "brash" (90).

Apparently, Seabrook does a similar breakdown for Bowie's Berlin trilogy, so I'm looking forward to reading all about what influenced Low, Heroes, and Lodger. Not to mention about the essential intrigues and trivia surrounding them. That is, as long as Seabrook continues to follow his pattern of describing Bowie's situation, who he's with and their relationship, and then working through an album.

Jumping when the time is right

Pandora's Tower's automatic jumping is terrible. I'm finding that more and more often when I run to the edge of a ledge to jump, Aeron just drops down hangs from the edge instead.

This disparity in expectations and actual happenings is starting to show me the game's stitches. It's starting to look like you can only jump when the game lets you jump. That is, when you're directly across from something to which you can jump.

Hemming players in like this makes the game feel restrictive. Not because there are platforms from which you'd want to jump where you simply can't, but because the game's jumping mechanic takes away your freedom to consider that option.

And yet, having Aeron jump automatically only when two edges are aligned across a gap has saved me from certain doom in a few instances. Especially in the Blazing Citadel's puzzle room.

In said room you're not just jumping between lowering and raising platforms, you also need to watch for lava (molten ore?) falling from above. Whenever I've not met the game's standards for precision in jumping, Aeron's defaulting to hang from the edge of platforms when pushed over their edge has kept him off of the lava covered.

Nonetheless, tying the game's autojump to a player controlled action (let's say rolling or running off of an edge) would give players more control over Aeron's jumps. Doing so would also inject the game with a bit more of a sense of discovery. Even if that sense of discovery tingled when a player simply found a better part of a ledge to jump from to another ledge.

Another random, another tale-telling

"The Kreutzer Sonata" is, to my pleasant surprise, not at all about music. Yet. I mean, it's hard to tell after 1/4 of a short story what will or won't come up over its course. I can say with certainty, that Tolstoy did improve ever so slightly in the few years between this story and "The Death of Ivan Ilych."

I also have to admit that I was pretty excited when I realized that this story takes place on a train. Sort of.

The main character is travelling when he meets a man who ends up sharing his experience of love, and, in so doing, takes over the story. So, of course, what I wrote about how the apparent pointlessness of the early part of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and being talked to by a random definitely applies to "The Kreutzer Sonata."

Though any tale about the complications of love and its definitions has a place in my heart. It's just so easy to take the concept of love for granted. Reading something philosophical on the topic reminds me that there's so much more to it.

Though the gender relations and perceptions of just what is debauchery in nineteenth century Russia do not age well. I'm not sure I'd have otherwise learned that there were doctors in charge of inspecting prostitutes at contemporary Russian brothels to keep STIs in check, though.

There's also a certain charm to nineteenth century nested stories. The in-story narrator gets characterized with such fine detail that readers really get an insight into him. Not to mention the fact that it allows a writer to bring his narrator's authority into question. And there's the language. Aylmer Maude and J.D. Duff's translation reminds me of Poe in its style.

I would have liked it a bit more, though, if the nineteenth century word for a morphine addict wasn't "morphinist" but simply "morphiend."

Bowie the "pseudo-intellectual"

It's hard to read David Bowie's "Stay" described as "blistering" after you've listened to metal. I don't doubt that the guitar parts of "Stay" are demanding or difficult, but they're just not that fast. And that's what I take "blistering" to mean when it's used to describe music.

Though, I think that that's the problem when it comes to writing about music. Unless you're writing for a group of people that have listened to the same things that you have. Music is just too subjective to write about with precision.

Thankfully, though, Seabrook's veered away from music writing over the last few pages. He's come at last to Bowie's moving to Berlin. In doing so he's started to get more into Bowie's character and personality at the time. Reading that Bowie's bandleader Carlos Alomar described him as "a pseudo-intellectual" (70) definitely puts a different spin on my listening to Bowie's stuff.

Not that it takes anything away from it, but rather, it forces me to consider just how creativity works.

Seabrook does mention that Bowie would always have books with him. Though from Seabrook's description Bowie rarely studied much in depth. Such a broad interest and his "near-constant desire to grow and change" (70) lead me to believe that Bowie's creative process involves aggregating information and putting it through his own personal filter.

If this process can make things like David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Diamond Dogs that's fine with me. Even if "blistering" isn't a great word to describe any of Bowie's work.

Ivan Ilych's death before his death

Well, it didn't end quite as I had expected but "The Death of Ivan Ilych" certainly deserves its title.

After getting through the details of his life and the cause of his eventually fatal illness, the last third of the story is spent in Ivan's head. Things become quite introspective and as bleak as Russian literature is said to be.

In his throes of agony, Ivan looks back on his life and wonders if he has lived properly. Up until the story's end this question plagues him and he denies it consideration although doubts constantly bring it to the fore of his mind.

Was Ivan Ilych living his life properly, always keeping to whatever middle path appeared before him?

It's a question that anyone can ask of themselves, but I think that the only answer can be found in a They Might Be Giants lyric: "Who can say what's wrong or right?/Nobody can" ("Spiralling Shape").

Though Tolstoy doesn't give any definite answers himself, he does end his story on an up note. All of Ivan's wondering about whether or not he lived his life properly really reminded me of P.D. Ouspenky's The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. Ouspensky's novel is about a man who's given a chance to relive his life with the aim of improving it thanks to his awareness of where he went wrong.

The influence of G.I. Gurdjief's teachings about the Fourth Way and self-remembering were also brought to mind as I finished "The Death of Ivan Ilych." In my mind, Ivan's reflections suggest that his death isn't just the event that closes the story, but something that happened to him once he entered the world of officialdom at his law school. From that point, his life became more regular and predictable, or, as Gurdjief would have it, mechanical.

That is, all of the organic happenings of Ivan Ilych's life were slowly leached out of him until he reached the point where he moved into the same sort of house that others of his social standing owned and he decorated it in the same way as those others. To my mind, Ivan's injuring himself during this decorating is his time of death. From then until near the end of his broken body's existence he is dead and only in his final hours does he regain lively clarity through the nagging question: "What if my whole life has really been wrong?" (148).

So, "The Death of Ivan Ilych" is definitely quite a bit richer than "Family Happiness." As "The Kreutzer Sonata" is started, we'll see just how much Tolstoy's changed over a much shorter span of time: a mere three years.

Playing along a straight line

As it turns out, one can simply walk out of the Gortress.

After experiencing a day's labour (or so the title card told me), your guide and neighbour in the cells, Sterling, asks if you're interested in an escape plan. I chose "No" to see what would happen, but have a sneaking suspicion that it made little difference.

When the next day arrives, there's an attempted hanging and that is the rupture point among the prisoners. With all the guards distracted you're free to go - Sterling even tells you to leave the Gortress and "Zoom" out to where you can meet up with the rest of your party. And because this is a prison break you can just come back whenever, I guess.

Seriously. You just walk out of the Gortress, have complete control and then Zoom away to Stornway (or anywhere). I probably could've re-gathered my party and run some sidequests and rested at a few inns before heading back to find the prison break still in progress. Whatever happened to maintaining a sense of urgency?

Since being forced to go it alone to see Greygnarl, I've been wondering why this solo portion of the game just didn't work. I think it's because there are no stakes.

It's been years since I played through it, but Earthbound's Magicant section (where Ness is alone) is what I would call a successful solo section in an RPG. Your character develops, picks up a new technique, and no doubt gains a few levels in the process. Plus, there are actual stakes.

It's possible to die while in Earthbound's Magicant, just as you could anywhere else. But, unless you force your way forward without the rest of your party, there's no time during Dragon Quest IX's solo section where you're really at risk of being wiped out. Although you would probably pop your clogs if you tried to fight the monsters around the Gortress alone.

All in all, it seems like Dragon Quest IX can be represented by a straight line. There haven't been battles that are difficult outside of those that pit me against bosses just at the edge of my party's own power, there haven't been major changes in gameplay (outside of sidequests), and the job system is prohibitive of smoothly changing them mid-game.

But, I did just discover that pressing the shoulder buttons rotates the camera. That's sort of cool.

Bowie's works over Bowie himself

Well, he's not there yet, but Bowie is just about on his way back to Europe in Bowie in Berlin.

As I read onward I'm still distracted by the book's physical form. The pages are just too chunky and stiff for their own good.

As per the book's content over the last 20 pages, Seabrook has varied it greatly. It's all centered around Bowie, of course, but it orbits him rather than focuses on him.

In the past when I've read books about musicians (most notably The Real Frank Zappa Book) there have been anecdotes and name drops galore. But what I'm finding to be unique to Seabrook is an approach that focuses less than on the musician himself and more on his creative endeavours.

Of course, the book is much less a biography than a book about such endeavours, but it's still bothersome how ephemeral Bowie seems to it all. Seabrook foregrounds his works, generally giving a paragraph or two of information about them, but has Bowie himself relegated to the background.

With the manifold biographies of the music icon out, Seabrook's understanding is undoubtedly that his readers will have already read at least a few of them. Having read none of them, however, I can't help but feel like his nods and winks to major moments in Bowie's career are just as substantial as said gestures.

But, things have left Station to Station and the book's nearly up to Bowie's return to Europe. And if Seabrook's tendencies to concentrate on Bowie's creative output rather than the man himself is any indication, the attention that Seabrook gives to the Berlin Trilogy will be riveting. Once that's finally reached.

Combat-focused and flesh-crazed

Well, the Blazing Citadel certainly appears to be much more combat-focused than Torrent Peak. Though, there aren't many encounters with cursed servant beasts.

Instead there are plenty of flying enemies. No doubt, the game's designers figured that players would be pretty adept at fighting fellow bipeds by this point in the game. Better to mix things up with flocks of flying enemies.

Also driving me to consider this tower more combat-focused is the placement of the three chains.

One is accessible from the corner of a large dark room early on.

The other two, at least from what I've seen, are behind doors that share a room. Mind, those doors are behind walls of fire that seem to be controlled by one central timed switch. So there are some puzzle elements at play.

Outside of the towers, I've confirmed that Elena is starting to truly enjoy the flesh. Aeron even had a dream in which she snatches a hunk away from him, eats it in just a few mouthfuls and then licks her fingers clean. After all of that she turns to Aeron and apologizes as the camera focuses on her arm, down which blood runs.

The game's equip capacity mechanic is also becoming more intense. Since I'm nearly through the game, I can craft some powerful accessories. Getting them all to fit simultaneously isn't possible just yet, though. Yet.

Cold reading a different culture

Since flashing back to the period before the death of Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy has not yet gone back. However, we have learned what probably started his illness off.

A little stumble while he was caught up in micromanaging the organization of his new home in a new city.

Or municipality.

Along with all of the personal names that are being thrown around (including the variations different characters use for the same person), nineteenth century Russian geography is not entirely clear for me.

However, rather than just going and looking up such things, I've decided to see how the work stands on its own.

Perhaps that's just a danger of having a readily available translation: Anyone, even those unfamiliar with the original language and culture of a work, can read it and misunderstand much. Although an unprepared peek into another culture can shake loose thoughts and ideas. That jolt to perception and conceptions of what is usual can be pretty useful.

Such a jolt may or may not have shaken loose an idea for a short story about wary parents giving their children a certain kind of pet.

At any rate, now 2/3 through "The Death of Ivan Ilych," I've read through his breakdown and am confident that I'll learn why Tolstoy is telling this story by its end. I really doubt that it'll be left open-ended on that front.

A new post for a new book

If Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town is indicative of Jaw Bone Press's usual practices, they make very blocky books. And on a peculiarly stiff paper stock. Each page feels weirdly solid, as if it's a couple of more standard pages pressed together.

As a whole, this 272 page book feels unwieldy. Especially if you're holding it while reading and trying to not bend its spine.

Thankfully, this is a book about David Bowie.

Specifically, how his time spent in Berlin changed his career for the better. At least, that's the sense that I'm getting from the opening 40 pages. So far I've read about Bowie's becoming deeply addicted to cocaine, his growing obsession with the occult, and what sounds like a mental break from reality that resulted from the combination of the two.

Thomas Jerome Seabrook keeps foreshadowing what's to come, though. Things like why Iggy Pop didn't return to Hollywood's Oz Studio after one day of recording with Bowie in 1975, and what makes Bowie's Berlin Trilogy of albums such a critical success.

Much has been promised, and it's looking like Seabrook will deliver.

At the very least, Bowie's crazed obsession with the occult does help explain just what he was doing in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Even if that movie appearance was nearly 20 years later.

Why are you telling me this, Mr. Tolstoy?

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" really cracks along.

As in "Family Happiness," Tolstoy is covering a lot of time, but he handles it very differently in this story. He's stepped back to the third person perspective, for starters, and has taken an omnipotent position over his subject.

Once more, the story is broken into several parts. The first deals with the aftermath of Ivan's death, and the second is the first of a sequence detailing Ivan's life and characteristics. If this all sounds mundane, it is. But I find it strangely compelling as well.

I'm reminded of Infinite Jest, actually. Not because Tolstoy is writing in a mode that could be considered hyper realism, but because the whole story is made up of mundane details.

It's not a story that's interesting because it's about a particularly interesting subject (unless civil servants who like a good a decorous time and find marriage to be a minefield are your cup of tea), but because you really wonder why it's being told in the first place.

It's like something that a random person comes up and relates to you while you're out in public.

That person needs to tell that anecdote or share that thought, but you're never explicitly told why. This being a short story, though, I imagine Tolstoy will reveal why the death of Ivan Ilych matters come the end. Until then, I'm definitely fine with reading on.

A disappointment with dragons

I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised when "Dragon Warrior" equipment gets mentioned in Dragon Quest IX. That was the original North American name for the franchise, after all. However, its use in the game (at least up to where I am now) is strange.

Greygnarl gives you this equipment when it comes time to ride him. At first this is just to get to the Gittish Empire, but then his age-old rival Barbarus the black dragon shows up and you and Greygnarl fight him instead.

This is where the use of the equipment, and more particularly, your riding a dragon - a dragon! - gets strange.

The game shifts from its general style to the hand drawn anime style seen in the game's intro sequence. There's still some dialogue, but the entire fight is a cutscene in this style. It's really quite impressive. But it's an odd choice.

If this cutscene is an animated sequence, then why aren't any of the other cutscenes that we've seen to this point in the same style?

Because being a dragon rider (or even a Dragon Warrior) is totally badass, why make a fight while on dragon-back a cutscene instead of a minigame or special combat of some sort?

What makes me wonder why this isn't a battle you play is the fact that the game requires you to drop off all of your party members before going to meet Greygnarl for the second time. Such a requirement gives the second visit to Greygnarl a feeling of great significance. It is something that your avatar - the game's main character - alone is fit to do. There's an incredible sense of being chosen.

But chosen for what?

To put on some admittedly cool looking armour that nonetheless makes your avatar look generic?

To initiate an animated cutscene?

The fact that such a sweeping change to the way that you play the game leads to a part of it that involves very little play is just disappointing. It's a design choice I can't quite figure out.

Much like how the game designers decided to leave all of your items, equipment, and gold with you when you subsequently wind up in the Gittish Empire's Alcatraz - the Gortress.

I can't decide if I should play along or just try to bust out.

Liberty over nationalism

Somehow I feel like I missed something from earlier in The Idea of Nationalism. The penultimate section of Kohn's final chapter was about Russia, and it wasn't until this that I realized that Kohn wasn't working on countries at random but rather sweeping from west to east (unless this is just how nationalism spread chronologically). 

The final chapter wraps everything up and works as a peak from which Kohn proclaims his conclusions. Surprisingly, and spoilers lay ahead, Kohn doesn't consider nationalism as the ultimate thing that humans strive for. Instead, he believes that liberty is the virtue that all people interested in helping humanity strive to reach and spread. Nationalism is just an expression of this drive for independence and self-sufficiency. 

Overall, Kohn's book deserves the high praise it has on its cover. It is a study of incredible breadth and some considerable depth. So much breadth in fact, that there are a few points at which I wish Kohn's project gave him more space to go further in depth. 

This book's also a little dated. I feel like Kohn's work on the ancient and medieval worlds is more evergreen, but his stuff about countries even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is probably a bit frayed. It has been 70 years since this book was first published, after all. 

But that shouldn't keep fans of history books from checking out Hans Kohn's The Idea of Nationalism. 

Overpowered at level 34?

Dragon Quest IX continues to strive for a quick pace. After climbing up the volcano called Magmaroo to see Greygnarl (and discovering that he's a dragon), you fight off some goons from the Gittish Empire.

Ah, the Gittish Empire. After a game full of English dialects and puns, this send up of the British Empire comes as no surprise at all. From the looks of its soldiers, though, it appears to be an empire of undead creatures ruled over (at least in part) by an anthropomorphic owl. That adds some bite to the satire, I think.

But the game's combat isn't as polished as its dialogue writing is.

Beating the dragon Greygnarl with relative ease with a party of characters ranging from level 31 to 34 makes old Greygnarl seem less than spectacular. The fact that it's possible to go to the inn and church between the fight with Greygnarl and the fight with the Gittish soldiers really takes away from the situation's urgency, too.

Yet, despite the ease of the last few fights I've been through, I can feel the endgame starting. There's one more major spot on the map to venture to, and apparently all of the McGuffins just need to be recovered. Oh, and I suppose your tutor's motives for handing the fyggs over to the Gittish Empire need to be found out as well. But that seems secondary to simply getting them back.

The end of "Family Happiness"

"Family Happiness" ends by making the reason its title is what it is abundantly clear.

Having finished the book, I feel like I'm justified in writing that Tolstoy wasn't just trying to write from the perspective of a woman. On the whole, "Family Happiness" is instead about the ways in which happiness changes as people age. Or, specifically in the case of this story, gain experience.

On the whole, I quite enjoyed it, and if this single Tolstoy short story is anything to go by I'll enjoy the rest of this collection. Perhaps Russian literature will hold more interest for me than the Victorian canon ever has, even.

However, I found the thematic and emotional climax of "Family Happiness," a little stilted.

Maybe it's Aylmer Maude and J.D. Duff's translation, maybe it's just the way that Russians of the time expressed emotion, but it comes out in blocks rather than English Victorian writers' rivulets.

On the level of the page, what I mean is that each emotion that Masha expresses and feels as she pours out her heart to Sergei appears to be trapped in its paragraph. The emotions in what I've read by Jane Austen and Ellen Wood instead flows from paragraph to paragraph, contained only within the character experiencing them.

Perhaps such blocky emotional expression is just the mark of a man attempting to write as a woman. I doubt that the same was done in "The Death of Ivan Ilych," but we'll soon see how a decades older Tolstoy handles writing women (and in general).

Into the Blazing Citadel

Aside from running into a small game crashing bug, tonight's Pandora's Tower session went smoothly. That is, except for the revelation that the next tower, the Blazing Citadel, is yet another puzzle-filled dungeon.

However, rather than Torrent Peak's concentrated space and minimal number of rooms, the Blazing Citadel is expansive. So much so that in my searching for ways to get to either or both of the first two chains I found my way up to the master's door. The reason that this discovery strikes me as strange is that most of the previous Towers have sort of guided you along from chain to chain. They aren't entirely streamlined, but the Blazing Citadel seems to have more branching paths than most of the other towers.

Also, as Torrent Peak is to Wellspring Steeple, Blazing Citadel feels like an upgrade of the Crimson Keep. Maybe the dungeon designers just got a little lazy, or the sensation of these towers being improvements on their earlier elemental counterparts is intentional. The last tower is the Truegold Tower, after all.

Anyway, what the Blazing Citadel does lack is monsters that provide flesh. In my roving I found a single servant beast and got nothing more than mere "Beast Flesh" from it. So, much to my chagrin, I might have to head back to Torrent Peak to get the primo stuff.

An unexpected contributor to nationalism

It's strange just how different the first two thirds of the twentieth century are from the final third. Really pointing to this difference is Kohn's constant reference to the peoples wedged between Russia and Western Europe as Slavs.

I've heard the term before, sure. I'm pretty confident that it's still in use today as well. But the way Kohn uses it, it sounds as if the lands stretching from Germany to Russia were occupied by loose groupings of people that were without any sense of being part of something bigger than themselves or their town.

Czechoslovakia and Serbia are the two countries Kohn's treats with as his book nears its end. And they're both rather exceptional. Czechoslovakia because they were able to follow the Western European model much more easily (being so close to Germany) and Serbia because hog exporters played a major role.

Yes. Hog exporters. It's right there on page 549.

Of course, Kohn points this detail out because it was these exporters who were the first to venture to other lands and to get the view of other countries, other nascent nations, that seems necessary to bring that sense of unity back home.

As exceptional as that little detail is, though, there's something even more exceptional still.

Kohn writes very little about the role of women in countries awakening to nationhood.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries women weren't exactly sitting in parliaments or heading newspapers, but surely Kohn omits some key contributions in missing any mention of the fairer sex.

Tolstoy, "Family Happiness," and types

Having left behind the matter of their age difference, Tolstoy returns to writing Masha as more of a young woman in part two of "Family Happiness."

However, as this is the part of the story where their marriage begins to break apart and is rife with emotional conflict, I'm back to questioning Tolstoy's choice of writing in the female voice.

Because Masha is significantly younger than Sergei, it's understandable that she's bored by the dull country life they lead in Nikolskoe. There's also nothing really particularly wrong with Tolstoy's use of Masha's introduction into society life in Petersburg as the catalyst for their conflict. Yet, I'm not sure he really captures the feminine voice in the same way that the female English Victorian authors did.

But I also don't think that's what he was attempting.

In taking on a voice that is not at all his own, Tolstoy's stretching himself out into humanity. As such, rather than presenting a single female voice that represents a generation of women's hidden thoughts and feelings, he makes Masha and Sergei into types. In very broad strokes they are the young and inexperienced, and the old and experienced respectively.

But those are broad strokes.

Though, even with such generalizations (maybe moreso on my part, who knows what Tolstoy was trying to do with "Family Happiness"), I think the reason I'm enjoying "Family Happiness" more than any of the Victorian novels I've read is because he seems to be striving more directly towards expressing human issues rather than happening to do so through self-expression.

Though, there's also something in Tolstoy's indirect way of going about his direct project.

In choosing to write in a female voice, the voice of the Other, Tolstoy is trying to show that the Other is still relatable despite surface differences.

Writing for myself, I definitely relate to Masha and can see why she stands where she does in her marriage to Sergei. After all, at the heart of her concerns is the matter of how much you can really truly know another person and their motivations, thoughts, and feelings.

Story as distraction from combat

Dragon Quest IX is actually pretty compelling when the plot's happening as you play. It feels much more like you're making actual progress rather than just wandering around.

That's not to say wandering around the game's world map isn't fun or interesting in and of itself, but there's definitely a sense of things moving forward when you keep running into cutscenes. And when the prices of weapons and armor pass into the 10,000+ gold range.

Part of why I'm grateful for the game's story having kicked in again is that it distracts from the grind of combat.

Dragon Quest IX isn't really an RPG that requires a lot of strategy when it comes to battles. Attack the enemy hard, watch your party members' HP and heal them when it's low. During boss battles, do the same, but throw in some stat-boosting spells to hit harder and to be able to take more hits.

So far elemental weaknesses are minimal and the benefits of exploiting them seem limited. Grouping the monsters into families (demons, dragons, insects, etc.) is definitely neat, but basing weaknesses on those families is meaningless.

Hiding this information in the game's bestiary (accessed through a sequence of menus) doesn't help matters either.

I would make a comparison to Pokemon and how easy it is to guess type and then know weaknesses, but it's hard to say just what all demons are weak to (crackle magic, since it's ice and they're fire?).

At any rate, the route to Upover winds around and around so much you'd think it were the last town in the game. All this talk of the Gittish Empire suggests otherwise, though. I know I've sailed past a mountain-locked land before, and that must've been it.

Well, onward and upward.

Torrent Peak complete

If you were to graph out the difficulty of Torrent Peak as a whole you'd get a sine wave.

The first two chain anchors can be tricky to get to because of the water wheel puzzle. The third chain's a snap. But then the master is a brute.

Basically the lower half of a Tentacruel with shell plates over its body, this boss is nothing more than a "guess-where-the-flesh-is" minigame. At least before you pull off the first plate of armour. If you miss the master flesh and reveal a tentacle or a node, then you've just added patience into the equation. Reveal a few more non-flesh areas and you've initialized the game's "dodge-while-handling-the-chain" tutorial. It's a bit too little too late, though.

However, at least in my experience, having fought all of the enemies in this tower's main room bulked up Aeron and the chain so much that a fully powered yank at the master flesh took out nearly 1/4 of the master's health bar. If it hadn't been for all the tentacles and defense-draining water orbs I'd have made squid bits of this boss in minutes. Instead Aeron died at its watery extremities before I managed to take it out.

Honestly, on reflection, this boss was once more completely new and innovative within the scope of the game itself. This game's being a continual parade of such challenges is something for which I commend the people at Ganbarion.

But, if it hadn't been for all of the stuff you need to dodge while trying to power up your chain, I never would've known about dodging while the chain is active. I'm sure this was mentioned in one of the game's early tutorials, but actually being forced to use it early on would have made it stick in my memory.

Anyway, aside from the game's generally increasing difficulty level, something else is on the rise in it. The horror factor.

Every master howls or roars once its HP reaches the halfway mark. Underneath the Torrent Peak master's howl, though you can hear a human cry of pain. A cry that sounds like it's coming from a child.

After the fight, when Aeron offered the flesh to Elena, she didn't meekly take it but pulled it from Aeron and then tore into it like a starved wolf.

Two towers remain now, and I have to say that I'm looking forward to what they have in store. Frustrations, feelings of horror/disgust, and all.

More on Poland'd be nice

Kohn's tour of countries that became nations takes him to Eastern Europe in the latest lag of his book (pages 518-543). Having some Polish heritage, but knowing next to nothing about the country, this has made these pages of Kohn's some of the most interesting for me.

However, by Kohn's assessment, things didn't really work out for Poland. Unlike nations like Italy or Greece or Sweden, it didn't quite awaken as a nation just yet. Instead, it weakened itself through its stirring and was ultimately swallowed up by Russia and Prussia only to emerge again later on.

Through implication while he's discussing Hungary, Kohn notes that things didn't work out for that country either because its nobility regarded itself as the nation and discounted those of lesser rank. But as far as I can tell that wasn't the case with Poland. If anything, actually, Poland's problem during this century of national awakenings was trying too hard and aiming too high.

Again, while discussing Hungary, Kohn mentions that the reason that nation and Poland failed to launch into a true era of nationalism in the eighteenth century is that they both put too much stock in past achievements.

Sure, I can see why trying to revive the past could lead to ruin. Conditions and variables change and more often than not can't be reset to just where they were when great things were done. But what bothers me is that Kohn doesn't give these two countries more depth of coverage.

Concentrating on Poland or Hungary's not his purpose in writing about nationalism so broadly, but a close study of some failures might have made all of the successes he's written about truly stand out.

An attack of plot

True to form, Dragon Quest IX plays on like all classic JRPGs. As soon as you've gathered the MacGuffins they're stolen away and you need to go retrieve them. In this instance, as you return to the Observatory with your seven fyggs you're hijacked, give them all up, and then are completely devastated.

Well, for the sake of the plot at least. 

Thankfully, the game doesn't force you to restart your party after you come crashing down from above. Nor does it force you into an entirely different class all the way back at level one. You wind up in Wormwood Creek and the game just resumes. 

Though that's how Dragon Quest IX rolls. The story comes in whenever you're at the connective parts of it, but there's far more game than is encompassed by its plot. The game's story asserts itself every now and then, but in a way that makes it appear as remote from the actual goings on in the physical earth as that planet is from the Observatory. 

But back to Wormwood Creek. 

There's a lot of talk of dragons around that town. This topic's so popular because of the dragon involved in your incident, sure, but I think there's more to it than that. 

While sailing around Dragon Quest IX's big ol' world I noticed a few places that were inaccessible without some way to travel through the air. 

The big plot point right now is that Wormwood Creek is the town meant to keep the town of Upover and its Hero of the Heavens safe. Said hero rode on a dragon in the legends about him. As something of a legendary hero myself, perhaps a dragon will come my way in the game, too?

All a matter of experience

Masha and Sergey are now married. But such was not a psychologically easy undertaking for Masha. 

I feel that Tolstoy's handling of the female psyche took a bit of a dive once it turned to the matter of marriage. He had a lot to work with because of the age and experience gap, but Masha's worry and concern over feeling things that she'd not felt before when with and thinking of Sergey seem slightly overwrought to me. 

I've lost the impression that Masha is particularly a woman being written by a man. This sense has since been replaced with knowledge of a person with very little experience of the world entering into a commitment with another who has a great deal of experience of the world. 

However, some of Masha and Sergey's talks circle around Masha's fears about their marriage. And, in doing so, it's possible that some of her anxieties were implanted, or perhaps just encouraged, by Sergey's questions to her. 

I imagine that part two (where my bookmark currently sits) of this story will be much like act two in a play. We'll rejoin the characters after some time has passed and see just what their marriage has come to.

Two chains broken, one chain lost

At last, the second chain in Torrent Peak is broken. Just one more of them and then I never have to return to this dungeon again (except maybe to get through the mysterious door that needs a key).

Trouble is, I'm not exactly sure where that last chain is anchored. The first two were obvious. You can see them with ease on the second and third floor of the room with the water wheel. But the third chain is nowhere to be seen. And unless I'm misreading the map, there's nowhere left to go in the tower - except through that locked door.

But that can't be it because I haven't come across a key yet.

Yet, on close inspection of the map, there is a red mark indicating a door that I haven't passed through before. But that mark is layered underneath the marker for a chest I've already opened. It could be that there's a door somewhere around there (maybe just below it) but getting to it could be tricky.

Well, whatever I have to do, I've turned the whole too-many-monsters-in-the-main-room thing mentioned in past entries on its ear.

To keep from drawing more than one to me I've taken to using the chain to slam them into walls. They take a few more hits with this method than when they're given consecutive tastes of scythe, but seeing them crash into a wall and still come running back for more is truly satisfying.

Patterns in nationalism

Kohn's whirlwind coverage of countries that wakened into nations continues with Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.

Gathered together like this, patterns among the ways in which nationalism emerges are starting to appear.

Generalizing broadly, it seems that the nations of Europe awoke either through poetry and drama or through the political work of individuals. Sometimes these two also worked in concert.

More often than not though (at least with the nations Kohn's covered so far), everything is sparked by a single individual's efforts. Not always while that person is alive, however, or in vogue.

In the case of Italy Vittorio Alfieri got people thinking about nationalism, but in an incredibly insular way. Alfieri decried the influence of anything from outside of Italy as such things threatened to corrupt the pure Italian-ism that had fostered the Roman Empire.

As much as nationalism is a matter of a collective ego (with all the negative and positive connotations of that word) another trend that's come out is that almost every nation that Kohn has chronicled draws inspiration to awaken to nationalism thanks to inspiration from another country. The French Revolution was just such an inspiration to Italy, much to Alfieri's chagrin.

Another 60 pages remain, and so I'll see about how these patterns carry forward.

Finding the missing fygg

Apparently going to Swinedimples Academy before Gleeba wasn't my first move out of order. There's a fygg hiding on the way to Bloomingdale. It's atop the Heights of Loneliness, among the Zere Rocks.

The thing is, I never would have figured this out without a guide.

When I first went through the area on my way to Bloomingdale, with dreams of a ship running through my head, I found the entrance to the Heights of Loneliness. But I turned back, thinking that I'd check it out again after I'd levelled up some and bought better equipment. In the end, I did just that - only over a much longer period than originally intended.

But what makes this fygg so hidden?

The fact that it's not related to or near any town or place with a save point. All of the other fyggs are. So what makes this one so special? It's almost as if the developers just needed a seventh fygg and so they came up with something and tossed it in between two major centers in the game.

Speaking of which, my memory of NPC banter suggests that hints about this fygg were almost non-existent. Were it not for the lone man waiting around near Mason's cabin you'd never even know that its owner had gone up the mountain and then deduced that you were to follow.

In an RPG that features a world map broken down into smaller maps that could still give other RPGs whole overworlds a run for their money, is hiding a fygg like this good design?

Or did someone drop the ball on this one, leaving Dragon Quest IX with a weirdly obtuse, plot-centric destination?

Starting into "Family Happiness"

Leo Tolstoy is the last person I'd expected to write a short story that feels as though it's familiar to fans of the Brontë sisters or Jane Austen.

Of course, my knowledge of Russian history and literature (of anything historically Eastern European in fact) is pretty sparse. Awareness of what that region's literary legends did definitely falls into the category of such knowledge.

But what I find particularly curious as I read "Family Happiness" is that Tolstoy's Mashechka doesn't sound like she's written by a man. No more than Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet does. It's much clearer to me now how nineteenth century readers so easily assumed books written by women were actually done by men.

What I'm reading is a collection of four of Tolstoy's short stories. The first of these is "Family Happiness." It's as dour as everyone says Russian literature is, with its heroine going on frequent late night walks alone and being called out for the affecting happiness only in the presence of others. Where I've left things, the main character, Mashechka, expects her confession of love to the quite older Sergey Mikhaylych to go well.

I've not read much Russian literature before this, but I have read enough to know that something's going to go awry. Based on Sergey's dwelling on his calling Mashechka Masha, I'm willing to guess that this is either Mashechka's mother's name, or the name of some previous lover. If things get really interesting, it will be the name of Mashechka's father. Alternately, and possibly most disappointingly, it could just be a matter of calling her by a familiar form of her name. Without proper understanding of Russian names, it's hard to guess with certainty.

Actually, the age gap between these lovers-to-be is kind of startling. Mashechka is seventeen and Sergey is 36. So Mashechka definitely fails the "half-your-age-plus-seven" rule.

The mid nineteenth century was a different time, I know, but still. Under the auspices of that rule, Mashechka's a full eight years too young.

If things do go as wrong as I expect them to, I'll be sure to chalk it up to this disparity in age.

Grinding in Torrent Peak

Perhaps an unintended side effect of the constantly respawning monsters in the main room of Torrent Peaks is fairly frequent levelling up. At this rate, I'll be pretty over powered by the time I get up to this tower's master. 

Unfortunately, why I've been grinding with these monsters is because the water wheel has me partially stumped. I need to get the pegs lined up so that they can be used to climb up from floor to floor. But while you're using the switch to move the water wheel the camera is fixed at such an angle that you can only see one side's pegs. Yet you need to align the other side's pegs with outcroppings as well. Without using a guide, I've got nothing but guesses and trial and error to go off of. 

I might be better off just hitting up GameFAQs. 

In the meantime, I've got to say that I really appreciate the ability to throw enemies. When you're being swarmed on a narrow platform it really helps to make space. But having the monsters in the main room respawn every time you wander off to a different floor really makes it a pain to leave the tower. 

Nonetheless, the game continues. Hopefully the next tower's more combat-based. 

Nationalism, "patriot," and language

From Ireland and Wales, Kohn has moved on to write of Holland, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. At this point I'm wondering if he'll get over to Asia at all. Though that seems especially unlikely.

What strikes me as the most dated feature of Kohn's writing, though, is his constant use of the word patriot.

When The Idea of Nationalism was first printed, in the 40s, the word stood for something to strive toward. A patriot was someone who expressed a desire to better the entire world through bettering his or her home nation. In modern usage, however, at least in North America, the word's gathered too many negative connotations to be taken seriously. Or to be regarded as a positive.

There's the infamous Patriot Act in the United States. And the general sense that a "patriot" isn't someone who stands up for some national good but who's fanatical about his or her country the same way that a football fan who paints himself and screams the whole game through is seen as fanatical about his team. In this age of irony where sincerity is seldom expressed, "patriot" is too strong a word to be of any good use.

Of course, that's not to say that there were no egos involved in the early nationalism that Kohn writes on. It seems like that's all it was - a country's population coming together to say "this country of ours sure is much greater than all those others."

In the case of Spain, for example, Spanish nationalism was fostered on the idea that Spanish literature was the only truly original European literature. Further, that the rest of Europe owed Spain a great deal in the literary field.

It was also thought that a country's language had to be pure for it to unite as one.

Given the way that English has fractured, maybe even to the point where "proper" English is where Latin was 100 years ago, it seems unlikely to unite anything much. Yet the bible, the book used to legitimize languages in the past, is being translated into LOLCat.

A post playthrough Super Mario RPG assessment

The 90s was the golden era of 16-bit console RPGs. You had your Final Fantasy titles, your Secret of Mana, your Lufia games, and, for those unafraid of emulators, Tales of Phantasia.

But, a little late to the scene, riding on the shoulders of giants, came Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

This was the game that got me interested in the RPG genre to begin with. From there I moved onto those Final Fantasy games and Lufia titles, and the masterpiece that is Tales of Phantasia.

But I first played this game (several times through) almost twenty years ago, now. As such, you'd be right to wonder whether the game holds up or not.

After spending a weekend working through it with friends, I can write confidently that it does. For the most part.

Graphically, the sprites based on 3D-models still look clean and neat (with the exception of monsters like Belome).

Aurally, the music and sound effects have all the charm they do in the other Mario games.

Story-wise, the game is still compelling since several characters and elements of the Mario world are explored for the first and (alas) last time.

And, as far as the gameplay is concerned, Super Mario RPG offers a fine blend of JRPG standards (turn based combat and side-questing for secret areas and items) and Mario-inspired mini-games and platforming.

Though, the game's platforming is much more difficult than I remember. Mostly because the game's isometric viewpoint doesn't lend itself to easily judging distances and depths. Were it possible, warming up with some Sonic 3D Blast probably would've helped.

But Super Mario RPG really shines in its minigames' integration with the main game. Most of these games are played through at least once because of some relevance to the story. Placing them within the structure of the game as a whole keeps you from needing to do any serious backtracking to retry them. The minigames' accessibility also makes the game's world feel much tighter than those that are spread out over expansive world maps.

The cost for that tight world design is high, though. There's little exploration involved in Super Mario RPG. Just as when I played the game as a kid, in this recent playthrough there were a few instances where the crook of a wall or the texture of a rock suggested that something lay just beyond it, if only you had some of Link's bombs or Samus' roll ability.

However, beating an RPG crafted by the masters of the console RPG golden era, SquareSoft (known now as Square Enix) in a weekend (approximately 20 hours) is otherwise unthinkable. Were there an expansive overworld in Super Mario RPG, rather than a node system, much more time would be spent in travel. Not to mention, time spent fighting monsters during that travel.

But that's Super Mario RPG's greatest strength.

Even though when you know what you're doing it's a fairly short RPG, it's an RPG of small, manageable numbers.

At level 22, equipped with the Lazy Shell and the Quartz Charm, Mario doles out 500 damage per turn against the game's final boss. No more than fifteen turns of that damage alone ends him.

Your characters' HP isn't likely to climb much higher than 200.

The game pools together your party's MP into a number that maxes out at 99.

For whatever bizarre reason, you can only ever carry a maximum of 999 coins. If you do so, you'll never be left with less than 300 coins after upgrading all five of your party members weapons and armour.

These relatively low numbers make the game supremely manageable and conceivable. These qualities make the game a welcome reprieve from other more expansive RPGs (like Dragon Quest IX, or the downright intimidating Xenoblade Chronicles), while also offering a ready amount of challenge in its hidden content. Not to mention the infamous achievement of winning the Super Suit for executing 100 consecutive Super Jumps on a single enemy.

So, though the challenge may be set outside of the main game, and the experience as a whole is short in comparison to other RPGs, Super Mario RPG's rich blend of its name's two key elements locks it firmly in place as a great classic of the 16 bit era of RPGs.

What comes after Batsureg?

Well, it should have been expected. The next boss was just another bash fest. Even with its magic barrier, Larstastnaras proved to be no match for my group of four.

However. Now I'm really feeling the consequences of playing this game out of order.

It's entirely possible that the people of Batsureg wouldn't give clues for the next fygg anyway, but this seems unlikely. In a game as expansive as Dragon Quest IX I expect there to always be a hint hidden within NPC dialogue.

Since it's unclear where to go next I've taken to my ship.

Sailing around has landed me in the area of Wormwood Creek. Here, the entire town refuses to interact with foreigners. There's definitely a major sidequest here since what the people of Wormwood Creek do say suggests there's a way to break the town of its xenophobia. All of which is backed up by an inscription found at the edge of a canyon.

Now, the question is: Am I heading in the right direction?

I get the feeling that this part of the game (though in a hitherto unexplored part of its world) is extra. This feeling probably comes from the obscurity of it all.

A town that rejects foreigners?

An area that's mostly open space?

It just feels too far flung to be part of the game proper.

As always though, I won't know until I play further in. (And as long as I ignore most of what one of the linked pages mention.)