A universal individualism

As society at large became more secular the dream of universalism followed suit. Because individualism became more mainstream alongside this secular dream of a united humanity, I can see why New World Order conspiracies persist. Universalism and individualism are kind of paradoxical after all, but, if Kohn is to be believed, both are necessary for the establishment of modern nationalism. One world government conspiracy theories are just a product of the paradox, the result of staunch individualism bashing into a drive for universalism. Though the individualism involved in such theories is simultaneously on the personal and national level.

Anyway, along with the roots of such conspiracies, Kohn's coverage of the emergence of sovereign states deeply involves France. He notes how France of the seventeenth century had some great thinkers (Rousseau, Descartes, etc.). He mentions that during this time the French were the most wide ranging of the European peoples. And, he makes it clear that French was the language to learn if you wanted to appear truly civilized and sophisticated. Add that to the list of things that change very slowly.

What's interesting is that this romantic perception of French lasted to the present despite the long period of England's nigh global dominance. Though the French (and Spanish, and Portuguese, and Dutch, and Germans) were involved in colonizing the world, too. Maybe it's lasted so long because it was the English who dominated. But Kohn's not reached that point in history just yet.

Thoughts of a year-late Wii U adopter

Setting up the Wii U a year after its launch was way easier than I'd expected. I remember all of the horror stories about lengthy updates required to do anything, systems getting bricked because an update froze them, or because the system was powered off during the process for some reason or other. Even if it was a year later when I finally got the Wii U (Merry Christmas!), for whatever reason, these problems were expected.

But those expectations were foiled.

Though, the Wii U's hardly a plug and play system. You still need to set up a user account, run a few updates for most of the pre-installed channels/menus, and configure a few of the GamePad's features. These set up processes alone should be the criteria for a console to be considered "Next Gen," since I'm sure you need to go through the same things with the PS4 and XBox One. Specs and such aside, I will always consider the Nintendo console with a year-long head start part of the same video game heat as Sony and Microsoft's latest machines.

Yet, now that I have a Wii U I also have to admit that Nintendo really didn't make good use of its head start. The Nintendo Direct from 18 December left me feeling excited for 2014, but what, then, happened in 2013? It seems that Nintendo took the time to relax before (hopefully) turning their efforts up to 11. The Virtual Console is,as it was on the Wii, a prime example of Ninty's playing the hare.

The only two consoles represented on the VC as of this writing are the NES and SNES. Some of the games available for these are also available on the Wii (the VC of which is accessible via the Wii Menu). But, even then, when I turned off all of the eShop's search filters and went through all of the available titles I was dumbfounded to see there were only eight pages worth of software. Some of which wasn't even available on the Wii U, but only available for the 3DS. Since the two consoles now share the eShop, it seems that the eShop is doubling as a strange cross-platform advertising delivery system.

Yet, Nintendo has still captured my imagination with its GamePad. Off-TV play is, at its core, a simple concept. But it's so cool. Being able to take games or apps around with you is incredibly convenient. This convenience probably sounds familiar to owners of smartphones or tablets, but the GamePad's screen is bigger than most smartphones. Its being tethered to the Wii U console cuts down its mobility, but at the same time the GamePad is, essentially, a portable Wii U - which makes it super cool.

Hyrule Warriors raises my hopes for the future of the Wii U. Perhaps this spin-off in the Warriors series is a hint at some element in what will eventually be in Zelda Wii U. Or, perhaps the use of Link (and maybe Zelda?) in a spin-off game is just nodding towards a very late release date for Zelda Wii U.

A story rushing onward

River of Stars has a certain cinematic quality to it. Earlier in the book, the shifts from chapter to chapter covered greater geographical spaces and temporal gaps. Now, as the book's action rolls more and more quickly onward, the jumps in space and time between chapters are shrinking. In the case of the jump from Chapter XVI to Chapter XVII we actually see the two overlap.

Such jumps between scenes (the television/movie version of chapters) are common in audio/visual entertainments. Cutting between plot arcs creates the illusion of more things happening simultaneously, or at least within the bounds of a story.

Having more happen in a story makes it appear more interesting since it seems like there's a lot for the brain to process. By their nature, books can't replicate the pace at which television shows and movies switch between scenes, but because books are a slower medium they allow for more nuance, even in a flurry of scene and point of view changes.

Part of this nuance is the possibility of scenes overlapping each other. Or, because books take more time for the brain to process, you can see what might otherwise be frenetic scene hopping in slow motion and pick up on more of the detail of what's happening between scenes. Most importantly, though, this sort of scene hopping, either because of a flip book effect or because of what it's come to mean through the movies, indicates a story rushing onwards.

Exploiting a Link-sized loophole

Like the Helmasaur King's mask after the final hammer blow, A Link to the Past's linearity is now broken.

Armed with the Magic Hammer, I figured I'd see what new areas of the Dark World could be broken into. A vague memory pulled me to the Lost Woods, where, at one of the exits to Kakariko Village, I found a portal. After jumping through, I was primed to storm Theives' Town (so called), and quickly retrieved the Titan Mitts. With those great gloves on Link's hot hands, the entire structure of the game came crashing down.

The duck that was trapped in the village weather vane is now free. Link's sword was tempered by the dwarf smiths. The final bottle was retrieved. And, the cape that turns Link invisible was pulled from the Light World's graveyard.

This freedom of movement is what makes A Link to the Past great. If you know the game well, you're not just rewarded with cool stuff, but with the freedom to play its latter two thirds in just about any order you wish. That freedom is a true reward for skill because it puts so much power into a player's hands.

Though, this reward comes at the cost of story. A Link to the Past has one, of course. It's also an important part of the Zelda timeline, but so much of the game's story is in its atmosphere and NPCs, rather than in dialogues or exposition dumps. Or even cutscenes, for that matter. I think you can count the number of cutscenes in A Link to the Past on one hand.

The question is, though, has there ever been a story-heavy game that plays non-linearly if the player knows a trick or two?

Lleviathan vanquished

Lleviathan still put up a fight, but in the end those extra two levels earned through grinding made a real difference. Though, cutting right to the quick, this battle must've gone at least as many rounds as the previous one and Lleviathan used only a fraction of the group attacks that he had before. I only saw the tidal wave attack once as opposed to at least five times in the last battle, and the tail swipe thrice where it'd been busted out a few times more before. Ticks boss enemy AI aside, with stronger party members and more potent curatives I won the day.

What follows the battle is a rather touching reunion of father and daughter. Maybe it's the Welsh eye dialect used for the citizens of Porth Llaffan, but it had me misting up a bit, it did.

The game doesn't linger on this heartwarming scene for long, though. It fades to black, moves time forward a day, and has the party waking up in the mayor's house. There we're told that the ferry's back up and running. No doubt the NPCs comment on this return to service, as well, but this next gentle nudge forward is pretty clear.

Since things are moving along so smoothly so far, I expect that at either fig number three or fig number four we'll encounter a rival fygg collector to whom we'll lose our whole collection around fygg number six. Either that, or the fyggs, once gathered, will rouse some sort of vile demon that your party needs to face down. This is a JRPG, after all, and there's just got to be some sort of twist.

Heavy on the primary sources, please

The latter half of Kohn's chapter on the Renaissance and Reformation is all about the nation he believes is the biggest player in the spread of modern nationalism: England.

His focus on the island nation of northwestern Europe is quite useful for me. It gives me things to argue against with my case for Beowulf as a kind of national poem of Anglo-Saxon Britain.

His spending so much space on England and its progression through the various nationalisms he presents is also helpful because of the definitions of those nationalisms that he provides. Right now it looks like an Old Testament nationalism (seeing a people as set apart by a divine destiny) comes closest to what I think is expressed in Beowulf and other major Anglo-Saxon writings. There's definitely a note of a Germanic sense of superiority in there, too, though not enough to completely crush the Celtic culture the Anglo-Saxons found when they came to Britain's bright shores.

One thing that's becoming clearer the more I read of Kohn is that he uses a lot of quotations. I mean, to the point where there's easily a 70/30 split between quotations and original prose in some paragraphs. It's neat to see history in its makers' words, though.

When Link got Helmasaur'd

The Helmasaur King and I have never gotten along. Every time that I've faced him I've fallen at least once before vanquishing him, the first of the Dark World's fiends. Tonight's session was no exception. I admit it, I struck the reset button on my old Gamecube as soon as the "Game Over" screen appeared. As I pulled out the first satisfying syllable of a favourite four letter word.

On that first part of tonight's session with A Link to the Past, I spent 15 minutes gathering a heart container and the Bombos Medallion, as well as probing my limits in the Dark World. Before the Hookshot, it's a very small world. And it's even smaller before you get the Magic Hammer. Then, a good twenty minutes went into the first dungeon, The Palace of Darkness, before a five minute fight with old H.K. The fight that saw Link getting brained on the business end of that boss' flail of a tail. Well, that's how you've got to imagine a dramatic end to a dramatic fight, anyway.

On my second run through I gathered everything I'd gathered before in a about five minutes, navigated the labyrinthine dungeon in about 14 minutes, and then smashed and slashed Helmasaur King into an explosive end in about three. I also saved at every step of the way, unlike my impulsive first session.

The first dungeon of the Dark World is a big shift from the Light World's three. It's about as tightly designed as the Tower of Hera, but is more puzzling. From figuring out that Link can push statues onto switches, to needing the patience to navigate through mazes infested with fire-breathing Green Kodongos, The Palace of Darkness is definitely a steep step upwards in terms of difficulty. So much so, in fact, that the rest of the Dark World's dungeons are easy in comparison. Really, the only thing that most of the others have on the Palace of Darkness is length. That includes the Swamp Palace, though it too will be made short work of and its Hookshot will come in handy.