A culture of a different kind

Menander's The Arbitration is the work of a stronger playwright. This impression is left by the play's nested plots.

On top of the general plot about another classic mix up involving a father, a son, and a baby of "mysterious" origins, the play also involves a sub-plot wherein the shepherd who found this baby and the servant of its unwitting father seek an arbitrator to settle the matter of who owns the trinkets found with the baby.

What's troubling about this play though, is it's casual treatment of rape. The baby at the plot's center is the result of the main character's raping his wife four months before they're married. As to why he doesn't remember this incident, it's revealed that he had done it while drunkenly barging into a women's festival. Given this context (and what Marrou mentioned about the mixing of the sexes at festivals), I can understand how such a rape could be a plot device.

But, the coolness with which the characters treat the rape sets a strange scene for a comedy. The play's jokes aren't that dark, though. Generally speaking, they're more like verbal slapstick.

It may be that the bits missing from the play contextualized its plot's rape to some extent. As it is, though, and as a modern reader, a rape is out of place in a comedy. Unless Menander pioneered dark comedy.

Comic catch up: Refreshing my mental captchalogue

Sometimes you just need to read some comics. Also, sometimes you forget your books when you rush out of the house in the morning. Whatever the case, the ubiquity of the 4G network allowed me to read a tiny fraction of what I have to catch up on with Homestuck.

Just how far behind am I in this lovely monstrosity of a comic? Far. I'm hardly out of the first act. I'd read it before, but went back to where I actually recognized what was happening (shortly after the beta was starting to mess up John's reality). Now I'm up to where Rose is trying to one-up her mother by taking the velvet pillow that her mother placed under her note so that she can stitch a thank you note into it.

Although, as a comic, it can't obscure timelines and perspectives in the same way that a book can, as I'm reading through it, Homestuck reminds me of something. It reminds me of Infinite Jest.

I think that the main reason for this is that Homestuck has the same frantic tone that parts of Infinite Jest do. Plus, because of the way that it unfolds and the very nature of the story itself, you're not really sure what's going in in Homestuck - just as you're not sure about what's really going on in Infinite Jest for most of it.

At the very least, both works are of a seemingly indomitable length.

Kindling a different sort of fire

Maybe it's just my imagination, but I think Elena's starting to like eating the raw beast flesh that Aeron keeps bringing back. Or maybe she has a strange taste for raw meat that's still dripping or pulsating (the three tiers of flesh you can give her are "Beast Flesh," "Dripping Flesh," and "Pulsating Flesh"). In any case, there's a hunger that appears in her eyes now, or at least there seems to be, whenever she pulls back from that first bite.

Of course, this change in taste could be the result of my playing through more of the romance simulator part of the game. I've been giving Elena a lot of gifts from Mavda's shop lately and the way that they're arranged around the Observatory has made it much more home-like. I also very much enjoy the fact that after you give her a bracelet you can see her wearing it in cutscenes. There are two other pieces of jewellery  that I can make at this point, and I wonder if they're cumulative or if she only wears the latest piece that you give her.

Needless to say, the inventory and relationship management sides of the game have been pre-occupying my sessions lately. I've been pushing my way through the Crimson Keep (the fire-themed tower) as well, but it's strangely straightforward.

However, when Aeron is touched by fire and gets burned, I don't see why pushing the "Z" button and rolling doesn't put him out. Instead, running around in circles does the trick. And that makes sense, right? Aeron is something of a bishōnen after all, and they've got a certain penchant for physical comedy.

"Bake 'em away, toys"

Marrou's wrap up on Hellenistic education offers some sweeping statements about the final state of higher education in the Hellenistic world. However, he's careful to back these statements up with examples, and to buttress the whole thing with the thesis that said final state was always nascent in the Hellenistic culture and system.

But then he goes and does something that marks him as a product of his times. Something that makes it clear that his work is a bit dated. A thing that suggests that his work is valuable for its philosophic view, but perhaps could use some updating on the finer points.

On page 294 he uses the word (the phrase?) "high jinks."

On seeing this word in print, I was immediately reminded of Chief Wiggum's conversation with Eddie from the Simpsons episode that sees Bart and Milhouse getting a slap on the wrist for breaking into Flanders' house and ruining his Beatles memorabilia collection:

"Chief Wiggum: '...Hehe. Hijinks. Funny word. Three dotted letters in a row.'Eddie: 'Is it hyphenated?'Chief Wiggum: 'It used to be. Back in the bad old days. Of course every generation hyphenates the way it wants to.'" (S14E16 - "Bart of War")

It's a curious thing the way that language changes, even if the systems that it describes essentially remain the same.

Surely just a towering story's base

Because of the isolation inherent in Pandora's Tower (you, your cursed love interest and some kind of merchant witch are the only ones hanging around an old, abandoned frontier base), its story is neatly two-pronged. One of these prongs is the story of the world at large, the war between Elyria and Athos, and the creation of the towers. The other is the story of Elena and Aeron - how they met, what their relationship was like before Elena was cursed, and what their relationship is becoming as Aeron strives to gather the flesh of each of the thirteen towers' masters in time.

Other games run simultaneous plots on multiple levels, but in Pandora's Tower the two plots are much more distinct from each other. That's not to say they aren't intertwined. Elena and Aeron's relationship is a story of star-crossed lovers from nations at war, but at the same time, their relationship is an example of the two nations co-existing. It's a microcosm of the world and its goings on. Elyria is merely suspicious of Athos at this point in the game, but there's trouble brewing there, and likewise, as Elena becomes lonelier and lonelier, she's likely to change as well. Though I doubt that she would ever become hostile towards Aeron. 

Still, two plots so straightforward in their motion could do with some shaking up - there's no doubt the game's developer Ganbarion knows this and put something disruptive to both plots down the line somewhere. I'd expect nothing less from a company that's worked on anime projects in the past.

A marked improvement

A brief introductory note mentions that The Girl from Samos is the work of a more experienced and mature Menander. This turns out to be more than just blather.

For starters, most of the women in this  play are named. Though only the title character has any lines among them. Plus, in a curious reversal, tthe only wife in the play is never seen.

Though this play is more fragmented than Old Cantankerous, the story holds together nicely. The comedy inherent in the play's central misunderstanding holds up pretty well, too. Not to mention the fourth wall-breaking jokes and effective use of addresses to the audience. Such addresses must have been the norm, or the mark of a particular character type, though, since they do happen rather frequently.

Menander's made quite a jump, but how did he manage between these plays? Perhaps we'll find out in The Arbitration.

Dragging my heels back to the priest

Dragon Quest IX is a modern old school JRPG. The presence and incredible importance of churches is what leads me to this conclusion. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that the churches aren't the only way to revive fallen party members, given what they're needed for in the game. Case in point: You need to go see a priest to figure out how much experience a character needs to level up. There's no status screen for that here.

Yet, as much as I find this delegation and concentration of features otherwise taken for granted in other games annoying, such a system really adds to an RPG. Take character revival, for example. When  your spell caster finally learns the revive spell, or you find a reliable source of a game's reviving item, you really feel like you've accomplished something - at last you're free from the tyranny of the game's administrative center!

No doubt the people at Level-5 knew this. Maybe that's why you need to go to a priest to figure out how much grinding you've yet to do: they didn't want their world's churches to become irrelevant.

A rhetorical matter

I think Marrou is trying to put into practice some of what the Hellenistic Greeks taught about rhetoric in his chapter on the same. In it he makes free use of em dashed clauses - you know, the sort that are supposed to be quick interjections. The sort that are designed to grab your attention. Some might even say that they're a charming device that, at the very least, persuades you to view the speaker as lively and animated. Those two qualities being important for eloquence, it seems.

That was, after all, the goal of rhetoric among the Greeks. The whole purpose of the subject was to learn how to speak persuasively. Those that mastered the art, unsurprisingly, played a large political role. They acted as ambassadors, diplomats, counsellors. In a way, it's not unlike today. Spoken eloquence can get you far - though not nearly as far as it could in a world still consisting primarily of small, relatively close-knit communities.

At the same time, Hellenistic rhetoric is said to have been universal. In fact, Marrou bemoans the lack of unity in language in his own day.

Today, in 2013, I don't think we have a problem with the unity of language. Our system is such that code switching when talking with different groups of people is more important than always speaking a single perfect language or in a single perfect style.

(Hopefully) the last glitch

At long last, we discover why Zael wants to be a knight. His village had none protecting it and so was razed in the most recent war. Zael wants to be a knight to prevent that from happening to other villages in the future (I guess). There's not much to make the reason stand out, but I'm glad that a reason beyond their coolness has been given.

As you may've guessed, tonight saw some more The Last Story action. Chapter six has proven longer than those that came before, but we cut the game off just before chapter seven's start. At least, it would make sense for the next scene to be the opening for a new chapter.

At any rate, the latest Final Fantasy games have been called "Final Hallway," and I'm beginning to see why (Though Sakaguchi, The Last Story's director, is less and less involved with that series). There aren't a whole lot of branching paths nor is there much exploring in The Last Story. Everything's quite linear, with some of the game's areas offering treasure to those willing to look around an otherwise innocent corner. But for the most part you just march forward from battle to battle. Though the battles can be spectacular.

Aside from glitching out the fight with the Terracor, the game's battles have been pretty engrossing so far. The glitch seems to have emerged from bouncing the armoured beast into the wrong corner at the wrong time - it got stuck, the sound effect for its rolling played on loop, and the beast somehow emanated a damage-inflicting force-field around itself. It looked as though it could still be damaged, but Mirania and Lowell's attack spells worked at the beast slowly. After a reset (followed by a couple game over screens (Zael's slash seems to require sight of the target, something the game's camera is not always keen on giving you), the beast was no more, Zael and Dagran's old friend Zoran was taken out, and the quest we were on was completed.

The game really puts its streamlined play to good use, making for a very quick-to-play RPG. So much streamlining might have a negative effect on character development, though.

Somehow I'm not convinced that Zael is as young and inexperienced as he's depicted, he just doesn't look it. Were he a sprite, doing things like looming over the previously rescued Lisa when the option "Touch her" is chosen after the scene where the two discuss lucky stars, might be endearing or even charming. But with a full 3D figure the same gesture just comes off as weird and laughable.

This incident left me wondering: Is The Last Story's visual style out of sync with its cutscenes/characters' style?

My quest grinds to a halt

The Ragin' Contagion is definitely angry. Despite its two attacks per turn, penchant for draining defense, and ability to inflict poison, I took it much too lightly on my first attempt on it. Though, I do admire the localization team's efforts in giving it a slightly Southern US accent. It's definitely there just to complete the reference to a "Ragin' Cajun," but it suits the game's ever so slight goofy quality.

What surprised me about the place where the beast is fought is that it presents a puzzle that's straight out of all the classic RPGs: a light reflection puzzle. All the mirrors for it are in place, the stone slab near the tomb's entrance is inscribed with a clear little bit of poetry about sending the red light to the red door and the blue light to the blue. Everything's lined up for a solid puzzle.

But then it's all done automatically. The mirrors are already in position. The beams of light just shoot right into their respective doors after switches are hit. It's a little disappointing that such a puzzle is so easily solved. Though I am thankful that this game has so far avoided the brainteaser-level of some of the puzzles in Lufia II.

However, no punches are pulled with this boss.

It's pretty clear that I need to, at the very least, upgrade up my equipment. Kleftis (my party's thief) is already something of a fiend, hitting harder than my main character most of the time. My wizard, Thoth, is fairly balanced but could probably use some defense-boosting accessory. As per my main character, everything's fine with him, though maybe some greater defensive items are also necessary to keep him alive.

Of course, to afford the best of the best at this point in the game, I'm going to have to farm some gold from battles. So, just as it would often arise in several of the old classics, I've reached a point in Dragon Quest IX where I have to grind.

The entertainment cycle

Menander's Old Cantankerous (aka The Misanthrope)'s a tidy little play. Curiously, I think it would play well today, with just a few modifications. Why? Because like the recent hit comedy Bridesmaids it depicts women getting as debauched as men stereotypically do. Entertainment really does run in cycles.

At the same time, though, the two women who are the foci of the two male leads' affection are never named. They're just referred to as "the girl" or "the sister" or "the daughter." Such disregard of women is par for the course in much of the Ancient world, sure, but it still strikes me as really odd. Married women (who are also mothers) have names, though. So perhaps when Menander was writing it was a convention that women needed to have a social place/function to be considered worthy of a name.

Nonetheless, Old Cantankerous delivers a few laughs and is a pretty quick read since it's quite short at some 27 pages. I'll have to see what The Girl from Samos holds before I really figure out this Menander fellow, though.

Reasons to prefer a genre

I need to work on my twitch reflexes. And my spatial awareness. These are the things that playing a few missions of Star Fox 64 have shown me.

Much like the SNES original (a game I beat for the first time only a few years ago), I always struggled with Star Fox 64. Yet, I also really love space combat simulation games like it. As a kid I must have clocked in at least a hundred hours on a Terminal Velocity demo, I played Star Wars X-Wing every chance I got, and I loved Descent. Before I discovered the RPG, the space (or even just aerial) combat simulator was, without question my favourite genre. Not that I was ever any good at it. It was just that I, like every young boy, liked blowing up big robotic things that had evil intentions.

I still do, as last night's blast from the past made pretty clear. At the same time, though, space shooters never really struck me as capable of the emotional impact a good RPG can have.

Ultimately, as someone who already loved writing fiction, the RPG's greater potential for more gripping stories than your standard space combat simulator (at least in the 90s) is what lead to my now insatiable drive to try as many RPGs as I can. Plus, working with a series of menus proved easier than movements in a three dimensional plane and holding steady while aiming.

Another drop of story after Wellspring wrapped up

I'm not sure how I feel about the drip-brewed style of story telling in Pandora's Tower. 

On the one hand, revealing a bit of the story after each tower suits the game's restricted in-game world. I mean, you never have to run between the towers, you just choose your destination and appear there. This limited travel makes the game into a collection of locations. As such, limiting the storytelling to scenes seen after each tower's master has been defeated makes sense since it makes each block of the story into a collection of nodes rather than something that moves continuously like something unravelling (or travelling over an overworld).

On the other hand, only telling the story in bits tossed to the player after each tower's cleared means you have to finish each tower to learn it. 

As much as I'd prefer a less controlled release of the game's story (it's shaping up to be quite interesting, just as twisty as that of any dramatic anime), the game's bit-by-bit method does build up a lot of anticipation. 

Of course, the anticipation I feel for the next bit of the story as I near a tower's master is probably making the game's story appear more interesting than it would be otherwise. 

The most recent wrinkle, the revelation of the "Other World" supposedly under the towers (or accessible from the valley found beneath them) brings a lot of possibilities to mind. Not to mention the revelation that the masters are living weapons created from living things paired with Elena's dreams after she eats their flesh. The little boy featured in most is probably the base for one of the masters, or so I'm guessing at the moment. 

Speaking of masters, the one sitting atop Wellspring Steeple offered almost more than ample challenge. Actually, much to my surprise, the fixed camera might have made it easier. After all, in most 3D Zelda games, the camera has a terrible habit of locking onto Link so that the boss is obscured from sight - especially after Link's been knocked down or back. And the boss atop Wellspring Steeple? It knocks you down a lot. 

As if it wasn't enough that the master flesh on this thing is in near constant motion, it's constantly spraying jets of water at you and launching venomous bubbles that lower the power of your attack. Plus, when its health starts to get low it sprouts tentacles and sees fit to fire more and more of those bubbles off. Not to mention the beast's cornering you, or the fact that the only assailable piece of this master is its juicy, yellow flesh. 

It was a fierce battle, but a successful one for me. Since it's only the third boss of the game and there must be at least 10 more it leaves me wondering how the next one will prove difficult. Perhaps I'll need to use the environment to my advantage or reflect an attack to deal damage. Until I learn the next tower's name all bets are off about the next master. Though, thankfully, Wellspring Steeple's boss was not a fish at all but a kind of tentacle-concealing spiral shell. So who knows what's up next.

The physician's apprentice

In Hellenistic Greece the only profession that had any structured education was that of the physician. Preparation for everything was based on apprenticeships. So, student lawyers and engineers and architects would basically shadow those practising these professions. No degrees, no years spent learning the theory separately from the practice.

Since it's the most structured, however, Marrou follows the path of the physician, noting how a student of the time would slowly climb the medical ranks within a doctor's practice until he took over that practice. Marrou also notes that doctors of the Hellenistic period may have lacked our technical anatomical know how, but they had quite the bedside manner. There are whole contemporary manuals about the psychology of the doctor/patient interaction, actually.

Perhaps this concentration on the psychological side of doctoring comes from the old notion that the body is sacred and shouldn't be internally inspected. Such a belief would be sure to get people more interested in getting into each others' heads (the work of language) than into each others' inner physiological workings (the work of science).

Swinging through Wellspring

Wellspring Steeple just became much more interesting. Amidst my wandering, I came into an entirely new room. Though, more importantly, I found a scientist's text about a fish that he created. At first I was sure that this fish would be the tower's master. But, much to my relief, it's just a nuisance enemy in the adjoining room - that newly discovered one. Actually, it's that room that holds the master, so I'll soon see just what it is.

Of course, the fish from the text being in the next room doesn't mean that the tower's master won't be a different kind of fish, but I'm heartened by the possibility that it won't be. Somehow, I imagine it will be a more powered up version of the aquatic servant beasts. Though so far the game's boss chambers have been uniform - large, cylindrical rooms with the master waiting at the center. Unless there's a big pool in the center, it seems unlikey that I'll be facing a fish in Wellspring Steeple.

Speculation about the game's next boss aside, I find the swinging mechanic really frustrating. Too often do I find myself flinging Aeron off and into his doom, missing the aimed-at platform by an arm's length. In part, this is due to the game's fixed camera - it's hard to judge distance when you're always given a different context for that judgment. Maybe the developers were aware of this and tried to compensate with Aeron's flipping to face the side that he's coming closest to, but that little animation also throws me, more often than not.

It seems that once again Zelda has spoiled me. I mean, how can you fall to your doom when you can rotate the camera to check your distance or actually see the ground rising up beneath you?

Meandering into Menander

Norma Miller really loves her some Menander. Yes, I've started into her collection of plays and fragments by Menander (which I'll title Menander: Plays and Fragments for convenience sake).

A little outside of my usual practice, I decided to read the introduction to this collection. It's quite animated for something about ancient history. Moreso, it's something that's working in tandem with A History of Education in Antiquity. Menander's era (341/2-291 B.C.) is just a slice of what Marrou has written of, but the trends that he tracks are visible in Miller's history, too. Most notably that the middle class and its immersion in Greek literature made for a shift in the nature of Greek comedy.

While Menander was writing, comedy was no longer as broad as it was in Aristophanes and its focus had moved from general situations to more private affairs. These two changes reflect an increasingly middle class audience, a group concerned with and aware of their social lives and literature.

All of this context for what's coming next is great. Actually, I'm rather glad that I read this introduction since it'll bring what's left of Menander's work into a sharper focus.

How Hellenistic numbers shaped up

Apparently, the Greeks were not blinded by science. At least, not in the secondary school system. According to Marrou, they knew of its importance, but regarded it as more of a specialized discipline. However, mathematics was used as a means to train the mind.

As proof of this Marrou mentions the Greek love of geometry and the staying power of Euclid, noting that his book Elements was used (in translation) as a textbook almost until his own present (roughly 1950). Though, Marrou does go on to point out that the Greeks were much better geometers than they were arithmeticians.

Marrou explains this disparity by way of the Greeks lacking symbols that would let them express abstract numbers, or even partial numbers. They used fractions, but not decimals, and, theoretically, their way of writing out numbers could bring them up to 999,999 but not any further. Add to that the Hellenistic Greeks' fear of infinity and near obsession with 1, 3, 4, and 7.

In short, they weren't well-outfitted to get into abstract mathematics aside from those areas that were geometrical in nature. Not to mention the fact that the study of literature still dominated secondary school education, and so anything mathematical would be picked up when students moved onto their post-secondary learning.

Jest ended

What can you say about something that you've been with and have intimately learned about for five months (especially when you thought it would only be a two month affair)?

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest cannot unfortunately live up to its title.

As I neared its end and felt the number of pages between me and the start of the at-first daunting endnotes shrinking until there was but one left, I kind of wished that the book could live up to what Wallace had called it.

Why would I wish for such a book to go on even longer?

Because so much of what happens in the book's main plot is left untold. Point of fact: The biggest event in the book, the presence of the AFR in the place of the Quebecois juniors at the fundraising ETA match is not given any page time. Not even in the slightest.

Looking back at what I can now proudly say that I've read, the best way to describe Infinite Jest's composition is that Wallace wrote a bunch of third person biographies/memoirs for characters living in a strangely familiar future and then shuffled them together, making sure to set a handful of events out of chronological order. It's not just the fact that the book's first chapter is chronologically its last (and thus, should be read after the grisly final Gately scene to really complete the book) that leads me to this analysis, but because as a whole it is a character-driven novel. The main plot, the struggle of various organizations to get the film that makes people neglect everything but watching it, is secondary to everything else going on. Instead, the characters populating this plot take center stage, just as if the book's main plot were some obscure historical event visible only on the periphery of old autobiographies.

Such analyses aside, Infinite Jest is a book that rewards its completion with so much more than a sense of fulfilment and accomplishment.

It leaves you with a feeling that you know the seedy, drug-laced, consumption-crazed (B.S.) 1990s more intimately than if you merely grew up during them in the confines of a small town.

It leaves you feeling that you know the characters that Wallace draws out.

Most of all, it leaves you feeling rewarded.

Not just because you've read one of the top 10 longest novels in the English language, nor just because you've read one of the most truly literary books in the English language. It leaves you feeling rewarded because, thanks to Wallace's incredibly detailed descriptions and characters, you have just experienced so much humanity that you are more of a person than you were when you first picked up this tome.

Dragging out an oldie

Dragon Quest IX's second story-related quest has now emerged. And, as expected in retrospect, but as was welcome in the moment, it's another quest pulled straight out of the 16-bit RPG playbook.

A town (aptly named Coffinwell) is imperilled by a terrible disease - but, this disease turns out to be a curse! The twist is that the curse is simply to be resealed rather than the usual vanquished or destroyed (as was the case in Phantasy Star IV's Reshel and Breath of Fire's Romero). However, flattening things out after this welcome shift from the conventional is the fact that once more a female character close to those involved in this plot point is in danger! We didn't have to save any princesses in the matter with the Wight Knight, hopefully it turns out that we don't need to save the wife of the archaeologist visiting Coffinwell, either.

Both the matter of the Wight Knight and the curse of Coffinwell seem to have been triggered by the earthquake that somehow lead to the game's lead falling from heaven. So, my guess right now is that after five more quake-related quests, the big bad will reveal itself and the game will shortly thereafter end. Just how accurate a guess that is remains to be seen however.

The ever-tightening iris wipe

What gives away the fact that Infinite Jest is winding down is its increasingly tightening focus. Aside from some brief looks into other characters, the story's bounced back and forth between Gately and Hal for the last 50 or so pages.

Though their sections remain distinct. Hal's are in first person, after all.

Actually, I still think there's something to Hal's sections being in the first person. The difficulty in nailing down what this choice of perspective means comes from the fact that Hal stars in a third person role in most of his earlier scenes throughout the book. With all the talk of J.O. Incandenza's films and his attempts to keep his audiences aware that they're watching something, it's safe to say that the shift to first person reflects Hal's growing awareness of being watched, of taking control.

That the first person sections happen mostly after Hal's "Abandon[ed] All Hope," (1064) suggests an anti-drug message. At the least, these things happening concurrently suggests that reality can only be seen clearly when the mind is drug-free. Though, the clarity of Gately's recovery bed reflections and Hal's move to first person at this point in the book adds a layer to that analysis. Instead of needing a drug-free mind to see reality, opened doors of perception are those that have been actively clouded and then unclouded.

Questionable fashion

I'm still at an early stage of Dragon Quest IX. As such, function currently trumps style for me, even though dressing your characters up is a big part of what makes the game different from other RPGs.

I can't deny that the customizability of your characters' outfits and their resultant appearance is something you rarely see in RPGs, but I can't help but wonder: Does coordinating your characters' clothes really matter?

As far as I can tell (and, again, I'm sure I've hardly scratched the surface of a truly long game) the only benefit to Dragon Quest IX's key feature is to the game's aesthetics.

This sense especially struck me when I noticed that the female thief I have in my party was the only one walking with a hip-wiggling motion. Now, I do wonder if that's part of the female thief's attitude coming across (think Kidd from Chrono Cross mixed with Clara from Skies of Arcadia), or is it because she's meant to model outfits?

That may be a narrow pair of questions, but it leads me to wonder if there's some sort of stat boost awarded to characters wearing a solid ensemble.

Or, whether or not the customizability of your characters is meant to covertly force you to grind levels early and often to make up for not equipping the best stuff as it comes up. Clogs and shirts of mail don't exactly match, after all.

Waiting for Gogoat

It's been a while since I've played  Pokemon. When the series first came out I was all about the Red, Yellow, and Blue. But, I played them all on an emulator, and so the experience was limited.

Plus, because I'd played the same adventure three times over with a relatively short time between them, I was burned out on Pokemon when the second generation arrived. Besides, Link's Awakening and the Oracle games were so much more interesting.

But I went to one of Ontario's pre-Pokemon X/Y events earlier today and played something a little more modern while en route and in line: Pokemon Diamond. After all, 2007's practically 2013, right? Right?

I made it through the game's introduction and have to say that the series has come a long way. Visually and musically, Diamond is well done. I also appreciate getting a speed boost early in the game. The default walking speed makes it seem like your character has to step crunchily onto every stone or floorboard he/she passes. Being able to choose between a boy amd a girl's quite a leap forward for the series, too.

However, I'm not a fan of the battle menu remembering what you did on your previous turn and defaulting to that. I also feel like I've been dropped into the game without any direction. I'm sure that just a few steps out of Sandgem Town I'll find some information on where to go next, though.

That'll be a good thing, actually, since I won't be playing much Diamond until I get to the Gift Game portion of my Games List.

A wee gripe

I enjoy the fact that the English translation of Dragon Quest IX uses eye dialect. That is, in the northernmost regions of the overworld, people tend to talk with a bit of a Scottish brogue. So you get words like "nae" for "not" and "wee" for small and so on. It's a nice touch that really brings the game's world alive.

At the same time, after I dispatched the demon Monag and freed the Right Knight from his lisped moniker of "Wight Knight," the game pulled me out of that appreciation for its world. It turns out a princess followed you to Brigadoom. She had guards so I guess that she made her way through the ruins just fine.

What bothered me more than the entourage was that the animation used for their side-to-side motion looked non-existent. It might have just been blocked by the wall overshadowing them as they walked off-screen, maybe. But after the dance number we see between Princess Simona and the Right Knight, such shoddy animation is inexcusable. The dance is quite coordinated, especially considering the game's sprites can look a bit clunky at times.

A nod to what's come before

As a writer my version of utopia is simply a place where knowledge and appreciation of the written word stands for something. It would be the sort of place where knowing Chaucer and Shakespeare could actually help you nail an interview or help your job applications stand out from the rest. Thus far, it seems like Hellenistic Greece is the place most like what I envision for this utopia of mine.

Except change Chaucer and Shakespeare for Homer.

And throw in an education system involving rote learning and the repetition of phrases. And don't forget tossing the copying of fables and aphorisms until their meaning becomes a numbed mass, collapsed before any reader into the mix as well.

That's the horror that Marrou sets out in his look at Hellinistic literature instruction. It's a place where creativity is stifled, and yet there's a refreshing lack of fear around being unoriginal. If an Hellenistic poet referred to one of his or her ancient ancestors of the craft, it would be lauded. Unlike today, where there's a constant push to do things new and novel. But at least we've got our creativity.

This chapter wasn't just about building up my own expectations of there ever having been a literary utopia and then tearing them down, though. In it Marrou makes a very poignant observation: As a civilization concretizes its culture's forms and values those forms and values make their way from the halls of the civilization's highest education down into its primary schools. An example of this process in our own society is computer programming.

At one time computer programming was reserved for university and college students (in part because only institutions could afford and house the room-sized processors we had to deal with). But now, computer programming is a common course in high schools, and no doubt has some presence in elementary curricula, too.

Marrou's observation is thus a look at his thesis (that a civilization's most prized values and culture is to be found in its educational system) in living motion. Perhaps it's a bit of a self-aggrandizing move, but if it's there, it's there.

100% real Jest

I was told that nothing in Infinite Jest is filler. But only on my way from page 911 to 934 have I seen this aspect of the book truly in action.

Dr. Wo, Gately's past, even the sentence-long section about Lyle levitating - they all get resolution while we watch Gately in his hospital bed.

That last one is the weirdest of all, though. If I'm right, while Lyle meditated he peeked in on Gately and licked his forehead. It's what Lyle does with those that come to him for advice. As far as I can tell, he takes it as a kind of reward. Or Lyle uses the sweat he licks from seekers' foreheads for some sort of psychic link or mind-meld with his subject.

In any case, when Lyle appears in wraith form along with J.O. Incandenza, Lyle's licking Gately's forehead is an act that holds a lot of promise. Although the book's main text is quickly running out of pages so I'm not sure if anything more will come of it. I'm also running out of endnotes.

So the big question for me right now is how can all of the book's 900+ pages of momentum be stopped in less than 50 pages? Some of the pages to come are no doubt as dense as a wordsmith's anvil, but even then 50 pages that dense wouldn't be enough to resolve everything that's been raised.

Is all well in Wellspring?

So as it turns out it wasn't a door I'd missed in the Wellspring Steeple. There was a ledge that you can drop down from to a part of the second floor. Before heading down though, I was sure to pop open the chest on the other remnant of the floor. For doing so, I was handily rewarded with the Twinblades. I haven't tried this new weapon out yet, though the monster cluster in the first chain room's antechamber gave more than ample reason.

In that room you face down three servant beasts. Two are the good old regular flavour, while the third is the iron knuckle of servant beasts. Only, it's more accurate to say that it's the beast's first day being in armour and armed because it moves as if it's unsure of itself. It also strikes so infrequently that the initial fear upon seeing three enemies blocking the way winds up being unnecessary. The greater fiend in this fight is the game's fixed camera, since it gives you a fair side view when you first enter the room, but as you move along the corridor it jumps behind Aeron into a zoomed out third person viewpoint.

Also, I'm not too sure about the mechanics the game laid on me during the fight. You can shoot the chain out up to five times while an enemy is targeted. Using this technique against the armoured beast knocked some of that armour off, but that's it.

As I think more about that technique, though, another fear rises: That this tower's master is a giant fish that you have to knock the scales off of as he jumps overhead, trying to knock you into his natural element and Aeron's doom.

A rough schooling

One of my clearest memories of high school is my ancient history teacher telling us that the ancient Greeks could solve the riddle of the lying and the truthful guards by the time they were our age. Considering this particular teacher spent the bulk of that semester teaching Greek history, it seems now (and at the time) that he was a little too interested in ancient Greece. 

Although it's only about primary education, Marrou paints a very different picture of what ancient Greek students could do. He notes that children learned the three R's under great duress. Teachers almost literally hammered these skills into their pupils' minds. 

For the ancient primary method was to teach students the hardest elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic first so that learning everything else would be a stroll through the roses. However, this method took nothing from the students' perspective into consideration. If you couldn't learn the hardest parts of reading, writing, and arithmetic from the direct, copy-what-the-teacher-writes-and-demonstrates method, then there was clearly something wrong with you. 

At the same time, Marrou notes that it wasn't uncommon (even for people who became politically important later in life) to be thirteen and not know your letters. Also that some people reached the age of nine without being able to even write their own name. Perhaps most surprisingly, he also points out that even the most intellectual of Greeks from the Hellenistic era apparently had trouble mentally adding numbers together. 

All of Marrou's revelations about what seem to be deficiencies in the Hellenistic education system and its results don't necessarily make my high school teacher's assertion invalid. The Hellenistic education system sounds pretty terrible for the basics, but it could still be excellent in its teaching of logic and problem solving. Perhaps Marrou will confirm this guess when he covers Hellenistic secondary education in the next chapter.

Ending a quest's lengthy hiatus

I never really played too many Dragon Quest games before taking up Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies nearly three years ago. Somehow, despite my appetite for 16-bit JRPGs I just never hunted down roms of the lauded series in my childhood, when time was mine and most of it was spent on the genre.

Maybe it's the come down from finishing Phantasy Star IV, but today's return session to Dragon Quest IX brought me right back into it. I'm sure having stopped right in the middle of the first big quest (the hunt for the black knight in Brigadoom) also made it easy for me to feel like I never left the game in the first place.

The game plays like so many JRPGs from the SNES era. Battles are turn-based, menus are deep, and the dungeons aren't so much expansive as they are tight. Brigadoom isn't a huge place, but it's got enough stairs and hidden rooms to keep you backtracking and wandering to find the right path. Plus, being able to see treasure chests and pots in adjacent, but seemingly inaccessible rooms is an invitation to deviate from the straight path to dungeon's end.

So far Dragon Quest IX's offered a fine mix of nostalgia and innovations on the formulae I remember from the 16-bit era's Final Fantasy series, Tales of Phantasia, the Lufia games, and even outliers like Secret of the Stars.

The wet and wild tower

On one hand I'm glad that it's come up so early. On the other, I wish it never had to come up at all.

With Sheerdrop Spire's master defeated, Aeron's next stop is Wellspring Steeple, the water-themed dungeon of Pandora's Tower. So far it's not as puzzling as Ocarina of Time's, but it's still got me stumped. A second look at the water wheel and the mechanism behind it will probably yield the solution. Or I'll find a door that I missed tonight. The new, semi-aquatic servant beasts threw me off my game, after all. They threw me so far off, in fact, that Aeron was battered and bombarded into an early grave.

At the least, my initial encounter with these new beasts revealed that the Elena's homemade cakes give Aeron temporary regenerative powers. Surely that will come in handy down the line. Learning this has also turned me from using the cakes as my primary curative to saving them.

My slow crawl through the game's mechanics aside, I'm convinced that a major variable in the rate at which I'll finish Wellspring Steeple is how much I perceive water-themed dungeons to be difficult. Really, the water temple in Ocarina of Time isn't tough, it's just something that requires attentive playing. I'll definitely be trying the simplest solutions before the most complex ones.

Curious density

Hal has gazed into the abyss and the abyss has very clearly peered back. That is the best way to summarize his experience at the purported NA meeting he'd gone to where he'd seen the sorry state of Kevin Bain. What Hal felt in that moment is now rushing through him completely undetected.

Though this feeling or sensation is causing effects that Hal is aware of. His painful, panicked hyper-awareness of everything going on around him as he heads back up to check the Ortho-window situation, for example.

But why is he possibly losing control of his expression?

Is Hal coming to a state comparable to the one those who watch "the Entertainment" end up in?

Adding to these questions is Gately's side of things. As with Hal we're given more background in these pages, but at a drip-brewing rate.

The current (and penultimate) chapter is among the longest yet. However, at the same time, this chapter implicitly refuses to answer the questions it raises since it's delivered in several fragments. I still have trouble pulling myself away from the book, but reading these sections is anything but passive entertainment.

Away game special: A phantasy ended

It is done. With the power of three, Phantasy Star IV was finished in the space of a weekend. At a guess, the whole game took us about 20 hours to complete.

At that time, the game comes  up a bit short for a 16-bit JRPG. A lot of comparisons we're made to Chrono Trigger (another short game if you know it well) and I think the two games share more than relative shottness.

Both games have a sleek, slim main plot line. Both also use intuitive, pace-quickening combat mechanics. However, the games differ wildly in the range of their extra content.

Chrono Trigger has a quest or event for each character's best weapon (at least); Phantasy Star IV really only has quests to outfit two of your four core characters. We probably would've cared more about Gryz (the butt of nearly all of our jokes and riffs) if we could've walked through a chapter of his life for something to make him a worthwhile addition to our battle party.

Stepping away from matters of combat efficiency, we never really learn much of anything in-game about Phantasy Star IV's four non-core characters. The priest Raja is something of an exception here, but jovial, life-loving priest characters always have a tremendous presence.

Nonetheless, the game is, overall, something to experience (though, nostalgia aside, once is enough). Plus, Phantasy Star IV does something no Final Fantasy game has ever done: it effectively (and, a little affectively) ends its series' saga.

Away game special: A phantasy of stars

Phantasy Star IV is a great game from my past. I originally played it with an emulator when those and roms were to be found in the shadiest corners of the internet. That was a solo playthrough, though.

This time around the game's being triple-teamed: two friends I've had since high school and I are playing it on the Wii's Virtual Console. Currently we're on our way to fight Zio and rescue the android named Demi.

Aside from now being aware of the ridiculousness of the games' abbreviations, it's quite a bit more drawn out than I remember. Also, there are a lot of towns for the early part of a JRPG.

I point out the panoply of towns because it gives the game's world a very realistic feel. Like the future before Lavos in Chrono Trigger, the array of towns makes it feel like the world is actually populated in a natural sort of way rather than for story or gameplay convenience.

Having so many towns around so early might not make sense in other games, but it's one aspect of Phantasy Star IV that remains fresh.

Rupeeland on earth

Uncle Rupee is no more. As illusory as Rupeeland wound up being, if the ending of the game is any indication, Tingle went on to use the 800,000+ rupees gathered throughout the game to live it up - doing all of the things that Uncle Rupee had promised him. With that in mind, it's no wonder that Tingle's broke by the time the sequel starts. Oh, yes, there is a sequel to Rosy Rupeeland, but it never left Japan. A shame, since Color Changing Tingle's Love Balloon Trip's Wizard of Oz basis makes it a very curious thing. 

As per the boss of Rosy Rupeeland, Uncle Rupee himself, the fight is actually a let down. It's a three stage fight (as any good final boss should be, right?), and done in a bullet-hell style...in space! The battle's setting is really cool, particularly the fact that the tower rockets off into the great unknown, rams through the moon and stops once the top gets through the far side. So, like another odd Zelda game, this one ends on the moon (sort of). 

I'm not sure if it was because I brought along so many rupees, or because Tingle and Uncle Rupee's attacks moved like they were in a light syrup, but all three stages of the fight were underwhelming. With 800,000+ HP, it's hard to feel like things are that dire, even if you wind up with just 200,000 by the battle's end. 

Interestingly, though, before the fight Uncle Rupee asks for your rupees. You can give him none or some (or nearly all). Handing over some of your cash would make the fight more challenging. Still, after all of the other boss fights and their innovative mechanics, just floating around and holding the stylus to the screen to shoot is pretty lame. 

Overall, though, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is a great game, so long as you can get past the rupees-for-everything mechanic. Its weirdness is a great reward for sticking with it.

Humble teachers pay more attention?

H.I. Marrou is a fine writer of history. He's definitely a product of an earlier era, but his tone and style make reading about even the bureaucracy of education interesting. But his speculations aren't always entirely clear.

At the end of the chapter about "The Primary School," he speculates that primary education in Hellinistic Greece must have been more individualistic than our own. Why? Because there had been no sign of blackboards in any known sites of school buildings.

This makes sense, sure, but it doesn't necessarily follow that just because the equipment for communal teaching wasn't present, education was individualistic. Teachers could after all, focus on their favourites, and leave those whom they deemed to be slower than the rest to their own devices.

Or could they?

Like professional musicians and athletes, teachers were regarded as tradespeople in Hellinistic Greece. They were people who had to go around asking people for money in exchange for their services, and thus were regarded as socially low. Marrou puts it quite succinctly: "The teacher of old was essentially a man of good family who had gone down in the world." Even then, though, to teach in this period of history required no training, you just had to be able to read and write (at least at the primary level).

But, as a teacher you'd still need to get paid. Since you'd be working for parents (who, during holiday-heavy months, might not use your services at all), maybe there is something to Marrou's speculation. Though, even if individualistic education was a hallmark in the Hellenistic age could be the result of dear old drachmae rather than ideals.

A lesson from Zelda found in the towers

The second master in Pandora's Tower offered another heart racing challenge. This time, though, it wasn't so much the boss itself, but was the ever encroaching curse that gave me cause for anxious excitement.

I had just refreshed the curse gauge with some measly "Beast Flesh" (for whatever reason monsters were only dropping the C-grade meat until I climbed the tower to face the master), and rushed up to where the Sheerdrop Spire master awaited.

I knew I had to use what I had learned in this tower to defeat it (in much the same way that in the average Zelda game a dungeon's item is the key to defeating that dungeon's boss). Since the beast was a kind of living rock, throwing it was out - as was throwing the four rocks I found arrayed around it upon entering its chamber. So I figured that I probably needed to bind it to something. I was right, but the problem was that I was trying to bind its head to the room's rocks.

Admittedly, this sounds like a faulty plan from the outset. But, in my defense, the parts of masters that you target with the chain don't flash like the parts of regular beasts do. Your chain indicator turns red and gains some crosshairs, but there's no indication of where you're able to strike on a master. So, it took a quick turn around GameFAQs to discover that you could chain its legs (of course) and bind them to the rocks that it forms in the room (after the first four are destroyed).

By the time I'd learned this, though, the curse gauge was under 1/4 full.

Nonetheless, thanks to the chain retaining its charge even after the master breaks free of it, I was able to yank its flesh out in the end and get it to a hooded, oozing, basement-dwelling Elena in time to restore her to her normal self.

Now, in this entry and in a few others, I've compared this game to those in the Zelda series. All matters of gameplay and combat and etc. aside, this game is now more Zelda-like to me than ever before.

In every Zelda game I've played to date there's always been some boss or puzzle or item that eludes me because I simply don't try everything. I'll go to a guide, tap myself on the forehead and move on in the game, certain that I won't be so narrow- and stiff-minded in the future. Inevitably, though, come the next Zelda game, the same thing happens yet again (usually just once, thankfully).

Since that same oversight has happened in this game, it now feels like it's delivered on some unwritten adventure/hack and slash game promise: to hide things in plain sight so that, at least for me, I can relearn the need to look for the obvious before searching out the needlessly complex.

Speaking up for more

I want to finish Infinite Jest. Not just at some indefinite point in the future - I want to finish it as soon as I can.

It hasn't sapped my desire to do anything else like the titular "Entertainment," but it's coming really close to doing so. I can taste the end in each endnote read from the final page of endnotes. I can smell the end on each of the last fewer than 100 pages' breath as it puffs up with each page turn.

Good writing and a compelling story working with interesting characters (I feel like I can totally ID with a bunch of them, Hal (and, to some extent, Mario) in particular) aren't the only causes for this desire to see how it all ends. My drive to want to read the rest of this great (but slow to start) book comes from its sheer size.

The first few hundred pages were dull. I admit it. But that's just because they're spent ponderously setting everything - everything - in place. Those pages set up the important settings, characters, their situations, their basic characteristics, their relationships, various subplots, the very world in which Wallace set the story. And it's one rich world.

It's a richness that owes something to its being something of an alternate one to ours rather than one that's completely original. Especially from here in 2013, things like subsidized years seem within the realm of possibility - though the less likely unification of North America would need to happen first. If such a unification ever did happen, hopefully it would be under better circumstances than the Northeastern states and parts of Quebec becoming an impromptu dump for a failed garbage rocket. Though, whatever the reason for North American unification, I hope that Quebec would resiliently resist any attempts to be assimilated into the larger North American Nation.

In a shorter book, none of Infinite Jest's world richness would be possible. It just wouldn't blossom in the same hypnotizing way that it does here. That's why I feel like I can't wait to read the book's final 85 pages.

Rupee goods rewarded

Thanks to a happy coincidence what looked like it was going to take two sessions to finish only took one (of a rather great length, mind). Except for the final boss (and the non-achievement of contracting all of the bodyguards), I've finished 100% of Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland!

In the end, once I'd gathered all of the necessary ingredients for the game's local specialities, the merchant working for the pirates gave me the last bottle in the game - bottle number 23. So, along with the fat stacks I'm now carrying from selling all of those specialities (Tingle's packing 300+ Gs), I was also given the three star sticker. This I redeemed from the alleged inventor of empty jars for the final rupee good: the Crown Bottle Cap.

With all the rupee goods thus collected, that mysterious door at the Auros Ruins beckoned. Upon answering its call, I was treated to quite the scene.

For you see, that door, unlocked only by collecting all of the rupee goods, leads to the room where Pinkle's been kept for the whole game. She rewards you with...well, see for yourselves (jump to 12:55):



To top that off, she also sends a hologram of herself to Tingle's house where it stands and waves - moving just enough to trigger some 2D jiggle. Yes, this is a Nintendo game.

The rise and fall of Zorba Lyrestrummer and the oboes from Athens

According to Marrou, music fell out of favour as a part of the antique curriculum for the same reason athletics did: Music became far too specialized.

The specialization of music is framed as problematic because it limits expertise in it to those who study it from their childhood onwards. However, Marrou does give some credit to the state educated music lover, noting that the true amateur was one who closely listened, while also dabbling on his own (195).

Specialized or not, the ancient method of direct instruction sounds miles better to me than learning to write music before you really play it. Having to copy an instructor as you have to copy the skull kids in that Lost Woods minigame in Ocarina of Time would at leat have let me reforge my somewhat tinny ear.

Twist of twists, though, among the music loving Greeks, musicians were despised. Why? Because they were paid for their work and were therefore tradespeople. Apparently the upper echelon didn't much care for the "working classes."

Somehow successful controlled exploration works

Pandora's Tower is already getting hard to put down. It's definitely a great game so far (though there is that glitch looming all the way down the line at tower 13), but I wonder if its format is as much the reason for my deep investment in it as the gameplay and chain combat are.

Here's what I mean:

In a Zelda game (a good Pandora's Tower analogue) you do the same thing you're doing in Pandora's Tower, and Zelda games are, by and large, great games. But, in a Zelda game, your exploration isn't limited by the need to restore a gauge every now and then (except for Majora's Mask). You can explore any time, anywhere - even in situations like Ocarina of Time's endgame where Zelda has been taken by Ganondorf in a moment of lowered guard. After that point in the game you could spend another in-game month or more wrapping up sidequests (or even just fishing) and Ganondorf and Zelda would still be where you'd find them if you rushed off right away to Ganon's Castle. As a result, the exploration in a Zelda game is (at least by game's end) without restriction.

Pandora's Tower on the other hand forces you to explore the towers in temporal chunks. If you knew where everything was, surely you could get through each tower in the time that each one's master flesh buys you, but otherwise there'd be a lot of trekking back and forth. Because of the game's curse mechanic, every minute in the towers counts.

Now, servant beasts aren't wanting as it is, but even so you couldn't grab some basic flesh, delve into a tower until the curse is just minutes away from coming into full effect and reliably get back in time to force Elena to down some beast brawn. So, at least in my current playthrough, in an average session of 30 minutes, I'm spending about 20 actually in the towers, inching through them on each visit.

Nonetheless, it's the control that the game exercises over your exploration that makes it so compelling to me. Exploration is parcelled out in such small pieces that it becomes a reward for a well managed inventory, a well fed Elena, and a well-outfitted Aeron. The curse mechanic itself presents a puzzle, the solution to which offers the reward of an efficiently running Observatory and a maximization of time to spend in the towers.