Yarthly Matters

The First Kothar the Barbarian Megapack, by Gardner F. Fox – This collects three different volumes, Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman (itself originally published as three short stories), Kothar of the Magic Sword, and Kothar and the Demon Queen. The author is probably best known for his work in comics, and I realized when looking at my tags that I’d read some of his Silver Age Justice League of America stories. These tales of Kothar, barbarian warrior from the northern country of Cumberia, are pretty derivative and formulaic, but still fun. Kothar receives the magic sword Frostfire from the undead wizard Afgorkon, the inspiration for the Lich in Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy. Owning the sword means he will never be able to have other significant possessions, despite how many fabulous treasures he finds, but he prefers the weapon. He has a recurring enemy in the sorceress Red Lori, with whom he has a weird love-hate relationship, and even teams up with her at one point. The barbarian faces the usual contingent of wizards, monsters, and demons, generally coming out none the worse for wear. One conceit of these stories is that, rather than taking place in an imaginary distant past, Kothar’s planet of Yarth is instead a remnant of an intergalactic civilization that died out, not that this really comes into the plots.

Voyages to the Moon and the Sun, by Cyrano de Bergerac – I’m not sure that, until recently, I realized Cyrano was, like, a real person, and not just a character in a play. But he was, and, among other things, he wrote these two tales that are often published together, although they don’t appear on Project Gutenberg that way. Moon starts out amusingly nonsensical, with the author attempting to reach the satellite by means of evaporating dew, but ending up in Canada instead. He actually gets to the Moon with a machine powered by fireworks, and finds out that the Garden of Eden and Elijah are there, as are four-legged people who communicate through music. Much of the rest of it is a mix of philosophy and satire, and despite the silliness, Cyrano seems to have had a better idea of the layout of the solar system than many of his fellows. The second book begins with some commentary on the first, much like the second part of Don Quixote, with the narrator being accused of heresy (in real life, neither book was published until after Cyrano’s death) and escaping into space in a glass box powered by sunbeams. He finds that the Sun is also inhabited by shapeshifting people and mythical creatures. It’s also the home to a court of birds who put Cyrano on trial because he’s human. He also hangs out with the Italian philosopher Tommaso Camapanella, who’s presumably there because he wrote a utopian dialogue called The City of the Sun.

The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps, by Edward Brooke-Hitching – By the same author as The Madman’s Library, this is also a book of trivia, specifically regarding unreal places that have appeared on maps, many of them included in the volume. Some are purely legendary, while others are the result of hoaxes or wishful thinking. Some were simply misidentifications or phantoms. European attempts to fill in unknown territory in places like the Americas and Africa often come into play, the search for the Northwest Passage showing up pretty often, and the Mountains of Kong being an assumed range that supposedly ran all the way across northern Africa, while the Mountains of the Moon were the imagined source of the Nile. There’s also mention of the proposed southern supercontinent to balance out the land in the Northern Hemisphere, including both what turned out to be Australia and Antarctica. Antillia,Atlantis, El Dorado, Lemuria, Prester John’s Kingdom, St. Brendan’s Island, and Wak-Wak with its human head tree are all here. So is the Garden of Eden, often marked on maps due to the tantalizing mentions in Genesis of actual rivers being nearby. The circular Hy Brasil, not etymologically related to the South American country, which was often said to sink for periods of seven years.

The book notes that later maps actually made the location more specific than older ones, which is pretty uncommon. Another mythical island that made the rounds for a long time was Thule, thought of as the northernmost island in the world, first mentioned by a Greek explorer in the fourth century BCE. There are also some brief diversions to discuss creatures that appear on Olaus Magnus’ Carta Marina and Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff’s Nuremberg Chronicle Map, including Cynocephali and Arimaspoi.

Hargon Is Gone

Having gotten a bit bored of losing to Zeromus in Final Fantasy IV, I decided to do another playthrough of Dragon Quest II, this time on the Switch, which I think is the same version you can get for cell phones. I think it would be weird playing an entire game on my phone, but I guess you take what you can get. It has kind of the same cutesy cartoonish style with disproportionately large heads that I’ve seen pictures of for other phone releases, albeit not to the same extent as what I’ve encountered of the mobile Final Fantasy VI.

I had already played through this game on the NES, when it was Dragon WARRIOR II. That was after I’d played the third game, which was much better realized. The game is known for being unfairly difficult at times, as the programmers didn’t have the time to balance things out properly. There were some clear improvements over DQ1, including a party of three characters. The main character, the Prince of Midenhall, can use a lot of weapons and armor but no magic, while the Prince of Cannock can use a little of both, and the Princess of Moonbrooke just specializes in spells. That said, Cannock can’t really use that many more armaments than Moonbrooke, so they’re both pretty physically weak. There’s a popular meme about Cannock constantly being dead in the NES version, and while I can’t actually recall if he died more than Moonbrooke did in my own experience, it’s quite possible he did because he was attacked more often.

Incidentally, the Switch version calls Cannock an Armamentalist and Moonbrooke a Mage. And there were some monsters toward the end of the game who could wipe out your entire party with one spell that never failed. Later versions of the game were made a bit easier, both in technical matters and in making certain things less frustrating. In the Switch version, the Yggdrasil Leaf brings a character back with full hit points, the Zoom spell lets you choose where to go (in the original it was just the last place you saved the game), and there are indications of where to search for items. I didn’t necessarily need that last one, as I remembered where most things were, but still. The game feels small now, but even when I first played it, the towns and castles seemed a little cramped. This is obviously the case when you revisit Tantegel Castle, which is reduced in size and connected to Brecconary.

Did they physically move one of them? That must have been labor intensive.
But even the new places feel a little on the small side. It does introduce towers and travel by ship. And even in this version, Erdrick’s Sword isn’t very good compared to how it is in DQ1 and 3. Time takes its toll, I suppose.

The plot is about a cult that worships a god of destruction trying to take over the world, with the leader being a priest named Hargon. With Nintendo’s policy of avoiding religious terms, the NES version just called him a wizard. That isn’t entirely wrong, as priests in the series do cast magic spells, but it lacks some nuance. The priests serving him, punningly called Wrecktors and Whackolytes in the modern translation, are instead Mace Masters and Evil Clowns, I guess because the priestly garb looks kind of jesterish.

Maybe it’s like how the chess piece called the bishop in English is a jester in French. On the NES, the Whackolytes refer to themselves as wizards in dialogue, but are Evil Clowns in battle. When these enemies appear in future games, they still wear the bat-like emblems, which are presumably supposed to represent the god Malroth.

And I suppose the false idol that you use to access Rendarak, called the Eye of Malroth on the NES, is an idol of the god.

There is now a mention at the beginning of the game that Hargon wants to summon a dark god, not calling Malroth by name, but still giving more indication of his existence than the game did previously.

That also helps to explain why everyone is so scared of Hargon, aside from his destruction of Moonbrooke Castle. You fight Malroth immediately after defeating Hargon, and I beat him on my second try.

I noticed that some of the lines I best remembered from the NES aren’t in this version, although I suspect the new takes are closer to the original Japanese. I found this script online, so I was able to compare some specifics. There’s a woman in Slewse who complains about her husband sneaking off to get drunk, while the earlier localization instead has them arguing about what to name a dog. That’s funnier, but I suspect it was only put in to remove the reference to alcohol. And a priest in Beran who curses you if you don’t tell him what time it is just says something about Hargon following a false religion.

And a merchant in Zahan who talked about the sunken treasure ship you can find instead reports that the town’s fishermen drowned at sea, perhaps a bit too dark for Nintendo at the time. Or maybe the translator just caught the bit about the sinking boat and assumed it meant something else. Considering how heavy the modern translations are on puns, I’m surprised that they removed one when the King of Moonbrooke, who exists only in the form of a flame, said it was “Hargon’s way of firing those he doesn’t need.” I think this lighthouse keeper’s line was adjusted to work in a reference to the Lord of the Rings films.

I also noticed that someone in Burrowell now explains that the reason everyone is living underground is to get farther away from Hargon’s influence, and there’s a lost guy there named Luke who comes from Zahan. On the other hand, nobody sings to you anymore.


And the Dragonlord’s grandson is now his great-great-grandson, I guess to better fit the hundred years since DQ1.

But dragons live a long time, so I never had a problem with his being a closer descendant than any of the human characters. Since I didn’t die as much this time, I don’t know whether your father still insults you if you die.

With Hargon and Malroth out of the way, I was finally able to beat Zeromus, so I’ll have more on FF4 in the near future. I’m also revisiting the DS version of DQ4 and taking another crack at Psaro, but I think my levels are kind of low.

Games and Goddesses

Gamemaster Classified: An Insider’s Guide to Nintendo’s Coming of Age, by Howard Phillips and Matthew Taranto – Back in the day, Howard was a very visible part of Nintendo’s marketing, especially in Nintendo Power, known for his signature bow tie. This book describes his time working there, which lasted from 1981 through 1991, starting as a warehouse worker and later becoming a game reviewer and tip provider, in addition to other stuff. Taranto provided the illustrations, including comics based on Howard’s experiences, but also provides his own insight and opinions on games and the like. Going year by year, the book provides some behind-the-scenes information, as well as thoughts on various games and technologies. Howard is someone who really likes action and challenge, often giving positive reviews to notoriously difficult games, like Ghosts ‘n Goblins and The Adventures of Bayou Billy. He also mentions that he doesn’t really like sequels that change the play style substantially, as happened with Super Mario Bros., Zelda, and Castlevania. And perhaps he was in the majority here, since all three of these series made the third game more similar to the first (with some elements taken from the second). It’s also notable that he really didn’t think Dragon Quest/Warrior should be released in the States, citing the primitive graphics and lack of action, the former partially due to the long gap between Japanese and American releases (DQ3 was already out in Japan before we got DQ1). Interestingly (and not mentioned in this book), Howard is in the English version of DQ1, along with Nester from the Nintendo Power comics. I had wondered before what these characters were called in Japanese, and it turns out they were given the names of people who worked on the game. Nester, by the way, was modeled on kids Howard tried to give advice on games they were struggling with, only for them to insist they already knew. Howard did like the also turn-based Mother, and thought it would be a better introduction to console role-playing games in the States. I’m not sure I’d heard of Sky Skipper before, but it sounds bizarre. Howard also seems to have been confused by the themes of Kid Icarus and Devil World. Towards the end, Howard explains why he left Nintendo for Lucasfilm, that they had him do more purely corporate marketing rather than more casual promotion of stuff he already enjoyed, and that he wanted to try making games.

Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth, by Natalie Haynes – This book gives an overview of several significant goddesses, along with pop culture references in a casual but still well-researched style. Haynes defends Hera, points out that Athena was a powerful woman who pretty much always took the side of men, describes the contradictions in Artemis, and explains how important Hestia really was despite the fact that she doesn’t appear in many stories.

Dawn of the Jaguar, by J.C. Cervantes – It’s been so long that I couldn’t quite remember what had happened in the previous book, but this one starts out with shadow bruja, alien conspiracy tracker, and daughter of the goddess of time Renata Santiago having died, and making a deal with the goddess Ixtab. She has to find a crown in order to thwart the Aztec Lords of Night, who want her to be their queen. She’s also lost her usual powers, but instead is given jaguar-related abilities. It seemed a little rushed, but I enjoyed it.

Kings of the Wyld, by Nicholas Eames – I became aware of this because Aidan Moher favorably compared it to the Final Fantasy series in his Fight, Magic, Items, and I can see why. It even has an airship as part of the story. It’s set in a fantasy world where mercenary heroes are treated like rock stars, and the leader of a group called Saga wants to get the band back together to rescue his daughter from a city under siege. A lot of the humor in the story is based on the comparison between mercenary and rock bands, including their having a sleazy manager who books monster-fighting gigs. Along their journey, they encounter bandits, an undead bard, owlbear cubs, and surprisingly friendly cannibals. They eventually rally a bunch of other bands to join them in fighting an army of monsters led by a rabbit-eared being from another dimension.

Let Me Kluya In

I’ve reached Zeromus, the final boss in Final Fantasy IV (the Game Boy Advance version), but haven’t been able to beat him. I can’t really think of anything to do other than just leveling up some more, but I suppose I can still talk about the game. One thing I particularly wanted to discuss was this translation of a Japanese guide, with extra information on the characters and locations. I love stuff like that, even if it’s often retconned later on. My brother had a book about FF6 that was in badly translated English, and had a history of the world from the War of the Magi to the time of the game, which I think was the same as this. The translator of the FF4 guide comments on how small the countries in the game are said to be, with Baron only having 3500 inhabitants. Of course, there are a lot fewer character sprites than even that, but I usually assume there’s stuff you don’t see.

There are six main countries, plus three presumably independent towns, and some more stuff underground. Most of them have a theme of sorts: magic, martial arts, ninjitsu, matriarchy, things you can be transformed into. Yeah, Mythril Village is a weird place.

There are spells to shrink someone down, and to turn them into pigs or toads, all pretty standard in fantasy and fairy tales. But we don’t know whether the inhabitants of this town were themselves transformed, or just happen to have those same shapes.

It’s interesting that Baron seems to be the most powerful nation, but it doesn’t have its own crystal. The guide suggests that this was done in order to maintain balance between the nations, but doesn’t indicate how these countries came to possess them. I suppose the desert kingdom having the Crystal of Fire makes thematic sense. The guide gives rough histories for all of the main locations, and includes several references to previous games: the founder of Mysidia is named Minwu, the guy who brought the Deathbringer to Fabul is Leonhart, and the first King of Damcyan is named Duster. Minwu and Leon are characters in FF2, and Duster a town in 3 with a lot of bards. Kain already had the same surname as Ricard, the last surviving Dragoon in FF2, and there was an additional connection made later on. Ricard’s friend’s son is named Kain, and Kain in FF4 says in the DS version (which I haven’t played, but I hear is much harder than other versions) that his father Ricard died fighting an evil empire. While I think it would be fun if these were the same characters across games, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and it’s been established that all the main series games are separate anyway. Besides, Minwu in 2 didn’t found the Mysidia in that game either.

By the way, I was kind of disappointed when I learned that the name of the town wasn’t a play on “my side,” and that Fabul isn’t pronounced like “fable.” Does this mean there was an evil empire active in this world a mere decade or so before the start of the game? Wouldn’t there still be traces of it? It would explain why Baron was so heavily militarized when there’s no indication that they have hostile relations with any other countries prior to Golbez’ infiltration. While Cagnazzo has presumably already killed the King by the time of the invasion of Mysidia, the military buildup must predate that. Maybe it’s to fight monsters. Baron plays the same antagonistic role that Palamecia does in 2, except here your main character starts out as part of it. Baron and Mysidia were likely allies before the invasion, as they’re connected by a magical path.

Since there are mages in the Baronian army, perhaps the Mysidians were involved with training them.

The guide also credits Cid with inventing airships based on an ancient text. In the game itself, Fusoya credits his brother Kluya with introducing both airships and the Devil’s Road to the Blue Planet. The DS version gives some more details on him.

We don’t know how long Kluya was on Earth, but it must have been a considerable amount of time if his spaceship became the subject of ancient legends. Incidentally, the Advance translation has Fusoya say that Kluya had “many children,” rather than just two, which seems like a mistake.

I guess it’s possible that he had children with people other than Cecilia, whom he wouldn’t have met until close to the end of his life, but that complicates things.

There were probably Lunarian visits to Earth before his, as the Tower of Babil is a gateway to the Moon that transports the robotic giant built by Zemus to the planet.

The tower is an immense structure, with its bottom in the Underworld, and you never see the top, and you never find out who built it. The floating Tower of Zot, where Golbez has his headquarters, might also be of Lunarian design. You never do see what happens to this place after Barbariccia destroys it. If the part about Cid using an ancient text is accurate, it might also have been of Lunarian origin, in which case maybe Kluya helped him with the translation.

There are a few other interesting details as well. There is, for instance, detailed information of how spells work, with Flare being said to create nuclear fusion. Seems like someone could put that to other uses besides frying monsters. There’s also a mention of gil, the typical FF currency, being named after King Gilbert of Damcyan. The list of items includes the Coeurl Whisker, related to the Coeurl enemy introduced in FF2.

This references the science fiction story “Black Destroyer,” by A.E. van Vogt, in which the Coeurl is a very intelligent being that some space travelers find on a mostly abandoned planet. It looks like a panther with larger forelegs and tentacles on its shoulders.

The Coeurl has the power to manipulate energy, and is always hungry. After killing a bunch of people on board the ship, it finally takes its own life after being outmaneuvered by the humans. The monster in the game has an attack that can either paralyze or cause instant death, and I guess their disembodied whiskers can have the same effect.

Like many other FF monsters, this one might have come into the games by way of Dungeons & Dragons, in which their name was changed to Displacer Beasts.

Good night, everybody, and keep watching the moons!

First Star I See Tonight

SPOILERS for all five of these! I had meant to write about some of them earlier, but I haven’t been feeling well as of late.

Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV – This is a four-part documentary about really disturbing stuff that took place at Nickelodeon. I didn’t have cable growing up, so my only real exposure to Nickelodeon was when we’d sometimes go to my mom’s boyfriend’s house and watch stuff like Count Duckula and David the Gnome. This stuff all happened later. One of the major child stars discussed is Amanda Bynes, whom I don’t think I’d heard of until she was in some movie that had a billboard I used to drive past really often. I guess to kids who grew up around that time, that would have been huge. Then later there was some news story about her throwing a bong out of her window. It largely focuses on Dan Schneider, a major producer for the network starting in 1994. He was in the show Head of the Class before that, and while I didn’t watch much of that, I do remember his character. The documentary discusses how he ran a rather toxic workplace, especially for women, and was known to put a lot of sexual innuendo and shots of young actresses’ feet into his children’s programs. There were also at least two people working there who were later revealed to be sex offenders. One of them, dialogue coach Brian Peck, repeatedly molested Drake Bell, and is alleged to have carried on correspondence with John Wayne Gacy. They apparently made a fifth episode of this, although it hasn’t aired yet.

Muppet Treasure Island – This is one of the only two theatrically released Muppet films I hadn’t seen yet, and I have to say it’s likely the least of the ones I’ve seen. That doesn’t mean it was bad, although Beth would probably disagree. It features Tim Curry, who’s capable of being pretty Muppetish himself, as Long John Silver. I’ve never actually read Treasure Island, and I wonder if I should, as I’ve now seen both this and Treasure Planet, and I’m curious as to how well they fit with the source material. Sam the Eagle plays a much larger role than usual as Mr. Arrow, the first mate, and Silver’s tricking him into inspecting the lifeboats has more than one payoff later on.

Kermit is Captain Smollett, Fozzie is Squire Trelawney with a weird recurring joke about his thinking a guy lives inside his finger, and Miss Piggy is an old flame of both Smollett and Silver who was left behind on the island.

It has plenty of the standard corny humor, and I was especially amused by the roll call of the crew, including Dead Tom, Headless Bill, Clueless Morgan, Short Stack Stevens, and Big-Fat-Ugly-Face-Baby-Eating O’Brien, actually an attractive woman with a strangely deep voice. I’ve heard that another idea the creators had for a Muppet adaptation of a classic story was King Arthur, and a Simpsons episode that aired in the same year had the family watching Troy McClure in Muppets Go Medieval.

I wonder if someone on staff was aware that this was something really being considered.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes – This is sort of a found footage thing, although the supposed footage is incorporated into a documentary instead of just shown. It’s about a brutal serial killer who tortured and murdered many people, taping most of his crimes, but had never been caught. It’s pretty interesting, but it really doesn’t go much of anywhere plotwise, instead just commenting on the killer’s many crimes. That said, it’s definitely disturbing. It was weird that they worked in one timely reference, with nobody hearing about the police officer who was wrongfully executed for committing these crimes being exonerated because it took place two days before September 11th.

Wish – Disney’s latest animated feature just recently became available on Disney+, and I have to say my main takeaway is that it’s weirdly low-key. It has an intriguing premise, being about a kingdom in the Mediterranean, inhabited by a mixture of different cultures, where the founding sorcerer-king collects people’s greatest wishes, allegedly to keep them safe. When a girl named Asha applies to be his apprentice, he reveals to her that he plans to never grant most of them, instead keeping them to maintain control over his subjects. He does occasionally grant some, but only ones he thinks are generally harmless. And as the people who’ve made their wishes automatically forget about them, leading some to grow listless and despondent. Asha uses some of the king’s magic to bring down a star from the sky, which becomes an active but non-speaking character. I couldn’t help but think of the Lumas from the Super Mario games, but to be fair, there probably aren’t that many ways to depict a star with a face.

The movie is tied in with the hundredth anniversary of the studio, and works in a lot of references to earlier features. The concept of wishing on a star, which has become a Disney staple, is fleshed out somewhat, and there are talking animals named after earlier characters, like a bear called John and a deer called Bambi. With that in mind, I would have thought it would be more of a spectacle, but it just felt toned down. The colors are somewhat muted, the songs are mostly quiet and breathy, and even the action scenes and more cartoony bits are a little subdued. The king goes crazy using forbidden magic to try to maintain control, yet he still comes off as surprisingly calm. For that matter, why would he just blurt out to someone applying to the apprentice position that he’s using the wishes to his own advantage, and then just send her on her way? It’s like the filmmakers didn’t want anyone to get too excited by anything.

Creep – This one also uses found footage, focusing on a guy named Aaron who agrees to create a video diary for another man, Josef, who claims to be dying of cancer with a baby on the way. As they hang out together, Aaron finds Josef to be a bit unhinged and overly familiar with him after hardly any time. Josef confesses that he raped his own wife while wearing a wolf mask, and then tries to keep Aaron from leaving the cabin where they were filming. He gets away, but not before learning that the woman Josef claims is his wife is actually his sister, who says that her brother is dangerous, but refuses to give details. Josef proceeds to stalk Aaron at home and send him weird videos of himself, with Aaron recording evidence of these things all the while. He tries calling the police, only to find out there’s nothing they can really do with such little information. Josef turns out to have done this with a bunch of other people before this, befriending people who agree to record him, killing them, and taking the tapes for himself. I would have liked to have found out more about what his sister actually knew, and why she seemed to be willing to help Aaron but not to really tell him anything. It seems to have been the fascination shown by Aaron, and presumably the other videographers as well, that leads to their demise, so maybe we’re better off not knowing.

Rejoice, the Wizard Is No Longer King

Since I’ve finished playing The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, I might as well write some more about it. You can read my first post on it here. It’s a pretty short game, and the fourth country you visit only has the Witch’s castle to explore. The Wizard has Dorothy and friends fight not just one witch in order to have their requests granted, but all four of them. You don’t actually kill any, though, just defeat them and take their magical eggs, which give more power to the Wizard. The witches are Flora for Spring, Delphi for Summer, Holly for Autumn, and their mother Protea for Winter. The name Glinda doesn’t appear in the game, and all four of them are pretty nice, despite what the Wizard says. Protea is a writer, and a combination of her story and Flora’s cyclone bring Dorothy to Oz. None of them fit into the elemental types that your characters specialize in fighting. After obtaining all the eggs, the Wizard throws you out of his castle and declares himself ruler of the land. Taking Protea’s advice, you get back in by traversing the Yellow Brick Road once again, and fight two battles against the Wizard in the giant-head-and-hands form so common with video game bosses.

The spell he uses to enhance his power is called RIZ-ZOAWD, the Japanese name for the game, and fortunately the Scarecrow is able to negate it. Then the Wizard reveals that he’s a humbug who just wanted to gain power, but wasn’t sure what to do with it, and is basically forgiven.

Nobody really seems to hold a grudge in this game. And, in a weird twist, Dorothy returns home to find her parents are alive again. I was interested to see that there’s a kind of monster with a carved pumpkin head in Holly’s Halloween-themed Welcome Inn. It’s probably just a coincidence rather than a reference to Jack Pumpkinhead, but who knows?

There are also radish enemies, like how the game Yellow Brick Road had talking radishes. Maybe they’re related to Mangaboos. The Cat Hoods do reference Alice in Wonderland and Hansel and Gretel. I will say that I’m glad I backtracked to get the Strength Spear, which can be used for healing, something you need to do a lot of in this game. I didn’t do any of the ultimate challenges with the dragons, but that’s not required. It’s a pretty simple game that’s mostly the same stuff over and over again, but it looks nice and is easy to get into.

I’m now getting back into the Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy IV. I’d already played through most of it, but as is common in such games, the final dungeon takes quite a while to fully explore.

Where a God Can Be a Kid

The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption, by James Branch Cabell – The follow-up to Figures of Earth has a lot of characters, with the focus on the Order of the Silver Stallion, the knights appointed by the late Manuel to keep order in Poictesme. Despite having actually known Manuel, they go about turning him from a flawed figure to an object of worship, a great hero who saved the country and would return someday. The Order disbands and the knights go their separate ways. There isn’t really all that much to distinguish one of these knights from another, as they all speak in Cabell’s rambling kind of dialogue. And there are a lot of unhappy marriages, a constant theme in the works of this author being that his heroes tend to be irresistible to women, but are never happy once they have them. A magician almost frees an ancient being to end the universe due to an argument with his wife, and another guy is thrown down a well by his wife and discovers a mystical library. It’s still entertaining, however, with such weird incidents as a Christian ending up in Valhalla, marrying Freyja, and becoming a creator god in his own right. As is typical in this series, there’s a lot of mixing of mythology and legends from different cultures, sometimes used in strange ways. The Silver Stallion itself is linked to Kalki from Hindu mythology. Koschei the Deathless is the creator of the world, and his predecessor Toupan, who’s imprisoned in the Pleiades, might be a South American name for God. Yaotl, whom Coth meets in Mesoamerica, is a name associated with the Aztec Tezcatlipoca. The self-insert character Horvendile is a Norse figure known as the harbinger of the dawn, etymologically related to Tolkien’s Earendil. Leshy, a kind of Slavic forest spirit, is Cabell’s name for supernatural beings in general. And I really don’t know why Odin is called Sidvrar.

The Innocent Sleep, by Seanan McGuire – This basically tells the same events as Sleep No More, only from Tybalt’s point of view. Unlike his wife, he’s aware from the beginning that Titania has altered the fairy world, and he’s very upset about it. He has to find allies and help out those whom Titania deemed undesirable. It’s interesting seeing things from his perspective, and learning more about him as a character. There’s also more about how the Cait Sidhe courts operate, and I appreciated the insight as to how they communicate with regular cats. I’d been wondering why he had that name, but apparently Tybalt was a very common English name for cats, and a feline character in the Reynard the Fox cycle. But the Tybalt of this series also lived in London in Shakespeare’s time, and was fully aware of the Romeo and Juliet character who was compared to a cat. The accompanying novella, Doubtless and Secure, is from the perspective of a character we hadn’t seen much before, a Cephali named Helmi who’s part of Dianda’s court, with her observations on her monarch and her relationships with her two husbands. It takes place over the course of centuries.

The Chalice of the Gods, by Rick Riordan – While the Percy Jackson series has spun off into several others, this one returns to the old team of Percy, Annabeth, and Grover going on a quest for the gods. There’s a good dose of humor, as Percy needs to get letters of recommendation from three Olympians for New Rome University, and the first deity who seeks out his services is the cupbearer Ganymede. He’s lost his magical chalice, and Percy and friends investigate the most likely suspects. Hebe, his predecessor in the job, now runs a fun center in Times Square, and is obsessed with being the youngest person around. Then, after an interlude where he has to clean Iris’ staff, he wrestles with the personification of old age. There’s also a Nereid guidance counselor who flushes people out of her office. While light-hearted and jokey throughout, there’s also a recurring theme of coming to accept growing older.

A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin – The second book in this series picks up with five kings vying for power, and brings in two more viewpoint characters, one of whom is called the Onion Knight. I don’t suppose that’s a reference to Final Fantasy III? The Iron Islands also become part of the conflict. I mentioned in my review of the first book that it takes place in a polytheistic society, but early on in this one, it looks like a monotheistic religion is gaining prominence in some places. The story has a lot of political maneuvering, which I guess is only to be expected. It did keep me interested, though, so that’s a good thing.

It Creeps and Leaps and Glides and Slides

WARNING! SPOILERS for these four movies!

Picnic at Hanging Rock – An Australian film based on an earlier novel, and a mystery that’s never actually solved. A group of schoolgirls go on a picnic to Hanging Rock, a landmark in Victoria, on Valentine’s Day in 1900. Some of them don’t come back, and the ones who do are mentally scarred, leading to a very stressful environment. We never do find out what actually happened, but there’s definitely a body count. It features a lot of pan flute music, to go with the mysterious atmosphere. It’s pretty dark and engaging, but I don’t have much specific to say about it.

The Blob (1988) – I remember seeing commercials for this a long time ago, showing part of the scene where a guy is dragged into a drain. Aside from being more graphic than the original, the most notable difference for this remake is that it brings in Cold War conspiracy theories by having a group of government agents show up to put the town under quarantine. While they initially seem helpful, they’re determined to take the Blob alive, even if it means a lot of collateral deaths. One character proposes that the Blob was made as a biological weapon in the first place, although I’m not sure if he’s supposed to have been right. There’s also an ending scene where we find out a local priest has preserved a piece of the Blob, intending to use it to bring forth the apocalypse. The creature once again attacks a diner and a movie theater, although in this case they’re supposed to be in California, not in Pennsylvania near where I grew up. Shawnee Smith, whom I don’t recall having heard of until her part in the Saw movies as Jigsaw’s assistant, is one of the main characters, a cheerleader, while her boyfriend who’s killed off early on is played by the brother of the musician Donovan, who’s also named Donovan. They have different middle names, but that’s still confusing as hell.

Cobweb – Peter is a boy who has cold, strict parents and is bullied at school. When he starts to hear voices behind the wall of his room, his parents deny it. And when he draws a picture at school that makes his substitute teacher think something is wrong, they lock him in the basement for a few days and take him out of school. This leads Peter to be more sympathetic to the voice, who claims to be his sister, and needs his help to escape. At her behest, he poisons his parents and sets her free. It turns out to be true that she’s his sister, but not that she’s on his side; she was born with monstrous features and locked up, and became a ruthless killer with spider powers. It reminds me of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment with Bart’s twin brother: “We did the only humane thing. We chained Hugo up in the attic and fed him a bucket of fish heads once a week.” While the parents’ death is pretty gruesome, they’re pretty unsympathetic characters, as they seem to just make everything worse with each decision. And I don’t think we ever know why their backyard is full of pumpkins.

Late Night with the Devil – We watched this last night at the movies, and it’s the kind of thing that’s very much up Beth’s alley, combining old television with disturbing horror. It’s been called a found footage film, although I don’t think it really qualifies, as it shows stuff that couldn’t possibly have been filmed, and the event that happens in it supposedly aired on national television anyway. It starts out as a mock documentary of sorts, telling the history of Jack Delroy, a late night host in the seventies who was moderately successful, but never able to beat Johnny Carson in the ratings. After a slump, he decides to try to reinvigorate his career with a Halloween show where someone conjures a demon to possess a little girl live on the air. I’ve read that a particular inspiration was an episode of an Australian talk show where James Randi exposes Uri Geller’s trickery. The character based on Randi is a total jerk, which I don’t think the real guy was, but that’s basically the fate of skeptics in movies where the supernatural is definitely real. And he’s able to hypnotize almost the entire audience into thinking worms are coming out of Delroy’s sidekick’s body, so even stage magic is more powerful in this fictional universe than in real life. It’s a pretty campy and funny film with some sinister undertones, as fits the setting. Delroy’s willingness to put a child in danger in order to save his show is quite dark already, but at the end it’s revealed in a dream sequence that it goes way beyond that, and he actively worked with a demonic cult to try to boost his ratings. Another reference I found when I looked up the movie was to the Bohemian Grove, a private men’s club in California that’s had celebrities and politicians as members, and has an owl as its mascot. There’s been some controversy over the film using AI to generate some of its bumper cards, which I think was totally unnecessary and kind of sets a negative precedent, but I guess not a huge deal as far as these things go.

Witch Hunt

The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road – As I’ve said before, in some ways, Oz seems appropriate for adaptation into a video role-playing game. There’s the same sense of exploration and variety of characters involved. Not as much in the way of fighting monsters (although there is SOME of that), but still. And this game for the DS really isn’t it. It was made in association with Warner Bros., and starts with an instrumental version of “Over the Rainbow,” but it doesn’t have all that much to do with the movie either. In Japanese, it’s called RIZ-ZOAWD, and you can still see that name on the screen. Just for starters on how different it is, the Tin Woodman doesn’t talk. What it does take from the books, or at least the first one, is that Oz is divided into four different countries, each ruled by a witch. Dorothy, who is seventeen in the game, is blown to Oz in a cyclone and meets with the three standard companions, who are then tasked by the Wizard to fight all four witches. He says it’s because they’re villains, but he doesn’t seem all that trustworthy, and the two witches I’ve encountered and beaten so far seemed pretty nice. One of them was apparently responsible for the tornado, intending to use it to gather flowers. Battles are turn-based and generally pretty short, with each of your characters especially suited to fighting a certain type of monsters, ghosts for Dorothy, wobbly creatures for the Scarecrow, plants for the Tin Man, and hard-shelled animals for the Cowardly Lion. I get those last two, and I at least see the connection with the Scarecrow, although I’m not sure why one boneless being would be good at fighting others. Why Dorothy is suddenly a Ghostbuster, I really don’t know.

There are also enemies that don’t fit into any particular category, including the hooded black cats who work for the witches.

Battle strategy largely consists of choosing the characters who can eliminate the monsters the fastest. The levels are mazes of a sort, as even though the paths are straightforward, it can be difficult to remember where you are, and you don’t see much of the stage at any given time. There’s a lot of emphasis on opening gates, and there are elemental spirits who can help you do this. There are different sorts of weapons and armor available for each character, and you can buy them from the Wizard, but money can be hard to come by and the stock doesn’t change until after you’ve beaten a witch. And you can learn new skills by fighting some friendly dragons.

As for the controls, this was a game that was designed with the DS stylus in mind. That kind of seems short-sighted, but it’s hardly the only game that did that. There’s a trackball on the lower screen that you move with the stylus in order to move, and you can build up a lot of speed that way. Dorothy isn’t so much easing down the road as she is sprinting down it. There’s a button you can push to interact with things, but it’s only used in specific circumstances. Otherwise, it defaults to interaction with Toto. I know people like to keep track of which games let you pet dogs, and this is one where you not only can, but are encouraged to.

While it doesn’t really have that much to do with Oz as I know it, and it can get quite repetitive, it’s pretty easy to understand and play. And the designs for the characters and backgrounds are cute, with each country being based on a season.

When you visit Stardust Beach in Summer, there’s an interlude about how excited everyone is to see a seashore. I happen to know Oz is landlocked, although I guess there is that Inland Sea from The Lost King of Oz.

It seems like it’s geared toward kids, although whether any actual kids have enjoyed it, I wouldn’t know.

Follow the Improbable Road

Thistlefoot, by GennaRose Nethercott – This is a retelling of the Baba Yaga legend specifically linking it to the pogroms against Russian Jews. In New Orleans in the present, the witch’s descendants, a shapeshifting street performer and a woodworker who can make things come to life, inherit her house on chicken feet. I quite liked the reworking of the mythical crone into a Russian Jewish context, and the associated lore; but for some reason I just wasn’t as interested in the main characters as in the flashbacks to the original Baba Yaga.

Dreambound, by Dan Frey – I really enjoyed this one. It’s written as a series of notes, emails, transcripts, and excerpts, telling the experiences of an investigative journalist named Byron in trying to locate his missing daughter Liza. One of the few leads he has is that Liza is a big fan of a popular fantasy series called Fairy Tale, of which we only see a few relevant passages, but still get a pretty good idea of the main characters and concepts. There are also some stories from a book that’s said to have inspired Fairy Tale, a nineteenth-century collection of folk tales from different cultures by an English nobleman. She isn’t the first fan to disappear like that, either. Byron doesn’t seem to be an entirely reliable narrator. He’s an alcoholic, not above using underhanded methods like faking emails from the publisher in order to interview the author, rude to people who are helping him, and totally convinced he’s doing the right thing even when others disagree. It’s also suggested that he really didn’t pay enough attention to his now-lost daughter. It gets even worse when he has experiences that seem impossible. Eventually, he finds out that the world of the Fairy Tale books is real, and a figure called the Green Man is trying to cross over into our world to gain more power. He also discovers that the Hidden World parallels Los Angeles in its structure. I like how the book reveals a little at a time, and sometimes things from earlier on make more sense with later revelations.

Final Fantasy, by Kaimeiji Yuu – I have an interest in adaptations of video games in other media, but of course a lot of them are only available in Japanese, and I’m sure even some of those are out of print by now. So I was excited to find a fan translation of this 1989 manga. It’s a single volume, so it goes through the main beats of the FF1 story very quickly, but it also introduces some new concepts and develops some of the characters a bit more. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and has a lot of gags. A few of them are based on mistakes the author made while playing the game, like healing someone who was already at full health, using a fire spell on Marilith, and mistaking an armory for an item shop. The main hero is the strangely-named Puffy Tolte, an elven warrior from an alternate world, who teams up with the disgraced monk Flitz Stewart and the witch Matoya, who takes a much more active role than just providing a potion to wake up a guy. A recurring theme here is that many minor characters journey with the heroes at least for a little while, including Princess Sarah, Bikke, the Dwarves Nerrick and Smyth, and Dr. Unne.

Bahamut permanently joins the party, and fights with a machine gun and rocket launcher in the Flying Fortress; and a cute Lufenian robot called DB-6 provides valuable information.

Towards the end, Bikke rallies people all around the world to help out, including some whose original appearances in the game were written out.

Is this a reference to Kandar/Robbin’ Hood in Dragon Quest III?
In order to speed things up, side quests are removed (Dr. Unne just happens to have a Levistone, with no need to visit the Ice Cavern), and Marilith and Kraken show up for aerial battles instead of being encountered in their lairs.

The airship being equipped with cannons and sometimes involved in battles is something that’s not in FF1 that we do see in later games, as is being able to attack a monster’s arms or heads separately from their bodies. I also found it interesting that Puffy is from a different world, as the Dawn of Souls version of FF1 has one of the Crescent Lake sages straight-up saying that the Light Warriors are from a world where time runs normally, when I’m pretty sure he didn’t say that on the NES. Puffy says she’s stronger in the world where the story takes place, so I guess it’s like the Pevensies in Narnia.

God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible, by Esther J. Hamori – The book gives a thoughtful and often humorous overview of monsters appearing in the Bible, including angels, demons, evil spirits, giants, and sea creatures. Hamori talks about how the snakes that tortured the Hebrews in the desert are associated with Seraphim, and how the Nephilim were used as a form of xenophobia. And yes, Og of Bashan riding a unicorn behind Noah’s Ark is mentioned.

The chapter on demons makes the argument that some of them are left out of translations, interpreting certain words as just general ideas rather than personifications of them in demonic form. With sea monsters, there are references to how the Leviathan is initially presented as a foe for God, but the description in Job makes it sound like the creature is God’s favorite pet. A major theme is that most of these monsters are sent by God to torture and kill humans, which makes the portrayal of God in these parts of the Bible quite monstrous himself. Satan, for instance, is not an opponent of God in the Hebrew Bible, but an agent of his who tests mankind.

Under the Smokestrewn Sky, by A. Deborah Baker – The conclusion to the Up-and-Under series has Avery and Zib finally finding the Queen of Wands, who turns out to have been among them in disguise, reaching the Impossible City, and returning home. Each of these books deals with one of the classical elements, in this case fire. It does seem to end rather abruptly, but the whole thing is so whimsical and mystical in style that it kind of doesn’t matter a whole lot. I feel like it would have worked better as a single volume, as the individual books didn’t really stand on their own, and they became a little repetitive as the series went on. It’s interesting that the fictional author is a villainous character in the Alchemical Journeys books, and while I do think the series stands on its own, it’s even more interesting in its meta-fictional context.