Spidey, I’m Coming Home

Spider-Man: Homecoming – This was the only movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe I hadn’t yet seen. I saw all three of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, and didn’t really have any interest in the Andrew Garfield ones, although I saw part of The Amazing Spider-Man on television. The re-reboot takes place after Captain America: Civil War, and has Peter Parker, played by Tom Holland, returning to Queens. I guess that’s part of the meaning of the “Homecoming” part of the title, although it also refers to his coming home to the larger Marvel universe, and the film involves the homecoming dance. Holland plays Spidey as appropriately nerdy and awkward, although I don’t recall him wisecracking all that much in this movie. He also has a fancy new suit given to him by Tony Stark. With Stark funding much of Peter’s work, I wonder if that means this incarnation of the character isn’t going to be taking pictures for the Bugle in order to make money. J. Jonah Jameson isn’t going to be too happy about that.

There’s no mention of Uncle Ben or of spider-sense. As far as other characters from the Spider-Man universe, Flash Thompson has become a rich snob rather than a jock, and Liz Allan shows up as a love interest for Peter. Well, except her last name isn’t Allan, because she’s the daughter of the Vulture, Adrian Toomes.

Played by Michael Keaton, this is the character’s first appearance in a live-action film. They’d wanted to put him in the other two iterations of the franchise, but never got around to it. His company loses the contract to clean up after the Chitauri attack in The Avengers, so he holds on to the technology he was able to salvage, and uses it not just to fly but to make super-weapons to sell to criminals. One of the buyers, Aaron Davis, in addition to having the name of a guy I know online, is the uncle of Miles Morales, who became Spider-Man in a different universe where Peter Parker died. Then he was incorporated into the main universe after a crossover event.

Peter’s friend Ned owes a lot to Miles’ friend nerdy Asian friend Gange, although he’s named after Bugle reporter Ned Leeds.

Spider-Man as a franchise is always kind of sad and awkward (successfully so, that is), as disappearing and coming up with lame excuses is such a significant part of his character. We know it’s for important reasons, but no one else ever does. Maybe I should just assume everyone who ever cancels on me is a superhero as well. Nah, I’m not that generous. There’s a lot of awkwardness in this film, which I guess makes sense when a lot of it centers around high school. And while the Raimi films had Peter saving people on the Roosevelt Island Tram and the subway, here he does the same on the Staten Island Ferry (although Iron Man ends up stealing his thunder). How many other sorts of mass transit will feature in this franchise? Overall, I liked it. I recall the first two Raimi movies making me feel more for the characters, but it’s a fine way to incorporate Spidey into the larger universe. And the orchestral version of the Spider-Man theme at the beginning was cool. I understand his next solo outing will occur after the fourth Avengers film.

Monstrous Fun for the Whole Family

I’ve been writing about Dragon Quest a fair amount recently. I went back and finished Dragon Quest VI about a month ago, and last week I did the same with Dragon Quest V. I actually had even less of that one left to play. I’m not really sure why I put it aside all those years ago. I probably either started focusing on a different game or just wasn’t playing any games for a while. I seem to recall this one’s plot better than that of DQ6.

This game was quite innovative in a few ways. Perhaps the main one is that of having it take place over three generations, including a choice of which character to marry. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened in an RPG. I remember the same idea being heavily promoted for Phantasy Star III, and I think there your choices might have affected the plot even more. (That reminds me that I should maybe try that game again; I have the Game Boy Advance version.) But it works quite well here, working in the family idea while retaining the traditional elements of a DQ game.

There’s a lot going on, even though I don’t know that it’s really any longer than other games from the same time period. The use of time skips helps to create a more epic feel without actually making you play the in-game equivalent of the eighteen years over which the story occurs. The story starts out with the main protagonist living in the small town of Whealbrook with his father Pankraz and his assistant Sancho. In the original Japanese, the father’s name was Papas, which I guess was too obvious in English, but I’m not sure why the new name sounds like an internal organ.

You assist fairies in an alternate world, and hunt ghosts and rescue a sabercat cub with Bianca Whitaker, the daughter of the innkeeper in Roundbeck.

During a journey, Pankraz is killed by a nasty piece of work called Bishop Ladja, and you and the bratty Prince Harry of Coburg are enslaved, made to build a giant temple to evil called the Crocodilopolis.

There’s a ten-year time skip, after which you escape and try to honor your father’s wish to find your mother and locate the Zenithian gear and the legendary hero who can equip it. Along the way, you come across a rich guy named Rodrigo Briscoletti, who wants to marry his daughter Nera to someone who can obtain the Circles of Fire of Water. Once you do so, you have the choice of marrying Nera, her spoiled sister Debora, or Bianca, who helps him to retrieve the Circle of Water. I chose Bianca, who I guess was basically the obvious choice as she was a childhood friend. The DS version does try to mitigate this somewhat by having Rodrigo and his daughters show up earlier in the game, but you still never really get to know them. Debora, by the way, was added for the remake as well; you only had two choices of bride in the Super Famicom original. There’s some obvious replay potential in choosing a different wife, which I understand doesn’t affect the main plot much, but does result in very different dialogue. Hopefully I’ll go back and do that someday.

But anyway, after reaching the Kingdom of Gotha, you learn that you’re the heir to the throne, and also that your wife is pregnant; she gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, while you’re off performing the rite of passage to earn the crown. There’s no time skip for the pregnancy, so I guess you just have to assume more time passes than appears to. Ladja turns both the hero and his wife to stone, but eight years later your kids and Sancho find your statue and disenchant you. It turns out that your son is the legendary hero who can equip the Zenithian equipment, which is a little confusing as the term “hero” is generally used for the main character, and here they’re two different people. The hero’s father apparently has no issue with dragging two eight-year-old children on a quest to defeat the forces of evil, but hey, neither did HIS father. You then have to rescue your wife from the Crocodilopolis and fight the main villain, Grandmaster Nimzo, finally meeting your mother along the way.

In addition to the family aspect, another innovation is being able to tame monsters. Probably inspired at least partially by how the Healslime Healie and the dragon Sparkie are uncontrollable party members in DQ4, some monsters will volunteer to join the party after you defeat them in battle. This mechanic would later take center stage in the Dragon Quest Monsters spin-off series, but there’s generally some variation on it in later main series games. It’s even somewhat relevant to the story here, as you find out that the people of Lofty Peak, your mother’s old hometown, have the ability to tame monsters. You can have four active party members plus four in the wagon at any time, and this includes monsters. One I found myself using quite a bit was the golem Mason. I switched him out for Bianca after rescuing her, even though she was rather underleveled due to her time as a statue, mostly because it felt right. In the final battle, however, my human characters were wiped out, and it was Mason (they all come with names, which you can change but I never bothered) who struck the killing blow against Nimzo. What’s kind of weird is that the recruited monsters apparently just wait around during the eight years the protagonist is a statue; I can’t recall if that’s addressed in the game. There are a few other optional party members in addition to the monsters. Once you’re established as King of Gotha, Sancho and some of the soldiers can be added to your group.

In terms of transportation, DQ3 and 4 both had a sailing ship and a method of flight, a bird in the former and a balloon in the latter. In 5, there are three ways of flying. The first is a carpet that can’t fly over high mountains, a mechanic that’s used again in the next two games. Then there’s Zenithia Castle, once you get it out of the lake into which it’s fallen.

Finally, to access the Crocodilopolis on Mount Azimuth, you need to get a ride from the Zenith Dragon himself.

I think I’ll end this post now, although I might want to write another one about lore and references in the game, of which there are plenty. I also sort of want to look at DQ heroes in general. Any thoughts on these ideas, or anything else you want me to address? Let me know!

Catching Up with Constance (and Others)

Not counting the one on The Lost Tales of Oz, how long has it been since I’ve done a book review post? I checked, and it looks like it’s been about a month. And on Goodreads, I’m still listed as currently reading a book I finished a while ago. So let’s see if I can rectify that.

Constance Verity Saves the World, by A. Lee Martinez – This is the follow-up to The Last Adventure of Constance Verity, the title of which is inaccurate. Although Connie has broken the spell that keeps her constantly adventuring, she’s still doing so on a somewhat less frequent basis, essentially as a day job. Most of these adventures are in the background, with the focus being more on Connie’s attempt to have a normal relationship with her boyfriend Byron. Her past continues to have a profound effect on her life, however, as the apartment building in which she and Byron are living is also inhabited by mad scientists and aliens, and an old lover who’s trying to turn around the evil organization he inherited from his mother appears to still have feelings for her. It doesn’t feel like it covers as much ground as the earlier book, but I still enjoyed it.

The Girl at Midnight, by Melissa Grey – You know, I really wanted to like this. It tells the story of two warring groups of people, the bird-like Avicen who live under New York City, and the dragon-like Drakharin, both trying to find the Firebird. The protagonist, Echo, is an Avicen girl who lives in the New York Public Library and works as a thief. For some reason, though, I really couldn’t get into it, and I’m not sure why. I didn’t dislike it; it just didn’t hold my interest that much.

The Abominable Showman, by Robert Rankin – The steampunk world with incredible technology and interplanetary colonization in the Victorian era that featured in Rankin’s last few books meets the recurring characters of Barry the Time Sprout and a fictionalized version of a young Rankin. Barry takes the boy to an alternate version of 1927 that some people still remember, where Queen Victoria is celebrating her ninetieth year on the throne, and Prince Albert is still alive as well, but with many prosthetic parts. Most of it takes place on board the giant spaceliner Leviathan, where Count Ilya Rostov, magician and master of ceremonies, is planning a scheme. Or is he? As is typical for Rankin, there are frequent twists for the sake of jokes, and plot threads that don’t go anywhere. That’s typical for Rankin, and it can be frustrating sometimes, but for the most part it’s best to roll with it, as it’s still generally funny and creative throughout. It’s also typical Rankin in that the protagonist undergoes a lot of misfortunes, somewhat deserved as he’s a bratty, self-centered character with little regard for others (and remember, this is Rankin basically writing himself), but still uncomfortable at times. And it sometimes allows even worse characters to triumph. There’s an explanation of sorts for how the steampunk universe was replaced with the more familiar one, partially involving the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, the Garden of Eden, and the first girl born in space. I guess the explanation from The Witches of Chiswick is from another alternate universe, but Rankin’s sense of continuity is often rather messy. Barry even comments on the two different origin stories he’s given in earlier books, and refuses to explain how both can be true. Also worthy of note is a bit of comedy involving the Three Als: Crowley, Jolson, and Capone.

The Lord of the Ring Roads, by Robert Rankin – In his latest book, Rankin returns to the ongoing adventures of the clueless but generally well-meaning Jim Pooley and John Omally of Brentford, who frequently find themselves dealing with supernatural adversaries despite really only wanting to hang out at the pub and maybe get rich with little effort. Here, they’re roped into a scheme by a council member to build a ring road (basically the same as what Americans call a beltway, as in the Baltimore and Washington areas) around the borough, even though it doesn’t get much traffic. (See, the title here is both clever AND relevant, unlike some of Rankin’s earlier ones.) It’s revealed to be part of a plot by a dastardly fairy, which also involves sacrificing Prince Charles. The conflict is never resolved, but the end promises a sequel. Most of the familiar characters from the earlier Brentford books reappear, and there’s a friendly giant as well.

Half-Off Ragnarok, by Seanan McGuire – While the first two books in the InCryptid series starred Verity Price, this one instead features her brother Alex, a nerdy but still bad-ass sort who works as a herpetologist at a zoo in Ohio with a gorgon for an assistant. He also has a pet church griffin, which is more like a house cat than a lion, who’s a really cute character. When people at the zoo start getting turned to stone, he has to find a way to identify and catch the culprit. It also turns out that his girlfriend, Australian zoologist Shelby Tanner who works with the big cats, is familiar with cryptids, and she becomes an ally. It seems that the protagonists in this series (at least so far) are always good-looking, something the cover artist seems to focus on at the expense of the fantasy elements. That said, both Verity and Alex’s relationships actually came across as pretty sexy.

Dream Dragon Warriors

I wrote a post about Dragon Quest VI a few weeks ago after finishing the game, and I have a few other ideas for video game entries, but before I go there I’d like to take a closer look at the characters from DQVI. As with DQ4 and 5, you can only control four party members in battle, but you can bring four others along with you in a wagon, and they also get experience. There are six party members who always join in the course of the game, as well as several optional ones. There are SPOILERS in what follows, if you’re concerned about that kind of thing.

We start with the hero, who as usual is named by the player and present throughout the game. DQ heroes generally don’t have any dialogue, which I suppose is so you can imagine what he’s saying, but I think it often makes the hero the least developed member of your party. He can equip the legendary equipment and is good with both weapons and magic. Due to the job system, any of the characters can develop pretty much any skills, but some are still better in some areas than others. The hero this time is the Prince of Somnia, although he doesn’t know it until a while into the game. There’s a part earlier on where he has to pretend to be the Prince, so I assumed that was leading up to that being who he really was, due to storytelling conventions. Well, he’s actually the dream version of the Prince. The two selves were separated by the Dreadfiend Murdaw when he initially took on the monster with the help of two companions, Carver and Milly.

Carver was known as Hassan in the original Japanese, but I don’t know whether that means he was supposed to be Middle Eastern. He apparently speaks with an Irish accent in Dragon Quest Heroes II and in a Cockney dialect in DQ9. His name was presumably changed for the sake of wordplay, as he’s a carpenter, although he dreams of being a martial artist. He’s a big guy and a good friend to the hero.

Milly is from the Kingdom of Felonia, where her parents sold her into slavery, and she became a dancer for the King. Later, she became an apprentice to the Dream Sage, Madame Luca Luminista. Carver finds his real-world body as a statue in Murdaw’s castle, and the hero’s has been hanging out in the small Somnian village of Weaver’s Peak. It’s never explained what happened to Milly’s body, but she’s apparently already found it before you encounter her again. It seems like such a thing should have been explained, but it isn’t.

Another character is Milly’s younger brother Terry, whose inability to protect his sister made him wander the world seeking weapons and power.

You come across him a few times before you’re able to recruit him, but even if Milly is in your party, he doesn’t show any sign of recognizing her. Finally, he sells his soul to the Dreadfiend Dhuran in exchange for power, but after you defeat him and Dhuran, he joins your party.

He has a smug attitude that presumably resulted from his childhood trauma. Terry seems to have been the popular favorite from this game, as he’s also the protagonist of Dragon Quest Monsters. He and Milly (called Milayou in the original English translation), both children (this is apparently before they were sold into slavery), are taken to the Kingdoms of GreatTree and GreatLog to train monsters and compete in the Starry Night Tournament.

A lot of bosses from the main DQ series show up, and at one point you have to fight Dhuran, who has an older Terry working for him. He at first scoffs at his younger self, but later apologizes, presumably never realizing who the child is. He’s also the only DQ6 character to be playable in Dragon Quest Heroes; DQH2 has both him and Carver. I’ve seen it pointed out that, if you combine the siblings names, you get “military,” but I don’t know that there’s any real significance to this.

The other two required characters are Nevan and Ashlynn.

The former is a nerdy, egotistical, and rather sheltered priest from the village of Ghent, and perhaps the first DQ character to wear glasses, although the two male protagonists in DQ2 are shown in artwork wearing goggles for no apparent reason. Well, there’s also Avan in the spin-off manga The Adventure of Dai, who was introduced before Nevan, but never appeared in a game.

Ashlynn was called Barbara in Japanese, the change possibly having been made for the same reason Tina in FF6 became Terra; it’s just too common in the West. The name Ashlynn is derived from Irish Gaelic for “dream,” and an Irish name makes sense for a redhead. In addition, her real body was burned to ashes, although an application of Dream Dew allows her to interact with the real world. She has amnesia when you first encounter her, but is eventually revealed to be from Sorceria, a town destroyed in the real world and sealed away in the dream one. She has feelings for the hero, but since I didn’t use her much, it wasn’t really something I picked up on.

She fades away with the dream world at the end, but then turns up in Cloudsgate Citadel.

The only optional human character is Amos, a local hero from the town of Scrimsley who turns into a monster during the full moon. There are monster characters as well, as in DQ5, although there are considerably fewer in the 3DS version than in the Super FamiCom one. Most are Slimes of some variety or other, but there’s also a Hackasaurus named Lizzie who’s defeated by Terry early in the game, and will join the party at his request.

Peggy Sue, the horse who pulls the wagon, also gets a bit of development.

The hero and Carver capture her when she’s running wild in Somnia, and she’s later revealed to be the legendary Pegasus, although she only regains her powers of flight when you obtain the Celestial Reins. I thought the wordplay with her name was pretty clever, and it apparently didn’t exist in the original Japanese.

We’ll Get Lost in Hoztory

The Lost Tales of Oz, edited by Joe Bongiorno – I guess this doesn’t count as a traditional review. I’m in this book, so of course I’m going to recommend it. I do want to take a closer look at the individual stories in it, however. Overall, it’s an attractive volume, with illustrations by Eric Shanower. It does look very plain under the dust jacket, but you can’t have everything. There’s a framing device of Dorothy, Betsy Bobbin, and Trot exploring the Royal Library (possibly the same as the Public Library of Oz from The Wonder City of Oz?) and finding some previously unwritten tales. Each one has an introduction from one or more of the girls, and there are a few interludes featuring them as well. I’m not sure that there’s any particular order to the stories; they’re definitely not chronologically arranged.

The Great and Terrible Oz Mystery, by Michael O. Reilly – When one of L. Frank Baum’s own mystery stories becomes popular in the Emerald City, it leads to the invention of a mystery game in which many citizens participate. This, however, leads to Ojo and Tik-Tok (a pairing I can’t recall seeing before) getting involved in a REAL mystery, that of the palace being haunted. It’s also suggested by Jellia Jamb that the Wizard of Oz himself could be an impersonator. With some help from Dr. Pipt, they manage to solve the mystery.

The Witch’s Mother of Oz, by Paul Dana – I’d seen it suggested before that Mombi, who appears to have particular skill in transformations, might be a Yookoohoo. Paul runs with this idea here, with Mombi being born into a Yookoohoo family but leaving to practice other sorts of magic, and being visited by her mother late in the events of The Marvelous Land of Oz. There was some preparation for this in Paul’s books, as Bina Radget and her family have made appearances.

The Trade: A Langwidere Story, by Mike Conway – Princess Langwidere offers to trade one of her heads to Dorothy in Ozma, but Dorothy adamantly refuses. Here, the Princess encounters a girl who WANTS to trade, and a lesson that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I know Conway’s Oz writing often tends toward the dark, but while there are a few heavy themes here, they still hew pretty close to Baum’s own tone. There may be more about Langwidere coming in the near future.

Ojo and the Woozy, by J.L. Bell – In the spirit of the Little Wizard Stories, we learn how this pair adjusts to life in the Emerald City after the events of Patchwork Girl. While the Woozy remains easy-going, Ojo has some trouble making friends. The story has baseball being popular in the Emerald City, which doesn’t entirely fit with the Ozites appearing to be unfamiliar with it during Peter Brown’s visits, but it is mentioned as a sport the students at the Wogglebug’s college play back in Emerald City.

The Other Searches for the Lost Princess – This is one of mine, which I wrote because I always thought there were several perfectly good premises left out of Lost Princess. It’s pretty much how I wrote it, although I noticed the joke about Elvis appearing in tabloid headlines before he was even born was cut. I thought it was funny, but I guess it stretches believability a bit. I worked in a lot of references to both my own work and some other lesser-known writings.

Chop, by Eric Shanower – This one is a horror story about Chopfyt from Tin Woodman, who has gone from lazy and surly to downright psychotic over time. Button-Bright has a close call visiting the mixed-up man. This is followed by an interlude explaining how Chopfyt was made to drink from the Water of Oblivion and his victims were restored, presumably to bring it into line with Melody Grandy’s Forever, where Chopfyt is still a jerk but not on the same level of destructiveness. It’s interesting that the few people who chose to work with Chopfyt made him a villain, but the situation at the end of Tin Woodman doesn’t seem that likely to last, and he literally has multiple personalities.

In Flesh of Burnished Tin, by Jeffrey Rester – From what I’ve heard, Jeff has a complex mythology worked out that encompasses many different aspects of Oz and some other fantasy besides, but he’s so far only had short, enigmatic stories published based on it. This one touches on why Nimmie Amee is staying with the Wicked Witch of the East in the first place, although it doesn’t fully answer the question.

Diplomatic Immunity, by David Tai – Betsy and Trot come across Sky Island on the ground in Oz (I guess it must have landed in a way that didn’t cause any serious damage or injury), and have to get it up in the air again, which means dealing with the unfriendly giant frogs of the Fog Bank. It also shows Trot trying to balance her responsibilities and powers as a diplomat for Ozma and Queen of Sky Island, and a temporary falling out between her and Betsy. There’s some good characterization of the protagonists, and it’s nice to see Sky Island again.

The Scrap Bag Circus of Oz, by Margaret A. Berg – I remember reading some writings by the late Mrs. Berg back in the nineties, and corresponding with her a bit as well. One idea that recurred in several of her books was that of cloth dolls made by Margolotte accidentally being animated with the Powder of Life. Here, Scraps and the Sawhorse (who is credited as the author, with Berg as editor) come across a group of these dolls who have formed a circus, and are made of some of the same scraps as the Patchwork Girl herself.

The Wizard in New York, by Sam Sackett and Joe Bongiorno – I believe Mr. Sackett died while this book was in production. He’s the one who wrote Adolf Hitler in Oz, which I haven’t read yet but probably should, even though I find the idea of Hitler being an Oz villain as…not trivializing, really, but rather too whimsical for someone who caused so much actual harm in the world. But yeah, I should read it before I judge it. Sackett’s two stories here, some of the longer ones in the volume, are sort of prequels to the book. This one has the Wizard visiting New York City during the 1939 World’s Fair, and also watching the MGM Wizard of Oz at the theater and reacting to it. There’s a lot of description of the Fair, which Sackett visited as a kid. He even briefly appears in the story, although he says he wouldn’t really have been as rude as he portrays himself. I’ve been to the site of the Fair in Flushing (it’s the same place where the 1964 one was held), and I’m kind of disappointed that we don’t really have anything like that anymore. I think there just isn’t as much optimism about the future. Of course, this story indicates that the optimism was largely misplaced then as well, as the Wizard’s exploration of the Fair is interspersed with his finding out more about the brewing war in Europe.

Ali Cat in Oz – The follow-up to the last story has Ali Cat, a pet the Wizard finds as a stray in New York, exploring Oz and finding how different it is from what he’s experienced in the Outside World. He comes to terms with how the life of a carnivore works in Oz, and encounters several other cats. Catty Corners from Lost King doesn’t appear, but is discussed. There are several references to other semi-obscure Oz works, including an appearance by one of the Noyzy Boyz from Ruth Morris’ Flying Bus. It does seem a bit anachronistic, though, as that story presumably takes place a few decades later.

Lurline and the Talking Animals of Oz, by Joe Bongiorno – Presented as the journal of someone who was around at the time of Lurline’s enchantment that resulted in animals talking, the tone is somewhat more reminiscent of Narnia than Oz, heavy in moralizing and mysticism. It’s also interesting that, with religion usually being glossed over in the Oz series, the narrator specifically mentions a minister at a local church preaching from the Bible. There are a few origin stories incorporated, including the beginnings of Rigmarole Town and the reason so many lions live in Mudge. The Wizard Wam and the dog Prince also make appearances, and it ties in with the wraparound story by explaining who the Royal Librarian is. I thought I remembered Joe mentioning before that there would be an origin story for the Lonesome Duck, but while a duck does play a role here, I don’t recall anything beyond that.

Tommy Kwikstep and the Magpie, by Jared Davis – This details the beginnings of a relationship between Tommy Kwikstep and Jinjur’s son Perry, with some help from a magpie and the former Good Witch of the North. I think it might have been Dave Hardenbrook who first proposed that Tattypoo in Giant Horse was someone who’d had her form switched with her predecessor Locasta, and Jared goes along with that, although the details are different. Here, Locasta has taken to running a music hall.

Ozma and the Orange Ogres in Oz – This is one I originally wrote back in high school that Joe expanded for this anthology. His background for the ogres and details of their leader’s reformation tie in some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology, giving it a bit of a heavier feel that I originally gave it. He also came up with the entertaining idea of the magically animated residents of the Emerald City getting together to scare the ogres, which is great.

Quiet Victory, by Marcus Mebes – This short tale features Victor Columbia Edison, the live phonograph from Patchwork Girl, who is quickly dismissed by the other characters. Sure, he’s noisy, but a few fans have noted how the rejection likely makes him lonely. Here, he meets up with the Musicker, who’s also ostracized due to being involuntarily loud and obnoxious. While proud of his his musical insides in Road, here he’s gotten rather tired of it, but he’s also a sympathetic friend for Victor. The Red Jinn, a favorite character of Marcus’ (and of many fans, really), also plays a role.

Vaneeda of Oz – Vaneeda, daughter of the Wicked Witch of the East, was a character briefly proposed but never used by Ruth Plumly Thompson. I’d previously come up with some ideas about her and her family, so I incorporated them into this story. I wrote it before “Other Searches,” which also uses the character of the Cookywitch Paella; and I don’t think it’s the last we’ll see of this clan. Jinjur’s daughter also plays a significant part.

The Puppet-Mistress of Oz, by Andrew J. Heller – The final story here is a rather disturbing one, but it makes sense with what we know of Glinda. It shows the events of Dorothy’s original adventure from her pragmatic perspective, and explains such things as why the Wizard of Oz would send an unarmed girl off to fight a Wicked Witch.

There’s also a companion booklet about the ancient history of Oz, completely written by Joe, that was sent to contributors and is available to buy as well. Addressing Oz and the surrounding fairylands from the third century to the thirteenth, it ties together not only the brief canonical references to this time period, but also such elements as Henry Blossom’s details of the life of Ozroar, Phil Lewin’s Enilrul, and Paul’s take on Lurline and Tititi-Hoochoo. And there are crossovers with non-Oz fantasy works as well, and the early settlers of Oz have their hands full battling eldritch monsters and mad priests of toad gods. I have to suspect that Clark Ashton Smith’s Tsathoggua or one of his fellows is the giant toad the Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion meet in Secret Island. There’s a rather fanciful explanation for the confusion between Lurline and Lulea as well.

Castle on a Cloud

Hey, I’m writing about Dragon Quest VI when Dragon Quest XI has been out for a while now. I don’t have a system where I can play the new installment, though. I have a PC, but I think the graphic card isn’t good enough or something. I hadn’t played DQ6 in a few years, six according to this post, and I didn’t remember that much that had happened so far. I had explored almost all of the two worlds and gathered all the legendary weapons, but my characters still seemed pretty weak. DQ6 appears to be one of the less popular ones in the series, and I’m not totally sure why, but it does seem to offer fewer innovations to gameplay than any of the four before it. The conceit, as I mentioned before, is that it has two parallel worlds to explore, the real and dream worlds.


The latter is affected by perceptions and memories of people in the latter, so places that have been destroyed in reality can still exist in the dream world. It’s also a more whimsical place in other respects, notably that the real world gives you the typical ship and flying carpet as transportation, while in the dream one you get a floating island and a flying bed. Still, for a dream world, it mostly functions like the real one, so you’re basically trying to get through two worlds that are much but not exactly the same. There is a significant alteration to the job system that was introduced in DQ3, in that the classes are kept separate from experience levels, so you no longer have to start again at Level 1 after changing. DQ7 uses the same system, but with more classes. In both 6 and the PlayStation version of 7, you could keep all your skills and spells when changing, but the 3DS version of 7 only lets you retain some of them. I get why they’d do that, but I kind of think you should be able to keep everything you’ve earned, even if it does make things a lot easier.

The main villain in this game is the Archfiend Mortamor, whose main goal seems to be making people suffer, destroying their hopes and dreams. He’s not particularly developed, and mostly works through his hench-demons. After restoring Cloudsgate Citadel and Pegasus, you can fly to his home in the Dread Realm, a third world but not a particularly big one.

He transports people here in order to torment them, and upon first arriving there, your hit points drop to one and your magic to zero. That doesn’t last particularly long, and the chance of running into monsters is slim if you know where to go, but gimmicks like that often seem kind of cheap. It took me several tries to defeat Blackmar, Mortamor’s top general who maintains a prison in the Dread Realm, but somehow I was able to beat Mortamor himself on the first try, albeit not the first try at his castle.

He has three forms, the last one and most annoying one being just a head and hands.

After beating him, you automatically return to the characters’ hometowns and they return to their old vocations or begin with new ones; and the dream world ceases to exist. The whole thing ends with the egg at Cloudsgate Citadel hatching, while Ashlynn, whose real world form has been destroyed and hence can’t remain there, looks on.

I’m interested in how DQ6 functions as a prequel to DQ4 and 5. Really, in most respects, it doesn’t. The main thing these three games have in common is the presence of the heavenly realm of Zenithia, and I’ve heard at least one of developers didn’t want there to be any major connections beyond that, although a few managed to sneak in. It’s similar to how DQ3 is a prequel to the first two games in that you obtain the legendary equipment that appears under a different name in the other two. There, the Sword of Kings, Armor of Radiance, and Shield of Heroes are later named after Erdrick/Loto. The Sword of Ramias, Armour of Orgo, Shield of Valora, and Helmet of Sebath presumably become the Zenithian equipment in 4 and 5, but it’s not quite as clear, nor do we know what the old names refer to. I wonder if the Sword of Ramias has anything to do with the Phoenix Ramia. The sword has a different magical power than the Zenithian one does in the other games, too. What does directly connect the games is that Cloudsgate Citadel is the only part of the dream world that survives Mortamor’s death, and it’s ruled by a Lord Zenith and has the same basic layout as Zenithia Castle in 4 and 5.

As such, the implication is that it’s the Zenith Dragon who hatches from the egg in the castle. There’s even a line suggesting one of the residents is the future mother of the hero from 4. I believe the post-game content makes clear that 4 is the future of this world and 5 the far future, but the worlds don’t really look anything like each other.

You can see similarities between 4 and 5 if you stretch a bit, but it’s totally different in 6. So how much time passes between these games? Well, it’s stated in 4 that the Zenith Dragon was instrumental in sealing the Demon Lord Estark underground 1000 years previously, so if he’s just born at the end of 6, it must be more than that. Of course, while there have been plenty of geographical changes in our world in the past thousand years, you have to go back much further than that to see any significant alteration in the basic shapes of the continents. Then again, this IS a world with powerful magic. That means we still don’t know the complete story of Estark’s original rise to power and defeat; he’s always a legacy boss.

6 actually introduces another Demon Lord who never gets to be the main villain in a game, Nokturnus, whom someone at Castle Graceskull summons to defeat Mortamor, but he just kills a bunch of people and destroys the castle instead. You can fight him in the post-game content and as a legacy boss in other games.

SPOILER: He’s not.

So what’s next for me in terms of games? Well, it would make sense to finish DQ5, but I don’t have it on hand right now. So instead I’ve started on Mario and Luigi: Dream Team, because I apparently can’t get away from games with dream worlds.

The Magic of the Written Word

Last week, I discussed signs that appear in the Oz series. This time, I’m going to look at a related topic, that of magical items or characters producing printed (or written; I don’t think it’s generally specified) messages, or accepting them from others. We see one of these quite early on when the Good Witch of the North’s cap turns into a slate that advises Dorothy to travel to the Emerald City.

This slate reappears to give advice to Prince Philador in Giant Horse.

Glinda’s Great Book of Records obviously also magically produces words, but it doesn’t seem to be something L. Frank Baum really used that much. In Ruth Plumly Thompson, on the other hand, such objects and characters are all over. Her second Oz book, Kabumpo, begins with a cake exploding, revealing a scroll with a warning from a certain “J.G.”, eventually revealed as the wizard Glegg.

Also in the cake is a mirror that provides a description, sometimes a quite insulting one, of anyone who looks into it along with their reflection.

Another bit of Glegg’s magic is a Question Box that, when queried and shaken, displays the answer. I’m not sure how much space it has, but some of these answers are pretty long. Lost King has Pajuka’s magic feather that writes a message in the Emerald City. And when Dorothy wishes for an explanation as to what’s been granting her wishes, her answer is printed on a card. The Hurry-Canes of Rash transport the bearer when provided with written instructions. It’s much the same with the Wizard’s Footpath in Gnome King, which normally runs to the Emerald City on its feet, but will also obey instructions written on a pad.

Since the Chief Scrapper writes his message while on the running path, it can apparently decipher sloppy handwriting. The Post Man in Purple Prince has to be directed through messages in the box on his back, because he’s deaf. In Ojo, a crystal ball in Crystal City provides answers and warnings.

One of the silver balls in Nox the Ox’s horn, provided by Himself the Elf, magically provides instructions on paper.

Also perhaps worthy of mention is, as per the Grand Chew Chew’s story in Royal Book, the crumpled parchment with the prophecy about the return of Chang Wang Woe that mysteriously appeared when the beanstalk did.

The difference between characters and objects can sometimes be a bit blurred in Oz. The Footpath and Post Man clearly have personalities and a certain amount of free will, but still function more as plot devices than characters in the stories. Then again, the same could probably be said about some of the human characters. The Menankypoos in Pirates are unable to speak, but communicate by flashing messages on their foreheads like illuminated signs. Clocker, the former Wise Man of Menankypoo, provides messages on yellow notes every fifteen minutes, delivered by a cuckoo bird that resides in his head.

And several characters communicate through skywriting. One is Quiberon, who can speak normally, but spells out a message in smoke when he wants all of the Ozurians to see it. Thun in Silver Princess is initially unable to speak or hear, instead spelling out all his messages in fire.

After Jinnicky converts him to flesh and blood, he’s able to talk and listen, but still produces the fiery words as well. And I mentioned Bill Bored and his pipe smoke writing last time.

Black Dogs Matter

From looking up the Barghest, a mythical black dog that made an appearance in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series, I found that there are a whole lot of ghostly black dogs in the folklore of the British Isles, as well as in some other places. They’re often seen as omens of death, or just bad omens in general, and sometimes directly attack people. This hardly seems fair to the many harmless black dogs in the world. Were black dogs rare enough in these parts that seeing one was cause for alarm, or were people just alarmed a whole lot? I mean, black Labrador Retrievers are really common and really friendly; but they’re Canadian dogs that weren’t brought to Europe until the nineteenth century, although they’re quite popular in the United Kingdom nowadays. There were occasional good black dogs and evil dogs of other coat colors in British lore, but the ghostly black dogs were pretty ubiquitous. With the Barghest in particular, it was said that those who got a good look would die immediately, while those who only caught a glimpse would have a few more months to live. Getting in the way of one at a funeral possession would result in its giving you a wound that would never heal. It was also thought to be a shape-shifter, sometimes taking the form of a headless person, a cat, or a rabbit. Apparently the term “barghest” can also be used to refer to any kind of spirit, elf, or goblin.

The Gytrash of northern England was also known for changing shape, sometimes appearing as a horse, mule, or cow. They appeared on lonely roads and led travelers astray, although they could sometimes be helpful. I guess which kind you encounter is a total crapshoot. In Jane Eyre, Jane is reminded of the Gytrash by both a Newfoundland dog and a black horse. The “trash” in its name apparently means “trudge,” due to the fact that it makes a splashing sound while walking, so in this case guy trash isn’t beer cans and pizza boxes. The Shug Monkey of Slough Hill is sort of a composite creature, with the face of a monkey and the ability to walk on either two or four legs.

Descriptions of the shaggy Black Shuck of East Anglia vary considerably, with some notable ones saying it has only one eye, or that it’s the size of a calf.

The Yeth Hounds of Devon are the ghosts of unbaptized children, and take the form of headless dogs that constantly wail.

The Moddey Dhoo that haunts Peel Castle on the Isle of Man has a name that really just means “black dog” in Manx Gaelic, but makes me think of Scooby-Doo.

Picture by Charlotte Grub
I know Scooby’s name was inspired by Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” but is there any indication that the guy who came up with it wasn’t also aware of the Moddey Dhoo? Instead of a ghost dog, he’s a dog who’s afraid of ghosts. Okay, I’m probably reading too much into this.

The Harry Potter series brings in ghost dog folklore when Sybil Trelawney mentions the Grim as an omen of death. If Wikipedia is to be trusted, the Grim was usually thought of as a good ghost, haunting a churchyard to guard it from thieves, vandals, and witches. It’s said to be the spirit of the first dog buried in the graveyard. But yes, it was also an omen.

It turns out that the mysterious black dog Harry sees is really his godfather Sirius Black, who can turn into a dog. It’s convenient that he was already named after the Dog Star, but since most of his family has the names of stars and constellations, I guess they’d get to Sirius eventually anyway. But the series was full of this kind of thing. A guy named Remus Lupin becoming a werewolf is the same sort of coincidence as Otto Octavius ending up with eight arms. When you name your kids, think about what kind of supernatural fate you could be forcing them into! Sirius’ nickname is Padfoot, another English ghost dog that can be recognized by the sound of…well, its padding feet.

You Fucked the World Up Now, We’ll Fuck It All Back Down

Today, I offer my thoughts on two recent albums that are not that similar in style, but both are by women who brashly and sometimes humorously speak out against injustice and have “nell” in their first names, so that’s…something, I guess?

Nellie McKay, Sister Orchid – This album is a collection of jazz standards, all arranged by Nellie, with her playing all the instruments as well. They’re mostly pretty soft and sparse, but there’s some great piano, as well as ukulele and harmonica on “Lazybones.” “Everything Happens to Me” includes crowd noise and clinking glasses. I like “Willow Weep for Me,” which starts out slow, then takes on more of a boogie-woogie sound. Overall, the album are her performances are very pleasant, but there’s not a lot of variety. Also, of the last four albums Nellie released, three of them are all covers (well, except one song on Normal as Blueberry Pie, and I feel she doesn’t even get to bring in her own flavor as much on this one. Is she going to do another album of songs she wrote herself anytime soon?

Janelle Monae, Dirty Computer – I think I was first aware of Monae when I heard “Dance Apocalyptic” on the radio or something, and I found it really catchy. I think the uke helped, but that wasn’t all of it. I listened to her earlier work on Amazon Prime, and it’s quite impressive, using science fiction themes to represent the struggle of minorities in an oppressive society, which I suppose a pansexual black woman would know something about. I don’t recall hearing of Afrofuturism, but it dates back to the 1950s, although the term was only coined in 1993. The previous EP and albums had Monae taking on the character of an android sent back in time; this one doesn’t, but keeps a lot of the same themes. The android idea is used in the promotional film, which involves reprogramming of non-conformists.

Technicians remove the protagonist Jane’s memory, but apparently have to watch the memories first, because the machine functions like voice mail or something. It’s a way to incorporate the music videos into the film, including an extended version of “PYNK,” the one with vagina pants. Tessa Thompson, who won me over with her performance as Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, stars in the movie and most (maybe all?) of the videos.

It’s popularly thought that they’re a real-life couple, but neither one has confirmed. You certainly can’t deny they’re really cute together.

Well, maybe you can; I saw some post on Tumblr about how straight men find Monae unattractive, which is weird to me, not that that affects the music anyway. Apparently The liner notes list a myriad of inspirations for the songs, including current events, history, fiction, dreams, and religion. Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Zoe Kravitz, Pharrell Williams, and Grimes all contribute vocals; and Prince worked on some of the songs, his influence being particularly notable on “Make Me Feel.” I know nothing about Grimes other than that she’s dating Elon Musk (I fail to see the appeal, unless it’s just the money), but “PYNK” is a good song. It samples from the Aerosmith song “Pink” in the verses. There’s something about the vocals and production that’s just really engaging, powerful but also often kind of comforting, even to this straight white guy. I’ve said before that I’m drawn to women who don’t take crap, which is a shame, as I produce a lot of crap. But there are a lot of lyrics here that are both funny and bold, like in the feminist rap “Django Jane”: “And we gon’ start a pussy riot, or we gon’ have to put ’em on a pussy diet.” It’s also very openly sexual. But then, there is that line in “Screwed”: “Everything is sex, except sex, which is power.”

Platforms for Prejudice

I’ve frequently heard that, if you let racists or other hatemongers speak, they’ll defeat themselves. And that’s true…in some people’s minds. I think the fact that our current President ran on a bunch of white nationalist garbage and conspiracy theories and still won (not the popular vote, but that’s still WAY too many votes) demonstrates that this isn’t always the case. Sure, I thought he defeated himself, but obviously other people thought he’d be a good leader of the free world. This is something that’s come to my mind a lot recently, most recently with Steve Bannon being invited to headline the New Yorker Festival. He was since uninvited, but I still don’t see what the point was. Okay, maybe I do. It’s just to stir up controversy. Bannon doesn’t have anything to say that hasn’t been repeatedly discredited, but he’ll definitely get a reaction. That sort of thing is so much in vogue these days. I guess it has always has been to some extent, but now that a lot of these bigots are running the country, it’s much harder to ignore. People will promote it as saying that they want a debate or a free exchange of ideas, but what ideas do people like Bannon have that are worth exchanging?

You can find the thinking behind racism in plenty of places, and it’s all stupid. If you just want to get people riled up, that’s not a debate; that’s a daytime talk show. And really, there’s limited value to a debate anyway. I pretty much always watch the presidential debates, but more for entertainment than information. Even when I was a kid, I realized that winning a debate was less an issue of having valid points than of swagger (although I wouldn’t have used that term back then). And there’s so much presented so quickly that, even if someone notices a factual error, they don’t always have the chance to point it out, and some audience members believe the lie anyway. I saw a tweet recently about how cult members tend to love debates because that was how they were recruited in the first place.

These people have the right to speak on a soapbox, but they shouldn’t be guaranteed a major platform, especially if they’re promoting harm to others. Some of them aren’t just despicable, but downright dangerous. But people will try to claim it’s a free speech issue when Alex Jones is banned from social media. For one thing, he’s been harassing people. For another, Twitter and Facebook are for-profit companies, and hence don’t count as the public square. And I thought hardcore conservatives thought we should let corporations do whatever they want. I’m all for hearing from people I disagree with, but in these cases, it’s not just harmless opinion that’s being discussed. I guess there’s also the issue of knowing your enemy, but there’s ALREADY a lot of information on what public figures preach. You don’t need to invite Bannon to speak at a festival to know what he’s about. When someone’s ideas include keeping Mexican children in cages, that’s not just a disagreement; that’s sickening to anyone with a conscience. And no, you’re not going to win such people over with rational arguments. It would be nice if you could, and maybe occasionally there will be someone who responds to that. But generally, if your fervently held beliefs aren’t based on facts or logic anyway, why would you change your mind when presented when facts and logic?

I do have to say that the news media are in kind of a difficult situation here, because part of their job is to report on what the President and his staff say, but so much of what that is nowadays is hateful rhetoric. Of course, the news outlets were giving Trump a hell of a lot of attention even BEFORE he was President. It was probably intended as sensationalist bunk, a “hey, isn’t THIS wacky?” kind of story, but it had the unfortunate side effect of exposing people who actually agreed with his crap to more of it than they would have gotten otherwise.

Along the same lines, I also occasionally think how obnoxious it is that people still use the term “political correctness,” especially since people who use it always seem to mean something different. The impression I got when it was in heavy use back in the nineties was that it was trying too hard not to offend anybody, to the point of absurdity. So no, just trying to be polite and avoid purposely offensive terms is not political correctness by that definition, but that’s how people use it. You’ll hear people (I think Bill Maher said something of the sort fairly recently) insist it’s about valuing politeness over truth, but I really don’t think the white guy who
wants to use the N-word cares about truth.

And the people who complain about everything being too PC will often get mad when they’re called out for being racist. How often do you hear about some intolerant person insisting that others aren’t tolerant of them? Sorry, but assholes still aren’t a protected minority. You can be a jerk if you want, but it’s likely you’ll be called out for it.