Slimeline

Posted on June 25, 2026 by Nathan

BERJAYA
I’m going to look at one of my niche interests, that of timelines for fictional universes, in this case the Dragon Quest series. While there are exceptions, I get the impression that game developers don’t generally think too much about this sort of thing. A chronology for an interactive medium is kind of futile anyway, as not everyone is going to play it exactly the same way. I mentioned in my review of Escape from Monkey Island that some game sequels essentially make optional things in previous entries canonical. Some of the DQ games have bonuses that you can’t get unless you defeat the final boss, then go back to a save with the boss still alive. It doesn’t make chronological sense, but these extra segments can include significant story information.
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Remakes of the games often include legacy bosses in the post-game, even if there’s no plot-related reason for them to be there. And what about cameos? Does the fact that Ragnar and Torneko from DQ4 show up in the monster arena in 8 mean the games have to take place around the same time?
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I suspect they’re just there as Easter eggs, but it’s more interesting to try to come up with some explanation. I suspect Torneko, like Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy, is capable of traveling between worlds. Or maybe he has unrelated doppelgangers like Dibbler from Discworld. The Monsters games and the Tockle quests in 11 explicitly allow you to visit locations from other games, and while I haven’t played them, I know the DQ Heroes games bring characters from different installments to a new location.
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The franchise also includes some characters who have the same names and functions but most likely aren’t the same people, like Patty who organizes questing parties and Monty the Monster Monitor.
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The Zelda series eventually got an official timeline, but it’s pretty messy, suggesting that it was cobbled together to some extent. There were probably some thoughts about how certain entries fit into the history of Hyrule, as A Link to the Past is a prequel to the original game, and Ocarina of Time likely intended as a prequel to the prequel. But the variety of games that came out after that meant shoving all the earlier games into an alternate branch where Link didn’t finish Ocarina, which seems rather dismissive. That series also has different characters with the same names who serve similar functions, including Link himself. And a lot of fans have imitated this concept with what I suppose are more time trees than lines. The most complete DQ timeline I’ve found originally did this, proposing that different games followed up on alternate lines created by the time travel in DQ11. Since Yuji Horii later said that he saw it as a single timeline that changed, however, it no longer does. But DQ Builders really does occur in an alternate timeline, so it’s not like those can’t exist in the franchise.
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The document brings in a lot of material from media other than the games themselves, some of which were translated from Japanese into French, but still not into English. We are starting to get official English translations of the Emblem of Roto manga, called The Mark of Erdrick. I read a few volumes of a fan translation, and it looks like the official version might be abridged somewhat, but maybe that’s faulty memory on my part. I read library copies of the first three, and it looks like the fourth just came out. This is officially a story that takes place in between DQ3 and 1, but it contains references to other games as well. Media like this often draw connections and fill in gaps left by the games, but they’re also known to contradict each other. They may be officially licensed, but I don’t think Square Enix has a Continuity Czar making sure they’re all consistent. But the sequel series to MoE, called Heirs of the Mark, has a scientist observing that Erdrick’s bloodline also has ancestry from the Zenithians and Dragovians, types of beings who appear in DQ4 through 6 and 8, respectively.
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I suppose that doesn’t necessarily mean these games all take place before 3, but a mention of Zenithians having become rare suggests this, as there are a fair number of them in the Zenithian Trilogy. And the hero of 4 has a Zenithian mother, and 8 a Dragovian.
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There could have been other such pairings, but it works out pretty neatly anyway.
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Rubiss also mentions earlier World Trees being imbued with the life force of a goddess and a Dragovian, possibly Celestria from 9 and Yggdragon from 11.
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The placement of 8 seems a bit haphazard, but the explanation is that it has to do with the design of the orbs. Doesn’t Empyrea specifically say that she was known as Ramia on a different world, which might mean they’re different orbs? But then, Heirs does give a specific origin story for the orbs.
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For the most part, there are no estimates as to how much time passes between these games. We know that more than a millennium passes between 6 and 4, since the Zenith Dragon is born at the end of 6 and seals away Estark 1000 years before 4. Monster Monogatari refers to an event happening in the area that would later include Casabranca 2200 years before 4. We don’t know when that is relative to 6, but the world maps in those two games look totally different aside from the tower in the middle, so it’s hard to tell what would become Casabranca. Not on the timeline is Pioniria, the ancient enchanted kingdom buried in the desert of Zamoksva that’s restored by recruiting immigrants.
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I have to wonder if the novelization inspired Psaro’s fraught relationship with his father in DQ Monsters: The Dark Prince, which itself explains some elements from 4 but contradicts others. The idea that several years pass during the tunnel excavation in Chapter 3 is interesting, but I find it unlikely, since nobody seems to age in that time. And the novelizations of the Erdrick Trilogy indicate that 723 years pass in between 3 and 1, which seems like a lot considering that the town layouts are largely the same in both. Then it’s only another hundred years until 2.

We also don’t know how many different worlds are involved, but we do know that there have been cataclysms that have reshaped the layout of at least one of them. Supplemental materials incorporate both Atlantis and Mu into the DQ3 world, as well as orichalcum, which Plato identified as a substance that came from the former.
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The Shield of Heroes is said to be made from mithril, which was invented by J.R.R. Tolkien. I wonder if the writer of Item Monogatari intended to tie mithril to Mithra, the chief of the gods in that story.
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I’m pretty sure there’s no actual connection, as “mithril” is Sindarin for “grey-glitter” and Mithra was a Persian deity whose cult gained popularity in Rome around the same time as Christianity.
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That’s probably why Robert E. Howard used the worship of Mithra as the equivalent of Christianity in the Hyborian Age. That account does seem to be contradicted by the implication in 11 that the Sword of Light is the same as the Sword of Erdrick/Kings.
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Another god in the supplemental material is Ra, the first owner of the mirror that shows true forms.
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I noticed that this item doesn’t appear in 8, but something called the Sun Mirror does, and Ra was the Egyptian god of the Sun.
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That might not have been intentional, though.
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And the DQ7 manga adaptation, Warriors of Eden, indicates that the Prince of Midenhall was the founder of Estard. I also know that the HD-2D remake of the Erdrick Trilogy makes some extra connections between the three games, including expanding the role of Hargon into someone who worked at the Dragon Queen’s court and raised the Dragonlord.
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The timeline makes a reference to a manga called Hiden Ryuo BariBari Tai in the magazine V Jump, which has the Dragonlord’s sister turning people into monsters. Doesn’t 3 imply that the Dragon Queen laid only one egg? Maybe they were twins. I swear I remember someone posting a picture of the Dragonlord’s sister online, but I can’t find it now.

I’ve been wanting for years to write something about the further adventures of Erdrick after DQ3, based largely on how you see his grave in the original English version of FF1. It would also tie in elements from other game series, likely including my dream that combined Alefgard and the End of Time from Chrono Trigger into a single place. MoE identifies Erdrick’s children as Loran, Carmen, and Flora; but I don’t think it identifies their mother. There is apparently a novel that says Erdrick married the daughter of Pimiko, the ruler of Jipang who was killed and replaced by the Orochi. My idea that wasn’t really based on anything other than combining DQ and FF was that his wife was the daughter of Cecil from Final Fantasy IV, and while he has only the one son in The After Years, he’s young enough to have had more children after that.
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After Years is another game I either need to finish or at least look up how it ends.

Posted in African, Authors, Christianity, Chrono Trigger, Comics, Discworld, Dragon Quest, Egyptian, Families, Final Fantasy, Greek Philosophy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Japanese, Language, lucasarts, Magic, Maps, Monsters, Mythology, Norse, Persian, Philosophy, Relationships, Religion, Roman, Terry Pratchett, Video Games, Zelda | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Curiouser and Curiouser

Posted on June 22, 2026 by Nathan

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Pandora, by Susan Stokes-Chapman – This was an online recommendation for me some time ago, probably because I was reading a lot of stuff based on Greek mythology. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the book. It uses the basis of the Pandora myth for a mystery story set in London in 1799. Pandora Blake, who goes by Dora, is the daughter of archaeologists who died when she was young, and ended up in the custody of her uncle Hezekiah. This guy runs an antique store with items that are mostly forgeries, took in a prostitute to serve as his maid and live-in lover and abuses her, and is really nasty to Dora. She finds out that he’s keeping an ancient Greek vase locked up in the basement, and suspects that it has a connection to the story about her namesake. Her parents’ idea was that the myth had an aspect of truth, but there’s some speculation that it might even be the vase from the tale. She tries to find out why her uncle is keeping this a secret, and also tries to go out on her own as a jewelry designer. The antiquarian Edward Lawrence helps her with her ambitions, also hoping to write a paper about the vase. They eventually get together, but I do feel kind of bad for the rich guy who’s secretly in love with Edward and paying for everything for him. The story also involves real-life antiquarian William Hamilton, whom I’d mostly heard of due to his wife’s affair with Horatio Nelson. It’s a pretty good read.

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Classic Dragonlance Chronicles, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman – This volume collects the first three Dragonlance stories, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning. (I’m noticing a theme here.) I had heard of this series when I was young, but never read any of it. It’s based on Dungeons & Dragons, which I’ve never played, but have gained some familiarity with through nerd culture diffusion. It takes place on the world of Krynn, which is commonly believed to have been abandoned by the gods, although some new ones are trying to take control.
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It focuses around a group of eight adventurers, but there are a lot of other characters involved as well. A new religious organization has allied itself with the Dragon Highlords, who are attempting conquest through control of a bunch of dragons of various colors, as well as the Draconian soldiers who are part human and part dragon. The half-elven Tanis, leader of the heroes, has feelings for a Highlord named Kitiara, which leads to some moral conflict on his part. She’s also the half-sister of the mage Raistlin and the fighter Caramon. The heroes visit various cities, castles, and towers over the course of their adventures. I did notice some pretty heavy Tolkien influence, including that the elves of Krynn had in their past a kinslaying, as did those of Arda. There’s also a ring of invisibility in the story. The character Tasselhoff Burrfoot was apparently originally intended to be a halfling, but since the authors thought that made the Tolkien association too obvious, they instead made him a Kender. These are small people who are known for their curiosity and their tendency to take anything they’re interested in, even from each other. And there’s a close friendship between an elf (well, half-elf) and a dwarf, Tanis and Flint Fireforge. Flint shows some prejudice toward the gully dwarves, and while this isn’t shown to be merited, the gully dwarves are written as people who speak in broken language and are unable to count past two. I have to wonder if the old, absent-minded mage Fizban was named after the invented card game from Star Trek. Anyway, the trilogy was nothing mind-blowing, but it did introduce a world and characters I wouldn’t mind visiting again.

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The Pirate of World’s End, by Lin Carter – It seems like every adventure series eventually has to bring in pirates (if it doesn’t begin with them), so it’s not surprising they show up in the Gondwane Epic. After leaving the largely reformed Ximchak horde, Ganelon Silvermane and the Tigerman Grrff fight some living stone heads, then end up captured by pirates. I like how casually the narrative mentions that the captain, Zarcas, is secretly a long-lost prince. That’s just the kind of thing that happens in this sort of story. He also develops a relationship with a girl Ganelon saves from a cult. Also featured in this book is an ancient robot called Zork Aargh, and I have to wonder if there’s a play on words I’m missing there. The story predates the Zork video game series. The ad

Posted in Authors, Book Reviews, Games, Greek Mythology, infocom, J.R.R. Tolkien, Magic, Maps, Monsters, Mythology, Names, Prejudice, Relationships, Religion, Star Trek, Technology, Video Games, zork | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Alone in a Furniture Warehouse

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Nathan

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Backrooms – We saw this on Wednesday, and I don’t think I was aware of the web series it was based on, or the Creepypasta that inspired that.
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The original image was taken of a former furniture store that was being renovated, and hence had an eerie emptiness to it. The main character in the movie is Clark, who was trained as an architect but stuck running a wholesale furniture outlet to make ends meet. He takes out his frustrations by drinking and on his wife, who recently left him. After finding that the fuse box in the basement of the store has two switches that apparently aren’t connected to anything but still do stuff, Clark walks through a wall into a weird space that looks a lot like the store, but there’s no real logic to where stuff is, and the arrangement of rooms is complex and sometimes defies physics. It seems to be an alternate dimension that connects to a lot of different places, but it also reflects the minds of the people who enter it. It reminded me of a lot of other media, like the Alice books for the weird layouts, House of Leaves for the mysterious and potentially dangerous space that isn’t supposed to be there, and Piranesi for the alternate world containing seemingly random objects. The aesthetic, with a lot of plain beige walls and fluorescent lights, made me think of Vivarium, and to a lesser extent Skinamarink, with creepy things happening in a dull, ordinary kind of place. Not all of the rooms have the same warehouse-like appearance, as they reflect places other than Clark’s store, but there’s a bleak, largely empty drabness even to the more colorful areas. One attic-like room contains a Christmas tree that repeatedly plays a tinny version of “Feliz Navidad,” with what look like bodies partially indented in the floor.
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Clark eventually decides to stay in what’s presumably a reflection of his old kitchen, with a distorted copy of his wife. His theory is that the space itself is remembering real things, which is why everything is off to some extent. His therapist, Mary, follows him in after he leaves her a cryptic answering machine message, and her own trauma also comes into play. While the order isn’t entirely clear, flashbacks show that her mother was terrified of ever leaving the house, and after their home was demolished, the mom was institutionalized.
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Clark ends up being killed by his store’s pirate mascot that’s based on himself, and Mary attacks the mascot with a chunk of cement from her old home that she’d kept all those years. She then encounters a researcher who is, from what I’ve gathered, a more direct reference to the series, an employee of a company that used to make MRI machines but had shifted into exploring the Backrooms. I found it interesting that there’s a short scene of the employee watching The Neverending Story, a favorite of mine growing up. The director, Kane Parsons, was born in 2005, so I’m not sure he would have grown up with it. I mean, he certainly could have, but it wouldn’t have been as current. He also wouldn’t have been alive when the film takes place, in 1990. I believe that’s only confirmed by something in the background, but since it explains why nobody has a cell phone camera and Mary is selling cassette tapes. I liked it pretty well, and appreciated that we never get a full explanation of what the Backrooms actually are, just theories by the characters. I’m generally fascinated by the idea of in-between places.

Posted in Authors, Christmas, Holidays, Lewis Carroll, Monsters, Music, VoVat Goes to the Movies | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Shapeshifters All Around

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Nathan

BERJAYA
Dragonsphere – This is a MicroProse point-and-click adventure game from 1994, which is quite similar in its interface to the last two games I played, Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender by the same publisher, and Inherit the Earth by a different one. They’re based on the LucasArts model with a series of verbs you can use to interact with the world, although there are a few extra ones you can use with specific items. Unlike Rex, here those additional verbs aren’t generally as jokey. The game is set in a medieval fantasy land called Grand Callahach, where a lot of the names are Gaelic-sounding, although I don’t know that they actually mean anything. The fairy forest is called Bryn-Fann, which seems like it could potentially mean “weak hill” in a mix of Welsh and Irish, but I wouldn’t know why. But I’ve made up plenty of names that are vaguely inspired by the sounds of languages I don’t know, so I can’t criticize the creators for doing the same. Anyway, I guess if Rex was MicroProse’s attempt to do Space Quest, this was their equivalent of King’s Quest, except I think the world here is less of a hodge-podge than in its inspiration. The story starts out seeming pretty straightforward, with you controlling the newly crowned King Callash (possibly named after the winter goddess?), who sets out to defeat the evil sorcerer Sanwe who had been trapped in a magic sphere twenty years earlier by your late father. The map has five locations to visit: the castle, the fairy forest of Bryn-Fann, Slathan ni Patan where the shape-shifters live, the desert land of Soptus Ecliptus, and Sanwe’s fortress at Hightower.
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The fairies like to test their limits and tease the humans, and are ruled by the confusing Butterfly King.
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A puzzle in Bryn-Fann requires you to distract some giant toads to get an item.
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The people of Soptus Ecliptus mostly speak a complex language where the words have various meanings, and the Caliph makes you play a betting game against him in order to win some necessary items.
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It’s not hard to win much of the time and there’s no penalty for losing, but it’s pretty tedious. Apparently it’s the custom in that country that you have to win things instead of just being given them. The desert land is also home to two shamans who will help you reach the mysterious Spirit Plane. And getting through Hightower requires you to freeze a dead rat at one point.
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There are some giant birds called Shaks that you encounter nearby, distinct from the roc you find eating grapes from a magic vine on the Spirit Plane.
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After the fight against Sanwe, there’s an additional twist revealed, that you’re not really the king but a shapechanger named Pid Shuffle who was made to take his form and forget his true identity.
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A lot of these games have shape-changing characters, but I suppose that’s a kind of magic that you can do a lot with. You learn three transformations, a snake, a seal, and a bear, each of which you use once. Well, technically you have to turn into a bear twice, but you don’t really do anything with it the second time. Interesting items include a polystone that can mimic other magical stones, a vortex stone to infuse things with magic or remove it, and a belt that keeps you from getting hurt when you fall. There’s voice acting in the game, but I don’t think the actors involved are professionals, and they really just say the lines rather than doing voices. Overall, it’s enjoyable, not really anything new but with nice graphics and some good characters and plot twists.
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I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to play next. I have King’s Quest VIII and Quest for Glory V on GOG, but neither of them will load. The latter has a screen that says to insert the CD, even though I bought a digital copy. There’s probably some way to fix this, but looking for information on that kind of thing isn’t all that fun. I’m not going to be on my computer for a while in the near future, so I guess I’ll see what I can try when I am again.

Posted in Animals, Arabian, Art, Celtic, Games, Language, lucasarts, Magic, Maps, Mythology, Names, Sierra, Video Games | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rash Decisions

Posted on June 9, 2026 by Nathan

BERJAYA
The Hungry Tiger of Oz, by Ruth Plumly Thompson – I reread this book for its centennial, and as usual, it was a fun experience. The adventure of the famous feline starts out quite similarly to Cowardly Lion, not only with someone wanting to capture the big cat, but the culprit specifically being the ruler of a Middle Eastern style kingdom. The Pasha of Rash, “pasha” being a title for a high official in the Ottoman Empire and Rash a small country in Ev, wants the Tiger to come to his court to eat his prisoners. The cat initially agrees, figuring that eating dangerous criminals wouldn’t affect his conscience, but he soon finds out that the Pasha orders execution for very petty reasons. It’s interesting that the Tiger’s dilemma here is about whether he should eat live people in general, not specifically fat babies. I suppose that would have had the potential to be way more disturbing. Anyway, the Tiger is locked up in a courtyard, but he manages to escape with some of the prisoners, including the young Prince Evered, or Reddy for short, the rightful ruler of the country.
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The rest of the book is largely about their search for the three Rash Rubies, possibly based on the Pearls of Pingaree from Rinkitink. They find them largely through coincidence, but that’s often the way things go in Oz stories. The travels and characters are still enjoyable and inventive. Betsy Bobbin arrives in Rash with Carter Green, a vegetable man who’s made of vegetables, and has the habit of taking root if he stays in one place for too long.
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He’s quite pleasant and entertaining, and is the subject of some of the best pictures.
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There’s also an Airman named Atmos Fere, a balloon-like person like the Loons of Loonville, but with a bit more development. He’s an explorer from a land in the clouds who wants to prove that there’s life at the bottom of the air.
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The first person he sees when getting down there is Ozma, so he takes her away as a specimen, and she somewhat uncharacteristically pops him with a pin in order to get away, then feels really bad about it afterwards. I found the plot device of time running faster in the sky to be rather weird, especially as it never works that way in any other airbound country in the series. I have to suspect it was just to make the times work out for Ozma and Atmos’ shorter journey to coincide with Betsy and the Tiger’s longer one, but I’m sure that could have been handled in some other way. On the evil side, there’s the Pasha’s scribe Ippty, who has a pen, pencil, eraser, stick of ceiling wax, candle, and pen knife as fingers. At one point he sharpens the pencil with the knife, so I have to wonder what happens when he reaches the bottom. Maybe it grows back.

After the prisoners escape Rash, they come to the underground Down Town. There was a Baum Bugle article by Patrick Maund that explained how this episode could best be understood as playing on the views of really young children who hear about their fathers going to work to make money without really knowing how it works. The Queen of Down, Fi Nance, is literally made of money, but implies that she wasn’t always.
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This kind of fits with Carter’s origin story, as he turns into vegetables by eating too many of them, and “I’m not made of money” and the idea of turning into something if you eat a lot of it are both expressions used with kids.  Down Town is a bit contradictory in some ways, as the characters encounter a sign saying the place is “for the daddies” after the Queen tells Betsy she should become a cash girl. And for a town that’s so obsessed with making money, it appears that all the tools needed for various trades can be picked for free from the Indus Tree, and nobody tries to stop our heroes from escaping even though they have an outstanding bill.
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Next, they come to the Nome Kingdom for the first appearance in a Thompson book of Kaliko, who here is generally friendly but is goaded by his chamberlain Guph into mischief and violence. Kaliko appointed Guph to that position in Tik-Tok, although Rinkitink had a different chamberlain named Klik. Then the characters visit Immense City, home of the Big Wigs, giants who are the size of normal humans except when they wear their magical wigs. Since everything else there is giant, including the animals that don’t appear to be wearing wigs, there might be an untold story as to how it came to be populated by people who aren’t naturally that big. The Princess of this city keeps the Tiger as a pet, seeing him as a kitten, and is unintentionally rough with him. It’s funny that her name is Elma, as she’s similar to Elmyra on Tiny Toon Adventures in that respect.
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I’ve written before about Thompson’s tendency to essentially pinball her characters around the map to get them where she needs them to be, and to include fast transportation that doesn’t always make much sense. Betsy and Carter found themselves on the edge of the Deadly Desert after being caught on a winding road. She later says it’s “near the Emerald City,” but since she hears Carter from her room in Ozma’s palace, I have to wonder when they left the city proper. A pair of Quick Sandals takes them across the desert to Rash, then leaves on its own accord. The courtyard in the castle of Rash just happens to have a cavern under it leading to a tunnel that goes far underground.
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The travelers leave Down Town through what’s labeled as a subway to Up Town, but there’s no train, just a passage with a lot of turns. It dead ends at the Cave Inn, which caves in and deposits them in the Lost Labyrinth of the Nome Kingdom. I have to wonder if there might have actually been a subway and an inn there at one point. Perhaps sour relations between Down and the Nomes resulted in their shutting down? And Rash has Hurry-Canes that can presumably take anyone anywhere, even across the desert to Oz. I also have to wonder about how the book ends with the Tiger being relieved that none of his friends found out he went to Rash willingly, when there are some indications in other books that the Oz books themselves exist within the fairyland, so it’s likely they’ll find out eventually.
BERJAYA

Posted in Animals, Art, Book Reviews, Cartoons, Characters, Economics, John R. Neill, L. Frank Baum, Magic, Magic Items, Oz, Oz Authors, Ruth Plumly Thompson, Television | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Outfoxed

Posted on June 3, 2026 by Nathan

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Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb – From 1994, this point-and-click adventure game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, called Morphs. It’s pretty short, but generally enjoyable and charming. The graphics are appealing, and the music has a medieval feel to it. According to Wikipedia, it has a furry fanbase, for obvious reasons. I’ve heard of people who aren’t part of that subculture being attracted to Disney’s vulpine Robin Hood, and the game’s protagonist Rif seems to be partially inspired by him.
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It starts with Rif winning a contest and being declared puzzle master. Right after this, however, it’s revealed that the Orb of Storms, a human-made artifact that predicts the weather, has been stolen. Suspicion falls on Rif, as foxes, as per Aesop, have a reputation for being tricky. Rif decides to hunt for the orb, accompanied by an elk guard named Eeah and a boar called Okk, who are there to help him out but also to make sure he doesn’t try any funny business. For the most part, different types of animals have their own tribes, sometimes more than one, although in the starting area the King of the Forest, who’s an elk, has some control over different species. Some animals specialize in a single vocation, like the ferrets who do craftwork, the rats who keep meticulous records, and the cats who perform spiritual roles. The feline priestess who keeps the Orb is named Elara, which made me think of the wizard Erana from Quest for Glory.
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I think all of the rabbits who appear are servants, often mentioning being late as an obvious Alice in Wonderland reference, although that’s kind of funny considering how the White Rabbit bossed around his own servants. While some of the characters are antagonistic, there’s rarely much real sense of danger.
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You get thrown into prison cells on two occasions, but it’s not that hard to escape. There are two occasions where you have to trick or distract guards, but if you choose the option, the characters will do it on their own. There are two annoying mazes, a common way to pad out short games at the time. And on two occasions, you have to find the wandering rodent merchant Kylas Honeyfoot in one of several forest clearings, which one it is being random each time. While the map isn’t hard to navigate, you don’t see much of it at once, and locations you have to visit can be a bit difficult to find.
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The towns are much the same way, and there doesn’t appear to be any simple way to differentiate the buildings in the ferret village. Towards the end, you explore some ancient ruins that the animals can’t identify, but the player can see it as a lab containing experiments and weapons, the implication being that the humans wiped themselves out in a war. Or maybe the canine astronomer is right, and they all relocated to the Moon, but probably not. As the title suggests, the Morphs inherited the Earth, although not all of them are particularly meek. You thwart a raccoon’s plans to take over the world, and the Orb is lost, but the King of the Forest doesn’t really mind since it was kept out of hostile hands.
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While we do get the always appreciated scene of a bunch of characters gathering to celebrate, the ending is pretty abrupt and leaves some things unresolved, like what happened with the Boar King’s alliance with the wolves. There were plans for a sequel, but it never happened. I did, however, find out that there’s a webcomic follow-up that started in 2014.
BERJAYA

Posted in Animals, Art, Authors, Comics, Lewis Carroll, Maps, Music, Names, Prejudice, quest for glory, Sierra, Technology, Video Games | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

One to Grogu On

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Nathan

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I saw The Mandalorian and Grogu this past weekend, and in preparation for that I  finally watched the third season of The Mandalorian. I had forgotten Carl Weathers was in this show, and even directed two episodes. It’s kind of funny that there was such an uproar about George Lucas wanting to have *NSYNC appear in Attack of the Clones, then on this show we get a planet ruled by Lizzo and Jack Black.
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Maybe the movie should have had the Backstreet Boys singing “this is the way” to the tune of “I Want It That Way.” That’s the same episode where Christopher Lloyd plays a follower of Count Dooku, and I suppose it isn’t common knowledge in this galaxy that he had been working for Palpatine all along. Bo-Katan Kryze, sister of the Duchess who had feelings for Obi-Wan, helps Din Djarin to retake Mandalore and once again becomes its ruler, defeating Moff Gideon and his Imperial remnant in the process. It’s interesting how much Mandalore comes into the TV shows when it presumably just started out as an origin for Boba Fett’s armor. And Din Djarin officially adopts Grogu.

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I also watched all of Andor, the Star Wars series about conjunctions. No, it’s about Cassian Andor from Rogue One, continuing the trend of these series being named after their lead characters. This is one of the more celebrated of the SW shows, as it deals with the rise of the Rebellion in a more political and personal way than as a bunch of fantastic epic adventures. I appreciated what it was doing, but I also found it kind of slow and a little hard to follow at times. There were certainly some exciting sequences, though, like the escape from the slave labor factory. It was also really good at showing the evil of the Empire without any planets being blown up, focusing on petty bureaucracy, absurd levels of concern for minute details when dealing with an enormous galaxy, and shady plots to keep people in line. In these scenes, one of the major players is the cold and ambitious Dedra Meero, who manipulates everyone around her, and builds a false resistance on the planet Ghorman so the Empire can retaliate. She’s also really obsessed with finding one particular guy, Luthen Rael, who leads a group of rebel spies. Mon Mothma also plays a significant role, and we see towards the end of the series that she and Andor don’t often see eye to eye despite their common goals.

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As for the movie, it did have a good amount of battles and use of the Force, but it was still a somewhat smaller story than many, mostly focusing on one particular mission Djarin is sent on to locate a former Imperial leader whose identity is unknown to the New Republic. It’s also interesting that, while the story follows directly from that of the show, it really didn’t use very many characters introduced there aside from the two leads. It did, however, feature some characters introduced in other TV programs, like Zeb from Rebels as Djarin’s pilot, and Jabba the Hutt’s twin cousins who appeared in The Book of Boba Fett. The Hutts agree to provide information on the Imperial fugitive if Djarin saves Jabba’s son Rotta from imprisonment on Shakari. Djarin and Grogu find him, but he doesn’t want to leave, enjoying his life as a pit fighter the crowd cheers for, and promised by the local crime boss that he can go free after his next fight. Unsurprisingly, this next fight is rigged so that Rotta will be killed, but he doesn’t believe that until he and Djarin are both forced to fight a whole bunch of monsters. The crime boss also turns out to be the Imperial the Mandalorian was looking for, so they bring him back without going through the Hutts, as Rotta has no desire to go back.
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Unfortunately, the Hutts capture both Djarin and Rotta, and Grogu teams up with some tiny Anzellans to rescue him, also receiving some assistance from a lizard fisherman.
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We see quite a bit of the Hutts’ homeworld Nal Hutta, where everything is trying to eat something else. It is weird to hear the Hutts speaking human language, as I thought the explanation for why they and others like Chewbacca and Greedo spoke their own languages even when they can clearly understand Basic was that they had trouble physically making the correct sounds, but I guess the Hutts just preferred using Huttese. And not surprisingly, there were quite a few instances where the movie relied on Grogu doing something cute. I liked when he jumped up and down in the refurbished spaceship, as that’s certainly a thing kids do. The bit where he keeps pressing the wrong buttons reminded me of the scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 with Baby Groot repeatedly bringing the wrong thing, although I believe that was considerably longer. It’s also fun that Grogu develops a bond with Rotta. Sigourney Weaver features as the person who gives the Mandalorian his assignments, and Martin Scorsese does the voice of a four-armed monkey-like being who runs a food stand.
BERJAYA

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Road Runner, Road Runner, Runs Down the Road All Day

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Nathan

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The Barbarian of World’s End, by Lin Carter – For some reason, this was the only book in this series I couldn’t find on Kindle, so I bought a used physical copy. As the title suggests, it focuses on Ganelon Silvermane, who has been taken hostage by the wandering and pillaging Ximchak Horde. He gains their respect and eventually becomes their leader, in which role he subtly encourages changes in the people to make them less violent and put their skills to more societally acceptable uses. The story also highlights how Ganelon is still childlike in some respects, as seen when he’s totally unaware of someone trying to seduce him. And there are some more of Carter’s weird creations, like the giant fish Gugluck who’s worshipped as a god. It’s a very light, casual read, and pretty fun, as I’ve come to expect from the Gondwane Epic.

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Angel of the Overpass, by Seanan McGuire – The third book in the Ghost Roads series, which takes place in the same world as the InCryptid books, has the hitchhiker Rose Marshall being tasked by Persephone with finally putting an end to her killer Bobby Cross. Along the way, she helps a trucker at a bombed truck stop get accustomed to his afterlife as a coachman of the dead, frees some ghosts from a poorly set trap at a diner, has an audience with the Anima Mundi, and considers her relationship with her old boyfriend who’d turned into a car who communicates via songs on the radio. There’s also a dinosaur ghost who helps her fight Bobby and his ghost-eating car. It ends with Rose becoming a Fury. McGuire creates an interesting version of the afterlife that mixes elements from classical mythology and urban legends.

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The Carpet People, by Terry Pratchett – This was Pratchett’s first published book, from when he was only seventeen. The edition I read was revised in 1992, so it’s more of a mix of how he wrote at different ages. It’s about a microscopic civilization that’s developed on a carpet, and sees the hairs like trees and things that fell onto the rug as landmarks. When the Munrungs’ village is destroyed by a force they don’t understand, they make a pilgrimage to find a new home on the other side of the carpet. Characters include a shaman who uses scientific methods that are pretty much unheard of on the carpet, and a philosopher who qualifies everything he says. Pratchett muses on some themes that would come into play even more heavily in the Discworld series and other later stuff, like tradition, war, and government. It promotes negotiation and coexistence over fighting and representative leadership over inherited, while slyly admitting that it’s difficult for these things to catch on.

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Snake-Eater, by T. Kingfisher – I suppose this would be considered a horror novel, although it’s also about someone finding a supportive, accepting community. I glimpsed a review that calls it “cozy horror.” Selena was raised by an overbearing religious mother and had an abusive partner. Trying to get away, she travels to Arizona to visit her aunt, only to find that she’s died. The neighbors don’t mind her staying there for a while anyway, and she befriends the cool old lady Grandma Billy (and she’s trans, which doesn’t affect the story much, but is good representation) and a kindly, tolerant priest who tries to reconcile local beliefs in nature spirits with his Catholic faith. His mother is actually a javelina spirit. Selena finds herself haunted by a terrifying roadrunner god who had some kind of relationship with her aunt and was responsible for her death. When this god seems to think she’s accepted mating gifts, she has to appeal to the other animal spirits. Overcoming Snake-Eater still doesn’t prepare her for having to face her emotionally abusive fiance again, but fortunately her neighbors are there to help her. Incidentally, I saw someone reading a Kingfisher book on the subway last night, but I couldn’t tell which one it was.

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The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson – In an interesting mix of genres, hostile aliens, the Wesgorix, arrive in an English town in 1345. I immediately remembered that there was a movie called Cowboys vs. Aliens, and while I know nothing about it, it sounds like the same sort of unlikely combination. The inhabitants are able to kill the invaders with their medieval weapons, despite the aliens having ray guns. They leave one alive and try to make him fly the spaceship to France, but they end up on a faraway planet instead. There’s a good amount about the English and the alien trying to communicate, including language issues and that the visitor is totally unable to understand Christianity. At one point, he assumes a rosary is an abacus. The local baron, Sir Roger, and his forces are able to take control of the ship and win several battles against the Wesgorix, and Roger is able to overthrow the Wesgorix and create his own interplanetary empire. The story is mostly narrated by the monk Brother Parvus, the one who is able to figure out the Wesgor language. The story was made into a board game.

Posted in Animals, Authors, Board Games, Book Reviews, Catholicism, Christianity, Discworld, Games, ghost roads, Greek Mythology, Humor, incryptid, Language, Mythology, Native American, Philosophy, Politics, Relationships, Religion, seanan mcguire, Technology, Terry Pratchett, Urban Legends, ursula vernon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Uh-Oh, Better Get Mako

Posted on May 29, 2026 by Nathan

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I played through part of the original Final Fantasy VII when it was still fairly new, but I never finished it. I think I remember getting to the part where the rocket was launched. So I’m playing through it again on Switch, and it seems pretty similar to the original, with a few changes like Aerith learning how to conjugate.
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So far, I’ve finished what was Disc One for the PlayStation and reached the Icicle Inn. I know this was a popular introductory role-playing game, but I was already familiar with the three FF games we already had over here, and VII kind of felt like it was trying to be a gritty, edgy, modern kind of entry. Part of this might be because of Nintendo’s censorship and sloppy translations, but I get the impression that even though there were some mature elements that were left out of the earlier versions, they weren’t that significant to the games in general. I do remember Strago in FF6 saying that Relm had a foul mouth when there weren’t really examples of this, and Cyan having a pornographic magazine, but those were pretty minor details. It’s pretty early on in 7 that you have to save one of your companions from a blatant rapist and sex trafficker in a red light district. Both Barret and Cid curse quite a bit, although sometimes it’s written out and other times just uses symbols.
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And I have to wonder whether Nintendo might not have allowed Tifa’s chest to be that prominent. A mad scientist wanting to force a woman and a lion into mating is also pretty disturbing, although it doesn’t actually happen. It’s also more modern in many ways. All of the previous FFs had some advanced technology, and 6 felt like it was in sort of a nineteenth-century level with trains and steam engines, although some aspects were still fantastic medieval. The world of 7 has motor vehicles, television, refrigerators, and machine guns. It’s common in earlier installments for more advanced tech to have come from lost civilizations, but while there’s one of those here, the Cetra were apparently more nature-loving hippies than inventors.
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The initial villains are members of a corrupt corporation that’s managed to control pretty much everything. There’s an old joke, often attributed to George Carlin but probably not actually from him, that America is an oil company with an army. That’s pretty much literally what Shinra is. There’s an environmental theme mixed in with a bit of spirituality, that all living things become part of the Planet after they die, and Shinra has been harvesting this spirit energy to provide electricity. Not only is it hurting the Planet, but there have been generator disasters, and bringing in these reactors often devastates local economies. I have to wonder what kind of power Mako energy is supposed to represent. Coming directly from the Planet sounds like geothermal, but it’s like fossil fuels in that it comes from the remains of dead things (only spiritual instead of physical in this case), and it’s radioactive like nuclear energy. Midgar is a fancy modern city, but it’s also very stratified, with the slums lower down and sometimes with infrastructure made of garbage. And President Shinra doesn’t seem to have any moral qualms with crushing part of the slums for propaganda purposes.
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Wouldn’t it have made more sense to name the place suspended in the air after Asgard instead of the mortal world? The Norse mythological theme does continue with Cloud and Tifa’s hometown of Nibelheim.

The main hero in this game is Cloud, who’s mysterious to everyone, including himself, as his memory has been tampered with.
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I remember thinking the reveal of how he had his identity changed was kind of weak, but we’ll have to see if I feel differently about it this time, as I haven’t gotten to that part yet. His main weapon is the gigantic Buster Sword, which I suspect is a mistranslation of “bastard sword.” Barret is a former miner turned eco-terrorist after Shinra destroyed his hometown, with him losing an arm in the process and having it replaced with a gun. Tifa and Aerith are both played as potential love interests for Cloud, the former being his childhood friend and the latter a flower seller with mystical powers who sees her old boyfriend in him (for reasons related to the memory thing). Her biological mother was one of the Cetra.
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Red XIII, whose real name is Nanaki, is a talking feline who’s forced to walk on his hind legs at one point, probably a reference to the Cowardly Lion in the MGM The Wizard of Oz.
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Cait Sith is an intentionally weird character, a robotic cat riding on a Moogle doll, really a robot controlled by a Shinra spy. Cid is portrayed as a cantankerous old pilot and engineer who’s past his prime, but he’s only supposed to be thirty-two, so he’s more of a cantankerous young man who thinks he’s past his prime.
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Playable characters in this series tend to skew young, but the previous three had at least one in the sixty-and-over range, which this one does not. And Yuffie is this game’s headstrong youth, but at sixteen she’s a bit older than early-game Rydia, Relm, or Krile. I haven’t yet recruited the brooding mercenary Vincent, who’s technically over fifty but was in stasis for a lot of his years. The main villain, Sephiroth, has a similar backstory to Kefka, in that he was subjected to experiments by the evil organization that made him incredibly powerful, but also severely mentally damaged.
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But while Kefka is a nihilist joker, Sephiroth is more a combination of angsty and arrogant, although he does still taunt people. And he’s obsessed with his mother, the alien parasite Jenova, and comes to work largely for her ends.
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A lot of the game so far has consisted of chasing Sephiroth around the map, which Shinra are also doing for their own purposes. It’s kind of weird that your enemies will sometimes fight you but not bother at other times.

The gameplay is pretty similar to other games in the series, turn-based but also active time, so the enemies can make extra moves if you don’t make yours quickly enough. The equipment system is simplified, with each character allowed a weapon, a piece of arm armor (I don’t know how that protects the rest of your body), and an accessory. You learn magic through Materia that can be equipped on weapon slots, and anyone can use any of these, just as all the FF6 characters could after discovering Magicite. The heroes’ individual attack styles mostly come out in their Limit Breaks, powerful abilities they can access when a bar fills up. These also link some of them more closely with traditional job classes in the series: Cloud as a warrior or knight, Tifa a monk, Aerith a white mage, Cid a dragoon (as suggested by his surname), Yuffie a ninja, and Cait Sith a gambler. I’m not as sure about the other three. There are a few different modes of transportation, and while I haven’t gotten the airship yet, I have obtained a buggy that goes over rough terrain, and the Tiny Bronco, Cid’s plane that flies over shallow water like the hovercraft in FF4.
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What’s with the single quotation marks? Are they not really deserts or rivers?
You can still be attacked by monsters while riding in the buggy, but not the Bronco, or the recurring Chocobos. While I’ve played several games with maps that rotate while you’re walking through them, I still find them rather difficult to navigate, and it doesn’t help that I’m playing this in handheld mode.
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FF7 is also full of minigames that generally require different skills than the main game, which is interesting but, to my mind, not entirely fair. Some of them will still let you progress if you don’t do very well, but you can get bonuses if you’re good at them. I couldn’t get the hang of the marching in Junon, but was fine with the posing. One location you visit a few times, the Gold Saucer, is full of games that you can play to win currency that’s only good there.
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The theme song was very obviously inspired by the Main Street Electrical Parade music from Disneyland.

Maybe that’s the real reason Kingdom Hearts exists.
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It is a little disappointing that Moogles apparently only exist as stuffed toys and characters from arcade games, as that’s another whimsical element of the series that’s downplayed here.
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Anyway, I’ll probably write another entry on this game when I’ve finished playing it, or am at least close to the end.BERJAYA

Posted in Characters, Corporations, Final Fantasy, Humor, Magic, Maps, Monsters, Music, Mythology, Names, Norse, Oz, Religion, Technology, Video Games | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

There’s Too Much Love

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Nathan

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Obsession – This is a rather disturbing film about a toxic relationship, directed by Curry Barker. While I hadn’t heard of him before, I understand he’s a comedian, so I guess he’s joined the ranks of Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger in going on to do horror. It’s a horror movie with some comedic elements, but generally uncomfortable ones. It’s about a guy named Baron, or Bear for short, who uses a One Wish Willow, a novelty item from a new age store, to wish his crush Nikki would love him “more than anyone in the world.” The wish works, but as expected, it has unintended consequences. Nikki becomes dangerously codependent, refusing to ever leave Bear, and lying and guilt tripping him in order to manipulate him into staying. And she often injures herself pretty severely. At one point when he does go to work without her, she just stands in one spot all day, peeing and pooping while there. She does some very unhinged things, including making Bear’s dead cat into a sandwich. There are moments where her true personality comes through, and she wails like she’s trapped. But perhaps the worst part is that Bear comes across as a total moron. Obviously he doesn’t think his wish is actually going to come true, but once it does, he never tries to get her any kind of help until much later on. He seems to think he can make this forced relationship work, and doesn’t totally let go of the idea even after she does horrible things. One of their mutual friends thinks it looks like he’s taking advantage of her, and another thinks she’s taking advantage of him. They’re both kind of true, but Nikki has little to no agency in this situation. He seems pretty clueless even before he makes the wish, like when he doesn’t tell Nikki that the reason he doesn’t want to go to trivia night is partially because his cat died. Then he says he got her a present, but refuses to give it to her. Later, he tries to make another wish that Nikki would only like him as a friend. While this would have been pretty innocuous at one point, this is after she’s already brutally killed their other friend Sarah in a fit of jealousy. He’s not only considering that she might not want to be his friend after he’s put her through all that, but also that it would mean he was staying friends with a murderer. He finally ends up killing himself by overdosing on the same pills that killed the cat at the beginning. The camera shows that there’s another broken One Wish Willow on a table, but I didn’t realize that Nikki had used it to wish he felt about her the same way she felt about him, which is why he initially tries to throw up the pills, then starts being affectionate towards her right before dying. His death cancels the wish, but she’s obviously traumatized that her friend is dead in her lap. And I don’t even know how much she remembers about what she did while enchanted.

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