[Final Fantasy IX SPOILER WARNING]

I have just finished FInal Fantasy IX.  As anybody who has played the game all the way through can imagine, I’m full of emotion over its conclusion.  Wow.  To be honest, the penultimate 3-4 hours of the game left me wanting a bit.  Zidane’s dialogue seemed to continually become more shallow, Vivi’s role had all but concluded, and the Terra story was surely quite a bit more compacted than the earlier arcs.

However, the final disputes with Garland, Kuja, the Necron, and the very concepts of memory and death were just absolutely masterful.

Yet, I am finding as a I reflect that the strongest impression of all is the incredible growth of Steiner from a stodgy, militant, and even somewhat ignorant pawn to a realized, humble, gracious knight.  It’s as if he were promoted on a chess board in one of those rare games where it makes more sense to ask for a knight than a queen.  The knight is, after all, the only piece that can ever be more advantageous than a queen, but this is an exceedingly rare occurance.  The queen has enormous raw power and lasting ability to control the board.  The knight offers something different: a creative mathematical solution to an otherwise intractable jam of pieces.

And to a degree, that’s the way that Steiner’s character increasingly plays out as the game moves forward.

He’s right not to trust Zidane at first, of course.  However, even after it becomes abundantly clear to everyone – not just the player, but the entire party – that Queen Brahne is the real source of danger, Steiner has a huge struggle in letting go of his loyalty to her because it is the core of his identity.  This struggle defines his growth for the next 30-40 hours of the game, culminating in a realization that his loyalty was never to the Queen, but to Alexandria, and more importantly, to the peace.

One of the clear theses of Final Fantasy IX is that a government that is handed enormous power will abuse it.  Brahne, and ultimately even Kuja, are villains with whom the player is forced to feel an enormous level of compassion.  The blame for Queen Brahne’s warmongering is laid unambiguously at the doorstep of Kuja’s arms dealing.  In turn, Kuja is very successfully painted as the scorpion to Zidane and Dagger’s tortoise – there was simply no way for Kuja to subvert his nature until his very end.  In this way, he’s less dissimilar to Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth than he seems at first.

Steiner, though, is the one who has to sort through this mess, because he is the one most aligned with Brahne and has the most to lose if Alexandria falls.  I know – you’re thinking that surely Dagger has a greater investment, but my sense was that Dagger’s identity crisis was continually bringing her further back in time to her biological roots.  To test this, ask yourself: of the two razings that she had to witness, which came to define her more in the end, that of Alexandria or that of Madain Siri?  Even though the former left her more shocked, I attest that the latter came to define her.  Her vision at Memoria wasn’t of being cared for as a Princess, it was being evacuated as one of the last surviving members of a species.

Thus, if Steiner is really the character bearing the brunt of the political upheaval following the Queen’s death – and I submit that he is – then he is left with some powerful decisions to make.  For starters, he had every reason and right to stay put when the party returns to Alexandria.  He claims to leave out of a desire to protect Dagger, but it’s clear that he’s torn between join Beatrix in beginning to rebuild and seeing through his commitment to Zidane’s need to right the deeper wrong in the world.

Following this decision, Steiner becomes increasingly transparent about his desire to be a meaningful part of the team.  His loyalty becomes connected more to his friendships and less to his politics. He makes a similar decision to board the HIlda Guarde instead of staying in Lindblum.  And again, when he decides to pursue Garland and vows not to return until he does.

At the biting moment when Zidane decides to save Kuja, Steiner may think he’s nuts, but I got the sense that Steiner, more than any other party member, wanted to join Zidane – wanted to be a fully realized knight and friend.  What a contrast from disc 1!

Steiner’s true moment, though, without a doubt, is in the final cutscene.  His joy at Dagger’s joy over seeing Zidane is true realization for him.  Full circle. I shed a tear.  In fact, the egregiously cheesy circumstances of his rendezvous with Beatrix (ie, Eiko’s letter) actually seemed charming in light of this new Steiner.

While Vivi is surely the most obvious and more refined story of personal growth, I think that Steiner is the true embodiment of the transformational identity that makes Final Fantasy IX the game that it is.

After Riddle’s victory against Chris Clements (with the amazing arm triangle osoto gari), I watched his fight against John Maguire with some esteem and excitement.

Then, following his clear (if less exciting) victory over Maguire, I read, on reddit and sherdog, a general assessment unfold that he hadn’t improved, developed, or matured as a fighter during his time in the UFC.

Now, to look at his progress from Clements to Maguire, this is not an unreasonable assessment of Riddle. However, let’s remember that he didn’t camp for Maguire – he took the fight on a week’s notice.

With my curiosity building, I went back and watched his loss to Sean Pearson, which I previously hadn’t seen.  I was amazed at how different a fighter Riddle was.  His punches were all over the place.  He had no sense of his range.  He didn’t capitalize on opportunities, even those that he created.

In short, the Matt Riddle who narrowly lost to Pearson was not the same Matt Riddle that has now won 3 in a row (and yes, he beat Chris Clements – don’t talk to me about this no contest nonsense).

His striking has vastly improved and is now backed with a very credible threat of reliable but creative BJJ.  Now project three more fights into the future, factoring in this pace of improvement.  Riddle suddenly seems like a very interesting ingredient in the Welterweight soup.

So I ask:

How can anyone possibly say he hasn’t developed? He has come a long, long way in his last five fights.

In fact, I think that Riddle is destined to be a contender. Am I crazy?

His best weapon is his attitude – his smile comes straight from his heart. Alone, these do nothing as we know – in fact they can even be setbacks. But when combined with his awesome wrestling, creative submissions, and apparent judo chops (in his last two fights he has attempted osoto gari, ouchi gari, ashi barai, and uchi mata), these things do mean something.

The more you punch this kid, the more fired up he gets. The harder you try to take him down, the happier he becomes. He outlasts and he shines.

If he can fix up his boxing and continue to mature at this pace, I think that the 170lbs division will be facing a significant question:

How do you beat someone who gets stronger every time you punch him?

Now that’s a riddle. An Unsolvable Riddle.

(And also, even though I kinda like the name “Deep Waters,” I just want to hear Bruce Buffer say “Matthew…. The Unnnnnsolvable Riddle!”)

I happen to intend to attend my anchor class at New Paltz Karate tonight.

Even if I didn’t, it seems to me that anything I choose to do will be a better use of my time than watching the debate.

Criticism of the candidates and the election aside, here’s what I want to add to the dialogue:

I feel the narrative that I’m “supposed” to swallow, and I sense the role of the debate in advancing it.  It goes like this:

Romney will “win” the debate, despite an absurd and dreadful performance.  Polls and corporate media outlets will insist that the debate advanced Romney’s position enough that he’s in striking distance of electoral victory.

This, of course, is supposed to compel everyone to rally around Obama.  And that’s all this election is really about.  Preventing a scarier candidate from occupying the White House is the only way that we can be convinced to support Obama.

Are you on the Jenkins bandwagon?

If so, you might have noticed a bit of drag on the wagon wheels – if you have any kind of serious requirements file for your build.  It’s very plausible that the build of your virtualenv can take 4x longer than your actual unit test suite.  So why build your virtualenv if your requirements haven’t changed?

Shining Panda’s Virtualenv Builder almost does this.

#!/bin/bash -x

set -e
set -u

ve=$1
reqs_file=$2

# Create the virtualenv if it doesn't exist.

if [ ! -d "$ve" ]; then
virtualenv "$ve"
fi

# Activate fails with -u
set +u
source "$ve/bin/activate"
set -u

# Figure out whether the requirements file has changed.
set +e
md5sum -c "$ve/requirements.md5"
set -e

nomatch=$?

if [[ $nomatch = 1 ]] ; then
# Our md5 didn't match.  Thus, our requirements file has changed.
# Create the new md5 hash
md5sum requirements/apps.txt > "$ve/requirements.md5"
# ...and install from the new reqs file.
pip install -r "$reqs_file" --upgrade
else
echo "Build requirements have not changed."
exit 0
fi