[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!”)

Disclaimer: As many of my readers already know, I am from Binghamton.  Thus, I have a certain connection in my heart to Jon Jones and his rise.  Although I support his practice of dominance that puts my hometown on the map, this work is an effort to harness a more dispassionate feeling about this particular bout.

The Mainstream Narrative

The current, mainstream narrative of UFC: 145 Jones vs. Evans goes like this:

Rashad Evans, famed takedown artist and ground-and-pounder, is singular in his intention: he immediately but earnestly forces Jones onto his back, a position in which he has only 12 seconds experience in his UFC career.

Jones, once on his back, pulls the latest in his series of surprises.  He survives the first round comfortably, in contrast to the typical experience of being underneath Rashad Evans.  He invites his former teacher into moments of side control and half gaurd (perhaps in a scenario akin to the Joe Roganism “corner mount”) but deals with each strike gracefully, throwing upward elbows of his own at a modest pace.

Early in the second round, Jones sprawls again only briefly before continuing negotiaions from below.  In round 2, however, Jones is less complacent about Evans’ strikes.  He attempts an armbar from underneath.  The crowd goes wild as Evans, perhaps with just the slighest smirk escaping from one side of his mouthpiece, escapes the technique with elegance and moves on.

Then, in a pivotal moment for the sport, Evans punches hard, missing Jones’ cranium handily and falling substantially off balance.  Jones, knowing that the world is watching in slow motion, wraps Evans up in a picture-perfect triangle, pulling his own ankle into the crotch of his knee to the rhythm of the camera shutters all around the cage.

Evans briefly bears a look of consternation – it fades rather quickly into complacence as he taps out to the choke.

Bloggers everywhere proclaim, with no irony intended, that UFC 145 demonstrates unequivocally what everyone has wanted to say since he bested Shogun: that Jones is it.  The greatest fighter in MMA history.

Meanwhile, in a nearby alternate universe…

Another completely separate narrative of this fight exists.  I can’t find a compelling account of it anywhere, so I have to assume that folks are keeping it closely guarded in their imaginations, hoping to save face when the inevitable mainstream narrative becomes reality.

Yet, this alternative is not at all difficult to imagine.  It goes like this:

Round 1.  Jones, defying the imaginations of only the utterly predictable, begins standing tall.  He knows that this appears to be a stark contrast to the crawling with which he has begun his last two bouts.  He weaves and walks close to the center, anticipating the immediacy and inevitability of the Evans takedown attempt that defines the mainstream narrative.

To Jones’ surprise, it does not come.  Not in the first 10 seconds; not in the first minute; not in the first round.

Instead, Evans works the inverse economy of the trade that Machida attempted:  Instead of trading a hook punch for an overcommited liver or body kick, Evans is content to allow Jones to land a glancing blow in exchange for his real treasure: a solid kick to either one of Jon Jones’ untested, nearly massless thighs.

For the first round, this is taken – quite literally – in stride.  Nobody says or thinks much about it.

Round 2, in appearance, is a repeat of round 1.  Jones lands a few punches, some of them with a seriousness that at first looks genuine but quickly turns out to be superficial.  Evans continues the punishment of the muscle matter that constitute the thighs of Jon Jones.

Two things change:

First, everyone takes notice that Evans’ leg kicks are not in jest – they are part of a plan.  Notably, it has the character of the first serious, comprehensive plan that Jones has faced.  It is a deployment of leg kicks unseen since Jose Aldo slowly and scientifically applied them in disabling fashion to Uriah Faber.

Second, Jones himself notices.  He switches stances frequently as per usual, but his facial expression betrays the obvious fact that this shit hurts, and he’s going to lose one of his legs pretty soon.  Southpaw becomes – at best – a backup.

Round 3. To the best of Evans’ ability, an absolutely uncreative (if boring) sequale to the first two rounds.  Yes, Jones surprises with a flying knee or a takedown attempt of his own, but for the most part this round turns out to be disastrously uneventful but for the ongoing damage to the outer thighs of our champion.

Round 4. Evans corner has made clear that its time to deploy phase 2.  Jones: frightened.  He is committing less.  His facial expression has changed.  His authority as champion – as conductor of the orchaestra of the body parts that make up UFC 145 – has been questioned with volume and pride by Evans.  Evans begins the round by moving with certainty to the center of the cage to a Jones full of anticipation and hope.  Hope that his poor legs will be left alone and that the fight will radically change to a dynamic that more intimately involves his upper body.

Jones quickly wishes he had watched what he had wished for.

Evans, taking the bruised Jones down with ease, finds himself in the guard of a champion who is numb and tingly from thigh to ankle.  He begins pounding.  And he doesn’t stop.  Soon Jones’ consciousness absconds, and Evans finds himself in side control, mercilessly applying hammer fists to his former student’s temple, no doubt in a manner that Evans once advised Jones – at all costs – avoid.

Evans bores with side control, moving gracefully into full mount and smothering the airways of the troubled Jones with his chest.  Jones has quadrupled (or more) his cummulative time on his back in this fourth round, yet hasn’t had the gumption to attempt a single technique from below.  Evans waits a few seconds, hugging his former student with pride – metaphorically whispering into his ear a reminder that yes, his future as a champion and a legend is surely his birthright – before posturing up and punching him.

Punching him like he has never, ever been punched before.  Jones’ will is broken, and he too is filled with the sense that providence has brought his career into check.  TKO is declared seconds later.  Both fighters are filled with a deep, heart-claiming pride.  Evans wishes he had the self-assured nature to lay on the canvas with his student and hug him, but instead he stands up and does his best to boast.

Evans takes the belt, Jones is reminded of his mortal nature, and MMA moves on.

I’m not saying that I’m predicting this precise outcome, I’m just saying that, for me, it’s as belivable a narrative as the mainstream version.  For all the enthusiasm about the superhumanity of my hometown hero, it is not difficult for me to imagine a night that instead reminds him that yes, he is after all a human being.

Tonight, we’ll find out which course belongs to this reality.  Here. We. Go.

I have spent a good amount of time today conducting some research on “Operation Payback,” (sometimes also called “Operation Avenge Assange”) and pondering whether or not it represents a tactical toolbox that is appropriate as a response to the recent trend of government and corporate entities attempting to cut off support (financial and otherwise) from wikileaks.

(If you aren’t familiar with the background of this story, here’s some background.)

First, of course, I wanted to be on the “inside” of the story and really see the play-by-play of what was happening.  I tried to go to the publicly announced planning center, a chat room on irc.anonops.net.  Unfortunately, this domain name had also been the target of the volley of attacks that was transpiring.  However, a nice gentlemen in the #wikileaks channel of irc.freenode.net directed me to the server by IP address: 88.198.224.117.  Do have a visit with your IRC client if you are interested.

Upon arrival, I was prompted to check out #operationpayback, the central meeting spot for these hacktivists.  Once in the channel, I was astounded at the pace of the conversation – about 5-7 comments EVERY SECOND.

Most were updates on the state of the LOIC (Low-Orbit Ion Cannon), the tool of choice for taking mastercard.com down from the Internet (LOIC is, or at least was, a fairly mainstream tool for testing server defenses).  The tone was absolutely jovial – mastercard.com was down, and the mainstream media regarded the events of this chatroom as headline-worthy.

Yet, I did not get a sense of constructive, radical civic duty.  In fact it seemed to me that the average age (judging by comment maturity and grammer) was probably about 14.

I do understand how a person of a different bent might derive a bit of glee from the spectacle of the denial of service attack being coordinated.  I, however, noticed a very different sentiment unfold in my gut:

Mere destruction of existing power structures, without contemporaneous (or, for that matter, preceding) construction of alternatives is unlikely to ever result in sustainable positive change.

May I suggest to all the people who are distressed about Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and whomever else abandoning Wikileaks that their mission needs to be to build peaceful, sustainable alternatives to Amazon, Visa, and Mastercard?

May I further suggest that this is the only truly radical use of information technology?  Destruction has been possible (and in fact normative) since the beginning of time.  Only now, however, is parallel construction possible.

Stop the temper tantrum.  Stop the blame game.  Instead, just work toward an information age where the the quasi-censorship that has characterized the industrial age is mathematically precluded at the infrastructural level.  I suspect that thanks for this work will come not only from Wikileaks (and all those who are spiritually motivated by its basic premises) but in fact also from governments and corporations too.  Everybody has an interest in the tech infrastructure working more efficiently and smoothly, and this will naturally translate to lower costs and increased availability in disadvantaged communities.

Make no mistake: I’m not happy about the treatment wikileaks is getting. But is this really the best that we can come up with as a response? Have we really run out of civil, ethical, and constructive ways to deal with these kinds of issues? If so, doesn’t that make us as bad as “them?”

I urge the young, tech-savvy people who are concerned about technological freedom: shut down LOIC, start up Eclipse and Miro, and get to work – there’s plenty to be done.