Frostfall

Goddess On The Mountain by Liquidd-1

May 4: Born on the first breath of summer, the Dream-Child finds the Walking Way.

November 4: The crown is seized for the Empire of One, bringer of summer to winter.

May 4: The Woman-Goddess convenes the Summit on the Mountain and touches the Sky.

November 4:

Birth and Death and Order and Chaos are two sides of the Looking-Glass that intersect at the turning of the year. The In-Between days remind us that such things are universes apart brought together at the World Tree, the I. Dreamers of Godhood within the Dream of Godhead. We exist at the point between opposite extremes where opposite extremes exist together within themselves. The Mirror-Globe reflects images of ourselves and our own future-past. And so it all begins again.

Helgafell. Myths tell us this is the burial mound of the Icelandic heroine Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir. It is venerated as a sacred place of peace and enlightenment: It was the birthplace of the historian Ari Thorgilsson the Learned and once held a library of knowledge. It is also, perhaps because of its resemblance to a house with a door, seen as a gateway to other worlds.

What do we mean when we talk about Homeland? It's a question that has occupied my mind a lot this year. I was born and raised in Vermont and have spent my entire life here, but for the longest time I never considered myself a serious “Vermonter”, except by tautological default, largely because I guess I never knew what that really meant. Every place has a regional identity, and Vermont is no different, but “Vermonter” definitely means something special over here. It's just it took me awhile to figure out what that was, possibly because I've tended to be as isolated from my fellow Vermonters as much as I've been isolated from everyone else (not typically by choice, I hasten to add).

My parents moved here from Southwestern New York, bluntly, to hide. They wanted to be left alone and to be closer to the wilderness. Also though, I think they moved here because it reminded them of the United Kingdom and the British Isles, of which they're both enormous fans. There's a settlement on a mountain fifteen minutes away from me called New Ireland, and just beyond that is the stretch of land known as the Northshire, which is pretty much like what it sounds like it'd be like. They don't call this part of the United States New England just because it was the first place the pilgrims settled: There are parts of the Northeast US that would catch the eye of any Anglophile or visitor from across the pond. This all made sense to me. Until recently.

There are very few events I've lived through that I can decisively point to and say they conclusively changed my life. I can count them probably on half of one hand. Late 2010 into 2011 was a confluence of those events, including a chance meeting with a quirky and esoteric band of bloggers and Internet writers who would go on to become some of my closest friends and the first people I could comfortably and unhesitatingly call colleagues. But there are two important ones for the context of this piece: First was Vermont's behaviour in the 2010 midterm elections, in which a party of people advocating the state's secession from the United States and transformation into a anarcho-communist republic based around localist ideals blindsided everyone by walking away with a staggering 20% of the vote. They haven't made a lot of noise since, but our state has one of the most uniquely creative and progressive approaches to local politics you'll find anywhere in the US and is a natural breeding ground for that kind of thinking. This was the first time I realised how deathly serious we were about that. Vermont is one of the only places where the heart of the true and truly radical left still beats loudly in this country, and I suddenly realised I was a fit for this place.

But what actually is Vermont? I can't tell you objectively, as no-one can. But I'm sure my fellow Vermonters have a lot of strong opinions about it. I can, however, speak from my own personal experience. And I don't think Vermont is part of New England. I think it's something else. Whenever I spend time in Connecticut or Boston I don't really feel at home there. It doesn't feel like part of the same larger entity to me: It feels more like whenever I visit the Mid-Atlantic: It's close, both geographically and climatologically, and there's certainly a continuity, but it's not quite the same thing (no offense meant to my dear friends Phil and Maddy who do live in Connecticut and Boston, respectively: I'm sure they have just as complex feelings about where they live as I do). New Hampshire and Maine might be closer, but I still find them regionally distinct enough.

I'm not just talking about our quirky politics and local identity. There's an energy about this place I notice that I don't find everywhere. This year I read a wonderful book called Running with the Fairies which is an ethnography of the “Fairy Faith” in Ireland, which is in some ways an evolution of the earlier NordicXCelticXGermanic animism and folklore blended with bits of later Christian teachings. They use much the same language, saying that the Earth Magick, which they associate with the Fairies (who can be air or earth elementals) is stronger in some places than it is in others. The only other place I know I've felt a similar power or presence so far is, weirdly, Cape Cod, which is about as distinct from the rest of Massachusetts and New England as Vermont is...and almost as distinct from Vermont. Cape Cod is the place where the land disappears into sea and sky. The Outer Lands. It is, in the words of its greatest biographer, the Outermost, closer in kin to the Atlantic Ocean then to North America. It's also, funnily enough, probably the only other place in the US that has as staunchly radical, progressive and fiercely independent identity as we do. The exploits of Provincetown alone, at the very tip of the island, are legendary.

My parents always joke that I was born in the wrong part of the world. That I'm really a sea person who should move somewhere more tropical. It is true that I'm a surfer and subscribe to a lot of the beliefs and philosophies of the old surfers from Polynesia (not so much the commercialized glamour show of Southern California). I've had a fascination with that part of the world for years, and some of the first works that really captured my interest were nature documentaries about the ocean and movies like Disney's The Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid statue sits off the Langelinie boardwalk in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Cape Cod, thanks to its unique location, has really bizarre weather patterns. It's in the North Atlantic, but it attracts plant and animal species more commonly found in subtropical and tropical coastal environments, typically as it's a convenient pit-stop during the migrations that happen in the leadup to every winter and summer. Thanks to deforestation and the harshness of the ocean, the entire island is now covered in a twisted, gnarled, dried-out blanket of pine barrens, which just makes the whole place feel rawer and more elemental.

Cape Cod is home to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, at one time the leading such institute in the world. Doctor Robert Ballard was based there, and launched his expedition to find the wreck of the RMS Titanic from Woods Hole. I wrote him a fan letter once.

Skálholt map, showing Norse conception of the Americas. The Vikings told of settlements in a region of North America called Vinland, or "meadow-land" where there was no snow in winter. Some scholars have placed the settlement Kjalarnes at Cape Cod.

The other event from 2010 and 2011 that changed the course of my life was the launch of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Skyrim is a serious contender for not just my favourite video game ever, but my favourite work of fiction period. But you should probably know that given the fact I can't seem to stop talking about it. I initially just picked up Skyrim simply to give the series one more shot: I'd played an Elder Scrolls game once before, The Elder Scrols IV: Oblivion, at the start of the seventh generation, but it failed to really grab me. I really liked the concept of an open-world action RPG where player choice and the freedom to explore, not just the sprawling world but your own individual experience of the world, was paramount. But the Cyrodiil of Oblivion did nothing for me: It was one big expanse of identical green fields that was the setting for what seemed to me to be a generic rip-off of J.R.R. Tolkien. I didn't know anything about what The Elder Scrolls' Tamriel really meant. Skyrim fixed that for me.

At the beginning of Skyrim, just as in the beginning of any RPG, you're asked to design a character. The Elder Scrolls gives you a choice of eight possible races and two genders: Knowing next to nothing about the background lore of the series I arbitraily made my character a female Nord, as I knew Skyrim took place in their homeland and the player was supposed to be hero of Nordic mythology. It made sense at the time. I gave her a name that was a variation on the name of the heroine of Jan Brett's book The Wild Christmas Reindeer, a story I remembered once enjoying about a spirited stablehand who herds Santa's reindeer. Brett has written many other books set in Scandinavia and the other real-world Nordic countries, and I always appreciate how her meticulous illustrations convey the worlds of the far North she seems to love so much so well.

Desktop wallpaper by Artfall, based on concept art for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

If you're as unfamillair with The Elder Scrolls as I was when I first started Skyrim you would be forgiven for thinking the Nords are simply a stand-in for the Vikings, in particular the generic barbarian Vikings so common to fantasy stories. Start to pay attention to the game a bit more though and you'll find that's not really the case: None of the races in Tamriel have direct real-world parallels. They all draw upon many different cultures, myth cycles and belief systems to create an identity that's at once unique to The Elder Scrolls and also very logical extrapolations and exaggerations of real world patterns of human migration. While the Nords do in many ways resemble Vikings, they're actually far closer to what we know of the pre-Christian, pre-Norse GermanicXCelticXNordic inhabitants of northern Europe and also seem based quite heavily on ancient Egyptians, the Stone Age Megalith builders and, especially in the case of the Skaal (an isolated group of Nords living on the far northern island of Solstheim between Skyrim and Morrowind), the animistic shaman beliefs of the idigenous peoples of the Americas, the Inuit, the First Nations of Canada and the Sami of the Nordic countries.

Very quickly my choice to play a Nord became a retroactive no-brainer. As I was gradually drawn more and more into the game's world I started to feel as connected to the land of Skyrim as its own people do. Skyrim, as a place, means a lot to me now, as much as any real-world “homeland” might. I am still religiously playing the game nearly two years after it was released and have, as of this writing, clocked a little under a thousand hours into just my PC copy. I probably know my way around Skyrim better than I do a lot of real places, and I hardly ever use the game's fast travel feature anymore. I know exactly where I'm going, and I love the land so much I need to experience as much of it as I can. But that's the thing about lands like Skyrim: They are real places: The Tamrielic monomyth tells us the world came into being by the intersection of the primordial forces of Order and Chaos, of Stasis and Change, in the Dreamtime. Chaos traumatically inspires Order to create, and Order creates by lucid dreaming of Creation. Skyrim, like everywhere in Tamriel, is a world built around ideas and dreams and given life by its people, who are all dreaming of it.

Skyrim, goodmorning by Jorian89. Skyrim the way we see it.

One thing the Nords share with many of their Elven counterparts (though they'd never admit it given the longstanding hostility between humans and Mer) is their fixation on what has been described as a process of mythogeneosophy: A Sacred Geneaology that traces their lineage back to the Dawn Times. The primary difference between them and their enemies the Altmer is that the Nords much prefer mutable oral history to staunch objective, obsessively curated records. A Master Narrative for a people who have a troubling tendency to fancy themselves a Master Race. The Nords, by contrast, turn to their history and myths as guidance for how to live their lives day to day, and minor things like “historical accuracy” (if such a thing can every really truly exist) are acceptable casualties if the alternative is giving up a good story that might could help shed new light and new perspectives on whatever current crisis they might be facing. We frequently turn to our heroes, idols, role models and the stories we heard as children in the hope they might help us come to terms with adulthood, and in the process we constantly re-interpret them.

Lewis Carroll always felt children (though really, girls) had a kind of perspective worth holding onto throughout life. Not the blissful naivete of children per se, but more the sense that the world is a grand and wondrous place and that some form of appreciation and acceptance of this makes us happier and healthier, a perspective shared by Shigeru Miyamoto. Maybe that's why we still turn to supposed children's literature like Carroll's Alice in Wonderland diptych, or Miyamoto's Super Mario games...and why works like those are frequently deeper and more meaningful than about 95% of the stuff targeted towards adults. Of course there's no way I could ignore the Once and Future Underqueen on her summoning-day: There's no way she would allow this, and the Dreamtime's Chessmaster checkmates again. As she always does. As she always will.

Alice by Antichristofer is a similar interpretation of the Underqueen and her realm to mine. To me, this version of Wonderland bears an uncanny resemblance to Morrowind. Using DeviantArt's "Browse More Like This" feature on this picture gave me fanart for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

A long time ago, perhaps as many as two decades, I once watched a nature documentary about a woman who lived alone deep within the Boreal Forest of Canada. She was fascinated by the lives of the local moose (known as Elk outside North America) and spent her days trying to join their community and painting gorgeously elabourate portraits of scenes of taiga life. I don't recall much about that special, though I remember the lady's name vividly: Gisèle Benoit. The idea of studying animals from a cultural perspective has always fascinated me. It dates back to the earliest forms of naturalism, back before, like all life sciences, it was subsumed by and folded into the monolithic engines of celular biology and neuroscience. From a zoology perspective this is often called ethology, although it's in many ways actually closer to ethnography and the Kratt Brothers (another team of modern-day naturalists who were big inspirations on my relationship with wildlife) call it “Creature Adventuring”. In fact, this is the primary reason I'm such a big fan of the Pokémon franchise, and what was going to be the philosophical underpinning of the multipart retrospective on that series that's supposed to be here. This was also the primary reason I abandoned the natural sciences to pursue anthropology instead. Years later, Donna Haraway, one of my biggest anthropological inspirations and one of my very favourite writers and thinkers wrote a book entitled When Species Meet, outlining the framework for a new philosophy she called “multispecies ethnography”.

I've always felt a kind of kinship with Canada as a whole, though I've never really been consciously aware of it until recently. I'm closer to Canada than I am to a lot of the United States, and in perhaps more than just a geographic sense. In the 1990s one of the only other television series I made a point to watch whenever I came on apart from Star Trek or Scooby-Doo was Acorn the Nature Nut, hosted by Alberta-based entomologist John Acorn. Like the Kratts and Gisèle Benoit, John Acorn was another naturalist on whom I based my conception of nature. Acorn was also known for his distinctive dry, understated tongue-in-cheek humour also shared by The Arrogant Worms, one of my favourite music acts, and that has been described as distinctly Canadian. I've sometimes been told I have a similar sense of humour. One of my favourite TV shows now is still Survivorman, hosted by Ontario native Les Stroud. What intrigues me the most about Survivorman isn't so much the survival techniques Stroud is ostensibly teaching us, but how intimate he seems to become with the land when he's alone in the wilderness for seven days. The show is as much about our connection to nature and our natural roots as much as it is about what to do if you crash your bike in the Canyonlands in the middle of winter (this is, incidentally, what's missing from not just every other survival show, but every other contemporary nature show period).

Athabasca River Valley, Alberta, as seen from the Geraldine Lakes. The Athabasca River is mentioned in the Arrogant Worms song "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate", and greatly reminds me of Skyrim's soaring mountains and winding valleys.

I don't know what possessed me to, randomly out of the blue, look up Gisèle Benoit online recently, and for what purposes. But I did, and I was curious to see if she had done anything else in the intervening twenty years or so. It turns out she has: She still lives in the Boreal Forest with only her parents and the animals for company, and has put out documentaries, paintings and art books hoping to chroncile the ebb and flow of life in the northern forests and to, in her words, “renew the sacred bond with nature”. One of her more recent masterpieces is a mammoth tome of an art book called Cascapédia, a comprehensive look at life in the titular region through her perspective. Although the book is now out of print, Benoit put the whole thing up on her website for free with annotations under the book's sketches and paintings, all of which bristle with her signature power and emotion. Cascapédia is just what I remembered Gisèle Benoit's work to be like, and, astonishingly (though perhaps predictably) I was taken aback at how much her artwork reminded me of Skyrim: Her renditions of Cascapédia are equally evocative of the atmosphere and energy I sense in Falkreath and Whiterun.

Cascapédia sous la neige, by Gisèle Benoit.

Every once in awhile I'll cross the border into New York with my family. This is largely because if we need to get any substantial shopping done, it's impossible to do that where we live. On the highway coming out of the border town of Bennington and leading towards Albany, there's a ridiculous tourist trap of a place called the Big Moose Deli just across the state line. It advertises itself as “the last stop in New York” and the place to go if you want to stock up on “Vermont Gifts” and souvenir kincknacks. And yes, there is in fact a gold-painted moose on the roof of the building. That and every kind of gaudy, tawdry eyesore you can think of piled up as far as the eye can see in the parking lot. Sadly, it's but one of many such institutions you find as soon as you enter the Mid-Atlantic (though it's probably the worst). Vermont is one of the only four states in the country where roadside billboards and advertising are expressly forbidden (the others being Alaska, Maine and Hawaii) and you don't need a “Welcome to New York” sign to let you know you've crossed over.

My family and I have debated on numerous occasions what precisely the purpose of the Big Moose Deli is. Do tourists think Vermont is one big empty expanse of forests and mountains and that the Big Moose Deli is the last bastion of civilization they'll bear witness to before boldly plumbing the heart of the wilderness? I mean, people do live here, and we can probably sell you better maple syrup, barbecue and handmade crafts. I suppose it is one of the highest profile places between the tri-city area and the ski resort communities if you don't ever leave the highway, and the Big Moose Deli enthusiastically sells itself as the “Gateway to Vermont”.

But that got me thinking that maybe Vermont is a kind of gateway itself: A Gateway to the North. Part of what makes us distinct is that our mountains are known as the Green Mountains, because they're heavily forested instead of rocky. But also I think it's because of our abundance of conifers when compared to the rest of the Northeast US. Climatologically speaking, Vermont is the gradient between two biomes: The mixed broadleaf forests characteristic of southern New England (excepting Cape Cod) and the taiga of Canada. The Boreal Forest. Ironic for a state famous for autumn leaf-watching tourism, the further north you go the more pines you see (and the fewer deciduous trees) and the more and more Vermont starts to look like a proper Northland. Vermont is the space between.

View from the summit of Killington Peak, home of Killington resort. Nicknamed "The Beast of the East", Killington is one of the largest and most challenging descents on the eastern seaboard. Nowadays, it also incorporates the resort at Pico, its neighbouring mountain. Pico is the oldest ski resort in Vermont, founded in 1937 by the Meads, a family of Norwegian immigrants. Daughter Andrea was an Olympic gold medalist. Pico can be seen in the distance.

The closest Canadian province to me is Québec, and I do now wonder how much being so nearby has shaped my positionality. I'm far enough north to feel closer to my neighbours in Canada than to my neighbours in New England or the Mid-Atlantic. In many ways I now consider myself a true Northerner. That said, I'm also far enough south to be disconnected from the sociopolitical machinations of the province, which, given Québec's staunchly and infamously nativist and racist history is probably a good thing. Québec is also where Gisèle Benoit's legal residence is, though the fact she spends most of her time distant and removed from human society in the forests of Cascapédia leads me to wonder how connected she feels to the strife and upheaval going on around her. We were all Wandering Ehlnofey in the Dreamtime. It was the Old Ehlnofey who turned to isolationism, but they did so out of insular, incestuous xenophobia, not a desire to become close to the land and the sky. It was the Wanderers who settled in Alt Mora, the Elder Wood, who learned how to do that.

Concept art for Elise Riggs from the 2012 reboot of SSX. Elise (played by Lucy Liu in SSX Tricky) is a Canadian snowboarder, surfer and base jumper. She's one of my biggest idols and role models. One of my favourite levels in the original SSX Tricky is called "Aloha Ice Jam" and is set on a glacier that's been towed from the arctic to Hawai'i.

In talking about the Alice in Wonderland diptych, Martin Gardner (who, in spite of the numerous problems he had in regard to his scholarship and motives in his other fields and careers, probably remains the foremost authority on Lewis Carroll) once mused on the irony of the mathematician and Reverand Charles Dodgson becoming most famous for his “pagan nonsense”. Gardner was most likely talking about how curious it was for the formative work of Victorian children's literature, and really all children's literature, to have nothing to do with Christianity, or really Westernism in general (indeed, its status as one-part venomously barbed social satire makes it rather the opposite of those things), but I'm going to take him literally. Alice is a pagan queen.

While Alice in Wonderland is very British, it's most evocative of the parts of British culture that predate the arrival of Westerners: All the references to the sídhe, (and to Elves in the working title) and to Otherworlds (including, debatably, Tír na nÓg) make this rather self-evident. It's also quite critical of the parts of Victorian Britain that come out of Westernism, most notably its attitude towards royalty: Gardner describes Carroll as a Tory royalist, but he's always seemed more ambivalent on this front to me and illustrator John Tenniel, a famous polticial cartoonist at the time, certainly seems less enamoured with the whole prospect. Either way, with or without Carroll's and Tenniel's positionalities, it's perfectly easy to afford the work this reading, and I'm not the first to do so.

Meadow Elves, by Nils Blommér, depicts a gathering of Light Elves from Álfheimr, one of the nine worlds of Norse mythology. It is said Elves, like all spirits, would gather to dance on the hills during the festivals of Beltane, Midsummer and Samhain.

One of the things that's most impressed me about the history of the Tamrielic Nords is how logical and sensible it actually sounds. While, as I said, the Tamrielic races have no explicit real-world analogues its tough not to spot the influences in Nordic culture. They're Northerners, and it was through The Elder Scrolls I was finally able to come up with a theory about what that might mean. The Nords, the original Nords from Atmora, not the ones who absorbed too much influence from the Cyrodiilic empire and the Dragons they once revered, were mystical, animistic shamans for whom living as harmoniously with the land as was possible was a virtue of paramount importance, and they worshiped the sky as the domain of deified ancestors, and to understand all of this was to understand enlightenment. These are traits the Tamrielic Nords very overtly share with real-life Northerners: It's a cultural model shared by the Indigenous Americans, the Inuit, the Sami, and the real-life pre-Christian, pre-Norse Nordic peoples, and it decisively sets them apart from Westerners: These people are far more similar to each other than they are to those who originated from France, Italy, Spain and Greece. And its to them who I feel I might share a strong kinship with as well.

Fanart by Rafaken of the Throat of the World, the mountain serving as the symbolic and literal centre of the land of Skyrim. Also debatably the tallest peak in Tamriel. It is said the snow on the Throat of the World cannot melt, and dates back to the Dawn Times. The Nords believe humans were created when Kyne, wife of Shor, breathed life upon its peak. Nowadays, the renegade Dragon Paarthurnax, leader of the the Greybeards (a pacifist order of Nordic monks who devote their lives to worship of the Sky), meditates here on the concept of Voice, and how it can be used to touch divinity.

I suppose this would raise the question of how I reconcile my newfound Northerner heritage with my pre-existing magnetic attraction to the ocean, especially the tropical Pacific. In Norse mythology, Skaði, the Jötunn goddess of winter, skiing and the mountains was once married to Njörd, the god of the sea. While together, they split their time evenly between their two realms, with Skaði spending half the year with her husband in the ocean and Njörd spending the other half with his wife in the mountains. But neither was happy with this arrangement, and each would long for home while away from it, so they eventually divorced. But, strangely enough, I find the people the Northerners are most similar to may actually be the Polynesians.

In Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! and its sequel Donkey Kong Land III, Dixie Kong travels to the "Northern Kremisphere", a Northlands-inspired environment south of tropical Donkey Kong Island, eventually discovering the "Lost World", spoken of in myth and legend. The Northern Kremisphere, much like the Kongs' homeland, features tropical jungles intermixed with snow-capped mountains. The Donkey Kong Land series was one of my first real video game loves. Dixie Kong returns in 2014 in the WiiU sequel Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, by Retro Studios (known for Metroid Prime) and which features Vikings landing on Donkey Kong Island.

Both groups have similar attitudes towards oral history and both revere deified ancestors and elemental spirits. Most critically though, both placed great importance on the interconnectedness of worlds, in particular that of human life with the nature, as they are ultimately one and the same. Both also felt tied to their lands in a very deep and meaningful way-It's just the Poylnesians' “land” was in fact the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, both the Polynesians and the Norse Vikings were exquisite navigators (though the Polynesians were unquestionably superior): In fact, Te Rangi Hīroa's landmark ethnographic history of the Polynesians was titled Vikings of the Sunrise...and was cited by H.R. Ellis Davidson in her comparative analysis of the Celtic, Norse, German and Nordic peoples Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions.

Mauna Kea, as seen from the Ocean. The tallest peak in Hawai'i. Known as Mauna o Wākea, literally "The mountain of Wākea" in the Ancient Hawaiian, and seen as the land of the Gods, home of kind and helpful spirits, the seat of the sky deity Wākea and realm of Poliʻahu, goddess of snow.

I suppose I exist between extremes, or perhaps more accurately where extremes intersect. The Celts divided their year into a light half and a dark half, but it was the in-between times, when both light and dark comingle, that was the most sacred to them. I've never much cared for Fall. Actually, I loathe it. I much prefer Summer and Winter. Like the spirits, I celebrate midsummer and midwinter, but I'm most energized at Samhain and Beltane when summer and winter begin and end and coexist simultaneously. That's when I come alive.

Concept art for Tundraful, the second level of Alice: Madness Returns-American McGee's (of id Software fame) Gothic and surrealist re-interpretation of Alice in Wonderland.

May 4: The Dream-Child takes the Walking Way and learns to Dream.

November 4: The Dreamer Dreams anew, and henceforth Dream becomes Dreamer.

May 4: The Walking Ways lead us to the Mountain, upon which we may touch the sky.

November 4:

SummerXWinter. LightXDark. SeaXSky. These are the names of the Looking-Glass that we find at the turning of the year. The In-Between days remind us that such things are universes apart brought together at the World Tree, the I. Dreamers of Godhood within the Dream of Godhead. We exist at the point between opposite extremes where opposite extremes exist together within themselves. The Mirror-Globe reflects images of ourselves and our own future-past. And so it all begins again.

May 4: Taika, who is Ysmir Storm-Crown, returns as Adaleiz, born Adalhaidis of Atmora.

Snowgirl repainted, by Yoggurt.
 

“Tamriel never belonged to Bethesda. It was the other way around.

As for canon, it's really all interactive fiction, and that should mean something to everyone. That said, I appreciate and understand the stamp of 'official', but I think it will hurt more that it will help in the long run.

TES should be Open Source. It is for me.”

-Michael Kirkbride

Elise Riggs: It’s Good To Be Back (Part II)

Butterfly High

Elise is very intimately connected to my personal history with SSX and the video game medium in general over the past decade. Introduced to the series with SSX Tricky over at my cousin's house (the same one who introduced me to Super Mario Bros. and games in general) I was initially drawn to Kaori because her massive trick stat and hyperactive, cartoon-like personality seemed to me to fit the game's overstated, caricatured tone and atmosphere the best of the characters I saw. However, after a few rounds with Elise I had immediately found my character, not just the one whose play style I liked the best, but the one who I genuinely liked as a person and the game clicked for me.

The first thing that really struck me about Elise was her Devil-May-Care attitude and that she seemed to me to be someone who, despite her constant egomaniacal boasts, knew at heart she wasn't anywhere near as cool as she let on and was really just putting on a bit of an act, but who ultimately didn't care one way or the other because she was doing what she loved. I'll chalk that up to Lucy Liu primarily: Her subdued, withdrawn and nonchalant, crucially not boisterous or confrontational, delivery of lines like “I'll get over it”, “I'll get it next time”, “Easy come, easy go”, “Throwin' it all away” and “Think you're hot stuff, huh?” when Elise falls or gets passed, not to mention the consciously exaggerated and over-the-top bluster of Elise's self-congratulation in general, are all good examples of how a skilled actor can add layers of meaning to a script.

That said, there's enough in the writing of the first two games to support this reading as well I argue: Whether that's due to EA Sports' actual intent or some comical misunderstanding on their part of what passed for hip and trendy amongst the young'uns in 2001 (hence the somewhat amusing inclusion of the slang term “mofo” in a E-rated game; Elise tosses it out to bookend her chatter every once in awhile) is actually beside the point. The implication and meaning I read in either case is that while Elise will trash-talk to keep up appearances, when it gets right down to it she doesn't so much talk as she just does: Letting her actions speak for themselves, concentrating on being the best she can be at something she loves, always keeping in mind she's ultimately answerable to herself and nobody else, and furthermore that she's her own harshest critic. Put another way, Elise's interpretation of “cool” is almost a Glam or Drag version of cool rather than a straight pursuit of fame and popularity: She wears the trappings, and while she always knows she can't take full advantage of them it doesn't bother her in the slightest because her priorities lie elsewhere. Paradoxically, seeing how Elise didn't seem to care about being cool (despite halfheartedly pretending she did) and only concerned herself with following her passions made her seem really cool in a backhanded way to me. The fact Elise was so multi-talented, yet ultimately a bit of a goof with a loose attitude towards style made her really endearing to me and brought to my mind memories of Marsupilami, another character I'd loved as a kid (to the point Elise, rather uncannily for me, even used some of the same slang and vocal inflections, which I thought was awesome).

On top of all that, knowing that my cousin's favourite character was Eddie and mine was Elise added an extra layer of intimacy to my connection with the game in a way that can only happen when two close friends play a multiplayer game together in the same room. It's a great example of how two people can bond over a shared gaming experience, accentuated by what little background information about the characters we got. Despite its pretenses, SSX Tricky was really a retro game, being most comparable in my opinion to classic time-attack and sports pastiche games in the arcade tradition than the big-budget AAA titles that were starting to become the norm in Generation 6. And, just like the characters of those games, SSX icons like Elise and Eddie have very little in the way of biographical information and certainly no elaborate, fleshed out backstory. All we get is just enough for us to get a feel for who they are and what's important about them because that's all we need: Elise is a fun-loving, super confident adventurer with a Glam approach to style, Eddie is a wacky goofball with a huge Afro and a love of pop culture and they're best friends. That's all we needed to know and that's all we required to be able gravitate towards them. And it worked, not just for me and my cousin, but for others who I could share the experience with: Later on, when I got my own copy of the game, I'd introduce my younger sister to it the same way I'd been introduced once she reached gaming age and I could bond with someone else through the simple joy of SSX Tricky's arcade revivalism and pure fun.

Only 11 years later and the video game industry is a vastly different place than it was my cousin invited me to pick up SSX Tricky for the first time and I've seen every twist, turn and bizarre lateral turn it's taken. Through all that Elise and SSX have been almost a kind of constant for me: Despite the series experimenting and making many changes over its life, it's remained remarkably consistent, both in terms of core gameplay and more broadly thematically and tonally, which can be rare on a long-running game series (just take a look at the Sonic the Hedgehog series for an example of how that can go badly wrong). Despite maintaining a solid intellectual footing, SSX never feels stale because just enough is polished from entry to entry to keep the series feeling fresh (just take a look at The Legend of Zelda series for an example of how that can go badly wrong!). And, just like the series she hails from (and in spite of the brief speed bump that was SSX 3) Elise has never compromised her ideals, but remains on top of an ever-changing cultural zeitgeist, her rotating stable of jobs and hobbies becoming a metaphor for her ability to adapt, and that of the series as a whole. Elise and SSX have kept me playing through a generation of tight, hectic competition (Generation 6), helped ease me into one of the most radical, groundbreaking console launches and generational shifts of all time (SSX Blur, the Nintendo Wii and Generation 7) and now, after a worryingly lengthy period of prolonged absence, are once again barnstorming the industry to prove Generation 7 still has some life left in it and Elise Riggs, just like SSX, is impossible to keep down.

I must confess I was very worried when the 2012 XBOX 360/PlayStaton 3 reboot was announced: A dark, intense teaser trailer at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards that seemed inspired by the gritty, testosterone-heavy likes of Gears of War and Call of Duty rather than the kitschy '70s and early '80s retro trash of SSX Tricky and in which Elise, who up until then seemed to be the series' mascot, only appeared as a subtle Easter egg via a decal on a distinctly Black Hawk-esque helicopter left me frankly appalled at the new game's prospects. My panic subsided a bit as developer diaries started to come out that seemed to reassure fans the series' sense of fun wasn't going anywhere, and neither was Elise (a revelation that caused me to breathe possibly the biggest sigh of relief in my entire wannabe journalistic career) and I started to feverishly anticipate the reboot.

My panic quickly returned, however when I actually got hold of the game and found it seemingly built around a checklist of my worst 7^th Generation demons: Mandatory persistent Internet connections, online passes, competitive online multiplayer, leaderboards and social media not just a primary focus but deeply integrated into the fundamental core of the game, a complete LACK of the splitscreen multiplayer that allowed me and my cousin to bond over the series in the first place, short, linear maps in place of expansive, nonlinear ones made for exploration, arbitrary difficulty spikes and cruel, unfair level design intended to artificially lengthen the game in place of adding more content and a crass points/credits system that monetized every aspect of the experience, from board upgrades to level progression. It seemed, horrifyingly, that this new SSX had been meticulously crafted to focus on the absolute worst industry trends of the past five years. Most baffling of all, in an attempt to make the series feel “hip” and “current” to a new generation of players (something SSX never felt the need to do before, even for SSX Blur on the Wii, a console explicitly marketed towards new players) a soundtrack almost exclusively populated by dubstep, the current trendy indie music genre (and also one I happen to despise, speaking bluntly). It seemed for all the world that this was finally the game in which a great deal of SSX's timeless soul had been excised to make room for Generation 7 window dressing and dubstep.

Then I got to play Elise for the first time (after an unbelievably annoying, insulting and nerve-wracking tutorial where I actually had to *unlock* her), and all my trepidation and horror evaporated in an instant. She's no longer voiced by Lucy Liu (and in fact hasn't been since SSX Tricky), but absolutely all of her dialogue has been carried over from SSX Tricky, new dialogue written for the reboot sounds like it's a perfect extension of that game's script and the new actor delivers Elise's lines with the exact same kind of freewheeling, tongue-in-cheek confidence and fun that Lucy Liu did and is, for my money, the first to accurately capture Elise's character since Lucy Liu. The first time I heard her I knew that this was the Elise I loved, the Elise I remembered, and that she was back, and with her came the soul of the series I'd been missing in this game and honestly, hadn’t really felt in full since SSX Tricky.

Just as in the past, Elise had adapted to fit in a new gaming reality: She's now a seasoned adventurer and a living legend. At 33, she's the oldest rider in the game; a fact which makes her even more valuable as a feminist icon. I can count on one hand the number of female video game characters older than about 21 or so (being as we are in a medium where 21 is often bemusedly considered old, wise and experienced because our target demographic is still, frustratingly, adolescents), let alone the ones who are playable, major series leads and who are portrayed as individualistic, strong and yeah, sexy, as Elise is here: She's not fretting about her age or worrying about settling down, she's just looking for the next big adventure as always. Even Elise's good buddy Eddie is finally back too; this reboot marks his first major, official appearance since 2001. Every game since SSX Tricky had him either conspicuously absent or only available via cheat codes, and even then he was only a re-skin and had no unique dialogue. Bummer. But, now that Eddie's made a proper return at last you can bet the two best friends are busy tearing up the slopes and dominating the circuit together just like in the Good Ol' Days.

To have Elise back, and back in that fashion, was indescribably reassuring for me. Having her be in her 30s was one of the best ideas EA Sports has ever had, in my opinion, especially when paired with her characterization being so wonderfully loyal and accurate. Since so much of the game feels radically different than what the series had been in the past (though at its best it's still the SSX I remember), having Elise be recognisably the same person she'd been 11 years ago and not some strange hybrid reboot character as is so often the case when series are revived, meant it was effortless for me to relate to and latch onto her, making it much easier for me to accept and deal with how much else had changed. I could now walk through the game with Elise who, just like me is an old veteran returning to the scene after a very long absence even with her relevance (and most definitely her hipness) potentially now in question. We can tackle whatever the game throws at us together, her as much a stranger in this curious new land of online passes, Deadly Descents and dubstep as me. If she can make her way through and prove she's still got it, then damn it, so can I. Just as Elise often says in the game, “it's good to be back”.

SSX has changed, just like video games as a medium, and indeed so much else, has changed in the past decade. But Elise is someone who, if nothing else, knows how to adapt and remain current without losing her spirit, zest or identity. After all, nothing about Elise Riggs is accidental and any born self-promoter needs to be able to tackle whatever life throws at her head-on. If she can remain multi-talented, versatile and stylish without ever compromising who she is, Elise will continue to be, at least for me, a powerful role model to live up to. No matter where gaming, or indeed the rest of the world, goes in the next few years, hopefully I can be like Elise, look any new challenge square in the eye and tackle it head-on with the kind of inner strength and calm that only comes from a love of life and a confidence in one's own place in it.

Elise, you are a star and yes, you're absolutely right: I would indeed love to be you. You're my favourite video game character of all time. Stay Gold, honey.

Elise Riggs: It’s Good To Be Back (Part I)

It's Tricky, It's Tricky...

She's got the nickname “Bombshell”, maybe because of her blonde hair and devastating good looks. What she should have it for, however, is the fact she exudes the energy of a bunker buster every time she walks into a room and channels that into every aspect of her life. She unabashedly, unashamedly lives her life to the fullest and does more in a week with hers than most of us do in an entire lifetime. She's Elise Riggs from EA Sports' beloved SSX series, and while she'll never be spoken of in the same sentence as Samus Aran, Chun-Li, Ms. Pac-Man or Commander Shepard, to me she'll always be one of the greatest video game heroines of all time, and maybe the greatest of them all.

Elise is a self-made woman; indeed, her bio in SSX 3 flatly states “nothing about Elise is accidental”. She's one of the best professional snowboarders in the games' world (not to mention one of the best professional surfers as well), and when she's not carving a barrel she spends her time as a model, clothing designer, actress, producer, director, businesswoman, rock climber, base jumper and professional Mexican seashell necklace vendor. She has the shrewd business leadership and sense of adventure of Scrooge McDuck and the athletic prowess of Kelly Slater and Tony Hawk and no matter how you slice it that should be a frighteningly awesome combination in anyone's book.

Some may criticize Elise by calling her narcissistic, conceited or arrogant, and her repeated exclamations of “Am I unbelievable or WHAT?”, “I am SO fine” and “Wouldn't you LOVE to be me?” during events would seem to support this accusation. However, despite her countless ventures and hobbies and her legendarily fierce competitive streak, Elise comes across as actually rather affable and self-effacing, her self-congratulation delivered completely tongue-in-cheek (thanks in no small part to her tremendous voice actor in SSX Tricky, Lucy Liu) and matched just as often by humble resignation and self-deprecating joking whenever she bails a trick or slams headlong into a rock outcropping (usually due to me fumbling with the controls). Elise is also on relatively friendly terms with the others in the SSX circuit, always looking out for her pals Kaori, JP, Alex and Skye. She's also longtime, inseparable best friends and riding partners with the infamously wild, goofy and slightly awkward retro '70s-afficionado and super nerd Eddie Wachowski: “You and me, we're gonna rule this race, baby!” and “You and me, right to the end!” they say to one another before events in SSX Tricky. Extremely confident and fully conscious of her abilities sure, but cliquey and snobbish Elise surely isn't.

Another thing that strikes me about Elise is that she's clearly a sexual person: Various character bios describe her as enjoying “carving up men's hearts” and her first appearance in SSX Tricky has her address the player with the vaguely sexual “This is gonna be very, very...interesting”. However, that said, she's also a person fully in control of her sexuality-She's sexy for no-one except herself: The men chase her because of how hot she is due to her natural athleticism and confidence, not how she's trying to be, how she's drawn or how she's posed (and many of them are probably at least subconsciously aware they'll never be as talented and capable as she is). One thing that really sets Elise apart from many other gaming leading ladies is that, despite her obviously being very sexy, EA Sports has always treated this aspect of her character, and her character in general, with extreme respect-Elise's sexuality has never been exploited or used as a crass way to market the series and neither she nor her female colleagues are shot through the male gaze in cutscenes. When her sexiness was turned up starting with SSX Tricky, she was given a flattering, yet still very stylish and practical alpine jacket and jeans ensemble. It exposed a tiny bit of her midriff, but this was still something one could reasonably expect a snowboarder to wear, especially during Spring riding. Besides, it was nothing compared to what her male counterparts got: Moby, for one, went completely shirtless to show off his super-ripped physique and full-body Union Jack tattoo.

The only minor blemish on EA Sports' record is when cheesecake artist extraordinaire Adam Warren was brought in to do the concept art and character models for SSX 3: Elise was given ludicrous proportions, put in some really suggestive and provocative poses and also seemed to have been de-aged. On top of that, one of the possible outfits she could wear was a slinky black bikini, which is not an entirely practical fashion choice for someone who lives the life of an extreme snowboarder. However, Warren at least had the comparative decency to do this to everyone in the cast, not just Elise and EA Sports thankfully backpedaled hard from this for the next sequel, SSX On Tour, where she was given a cute and stylish white sweater and cargo pants and all attempts to make her a sex object ceased with no further discussion. This trend has continued for all the subsequent games culminating in Elise showing up in 2012's series reboot in a full-body suit of protective alpine armour and gear, befitting her new role as an adventurer in Earth's harshest environments, which still manages to show off her really impressive (yet not unrealistic) build and musculature.

Despite the minor hiccup with SSX 3, Elise has on the whole been treated much better than game heroines like Samus Aran or Lara Croft, both of whom started off in some form as immediate feminist icons but who have, over time, strayed somewhat from their legacy and ideals due to excessive and often blisteringly incompetent rewrites (sometimes with absolutely catastrophic results). EA Sports has never felt the need to give Elise a hilariously tortured backstory, for example, nor have they felt a burning obligation to give her an overbearing, upstaging male mentor or convoluted sexual tension with a love interest. Elise does what she does for the love of it, because it's interesting and important to her and because she's always looking to broaden her horizons. Since Elise and her sexuality have always been respected and never treated as an object of childish gawking and exploitation, she remains a formidable feminist role model 12 years after her creation. That resonates really strongly with me and makes it really easy for me to cheer for her each time a new SSX game is released

One of my favourite TV shows growing up was the PBS series Wishbone, about a talking Jack Russel terrier bibliophile who retold classic works of literature after being inspired by similar events in his daily life (...it was better than it sounds). Slightly looney premise aside, what I liked best about it was the character Sam Kepler (played by Christie Abbott) who was the best friend of Joe, Wishbone's owner and David, his next-door neighbour. Sam was a cheerful, outgoing and friendly tomboy who always had the backs of her two best friends. She was also a total ace: Hands-down the most athletically talented and versatile of the kids on the show (despite Joe's being a basketball enthusiast serving as the main crux for many an episode), she dominated at skateboarding, soccer, and even roller hockey. Sam's dad even owned a pizza parlor and she'd invite all her friends over to hang out there after school. It seemed like there wasn't anything Sam wasn't interested in and wouldn't lend her skills and talents to-When she wasn't showing off her sports skills or throwing pizza parties for her two best friends, she was leading them on all kinds of wild adventures, many of which proved to be fodder for the titular dog's overactive imagination. Why he wound up the star and not her remains a mystery to me, though she works incredibly well in a non-lead capacity. As a kid I really looked up to Sam and hoped someday I could be as effortlessly cool and have as many hobbies and interests as her.

I bring up Sam because she's a great metaphor for explaining why I dig Elise so much on a more personal level. Put bluntly, as someone who was a fan of Wishbone and has followed SSX since its inception, it's not inconceivable to me that someone kind of like Sam would grow up to become someone kind of like Elise. Both are unbelievably strong characters with a fierce sense of independence who are driven to succeed at anything they put their minds to, and they put their minds to a lot. Despite that, they both have time for those closest to them. There are some differences: Elise is an insane caricature, sure and Sam, while definitely a product of the 1990s, is at least somewhat more realistic, but their core personalities still seem similar enough to me that I feel this analogy works. And, just like Sam, Elise is someone I can deeply admire-I can only attempt to emulate some of her energy and sterling steel resolve. Elise also has the benefit of being a video game character: Someone we can, however briefly (and at times awkwardly) step into the shoes of.

In my analysis of Super Mario Bros. I made the argument that one of the reasons the game succeeds is because Shigeru Miyamoto designed Mario and Luigi to be very easy to relate to: Noble, humble working-class chaps tossed into a strange world and made to explore. By making the main characters people we can identify with, the boundary between the player and the game is blurred and it becomes easier to lose oneself in the immersion of the experience, which was the absolute most important part of Super Mario Bros. Elise works for me in much the same way, but with one crucial variable: Elise isn't just someone I can understand and relate to, but someone whose ideals I actively admire and who I consciously want to be like. In the same way some people look up to “badass” characters like Solid Snake or Nathan Drake, I look up to Elise: I want to be as strong, self-assured, self-reliant, independent, sexy, confident and successful in so many different and exciting things as she is. Being a sort of personal hero and role-model, Elise becomes more than just a cipher and is elevated in my eyes to the level of genuine escapism in a way that, contrary to a lot of mainstream and literature on the medium, I rarely feel with games: I can escape into her world, her life and live vicariously through her when I can't follow her example in real life. Combine this with the series' increasingly effortless and intuitive control scheme and tumbling mechanics engine and SSX, when it's at its best, becomes one of the most powerfully evocative video game experiences I can ever have.