Nitpicking on Age 233

The Nits Gehn spells it 'whark' in his personal journal in his bedroom. Catherine spells it 'wahrk' in her journal. All right. What are the big fishies properly called? Wahrk or whark? Or does it really make a difference? Actually, we may have reason to believe that it does make a difference, and a big one at that! Here's the lowdown according to nitpicker Tom Brosz: Gehn spells the name of the fish as Whark. He has always spelled it this way, including in the Book where the Age of Riven was "created." Catherine spells the name of the fish as Wahrk. Where did Catherine get this spelling? Why, from Atrus, of course. Now, Gehn wrote the original Book of Riven, spelling the fish's name one way. Atrus, as I understand it from the game introduction, is feverishly writing corrections to the Age of Riven to keep it stable. Unfortunately, he is spelling the fish's name the other way. I believe I have arrived at the true reason for the inherent instability of the Fifth Age. The fissure has nothing to do with it. If Gehn and Atrus could have agreed on the spelling of Whark/Wahrk, then Riven would have become stable, Atrus could have gone to Riven himself after Catherine, and I could have stayed home and watched Babylon 5 instead of running around a bunch of islands taking abuse, getting hit with poison darts, and getting sick on bouncy trams. Sounds like it makes a difference to me! Observations Oh, no! Gehn's out! CAAAAAATHERINE!! You just trapped Gehn in the prison book and are poking around, going through things. All of a sudden you notice he's somehow escaped, but before you think to do something about it, Gehn demonstrates just what an accomplished SINGER he is! Actually, there's an extra movie on the disk that's not part of the game. To see it, use Rivplay (for PCs) or Riven Movie Snoop (for Macs). Sunlight from right of doorway From outside, sunlight from left of doorway The linking books on Riven demonstrate that the images inside them most likely aren't real-time representations of the age they link to. In the Age 233 books, the shadows in the image show the sun as being low to the horizon in a certain direction. In the actual Age 233, the sun is low to the horizon but on the OPPOSITE side. I've never seen mention anywhere of the images being real-time. If they officialy are (in other words, if Cyan says so), then this would be a nit. FOLLOWUP! The books Myst: The Book of Atrus and especially Myst: The Book of Ti'ana sugggest that the images are real-time! (The books are official, aren't they?) So, it looks like a nit to me.

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