First entry - Beginning of the game
April 14 - Little Elder God
April 16 - Ass-wings
April 21 - Gravity
April 23 - THE END?!
Unknown Date - Pete

Some date that I forgot to record

Anyway. After the music video, a kid with spiky brown hair (though slightly less spiky than Sora's, admittedly) woke up. Unlike Sora, he was actually in his bed rather than on a beach with the tide coming in. Probably a better place to sleep, I think. His room was filled with pretty sparkly unidentifiable things and uncomfortable-looking, star-shaped furniture.

He then met up with his bestest friends, who actually turned out to be a gang. They were blamed for stealing -----, and their rival gang was telling everyone they stole -----. In fact, however, their own ----- were stolen, and somebody even stole the word -----. This, of course, didn't phase the young gang for a second; words get stolen all the time in this abstract world.

Kid 1, who seemed to fancy himself the leader, wanted to have a rumble with their rival gang (led by Seifer. *Mental groan*). Player character - who I later learned is named Roxas, 'cuz he like totally rox - wanted to clear their names before they rumble.

The good guy gang went out and talked to people who thought they were thieves, and then they ran into Seifer and his lackeys from FF8. Vivi of FF9 was with them, so I naturally assumed they're harassing the poor kid, but no. He was FRIENDS with the bastards, and he'd apparently lost the ability to speak coherently, if at all.

Actually, I didn't find that out until later. And it's probably not important anyway. So, Roxas pretended that he was going to beg for the rival gang's forgiveness in an idiotic feint that only Seifer would fall for, and then took about five minutes choosing one of three weapon that appeared out of thin air.

I think I should mention that the weapons were made of foam. The kiddy gangs have rumbles with foam toy weapons. I chose the star, hoping that I could at least poke Seifer in the eye with the pointy bit.

Well, Roxas kicked Seifer's ass, unsurprisingly. Then, suddenly, a shiny silver guy swooshed by. I mean, really swooshed. It was fucking awesome - until I realized that I was going to fight that thing. I knew I'd never hit that fucker.

I was right, of course. After chasing the swooshy thing down, Roxas pathetically swung at it with his foam sword, and missed every damn time. Then the Keyblade popped out of nowhere.

Now, much as I love this game - and the one before it - I find the Keyblade utterly bizarre. It's a sword that's not only completely blunt, it's round. But it's metal, so at least it's better for thwacking enemies than foam toys.

The Magic of the Keyblade allowed Roxas to finally thwack the swooshy thing, and thwack it he did.

And that's all for today, because I'm far too lazy for this. I shall return someday - i.e., whenever I feel a bit snarky after playing KHII.

In all seriousness, the "Little Mermaid" part of Kingdom Hearts is particularly loathsome. Thus far, I've enjoyed the game enough that I was fooled into thinking that no part of it could be described as loathsome, but no, I hadn't gotten to the bad DDR/Karaoke Revolution imitation.

I'm sorry; I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, as I was playing today, two new worlds opened up. One was clearly "Pirates of the Caribbean," but I couldn't figure out what the other was supposed to be. As always, curiosity won out, and so I zoomed in my Gummi ship (aptly named "THE SWOOSH") through to the world, only to find a world named "Atlantica."

"Cool," I thought, "I loved 'Atlantis'!"

But no. No fun literary/archaeologist geeks for me. I was soon to become embroiled in the affairs of the Little Mermaid - who, incidentally, isn't that little. I dunno; maybe she stuffs her shells. Who knows?

Anyway, we immediately started a minigame. "Fine, great," I thought. "They've all been fun so far."

But all that was about to change.

The instructions told me to hit X when it told me to. The minigame started, and then a little X symbol popped up on the screen - and didn't go away.

"Do I hold it down?" I asked.

"BAD," the screen replied.

"Hit it repeatedly?"

"BAD."

"Shove the controller through the TV screen?"

"Fzzzt..."

After a brief interlude, Sebastian told me to keep in time with the beat. "That song has no beat," I told him. "It has no rhythm. It's a string of boring notes inexpertly strung together."

Sebastian replied that he was the court musician, not me, and told me I couldn't go anywhere else in the world until I danced for him. He seems to be rather dominating; I now picture him screaming, "Dance, monkeys, dance!" at people as he beats them over the head with his baton.

Little red bastard. I bet you're a bloody communist, aren't you?

Anyway, I finally got a vague idea of what the beat was supposed to be in the song, and I managed to pass the test. I thanked God - or whatever deity they worship over there - and hoped I'd never have to do that again.

"Now that you've practiced," the commie crab said, "why don't we try it while singing?"

I begged and pleaded with the cold-blooded hearted bastard not to make me do that again, but he ignored me. We started the "musical," as he called it, and the Little Mermaid started singing.

And oh, how the mighty have fallen. I'll admit it - I liked the first "Little Mermaid." First of all, I saw it when I was a little kid, so how could I not? Plus, it was just a good movie, and I don't remember too much of the "mustn't scare the little ones with unpleasant feelings" bullshit you get today, even though they definitely threw a bit of that in to change the original story.

But now...now she sings songs with the phrase "finny fun" in them. That ought to be outlawed. The phrase "finny fun" and any reference to it should be burned and the phrase should be banned in every country on the planet. It should not exist. It should not even have been created.

The song itself was such an indescribable horror (it had everyone - even Donald - sing. Common sense demands that Donald Duck never, ever sing) that I had to turn the song off. You'd think this would make it difficult to get through the minigame, but by now I'd figured out that all I had to do was hit X when the meter reached the yellow bit at the end and I'd pass the game. The minigame had nothing to do with "moving with the rhythm," as they kept telling me. It had to do solely with hitting X in the yellow bit and ignoring the animation spawned by Cthulhu.

That's the problem, isn't it? Cthulhu is down there, under the sea, with those sea creatures, and it's addling the poor bastards' brains. They're so crazy now that they think "finny fun" is not only perfectly acceptable, it's edgy. They think they're a totally hardcore band - but they're not, because Cthulhu is fucking with their minds while Sin goes around eating up continents and sending his toxin floating down to them. Cthulhu and Sin are conspirators in this; they're going to take over the world by brainwashing people through that horrendous song.

They would've succeeded, too, if it weren't for Ariel. After passing the performance, Ariel told everyone who had some sense of punctuality that they'd have to come back later, because she didn't feel like practicing. She swam off to her room to pine over her human not-boyfriend and write angsty poetry. She's gained a bit of a prima donna complex since we last saw her, I think.

All the same, I'm very thankful to her for that complex, annoying as it may be. Without it, all the world would now be ruled by Sin and Cthulhu, and that damned song would be blasting out of every speaker on the planet. And that would be the truest form of hell I can comprehend.

I really don't see why Cloud is describing his hair color and weapons to people; aren't ass-wings much more...noticeable? I mean, "silver hair and a long sword" could lead to Ansem being mistaken for Sephiroth having left his sword at home. But how many people have ass-wings?

I could be wrong, of course; maybe ass-wings are very common in the "Kingdom Hearts" world/s. There are definitely a couple other characters with weird wing anomalies. Check out the FFX-2 fairies (which freak me out, by the way). Rikku's wings are made of her scarf. Now, I'm not exactly an expert on knitting, but I've done enough to know that you can't make functioning wings from a scarf.

Yuna, on the other hand, has wings on the end of her ponytail. Her hair has grown so long that it's gained sentience and sprouted its own wings. How the hell does that keep her afloat? Sure, maybe her ponytail could fly, but in reality, it should have her dangling below the ponytail, clutching her poor, aching head while her hair is being torn out by the roots.

But I do love the KHII writers for describing them so, so accurately as them "teenyboppers."

I made an interesting discovery today. I realized that Sora never actually jumps in KHII. Watch his legs; they never bend before they jump or make any sort of movement at all. He just suddenly appears in the air.

That means that the circle button controls gravity.

That means that I control gravity.

I'm sure I could control the gravity around anything in the game, if I could just figure out how to control something other than Sora. If I managed to gain control of, say, a house - just think of the endless destructive power I'd hold! It'd be fantastic! Fuck the Heartless - I'll take over the world/s on my own!

That's also the reason wings are so fucked up in the game. They don't actually do anything - they're there for decoration, so of course Rikku can fly with her scarf, and of course Yuna isn't dangling from her hair. And, obviously, Sephiroth can fly with his one wing - although I'm still not sure why you'd want ass-wings.

If you're playing a very good game - say, Kingdom Hearts II - you fall into a deep pit of despair upon the final realization: you may have to wait years until the next installment of the series.

The worst part is, KHII was only about 40 hours long - and that's after finishing the stories of every world and spending plenty of time swooshing around in the Gummi ship. Personally, I've come to expect at least 60 hours of gameplay from my RPGs.

Square-Enix, I am hurt. I am scarred. I don't care how pretty your ending scenes are (okay, that's a lie. They were fucking gorgeous). I still need more KHII.

Here's the thing; Pete's pants - God help me - have a zip-up crotch. If he were wearing shorts (and he might be, considering how short his stubby little legs are) they would be the exact pants shown in the shopping scene in Coyote Ugly.