Commentary on ch120

In other news, I beat Epic Mickey today. The ending did come really quick... However, I will give the game the fact that the boss battle was like the LONGEST BOSS BATTLE I have ever fought. I mean, Xmenas from KH2 comes to mind to rival it, but it's really hard to tell... Espeically considering one game is "fight the boss directly five times in a row!" and the other is "let's do all this roundabout crap that will eventually get rid of the boss!!"

*shrug*

POST ABOUT ZACK TWO POSTS AGO! (you guys should really look at it. I mean, I understand that posterous has been down for the past two days, so I'm not upset or anything, just making sure you know that it's there!)

And... time to talk about the chapter

I'd do review replies for the last chapter, but it's basically just:

"Yes, Joseph is awesome" and that's about it. 

Oh, except:

Peach: Your question about Tifa. (well, it was more of a comment, but still)

This is actually something that is explained later, but it's explained very lightly and I have no idea how soon it will be posted. So, I'll explain it for you now.

All of this arguing was caused by Sora's Shadow. All of it. And, considering he was pretty mad at Tifa at the time, she was affected the worst. That, and, things like this haven't happened to her since Sephiroth was around. It's been years since Sephiroth was around in my universe. She had let her guard down over time which allowed Shad a better vantage point to mess with her

So the reason that all of her apologies were half-hearted to begin with was that Shad had a better grip on her, and he was desperately trying to keep the conversation from going in the direction of returning Kairi's hope to her.

Did you follow all that? I sure hope you did.

ONTO THE CHAPTER!!

For starters, it's nice I live in a desert. Writing Sora's complaints about Agrabah and its heat feels so natural (as is Aladdin's "you get used to it" even though I think that's in the next chapter...).

"Sora, don't try to mutter a healing spell. You only know one."

He was trying to "mutter a healing spell" instead of just casting Cure. I have no idea why, and I can't blame the books I recently read for it, because I read those like, a week ago, and I wrote this about a month ago.

SPEAKING OF BOOKS!

there's this series called "The Beyonders" that was really interesting to read. If you have time, you might want to read them.

Moving on. (prepare yourself for a rant!)

Agrabah, in my head, looks like some cross between the games and the movie. Or... let me put it this way. It's got pretty much the same layout as KH1 (with a couple extra back alleys) but it also has BUSY streets and the shops aren't deserted and whatnot.

I like my Agrabah. This is slightly random, but I was reading this Zelda fanfic a while back, and the author spent a lot of time explaining the townspeople of... Kakariko, I think it was, and at the end they apologized for it. And I was like: "really? More fanfics need stuff like this!" Because most of them (mine included) focus on the main characters and nothing else.

Though, that's not hard with a base like KH. If there's one thing that botheres me about the KH series, it's the lack of random NPCs. You go to a different world which SHOULD be bustling with a bunch of people, and you find the three or four main characters from whatever movie it's based on instead. It bothers me. I mean, I understand in some places, such as Deep Jungle, that there aren't people there, and that's fine. But places like Agrabah have NO one. I mean, you can write it off as the Heartless scaring them away, but... still! There needs to be more Worlds like Traverse Town, where there's all these random people milling about! And, even then, there's not a lot of people in Traverse Town!! It bothers me! I mean, maybe it's because I was raised on Nintendo, and if you haven't noticed, Nintendo games have a LOT of random NPCs. Rogueport is full of them! Zelda games are full of them! I mean, Twilight Princess is a smidge lacking, there's about ten people a town, but- well, Ordon is small, a lot of people in Kakariko were killed, and Castle Town is FULL of them!
I mean, KH is amazing, don't get me wrong, but the lackof random NPCs is another reason why I think I love Nintendo more. Sorry to say it, Squeeniz has good stories, but Nintendo just- I don't know. They're story-lines might be lacking, but it's certainly made up by gameplay and things like NPCs that you can sit and listen to for an hour as they talk about random crud.
Which reminds me, FF13 has seriously disappointed me. I mean, the storyline's great, but I'm tired of the "just keep walking til we hit the next cutscene" layout of the game. I want more GAMEPLAY, thank you. Especially because when I don't feel like fighting enemies (which is frequently) I don't have extra time to make up for it later. It's just like: cutscene, cutscene, boss! And then I'm not prepared because I haven't been fighting enemies! it's no wonder I haven't finished it yet! Usually, I sit and play a game til it's done (with the exception of a few Mario games on handheld systems... but those are TOUGH). But FF13bores me! It's like sitting and reading a book or, more accurately, watching a movie. One very long movie. No challenging gameplay to overcome. No challenge at all. I get ten minutes of fighting enemies and walking, and then I hit a cutscene, and we're on the move again. I miss naviagting temples and finding that one guy who holds that random secret you need to activate some statue to get to some place so you find the key that unlocks the chest that has the item you need to move on. Again, that could be just because I was raised on Nintendo.
Maybe FF13'll get better. I mean, I'm on the second disc and it hasn't picked up yet, but one can hope...

okay, sorry about the rant. I'll move on now.

The annoyance towards the Bandits (the Heartless that Sora ends up fighting) was taken from personal experience. They are my LEAST FAVORITE Heartless. Probably just because of how ANNOYING they are during the battle with the giant Tiger Head (entrance to the Cave of Wonders), but I still hate them

If you haven't noticed, this chapter has a lot more detail than usual. It was a side effect of that Zelda fanfic I was reading, which had a lot of detail. I don't know if I'll be able to keep the detail up, but I think I might try.

Is it... sad that the most violent scenes I have written are between Shad and the wolf?