Today's Notes 12/19/20

Good afternoon everybody,

I can safely say if the snow stays on the ground it will indeed be a White Christmas in South Jersey, and hopefully we won't be seeing any more snow for the rest of the winter. I don't mind the cold as much, but snow is fucking annoying and I can't understand why anyone would encourage anyone to interact with it... and I'm saying when you have some school districts who have administrators who are Trump supporters assigning students to do just that (I'm looking at you Mount Vernon School District).

Anyway, last night's stream saw the return to the Kingdom Hearts franchise with the watch-along of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (which is read as Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2... don't ask). As a set up for Kingdom Hearts II it certainly works, as we get a lot of Roxas's backstory... or lack there of as the real star being Xion, who just happens to be Sora idealized version of Kairi. Roxas comes across as having rocks for brains and just really annoying. Axel gets some character development from what we just recently saw in Re:Chain of Memories since a good chunk of 358/2 Days overlaps with Re:CoM. Graphically, it does make a lot of use of Kingdom Hearts II assets, in particular for nearly every thing involving Organization XIII's Castle and Twilight Town. At the very least we do get the explanation of why Rikku looks like Ansem in Kingdom Hearts II.

By the way, in case you're wondering why last night's stream was a watch along, is because orignally Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was originally released for the Nintendo DS, and it's split screen set up couldn't really be converted to consoles, even though it was an action RPG. So what the developers did was just took all the cut scenes and made a movie while using occasional test pieces to explain details that took place in other places.... which is probably the biggest gripe I have regarding it, since they have all the other cut scenes, why not included the ones that took place in the Disney areas too? I get wanting to keep it under three hours, but as a viewing experience it does break the immersion.... not to mention the chance of locations would've been nice.

On a side note: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was last Disney project to feature Wayne Allwine, who was the voice of Mickey Mouse for 32 years.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a little short as I wanted to see to see what different settings were like, such as increasing the intensity from Get Moving to Stamina while lowering the duration from Heavy to Regular. The result ended up being few punches thrown because of the shorter duration but more constant movement and things being done with a more rapid pace. Kind of perfect for days when I wake up late as hell (lol). Plus since I'm doing Fitness Boxing 1 before before 10-15 minuets it events out a little (plus that helps counter some of my snacking lol).

Tonight being Saturday, means we'll be doing one of our final Twitch Sings streams, with the game shutting down on January 1st. Se we got tonight and next Saturday the 26th, and maybe December 31st if we want to close the year out with Twitch Sings. Actually no that wouldn't quite work as the 29th starts up the next Division 2 manhunt and the question of if PowerThumbz is going to start that then and finishing up the 31st. Ack! I'll figure it out... who would've though that the Division 2 would've became such a major part of my streaming line up? I sure as hell didn't.

And on that bombshell, we'll wrap things up here, catch ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden