Today, I am finally getting around to writing about Seamonkeys and Superheroes. I know, you've been waiting at the edges of your seats for so long. Let's all stay calm, and get through this together, shall we?

A couple of months ago, Joe and I were wandering around Fry's Electronics (something we do regularly; something we did today, in fact!), when a game caught my eye. Seamonkeys, by Sold Out. The "3+" label on the front caused me to feel a little sheepish and silly, but I continued reading anyway. It sounded very cute, and wasn't too expensive, so I got it.

When the game first opens, there's a still screen of the boy seamonkey eyeing the girl seamonkey in a weird, almost perverse way. That should have clued me in to just how strange this little game is!

After hitting buttons for a while, I finally figured out how to hatch three seamonkeys. I was thrilled. They are born pre-named apparently, so that was exciting. Very slowly, the pearl count climbed. Pearls evidently serve as currency in the world of seamonkeys. There's nothing one can do to speed up the accumulation of pearls, so I just had to wait a while and watch my seamonkeys until I had enough pearls to buy them something cool. I bought them a little house. Two of the seamonkeys, let's call them Charlie and Sabrina, wandered into the house. "Yay, they like it!" I told Joe, who was working on his own computer at the time.

Then, Charlie and Sabrina swam out of the house, followed by two more! "Where did they come from? Holy crap, they're having babies!" I reported. Sure enough, the tiny seamonkey babies, Angela and Todd, began to swim around and look for food as well. Later, I had enough pearls to buy them a castle, so I did. By this time, there were several more babies. Charlie spawned a few with his other companion, Rebecca. Then, the unthinkable happened. Charlie and Angela went in the castle together!

"No, don't do that!" I shouted at the screen. "That's your daughter!!!" But alas, I could not stop them, and they came out of there with a few kids of their own. It wasn't long after that an even more horrifying situation occurred. Charlie made babies with his granddaughter!!! Then Angela had a few with her son, and I was beyond disturbed. What an incestuous and weird game!

So, the seamonkeys continued to breed with all the other seamonkeys, multiplying like crazy. Then a few started dying! I still don't know how to stop them from doing that. I mean, what if computer seamonkeys just have a short lifespan? Who knows? I gave them a feeder, as well as a karaoke stage. Yeah, you heard me. The seamonkeys swim over to the mic stand, and begin to sing. They all sing the same way. It goes a little something like this, "Mee naw mee haw, mee naw MEE NAW!" No, really. Take my word for it. It's bizarre! I also gave them a dogfish, that looks like an underwater dog, as well as a bubble machine. The seamonkey babies especially seem to like that addition! I'm glad they're happy, playing in the bubbles and sexing each other up. Crazy bastards!

Another game Joe and I have gotten into is City of Heroes. Holy crap, is that game fun! It's a MMO (massive multiplayer online, for those who don't know) in which you design your own superhero, then go around Paragon City, defeating villains, and saving the citizens. It's awesome! We joined the beta first and levelled pretty high. Then we had to start all over again when the game officially launched, and I'm finally caught up to where I was. I think. I chose slightly different powers this time around, though. I can't fly yet, but I'll be able to later. You can choose various powers as you level up.

My first character is a girl named Taja. She has blue hair, and big ol' wolverine claws and will cut you up! I love playing her, because I can run up to the bad guys and when I hit them with my claws, it makes really cool slicing sounds. You don't feel bad killing the villains either, because they shoot you and hit you with baseball bats. Often, you discover them mugging the townspeople. I have to save the townspeople!!! So I cut 'em up, and it's pretty awesome! Other villains include scary magic people, robots that shock you with electric bolts from far away, and zombies surrounded by flies. It's kind of frightening!

One of the first times we played, Joe told me, "Hey don't worry if you die. At this stage, it's okay, because it's not like you lose weapons or abilities or anything."

"Okay," I told him, trying not to freak out about getting attacked.

A while later, a villain at a level much higher than us saw us and shot at us. We ran, but he was hot on our trail. I ran until I thought we were safe, then stopped to look around and decide where to go next. Joe's character had been running with me, and he stopped, too. All of a sudden, his character took of running while Joe shouted from his desk, "Run! RUN!!! He's right behind you, oh my GOD! Oh my god, he's gonna kill us!!!" I made Taja take off running, bolting away from the scary man with the machine gun. I kept getting hit, and couldn't see if he was still behind me or not, so I just ran like hell until Joe said it was safe to stop. At that point, we couldn't stop laughing. It was quite a jump from, "Oh don't worry if you die," to "Oh my god, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!" Heh.

I have a character on another server, too. That's because one evening, I got an email from an old friend of ours, known online as Meowei. She and her husband, G, were our friends from Palace, the chat program where I met all of them, and where Joe and I met, too. We all used to hang out in a big group together along with MissP and Macnut every night. Meowei and G have lived in Hawaii for a long time. I remember staying up SUPER late when I lived in Texas just to talk to all of them for hours. Man, we had a fun time together! Anyway, I hadn't talked to Meowei in a few years, so was really pleasantly surprised to hear from her. She had found my website and just wanted to say hi. After exchanging a few emails, I found out she and G have been playing City of Heroes, too, on a different server! Joe and I went ahead and made new characters that night and met up with Meowei and G. The four of us ran around messing people up for hours. It was so much fun! My character on that server is called Votive, because she's a fire girl. She can just spontaneously light herself on fire to hurt any surrounding villains. Also, she carries a battle axe. She's such a badass.

And through Taja and Votive, I feel like a badass. It is fun and bizarrely satisfying to run around killing bad guys all night with my special super powers! Especially when I get to do it with friends!

Being a superhero rocks.