Trabia Garden

Went to karaoke again, so I was finally able to belt out the chorus of 'Stacy's Mom', which had been trapped inside me since the song got cut off last time!

My housemate's boss was present for this particular karaoke session and had never heard 'Stacy's Mom' before, so I got to watch his expression of dawning delighted horror as he realised what the song is about.

My other song choices were 'The Call' by the Backstreet Boys, 'Whenever, Wherever' by Shakira and 'Baby One More Time' by Britney Spears, but my favourite was actually someone else's pick that I joined in on: 'Complicated' by Avril Lavigne. I hadn't thought about that song in so long, but it's so much fun to sing!

One member of our party sang 'Memory' from Cats so powerfully I nearly cried, but it was hard to be too intimidated when we were all having so much fun. It also helped to ease the intimidation that we had two microphones, so, unless you picked a song nobody else knew (or, as in the case of that 'Memory' performance, you stunned everyone else into silence), you weren't going to be singing solo.

A person I'd first met at the last karaoke session greeted me with 'Hey! Have you been writing any fanfiction lately?' I explained that I'd got really into Lost and mentioned that my favourite character was Jack. She physically recoiled in horror, then said, consolingly, 'I get it; we're getting to the age where, the grosser the middle-aged man, the more appealing they are.' I had to confess that I'd been this way since I was sixteen.

Am I going to make a habit of this? It's definitely a lot of fun to sing for a couple of hours, then have a meal and chat about fandom with all of the delightful nerds who came along to karaoke. There were multiple people with Pokémon tattoos present. My housemate's boss listened, patient but confused, while the table tried to explain why 5 November is Bonfire Night in the UK and DestielPutinElection Day everywhere else. It was a good day.

(EDIT: Just realised that, during the karaoke, I was the same age to the day as Jack Shephard at the start of Lost. I had a much better day than he did.)

Up to episode 5.06 of Lost, '316'!


( Lost spoilers up to episode 5.06, '316'. )


I tend to listen to randomly generated 'here are a bunch of songs you seem to like' YouTube playlists while I'm preparing my Lost episode notes for posting. It seems like Linkin Park's 'Lost' comes on every time. This is probably a sign that I'm supposed to go to the island.

Once again, having watched a performance of The Book of Mormon, I've been unable to think about anything else for the entire following day. Here's a post of brief notes about the musical (let's be honest, mainly about best boy Kevin Price) to get some of these thoughts out of my head.

- This show is ridiculous, but it has just enough sincerity to work. It's really important to have that first night at the mission, when Elder Price finally sees Elder Cunningham as a person, rather than an inconvenience, and tries to comfort him.

- I love Elder Price's incredibly high-energy, showy, over-the-top performance of 'All-American Prophet'. At one point he moonwalked across the stage and got a cheer from the audience.

- Elder Price's smile is disconcertingly radiant. This may be more Dom Simpson than the character, I suppose, but it very much fits the character to have a smile that's perfect to the point of being unsettling.

- 'Heavenly Father, why do you let bad things happen? More to the point, why do you let bad things happen to me?' remains one of my favourite lines in the entire musical. God, I love Kevin Price in all his self-absorbed glory.

- Leanne Robinson was great as Nabulungi, and her delivery of 'I hope he gets to baptising me soon' brought the house down. Actually, there's a video of her performing 'Baptise Me' here! (NB: one of the comments is 'This has to be the most blasphemous thing I have ever seen. I pray for every one of your souls that watched this without being convicted of its demonic agenda', which is very funny but does also remind me I should mention that this song is pretty blasphemous, if that's a concern.) It was a great cast all around, really, even if my focus is biased by the fact that one of the characters hits all my weaknesses. Speaking of which, your brief reprieve from hearing me ramble about Kevin Price is now over.

- Elder Price's faith as a Mormon is so tied up with his faith in himself as the Most Special Person. He can't believe in one without the other; when he loses faith in one, he loses faith in both. If God exists, Elder Price also has to be destined to impress him. (I love his declaration that he'll 'do something incredible that blows God's freaking mind'. I'm fonder of this kid with every reminder of how self-obsessed he is.)

- When Elder Price returned to the mission after losing his faith, dishevelled and disillusioned, Elder McKinley fixed his tie for him, which was a cute little detail. I don't remember that in the 2019 performance, although it's possible I just didn't catch it.

- Elder Price telling Hitler and Genghis Khan 'I left my companion; I'm way worse than you'! Kevin Price: an overachiever even when it comes to hating himself. He always has to be the top at everything, so, if he does something bad, it can't just be bad; it has to be the worst.

- Relatedly, you should never play competitive games with Kevin Price, because there's no way he isn't a sore loser. He always strives to be polite, so he'll try very hard to be gracious, but he will absolutely seethe internally. You'll play Mario Kart against him, and he'll go 'oh, ha ha, hey, I lost again, what are the odds?' while gripping the controller hard enough to damage it.

I don't think I'm going to start writing fanfiction for this musical again, because I don't have any ideas, but we all know what happens when I say that.

I must be almost finished with Persona 5 Royal! I've just entered the Palace on 3 February; here are my notes.


( Persona 5 Royal spoilers, up to early February. )


Rei (my housemate, not the protagonist) happened to be in the room when we entered the final Palace after the calling card, and enjoyed the motivational music. We had a little dance party.

I usually can't have music on when I'm working, but yesterday I had a task that didn't require too much concentration.

Hey, I thought, I could listen to some music! In this age of YouTube, I've got so many great songs open to me; it's hard to know where to begin.

I listened to the Glee mashup of 'Bye Bye Bye' and 'I Want It That Way' six times.


I've now actually finished watching the entirety of House MD! I never thought this day would come.

In episode 8.08, 'Perils of Paranoia', House says, 'Which is why Arceus created a universe with three states of matter and three hundred solid or liquid poisons that could cause his symptoms.'

I can't believe House made a Pokémon reference. And not just a Pokémon reference, but a really nerdy, obscure Pokémon reference. I had to rewind to make sure I wasn't imagining things.


( And more notes on the eighth and final season of House! Spoilers up to and including the finale. )


House may not be perfect (in particular, I think House himself doesn't have enough to balance out what an arsehole he is; I love a lot of arsehole characters, but they need more to them than that!), but I've never seen any other show maintain its quality so consistently across eight seasons. The cast changes kept it fresh, and I never felt I was just watching out of obligation; I was always looking forward to the next episode. I'm glad I went back to it.

The Last of Us Part II has a release date at last! And it's the 21st of February. I can't believe this game and the first instalment of the Final Fantasy VII remake, by far my most anticipated upcoming games, are coming out within a fortnight of each other.

I'm so nervous about The Last of Us Part II! Ellie is one of my all-time favourite fictional characters, so I'm simultaneously excited to see her again and very concerned. Just... please don't kill her off or ruin her character for me, Part II.

The announcement of the release date actually came when I was in the middle of a Last of Us replay, so I'm in an extremely Last of Us mood at the moment. I've just finished the replay; my notes are under the cut!


( Spoilers for The Last of Us. )


I just listened to the main theme of The Last of Us again, and it's such a haunting, beautiful piece of music. What a game. It's probably one of the strongest stories I've ever experienced, in any medium.

I don't know if Part II can possibly live up to The Last of Us. Honestly, even if Part II matches the first game in quality, I don't expect to love it as much; the first game's 'strangers being forced to travel together and slowly learning to care about each other' concept is my catnip, and that presumably won't be a theme in Part II.

But I want to see more of Ellie, and I want to see more of this horrible, fascinating world.

I'm looking forward to it.

On warm days, I've started occasionally wandering down to the local skatepark to watch the goings-on. I've never been a skater myself (I can't even balance on my feet; I'd have absolutely no chance on a skateboard), but it's sort of heartwarming to see people doing something they're passionate about and spending time with their friends. I've always sort of thought of skateparks as scary places, but they're not, are they? They're just a kind of playground for people who can balance.

There are, however, three problems with this:

- I don't understand any of the etiquette. One kid's skateboard went flying far from the skating area, and I tried to pick it up to return it to him, and he rushed up to me in a panic, going, 'NO NO NO NO NO, I'm measuring the distance!'

- There's a sign that says 'SENIORS NIGHT FOR OVER 30s', which is extremely rude.

- Whenever skateboards are within my field of view, Avril Lavigne's 'SHE WAS A SK8ER BOY SHE SAID SEE YOU L8R BOY' is playing non-stop in my head.


A while ago, I saw someone asking 'how does your OTP sleep together, literally?' and I tried to come up with answers for my assorted Dangan Ronpa ships. I'm envisioning a scenario where they're not actually in a relationship but, OH NO, there's only one bed. If you have answers for your own ships, I'd love to hear them!

- Naegi sleeps alone in the bed. Ikusaba stands by the door and guards it all night. He wakes without ever knowing she was there at all.

- Komaeda sleeps happily snuggled up to Hinata. Hinata lies awake all night with an increasing sense of dread.

- Hinata and Koizumi go to sleep on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other, but they end up cuddled up during the night. They get very embarrassed and blushy after waking up.

- Hinata offers to share the bed; Kuzuryuu sleeps on the floor.

- Kaede's expecting Rantaro to be awkward about sharing a bed with a girl and keep a careful distance between them, but he's way more casual about it than she expected - he's not hitting on her, but he's also not making any particular effort to avoid brushing against her, like they're friends who know each other considerably better than they actually do. She's a little flustered. She doesn't mind, exactly; she just wasn't expecting this!

- Kaito talks very loudly about how they're ONLY SHARING A BED OUT OF NECESSITY, NO HOMO. Shuichi is trying very, very hard to ignore the intense and building feelings in his chest.

A couple of weeks ago, I met someone with a puzzling tattoo. I said, 'Er, I have to ask—' and she snapped, 'YES, I've got a tattoo of a coathanger on my arm, I got it when I was nineteen and I've been asked that question every day for nine years.'

(Apparently she'd got it with ambitions of going into fashion and had ended up in advertising instead. 'I've had a first session to get it removed, so now it's not only a tattoo of a coathanger; it's a shit-looking tattoo of a coathanger.')


Still slowly working my way through season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Here are some notes, mainly made during 'Enemies':

Faith went to talk to Angel about how mutually psychologically screwed up they are, and I abruptly needed them to make out. And then they almost did! I think Angel and Faith might have the strongest chemistry in the cast, which I really wasn't expecting.

I can't believe Angel lost his soul a second time. He was just starting to learn how to wear shirts again.

Faith and Buffy fighting, and then Faith kissing Buffy on the forehead and running off: extremely good, should've been on the lips.

Interesting that Angel's first action, after fake-losing his soul, was to kiss Faith. He initiates it. This isn't a case of Faith kissing him and Angel thinking 'better kiss back because she'll suspect something if I have qualms about this'; Angel did not necessarily need to kiss Faith in order to sell the illusion of soullessness. And yet he did it. Iiiiiinteresting.

Giles walking into a tree at the end of the mindreading episode was magical.


After all this time, Scrubs still has some of the best use of music I've ever seen in television. There are so many scenes that have stuck in my mind for the last thirteen years, largely because of the perfect musical choices. I keep getting emotional over Carla accepting Turk's proposal, and it's all the soundtrack's fault.

(JD running around with sparklers is delightful. It's so good to be reconnecting with these characters. They feel like old friends.)

Over the weekend, my uncle told me the story of his application to Cardiff University. He got an interview, spoke to the interviewer for a while, and then the interviewer gave him a folded piece of paper and said, 'Could you take this to the professor down the hall?'

My uncle did so. The professor unfolded the piece of paper and read it. Looked at my uncle. Looked back at the paper.

My uncle could see the note from his vantage point. It said 'CANDIDATE IS ROARING DRUNK.'

He did not get a place.

(If you're wondering: yes, he absolutely was.)


I listened to the ending song of Umineko again and got SO EMOTIONAL about this stupid visual novel series. It's so beautiful and agonising and deeply, deeply weird. There's nothing else like it. It measurably changed my perspective; at one point it presented me with a question, and I went 'well, the answer is obviously this, but I'd have said the answer was obviously the opposite if I'd seen this question before playing this game.'

(The question, if you're curious, is this (it's best not to look if you're planning to play Umineko). It's got a very simple, very obvious answer, but which answer that is depends entirely on whether you've been through the journey that leads up to it.)

I'm sad that Umineko is in such an inaccessible medium and I can't get everyone I know into this odd thing. Everyone loves paying to read over a million words superimposed over dodgy art on their computer screens, right?

A part of me wants to try to write fanfiction, but I wouldn't know where to start. The canon's just too weird. And it gave me an OTP that's equal parts 'beautiful and romantic', 'juvenile and ridiculous' and 'colossally fucked-up'; it's hard to know how to strike the right balance there!

Here are some notes on the early third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! I'm up to 'Revelations'.

Faith: Isn't it crazy how slaying always makes you hungry and horny?
(EVERYONE LOOKS AT BUFFY)

I really liked Buffy's counsellor in 'Beauty and the Beasts' and I was very unhappy that he only survived for one scene. What a waste of a good character!

I'm also very annoyed that the 'werewolf' is clearly some sort of were-monkey. I'm so often let down by werewolf designs. The Harry Potter films, Supernatural, Buffy: all disappointments in this regard. Say what you will about Twilight, but at least the werewolves in the films looked like wolves. That's all I ask!

Angel is so bad at wearing shirts.

Before I started watching Buffy, I really wasn't expecting this protracted will-they-won't-they-turned-infidelity plotline between Willow and Xander. I'll be honest: it doesn't really work. If you're going to have an ~oh no, we shouldn't be kissing~ scene in a work of fiction and you want viewers to feel guiltily in favour, chemistry is really important. Willow has considerably more chemistry with her actual boyfriend than she does with the guy she's kissing instead, so this was never going to work.

I can't look at the cowboy vampire without thinking of the screaming cowboy song.

When was the last time Angel wore a shirt? Has he ever worn a shirt? Was he tortured by a shirt in Hell?

I keep forgetting this Willow/Xander plotline is happening and going 'WHY' afresh every time I'm reminded.

I was thinking Mrs Post had Mary Poppins' mannerisms right before Faith called her Mary Poppins. (Gwendolyn Post was also a character who had potential and was instead killed off immediately! Stop that, Buffy.)

You'll be able to deduce I wasn't a fan of the 'Willow and Xander kiss in the library' scene, but it did give us Giles holding his glasses in his mouth, which was endearing.