Feb. 6th, 2006

rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (forgive me my skepticism (panpipe))
I’ve got to warn you right now that this post is inexcusably rambling and disjointed.

Had a dream that started out as being-late-for-a-lesson and ended up in Silent Hill, being attacked by tiny adorable mice (some of which were wearing hats) as I tried to pick them up because I was convinced that they were part of a puzzle solution. I can recall a memo from it, much like the memos in the real Silent Hill games, but instead of saying something like ‘a part of that abyss is in the old society’ it said, clashing somewhat with the atmosphere of the location, ‘tiny mice are so cute! (That’s a clue, by the way.)’ Huh.

One thing that’s both completely unrelated and really rather enjoyable, because it means that you get to feel all smug and superior and knowing-something-the-characters-don’t, is when you figure out the Big Mystery fairly early on in the game/book/what-have-you, and you’re not sure at first but everything that’s happened so far fits in with it, and as you continue more and more details keep cropping up that support your idea and you just want to throw back your head and cackle evilly.

It’s like in Silent Hill 2, if you figure out early on that Laura is the Princess of Jupiter, and then there are all those little details – like the dungarees on the Princess of Jupiter painting, and the fact that the design on the Jupiter Sceptre looks a little bit like a teddy bear if you tilt your head to the left and squint, and the flashback in which you can’t quite make out what Mary and Laura are talking about but you can clearly hear ‘No, that’s not the right planet’ in the middle of it, and the fact that there’s only one ‘star’ visible in the Dark Silent Hill, and Jupiter Head when you’re playing as Laura, and – okay, fine, this was just an excuse to talk about Laura being the Princess of Jupiter. Leave me alone.

I’m mainly thinking about this because I’ve recently got back into the Jak and Daxter fandom, and Jak 3 is pretty much the only game in which I’ve ever actually figured out the Big Mystery well before the actual Big Revelation. (I’m very, very glad that I figured out the Big Mystery a long time before it was actually revealed, because I was foolish enough to stray into the Jak and Daxter section of fanfiction.net before I had finished playing it, and caught sight of a fic that spoiled the Big Mystery in its summary. It also managed to spoil another major plot point that I hadn’t suspected in the same sentence. Grr.)

The Jak series really is fantastic, if you haven’t played them yet, even if the second and third games (titled Jak II and Jak 3, because the series is just too cool to stick with one numbering system), while being squillions of times better than the first, are often infuriatingly difficult. They’re also really rather fun to write fanfiction for. ALSO ALSO ALSO JAK II HAS HEARTABLE RANDOM GUARDS. THEY HANG AROUND AND TALK ABOUT BRIBES AND SYMPATHISE WITH EACH OTHER FOR GETTING SEWER DUTY.

...games that make me feel guilty for killing random guards make me very sad. But also happy! HOORAY FOR PARADOXES! ...paradoxii?

ExpandBehind the cut, I ramble incoherently and extremely spoilerifically about Jak 3. )

Also, on a more general Jak 3-related note: MORE GAMES NEED TO GIVE LIMITED FLIGHT AND THE ABILITY TO SLOW DOWN TIME. Seriously. Light Jak is just the best thing ever.

Finally, after well over a year of being pestered by the idea, I've managed to write a fic about a parrot/monkey hybrid pining after a vaguely elf-like resistance faction member. I do believe that this deserves applause and possibly lynching.