Trabia Garden

For a while now, I've been making entries talking about how each of my major fandoms fits into my fandom history. I considered a fandom 'major' if I'd written at least ten thousand words for it across at least three fics.

I'm starting to wonder if those criteria are too strict, though. Persona 5 falls short on wordcount; I've written just over nine thousand words for it. But I've written five Persona 5 fics. That's enough for me to feel it has a real presence in my fandom life.

So I'm going to say that, if I've written at least five fics for something, it counts as one of my major fandoms, regardless of wordcount. This also reinstates a couple of my older fandoms I've always felt should have made the list.

This means it's time for some 'my fandom history' writeups!


Jak and Daxter

I'm glad I found an excuse to add this to the 'major fandom' list; it always felt wrong that it didn't qualify!

I must have first played Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy when I was thirteen; it was positively reviewed in Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, which my brother and I used to buy every month. I didn't actually start writing for it until I was fifteen, though, when Jak II came out.

Jak and Daxter was a colourful, cartoony platformer. Jak II was a dark action shooter set in a dystopian future. Jak had been tortured and traumatised and now he was bent on revenge! It was an incredibly jarring tonal shift, but it matched my teenage tastes perfectly.

The Jak fandom is particularly significant for me because it's the first fandom where I felt I really had a presence as a writer. Previously, I'd write a fic or two for a canon and then move on. But I stuck around for a while in the Jak fandom, and it's where I met eva_kasumi, who I think was probably the first fandom friend I ever made.

The earliest surviving fic I wrote involving sex was for Jak II, although it wasn't explicit (none of my sex scenes are explicit; it's not an area of writing I've ever been confident in). It was noncon selfcest. I feel I sort of jumped in at the deep end there. (It's possible I included sex in a now-lost earlier Red Dwarf fic, but I strongly suspect that that was also noncon selfcest.)

Favourite character: I'm surprised to realise I've never really thought about my favourite character in the Jak series. Maybe Torn? He's very grumpy, which I enjoy.
Favourite pairing: Jak/Torn. It's a ship with a lot of anger in it, and what more do you need, particularly when you're fifteen years old?
Number of words written: 9,659, across nine fics.

Snippet: I actually have managed to hang on to a snippet of unfinished Jak and Daxter fanfiction, which is impressive, because I must have written this in... what, 2005? Somewhere between 2004 and 2006, at any rate. I've kept my writing obsessively backed up for a long time!

This was saved in a document called 'stupidest jakfic opening ever.doc'.

( Jak and Daxter unfinished snippet. Some sort of Daxter pairing, circa 2005. )


ShakespeaRe-Told Macbeth

At the age of seventeen, I had a brief but intense love affair with the BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told modern-day adaptation of Macbeth, set in a restaurant and starring James McAvoy. I was absolutely obsessed.

This adaptation didn't have a fandom, but I was determined to be a fandom all by myself. I signed up to write a hundred fics and managed forty-one. In light of this, it's sort of surprising that this didn't hit the 'ten thousand words' threshold! But everything I wrote for Macbeth was extremely short, falling between 100 and 400 words.

In 2020, fourteen years later, I was struck by nostalgia and checked whether AO3 had a section for ShakespeaRe-Told. It did! I left a comment on a Macbeth/Banquo fic by speakertone, mentioning my solitary fannish history with the adaptation and how pleased I was to find that someone else had written for it, and I was delighted by their response:

I just have to say something because this is so amazing to me that it's almost hilarious - I'm pretty sure I've read all forty-one of the ficlets you posted back-to-back-to-back and I loved them! They were the reason I figured it wouldn't be so out of nowhere for me to post this fic online, so I'm really really ridiculously happy that you found this and you enjoyed my writing. Thank you so much!!

I'm ecstatic that my terrible teenage fanfiction could encourage someone to post their own fic for this nonexistent fandom, all those years later.

Favourite character: I mean, obviously it's Macbeth himself, just as it is in the original play. The entire adaptation is ninety minutes of Macbeth making terrible decisions and hating himself and having a guilty paranoid trembling breakdown. I was inevitably going to love him.
Favourite pairing: Equally predictably, it's Joe Macbeth/Billy Banquo. It wasn't the first pairing I'd shipped where one half murdered the other, and it absolutely would not be the last. I was obsessed with the scene where Macbeth strokes Banquo's face and kisses his hand just before arranging his death.
Number of words written: 8,505, across forty-one (very short) fics.

Snippet: I've got a few tiny scraps of incomplete fic scattered around from my fanfic100 attempt. Interesting to look at them again; it's been such a long time! Here's a snippet.

( ShakespeaRe-Told Macbeth unfinished snippet, circa 2005. )


Persona 5

Persona 5 was my first encounter with the Persona series, at the age of thirty-two. Scrolling through a sale of Japanese games on the PlayStation Store, I spotted it for £10 and thought I might as well try it out.

What I'd heard about the Persona games sounded daunting; they seemed very long and complicated, and I wasn't sure what they were really about. But it was the autumn of 2020 and the country was in and out of lockdown; there wasn't much else to do. If I was going to get into a hundred-hour JRPG, now was the time.

What a great decision. The Persona series has been incredibly valuable to me throughout the pandemic, constantly keeping me engaged in a restricted time. It has its flaws, but I love its characters; I love the emphasis it places on friendship; I love its strange blend of normal school life and fighting symbolic monsters in parallel universes. I've hugely enjoyed both playing and writing for these games.

(Here's an alarming statistic: I've spent over 500 hours playing Persona games since I discovered the series in September 2020. This means I have spent nearly 3% of the last two years playing Persona.

Honestly, I'm struggling to regret this. A substantial proportion of it was during lockdown, and I've had such a great time with this series. A worthy use of approximately one in every 33 hours.)

Favourite character: In the original Persona 5, it's probably Ryuji. He can be inconsistently written in a way I find frustrating, but I love how passionate he is and how openly he admires people; he just thinks all his friends are really cool! In Royal... God help me, but it might be Akechi, who was the party member I liked least in the original game. It turns out that, when you scratch his smug surface, you discover an angry disaster, and I've never been able to resist one of those.
Favourite pairing: Protagonist/Ryuji. Let me kiss him, you cowards! He's clearly in love with me; why can't I reciprocate?
Number of words written: 9,497, across five fics. Unusually, I've never written from the same Persona 5 character's perspective twice; I've got one fic from the protagonist's perspective, one from Ryuji's, one from Makoto's, one from Akechi's, and one that pings between various non-party confidants.

I don't think I have any unfinished Persona 5 snippets to include here! I've somehow managed to finish every Persona 5 fic I've ever started.

I'm playing Persona 5 Strikers! I initially didn't plan to get this spinoff because I thought from the title that it was a baseball game. It is definitely not a baseball game.

Here are my notes so far! I've just cleared the second Jail.


( Early notes on Persona 5 Strikers. )


I'm glad to be having another adventure with all these weird kids!

I've finished Persona 5 Royal! Here are my notes up to the end.


( Full spoilers for Persona 5 Royal. )


And that's Persona 5 Royal! It took me a hundred and fifty-seven hours of gameplay to finish, as if Persona 5 weren't already long enough. I had a great time.

I can't believe Persona 5 Royal took a game I already loved and introduced weird memory bullshit, my favourite thing. Of course I immediately dropped my playthrough to write this.


Title: Rewrite
Fandom: Persona 5 Royal
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,100
Summary: Fine. Ren's accepted this new reality. Akechi won't.


( Rewrite )

pict demanded to know all my ambitious fic ideas, which reminded me of something I've been thinking about doing for a while: archiving the fic ideas I've been scribbling down in my diaries.

Every year, I buy the same style of diary, which has a couple of blank pages at the back. I've been using these blank pages to note down fic concepts since 2013. Some of these get written! Many of them don't.

If I type up the unwritten concepts, maybe one of them will inspire me? (Or indeed inspire someone else? Feel free to let me know if you're interested in writing any of these!) At the very least, they'll no longer be languishing in old diaries I rarely look back at.

These are sorted in alphabetical order by fandom; the notes under any particular fandom may contain spoilers for the canon. Some ideas are extremely vague; some are very specific. Crossovers are filed haphazardly under whichever fandom feels right in the moment. The tags on this entry should give you an idea of which fandoms are represented, if you're wondering whether anything you know is in here!


( A huge pile of unwritten fanfiction ideas. )


I'm not sure this exercise has actually sparked any inspiration, but it's good to have all these ideas in one place. If any of these would particularly interest you, let me know!

Persona 5 fanfiction! Makoto tends to struggle with perfectionism and low self-esteem, and I thought that might collide interestingly with Ryuji's open admiration and more relaxed attitude.


Title: Good Enough
Fandom: Persona 5
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,700
Summary: Makoto's spent her life straining to meet everyone's expectations. It's strange to realise that Ryuji doesn't need her to be perfect.


( Good Enough )

Rei's partner Tem and I have an arrangement: whenever Tem visits, the two of us will play weird videogames about murder together.

Tem: Riona! Tomorrow, there will be murder.
Riona: Absolutely.
Rei: You can't say things like that!
Riona: We just did.
Tem: What are you going to do to stop us? Murder us? That would just be playing straight into our hands.

In weird-videogames-about-murder news, I'm surprised and delighted by the announcement of a sequel to AI: The Somnium Files! That's actually the game that kicked off this tradition; Tem and I tend to be awake before anyone else in the house, so we'd hang out and play it in the mornings. Looking forward to more of this absolute nonsense.


Of course, I'm also still playing Persona 5 Royal. Here's my latest batch of notes.

Can't believe I almost turned down Ryuji's invitation to see a film in order to hang out with a politician. I need to get my priorities straight. Boyfriend time is more important than spending my time as efficiently as possible.

'With Ryuji next to me, the movie was almost as fresh as the first time I saw it.' Aww!

Takemi calls me 'good boy'. She remains terrifying and I'm into it.

I keep going 'oh, I'm still at the beginning of the game, I'm only two Palaces in, Makoto hasn't joined my team yet, I've barely started,' and then I catch sight of the game clock and realise I've been playing for over thirty hours.

I love that Makoto prepared for spying on us by reading detective novels.

There's a whole new shopping district to explore in Royal! Ryuji's hanging out with me and commenting on everything I look at! I got a bravery bonus for sitting on a display sofa for ages! This is delightful.

'I keep forgettin', but your glasses are fake, huh?' WHAT, I REJECT THIS NEW CANON, OF COURSE THE PROTAGONIST NEEDS HIS GLASSES, HOW DARE YOU. Yes, I know he doesn't wear glasses in Palaces, but obviously he's got a corrective magical mask.

(pict informs me that 'the protagonist doesn't actually need glasses' was already canon in the original game, which I am also choosing to ignore.)

It's strange how rarely we see characters who canonically have vision problems, given how common vision problems are in real life.

Also puzzled by Akechi later going 'oh, so those glasses are just for the aesthetic?' in response to 'I see a lot of things'. Maybe I see a lot of things because I am wearing my glasses, Akechi. From two paces, I can barely tell whether someone has eyes; with my glasses on, I can see individual hairs on their head. The fact that I can't see things without assistance doesn't mean I can't ever see things; that's what glasses are for!

This darts date with Ryuji is very cute.

'I feel like I understand something better after pairing up with Ryuji!' You bet, Rei.

Caroline calling the waitress over with 'Hey! Person!' is sort of incredible.

I scored 69 points in a round of darts and got the message 'NICE ONE'. It was the first time I'd seen that message, so I didn't realise until I got a similar score later that it had just been a coincidence.

I finished Persona Q, if you hadn't deduced that from the fact that I wrote a fic about it!

At one point, Yosuke said he'd give me a shoulder massage later. I risked the Reaper to get that conversation, and it was worth it.

The trouble with Persona is that it's a really charming series of games about THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, but occasionally it has strangely mean-spirited scenes that don't seem to fit the themes and tone at all. In particular, there are moments when a party member is upset or distressed and, rather than giving you the opportunity to intervene or comfort them, the game goes 'and then you just walked away and left them to it, it was hilarious.' When Yosuke's on the verge of tears because of a misunderstanding, please just let me explain it to him!


Having finished Persona Q, am I going to shut up about Persona for a while?

No. No, of course not. It's time for Persona 5 Royal.

After I finished Persona 5, my main thought was, Wow. That was incredible, but it was also vast and exhausting. I definitely want to play the Royal expanded edition, but I don't think I'll be ready for that for at least a couple of years.

Seven months later, here we are.

Now that I've played Persona Q and met the actual Persona character called Rei, I probably shouldn't name the Persona 5 protagonist Rei again; it was already confusing, given that that's my housemate's name, and is now doubly so. That said, I'm naming him Rei again and nobody can stop me.


( Rambling about the early hours of Persona 5 Royal. )


I'd forgotten how much Persona 5 makes me think of Final Fantasy VIII, between the school setting, the quiet protagonist and Ryuji 'Zell Dincht' Sakamoto. Ryuji and Zell aren't identical, but there's definitely enough similarity to call Zell to mind.

I dreamt a couple of nights ago about Squall and Zell kissing, and I'm blaming this game. (Maybe 'thanking' would be a better word than 'blaming'. Squall/Zell was my first ever ship, and I woke up reflecting very fondly on it.)

I just looked up the account of the dream I wrote when half-asleep, and I'm going to type it up because it made me smile:

Dreamt I was Squall Leonhart and kissed Zell after an intense foot race around a raised track. EXTREMELY GOOD. I think I was sort of trying to hint at it and he went 'yeah, you don't have to ask, you can absolutely kiss me' (because, as we all know, Zell is very in love with Squall).

Barret was annoyed with us for kissing on the track instead of continuing to race. Barret, the race was supposed to be seventy-two laps; it was lap five and we were all exhausted already. Making out with Zell was a much better conclusion to the race than actually seeing it through. Also, what are you doing here? You're a FFVII character.

Rinoa had previously suggested letting Zell win to make him feel better. Hopefully the kissing succeeded in making him feel good without having to compromise the race.

Here are some teenage boys being terrible at feelings at the end of Persona Q. (It should be understandable if you're only familiar with Persona 4, though!)


Title: Clean Slate
Fandom: Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
Rating: G? I think this might actually be G-rated. Nobody bleeds or anything.
Pairing: Yosuke/Persona 4 protagonist
Wordcount: 2,000
Summary: If they're going to have their memories erased anyway, it's okay for Yosuke to kiss Yu, right? No consequences. The perfect plan.


( Clean Slate )

Here is a deeply, embarrassingly self-indulgent Persona 4 fic. Loosely inspired by Higurashi: When They Cry, but knowledge of Higurashi is not required at all; the concept just provided a helpful excuse to psychologically destroy Yosuke.


Title: Collapse
Fandom: Persona 4
Rating: 15
Pairing: Yosuke/protagonist
Wordcount: 3,300
Summary: Yosuke kind of wants to kiss Yu. He also kind of thinks Yu might be a murderer.
Warnings: Weird and dark.


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