rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
Tem and I are currently playing Little Hope, the second game in the Dark Pictures Anthology. By which I mean I’m playing Little Hope while Tem watches and laughs at my escalating alarm. I can’t handle horror and I don’t know why I keep playing these horror games.

We’re about halfway through; we’ve just had the Curator scene after crossing the derelict bridge.


ExpandNotes on The Dark Pictures: Little Hope. )


I played Man of Medan in a single sitting, but I'm playing Little Hope more slowly. The problem with this, it turns out, is that I obsess over it between play sessions, can't resist looking up discussion, and end up running into spoilers and hints.

Supermassive horror games really have a way of working themselves into my head. I started playing Little Hope three days ago, and I've already dreamt about it multiple times.

I suppose Supermassive games feel particularly high-pressure because they have lasting consequences in a way that most games - even most horror games - don't. In most games, if I mess up and a character dies partway through, the game will end and I'll be allowed to go back and fix my mistake; my failure isn't written into the narrative. In Supermassive games, if a character dies because I messed up, they're dead, and the story will continue without them.

Supermassive aren't the only developers of narrative games with choices and consequences, of course! The Life Is Strange series and Detroit: Become Human are also games where your actions have a lasting impact on the narrative (and are also extremely stressful). But Supermassive in particular really have stressing me out down to an art.
rionaleonhart: kingdom hearts: riku, blindfolded and smiling slightly. (we'll be the darkness)
We've almost finished season three of The X-Files!

I haven't seen much American television from this era, and I'm struck by the way the shadow of the Vietnam War hangs over The X-Files. In some ways, it's reminiscent of the lingering impact of the Ishbal genocide in Fullmetal Alchemist, although of course the atrocities of the Vietnam War were very real.

I remember being surprised to learn that 'the war' without context is sometimes used to mean the Vietnam War in the US. To me, in the UK, 'he fought in the war' has always meant World War II.

'Pusher': Mulder woke Scully up by stroking her face! They're such weird colleagues. I love it. ('You and your pretty partner seem awfully close,' the murderer they're pursuing observes shortly afterwards.)

I really enjoyed that entire episode, actually! Lots of Mulder and Scully having very intense feelings about each other, and that's very much what I'm here for. Scully slept on his shoulder! Mulder was forced to play Russian roulette with her! They held hands while trying to process their trauma!

When Mulder's in a dangerous situation, we don't see Scully making the decision to go in after him; we just see her going in after him, because of course she does. That was never in question.

Huh! I just looked it up, and apparently the writer of 'Pusher', Vince Gilligan, went on to create Breaking Bad.

'Jose Chung's From Outer Space' was also a hugely enjoyable episode for very different reasons. I loved the different perspectives and Scully censoring all the swearing. And she's so put out to learn someone said she threatened them!

I love the sequence in 'Quagmire' where Mulder and Scully get trapped on a rock in a lake. Asking each other about cannibalism! Mulder aiming his gun at a duck! Strangely reminiscent of the Peep Show episode where Mark and Jeremy get trapped in a building together and have nothing to do but talk to each other.

Scully: You're so consumed by your personal vengeance against life, everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniacal cosmology.
Mulder: Scully, are you coming on to me?

It's fun to consider Mulder and Scully investigating odd happenings from different canons. Mulder and Scully go to Silent Hill to investigate a series of disappearances? Mulder and Scully try to work out what happened on Rokkenjima? Mulder and Scully go looking for Luz Noceda and find the portal to the Boiling Isles? "Have you heard about the morphogenetic field, Scully?" Mulder asks.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (NOOOOOOOOO)
In an episode of Taskmaster, contestants are trying to get a loo roll through a toilet seat dangling from a washing line.

'What, is Pyramid Head doing his laundry?' Rei asks, scathing.

We take a moment to process this. What?

Pyramid Head has a toilet seat, Rei explains, when we express our confusion.

As in... he owns a toilet? He hangs around near a toilet in Silent Hill?

No, Rei says. Pyramid Head has a toilet seat on his head.

Ginger and I are confused. What is on Pyramid Head's head is quite famously not a toilet seat.

Ah, no. Rei sees where the misunderstanding came in here. Pyramid Head has a pyramid on his head, obviously. Rei's not stupid.

The toilet seat is underneath the pyramid.

We ask: is there a human head with a toilet seat on top of it and the pyramid on top of that?

No, Rei says, incredulous that we'd suggest such a thing. There's no head. There's just a toilet seat and then the pyramid over it. Obviously. He's a monster.

Rei was absolutely genuine in their belief in Pyramid Toilet Head, and none of us can understand how this has happened.

(Riona: Is it all right if I tell the story of Pyramid Toilet Head on my Dreamwidth?
Rei: Only if you make it clear that I'm as perturbed by all of this as you are.)
rionaleonhart: final fantasy viii: found a draw point! no one can draw... (you're a terrible artist)
[personal profile] rthstewart is currently hosting a three-sentence ficathon, if you'd like to poke through the current prompts or post some of your own! (Exceeding three sentences is absolutely allowed.)

This seems like an appropriate time to do a commentfic round-up, so here are some scraps of fanfiction I've posted here and there.


ExpandZanki Zero, 150 words, prompt: character/everyone )

ExpandSilent Hill 2, 100 words, prompt: mistaken identity )

Expand13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, 200 words, prompt: Pyrrhic victory )

ExpandNight in the Woods, 150 words, prompt: while the town sleeps )


'Riona, did you give yourself that anonymous character/everyone prompt?' you may very well ask, to which my response is 'shhhh'.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy viii: found a draw point! no one can draw... (you're a terrible artist)
[personal profile] 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!


ExpandA 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!
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
I've just finished reading [personal profile] zarla's Screencap Adventure/Let's Play of EarthBound, which has been an interesting experience!

I've never played EarthBound - it's not easy to get hold of in the UK - but I am familiar with Homestuck and Undertale, both of which were inspired by EarthBound. EarthBound was technically new to me, but its shape felt familiar; I'd gained a sense of it from its legacy. In particular, EarthBound and Undertale are very tonally similar; a lot of the dialogue, details and descriptions in EarthBound felt like they'd fit perfectly into Undertale.

Anyway, Zarla talked a bit about how unsettling the Giygas fight was (it does look it!), and it got me thinking about times videogames have really scared me or freaked me out. I've played a lot of games over the years, but only a small handful come to mind when I think of times a game has genuinely frightened me:


- Pokémon Red: encountering Missingno when I was eleven. I'd gone looking for it, of course - I wanted to use the glitch to duplicate the Master Ball - but actually seeing it terrified me. It was so clearly wrong; it didn't belong in this world. I was powerfully unsettled and regretted my decision to cheat.

- Silent Hill 2: pretty much everything to do with Pyramid Head, but especially the encounter on the hospital roof, when you suddenly hear scraping and you can't actually see what's going on. I also physically jumped the first time I went 'oh, James is looking at this car; what's over there?' and wandered over and A MONSTER scuttled out from under the car.

- Bravely Default: the game's subtitle suddenly changing on the title screen, well into the game, to something more sinister. Absolutely chilling, perhaps because the game hit me on the title screen, a place where I really didn't expect it. I had trouble getting to sleep afterwards because I was shaking, which is a stronger reaction than I'd generally expect to a small text change in a work of fiction!

- The Last of Us: the David fight, probably the most frightening boss fight I've ever experienced in a videogame. The Last of Us often forces you to creep around in tense situations, but the David encounter took it to another level. He's as smart as you are, he's stronger than you, and he's hunting you down when you're armed with nothing but a penknife.

- Undertale: Flowey crashing the game. This terrified me because it felt like something he was doing to attack me, the player, rather than the character I was controlling. Flowey's boss form was also extremely frightening; like Missingno, it was something that clearly didn't belong here.


Looking at this list, it seems like most of the things that have really scared me in videogames have been things that clashed with my expectations.

I don't expect the title of the game to change halfway through. I don't expect the game to close itself without my input. I expect monsters in Silent Hill, but I'd come to expect 'James is looking at something, and there's no radio static; it must be a useful item!' and I wasn't prepared to have that expectation betrayed. I knew I was pursuing a glitch in Pokémon, but I still hadn't really braced myself to encounter a 'Pokémon' that clearly wasn't supposed to exist, and seeing it jarred my understanding of the world I was in.

In their own way, each of these moments gave me the sense of unknowingly reaching the top of a staircase and trying to take a step that wasn't there. They shocked me in a way I needed a moment to recover from, and I still remember that experience years later - or, in the case of Pokémon Red, decades.

(Pyramid Head and the David fight are the exceptions here. They didn't contradict anything I expected; they were just extremely well-executed scary things.)

I'm curious now: what are the times a videogame has frightened or unsettled you in a way that's stuck with you? Feel free to talk about videogame moments you found particularly memorable for other reasons, too!
rionaleonhart: twewy: joshua kiryu is being fabulously obnoxious and he knows it. (is that so?)
I've now seen the first six episodes of the World Ends with You anime! It's not a bad adaptation, but it does feel very videogamey. This is because it's adapted from a videogame, of course, but seeing the characters completing obvious videogame missions does sometimes leave me wondering why I'm watching this, rather than playing it. It's a great story, but it's very much a story that works best in the original medium.

I also feel the anime waters down the characterisation slightly. Joshua, in particular, is not enough of an unbearable little shit. If I don't want to strangle him within sixty seconds of meeting him, he's not Joshua.

Also, Joshua is too tall! I always envisioned him as noticeably shorter than Neku; it's very weird to see them around the same height. Joshua's supposed to be tiny and frail!

I think Joshua may actually be taller than Neku in the anime, which is obviously illegal. In the game, Neku thinks 'this pipsqueak is my new partner?' when they first meet!

All that said, the anime does have some nice little additions, particularly with regard to Eri. And it's cool to see the characters in motion! I love how closely the art style matches the game. (The World Ends with You has a very distinctive graffiti-inspired visual style: bold designs, thick black lines.)

Plus there's some weird, sinister homoeroticism between Neku and Joshua, and that's very important.


More notes on Persona Q! I've just finished the Evil Spirit Club labyrinth. (The Evil Spirit Club is much more unsettling than I expected of a non-horror game on the 3DS and I do not like it at all. I slowed down on playing Persona Q for a while because it was entirely too scary.)

I'm glad this game gave me the opportunity to say that Yosuke is one-third handsomeness, but also why is it letting me flirt with Yosuke if it won't let me follow through?

('Whoa... C-c'mon, you're embarrassing me!' Yosuke responded, blushing.)

Holy shit, Tentarafoo is a lifesaver. I never realised how useful it was before. I've started using it at the beginning of every battle.

heck yeah, gonna hide from a cursed doll in a bathroom stall with my boyfriend

(and also Mitsuru and Ken I GUESS)

'Sorry, I was daydreaming, so I'm not sure what you asked me.' I'm glad Persona 3 protagonist Kosuke is living up to my 'clueless weirdo' headcanon characterisation now that he actually has dialogue.

It's lovely to see Kanji clumsily offering Ken advice and support!

'I'll show you what a man I am,' Kanji mumbles in his sleep. I love Kanji.

Elizabeth left me a secret message, and Yosuke was really unreasonably excited by the prospect that she might be confessing her love to me, just absolutely thrilled, and I felt pretty bad about having to tell him that the note said 'the price tag is still on your clothes'. It's okay, Yosuke; you don't have to settle for vicariously being with me.


I'm glad Persona Q has reminded me of how much I love Yosuke Hanamura (it's a lot), but now I'm torn between 'I should write more fanfiction about Yosuke!' and 'I don't have any inspiration'. I checked my list of unwritten fic ideas to see whether it had anything to offer, but the only Persona 4 concepts listed are unhelpfully vague:

- something about Persona 4 inspired by Higurashi (small towns!) or maybe Silent Hill (fog!)? Either of these would probably be a good opportunity to psychologically destroy Yosuke. (Or anyone else, but, let's be honest, it's going to be Yosuke.)
- Persona 4/FFXV: can you make Yosuke and Prompto meet? (Should you?)


Come to think of it, the Evil Spirit Club labyrinth makes a Silent Hill-esque Persona fic strangely plausible.

Yosuke meeting Prompto does sound potentially delightful, but I'm a little afraid that, if I attempted to write it, they'd end up sounding exactly the same and I'd be exposed as a fraud who can't differentiate characters.

Maybe at some point I should try to write a hundred words of every concept on my 'unwritten fic ideas' list and see whether any of them get a foothold. (Although I'm not sure about some of these ideas. 'Community/Utena. Jeff at Ohtori Academy. Meets Akio, goes "wow, so much better than the dean", gets banged.')


I think Persona 4 might be my favourite Persona game, which is impressive, because I played Persona 5 and went 'holy crap, I love this game, this is incredible. I suppose I'll check out Persona 4, but there's no way it won't be a disappointment after this.' And then I loved Persona 4, if possible, even more.

The Persona series isn't perfect by any means, but it's brought me so much joy during a worldwide joy shortage. Easily my best discovery of 2020.
rionaleonhart: okami: amaterasu is startled. (NOT SO FAST)
I expect to make very slow progress in Persona 4 Golden. The PS3 port isn't available in Europe, for some reason, so I've picked it up on Steam instead. This means I'll only be playing it when I'm in the mood for PC gaming, which is never.

Still, I've made a start! I've played for about an hour; just finished the first day at school.

I think it's unreasonable to expect me to give the protagonist a full name before I've even had a chance to see him. I almost named him Light Yagami, but I felt that that might be a bit too distracting, so I just stole Light's family name. He's Toya Yagami instead.

Something about Persona 4 really reminds me of Silent Hill; I was thinking of it even before I ended up having a dream full of fog and television static. I suppose I'm just programmed to see small towns in PS2 graphics and go 'oh no, oh no, get out of here.'

'Now, I hate wasting my time, but I'd better introduce this transfer student. This sad sack's been thrown from the big city out to the middle of nowhere like yesterday's garbage. And he's just as much of a loser here as he was there, so you girls better not get any ideas about hitting on him.' I don't think Mr Morooka is a very good teacher.

Chie's English voice actor is really going for it. It's slightly overwhelming.


More notes on my Danganronpa replay!

'To be kept waiting by the likes of you. Rest assured, if we had access to firearms, you'd all be dead.' Togami takes punctuality very seriously.

I love how, when things get really intense in the trials, you can hear Naegi breathing like he's on the verge of hyperventilating. It's half the reason I always play this game with Japanese voices; I really, really love Naegi's Japanese voice acting.

When Asahina is worrying about her appearance, and Naegi is trying to reassure her:

Asahina: Then... I'm still hot?
Naegi: W-well, I mean, uh... yeah...

Bless this awkward kid. His mind must have just been screaming when she asked that question.

I love it when Asahina asks Naegi to be her practice boyfriend, has no idea how to act like she's in a relationship, and just ends up yelling 'You lied to me! You said you left your wife!' at him. You're a treasure, Asahina.

I love Togami's 'Fine. I don't mind allowing you to indulge in my attention' whenever I spend Free Time with him. Again, even if I don't ship it myself, this playthrough is helping me see where the shippers come from.

I GAVE TOGAMI A THONG AND HE LIKED IT. As a joke, I gave him the present 'Emperor's Thong' (description: 'Designed solely for those in control of their buttocks. For better or worse, it's unisex'). I was just planning to see his reaction, then reload and give him something he'd like instead. But no. He happily accepted the thong. (Well, he said, 'Fine, I'll take it. I hope you appreciate this,' but that's what Togami says when he genuinely likes something you give him, because Togami is terrible at gratitude.)


ExpandAnd some spoilery notes, up to the aftermath of the Chapter Four trial. )


Hagakure, people are dead and I don't want to hear about how your hamburger was abducted by aliens.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
I've finished Silent Hill 3! A handful of confused notes on the ending below the cut:


ExpandSilent Hill 3: spoilers up to the end. )


And that's Silent Hill 3! On the Silent Hill confusion scale, it is less confusing than the original Silent Hill but more confusing than Silent Hill 2.

I really enjoyed Heather as a protagonist. She's fun in a way Harry and James aren't, and there's a lot of personality in her observations when she examines things. I can understand why Silent Hill 2 couldn't really have that levity - the idea of James Sunderland wisecracking makes me shudder; that'd be awful - but it was a pleasant change in Silent Hill 3.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy xiii: lightning pays intense attention to you. (speak carefully)
I am still having adventures in Silent Hill 3! Horrible, horrible adventures.

Heather, if you don't want to carry a plastic bag full of blood around, have you considered not filling a plastic bag with blood for no reason?

Heather encountered Vincent in her motel room, and of course I instantly found myself battling unfortunate fic ideas. I wouldn't say I ship Heather/Vincent at all, but I find their interactions interesting and I'm tempted to try to explore their dynamic. Because this is Silent Hill, though, and Vincent comes across as extremely self-serving and manipulative, I imagine any effort to explore it would turn out hideously.

This whole game is fairly confusing, and I feel there's a good chance I'll end up too bewildered to attempt to write anything, which, I'll be honest, may be for the best.

Are you... are you not going to ask how Vincent got into your motel room? No? You're just going to accept that this incredibly untrustworthy guy presumably followed you from your hometown to Silent Hill and you just found him in your motel room? Okay.

I don't want to go back to the amusement park! I've already been there in my dreams and it went very badly! I don't want to be run over by a rollercoaster!

'There's a dead body inside this box thing. There's nothing interesting here.' Heather, you're so desensitised.

Douglas pointed his gun at me! I was so startled! You can't do that, Sad Detective; you're the only person in this game I trust!

I found that scene really interesting, actually. Douglas raises his gun to point it at Heather's back, and:

Heather: What are you doing?
Douglas: Maybe killing you here is the only way to end this nightmare.
Heather: Yeah, maybe you're right.

But he doesn't shoot, he lets her leave, and they're still on good terms afterwards. I love this sort of strange, tense interaction, and Silent Hill is a great place to find them.

I'm enjoying Vincent occasionally just showing up to make everything uncomfortable.

Vincent: It's not uncommon for people to worship the same god and still disagree.
Heather: God? Are you sure you don't mean 'devil'?
Vincent: Whichever you like.

I really liked this little exchange. Vincent doesn’t care if Heather calls his god a devil; that's not what's important to him.

Vincent saying, 'I always hated getting all... hot... and sweaty' was a bit odd. The pauses made it seem like a come-on! But the content doesn't make sense as a come-on! 'I'm repelled by the thought of having sex with you,' Vincent says, breathily.

Vincent sort of feels like a slightly off version of Ignis Scientia. I think that’s why it’s really jarring to me every time Vincent speaks; I’m always expecting him to have an RP accent!
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
Riona: It looks like this 'DANGER: KEEP OUT' sign fell off this door. I'm not sure I want to go through this door.
Tem: Hey, it's not on the door any more, right? So it's fine.

Anyway, that's the story of how I got eaten by a giant worm.

Later I found a hairdryer, which gave me the perfect way to deal with this water-dwelling worm: let it drag me into the water again, secure in the knowledge that at least I'd be able to dry my hair afterwards.

I'm still talking about Silent Hill 3, if that's not clear.

It's never good news when a building turns into the Bad Version and you go 'wait, the version I was just in wasn't the Bad Version?'

There was some graffiti visible on the wall that said 'FRIEND' when we met Vincent, no doubt indicating that Vincent is totally, totally trustworthy.


ExpandSome spoilery notes. )


I looked at the clothes in Heather's dresser, and Heather decided she didn't need to change. Heather, you're wearing a miniskirt, which is not advisable Silent Hill attire, and your jacket is covered in blood.

I do like Heather's character design a lot, though. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if I saw her in the street, which is not something I can say for many PS2-era videogame women.

I used to listen to various pieces of music from this game when I was a teenager; it's strange to hear them in context for the first time!

I'm enjoying this awkward, sad detective more than I thought I would.

Douglas, I think you and Heather should probably stick together. I think it seems like a bad idea to send the traumatised seventeen-year-old to search an abandoned hospital alone.

It's really cool to be back in a part of Silent Hill I recognise from the second game! Familiar, friendly Brookhaven Hospital. Well, maybe not that friendly.

God, a fetus nestled into this sacrificial girl's womb, was summoned with the usual rites.

OH, THE USUAL RITES. THE NORMAL, USUAL RITES FOR SUMMONING THE FOETAL GOD.

Don't tell your daughter you nearly strangled her multiple times when she was a baby! That's not information she needs!
rionaleonhart: okami: amaterasu is startled. (NOT SO FAST)
Once again, Tem is forcing me to play a Silent Hill game so she can laugh at my distress. This time it's Silent Hill 3!

Heather's fun. Her observations have a lot more personality than Harry's or James's. I like that she can't be bothered to do anything that takes effort and she wanders through hell going 'ugh, all this blood and rust is so gross.'

It's so strange to have a Silent Hill protagonist who actually reacts to things! She comments when things are weird! This is unprecedented!

This is a normal non-Silent-Hill shopping centre; why does it have so many broken locks rendering doors inoperable?

It's interesting to see an attempt to depict a normal environment in a Silent Hill game.

At one point, a noise in a dark clothes shop freaked me out and then the light of my torch caught a mannequin and it nearly stopped my heart. I'm so bad with horror!

The enemies seem to take a lot of bullets to take down, even on Easy. I'm running away most of the time, rather than fighting, whereas in Silent Hill 2 I'll clear out areas to make them safe.

Heather, you're not in Silent Hill any more. You're in a normal subway. Put away your gun. Just carry a steel pipe, like a normal person.

I read the newspaper article about the guy who'd been hit by a train and concluded 'well, obviously the way to progress is to get hit by the same train'. Spoiler: the correct course of action was not to be hit by a train.

AND THEN I WENT 'WHAT'S THROUGH THIS DOOR ON THE TRAIN?' AND HEATHER LEAPT OFF THE BACK OF THE TRAIN AND DIED. Heather, you do not have a shred of self-preservation instinct. Once you see there's no more train in that direction, you are supposed to stop going in that direction.

I am incredibly bad at this game.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy xiii: lightning pays intense attention to you. (speak carefully)
I haven't written a Silent Hill crossover in far too long. Let's mess some characters up.


Title: Try Again
Fandom: Your Turn to Die/Silent Hill
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: maybe a hint of Keiji/Sara
Wordcount: 5,200
Summary: Sara wakes in a town that's trying to kill her. She meets a man named Keiji, who probably isn't trying to kill her. They team up.


ExpandTry Again )
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (NOOOOOOOOO)
I'll be honest: I was not expecting to laugh so hard at the end of Silent Hill.


ExpandSpoilers for the original Silent Hill. )


A few scattered thoughts on Silent Hill, now that I've finished it:

- The atmosphere and environmental design are genuinely impressive for a PS1 game. Ginger, watching me play, made the observation that, although there are plenty of retro-style games with sprite art, you don't really see retro-style 3D games in the style of the original PlayStation. PS1 graphics are flat-out bad. But Silent Hill really works at creating an interesting, unsettling environment with those limitations. I was struck by details like the patterns rain left on sand.

- Dahlia's voice actor is having such a great time.

- Very pleased that the mysterious Flauros turned out to be a disco ball that shoots you.

- I enjoyed the scene after the Flauros activation, where Dahlia and Alessa are both ignoring poor confused Harry completely.

- I was struck halfway through by the fact that both Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, although the protagonists are male, have majority-female casts. My instinct is that horror games tend to have a larger percentage of female characters than other genres, although I don't have solid numbers to back that up. I definitely remember noticing, back when female protagonists in games were very rare, that a lot of the female protagonists I knew of were from horror games: Silent Hill 3, Project Zero (Fatal Frame), Clock Tower etc. Is the idea that playing as a female character creates a greater sense of helplessness? That wouldn't explain the prevalence of non-playable female characters, though. (Both Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 have casts that are approximately 70% female. It feels notable when majority-male casts are so much more common in videogames, and indeed in fiction in general.)

- It's really interesting to me that a New Game Plus starts with Harry waking in the café, rather than straight after the crash. Is there some sort of time loop going on?
rionaleonhart: final fantasy versus xiii: a young woman at night, her back to you, the moon high above. (nor women neither)

Made an actual Silent Hill 2 edit of the Softer World strip I named my recent James/Mary fic after, because A Softer World and Silent Hill 2 are both totally timely and I know what year it is. I can't believe this strange, dark pairing still has so much power over my heart, all these years later.


The Final Fantasy VII Remake demo is now available on PS4! Just as a heads-up, it's about an hour long and you cannot save. Thoughts:

- Cloud is so pretty. Everyone is so pretty.

- You can't jump, alas! I keep accidentally opening the menu because I want to leap around pointlessly like you can in Final Fantasy XV.

- Cloud and Jessie have more chemistry than I'd expected. Huh. I loved them exchanging glances and shrugs while Barret lectured them in the elevator.

- I'll be very entertained if this remake not only reignites the ferocious Cloud/Tifa versus Cloud/Aerith shipwars but adds a Cloud/Jessie faction.

- I enjoyed Barret going 'okay, now prove you're one of us' and Cloud going 'uh, I'm... not?'

- Guard Scorpion struck me as an unreasonably tough, lengthy first boss fight. Nearly wiped out my supply of twenty-something potions. Maybe I just need to get a better grasp of the battle system? I think it's possible to switch difficulty levels mid-playthrough, so at least I'll be able to shift down if I continue to struggle in the full game.

- I really wanted them to have an 'attack while its tail is up' joke during that fight, but alas no.

- I don't remember any other voiced Final Fantasy in which the characters swear, and I am not yet used to it. At one point Cloud said 'no shit' and my reaction was very much 'gasp, he said a naughty word'.

- If you run into the security lasers five times, Jessie will stop expressing concern and start laughing at you. If you run into the lasers ten times, Jessie will ask, 'Um, do you have a fetish or something?'

- So far, it's looking promising!
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
As I've said before, I think James/Mary of Silent Hill 2 is the first ship I ever really, passionately loved. Here is my desperate, disjointed effort to express my feelings about them.

The opening quotation and the title come from A Softer World #196. I never really read A Softer World, but I saw that strip years ago and I've associated it with James/Mary ever since.


Title: like nails in my feet
Fandom: Silent Hill 2
Rating: 15
Pairing: James Sunderland/Mary Shepherd-Sunderland
Wordcount: 1,200
Summary: Maybe this is a love story that was doomed from the start.
Warning: Suicidal ideation, violence, terminal illness, weird disjointed angst. Full spoilers for Silent Hill 2.


Expandlike nails in my feet )
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
Riona, fighting nurses: Why are there so many of you???
Tem: It's a hospital, Riona.
Riona: As if any hospital is this well staffed.

Tem persuaded me to try out the original Silent Hill. I was hesitant - I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy it without getting to play as MY TERRIBLE BOYFRIEND JAMES SUNDERLAND - but in the end I agreed to give it a go.

At least it means I get to meet [personal profile] zarla's TERRIBLE GIRLFRIEND DAHLIA GILLESPIE.

I am staggeringly bad at the game. I started out on Easy mode, played up to the café and promptly died to the first enemy you can fight, eight minutes in. Silent Hill 2 has a Beginner mode in which most enemies die in one hit; I miss that!

This game's also making me grateful for James Sunderland's sexual issues, because it means the enemies he faces are all adult-sized with plenty of leg, making them reasonably easy to hit. The first enemies Harry encounters, meanwhile, are flying creatures that are too high up to melee, and dog creatures that are too low down. I never really appreciated the practical advantages of perceiving only monsters you could theoretically bang.

I'm never going to forgive the piano puzzle. The G key on a piano is not 'next to' the A key! G# is in the way!

There's a save point in the church, presumably so people can save their souls.

It's strange to see Harry actually asking people 'hey, uh, any chance you've heard anything about some sort of weird nightmare alternate dimension?'; James took it very much in his stride.

This game generally seems more interested in the nature of the town than in Harry himself, whereas Silent Hill 2 was an intensely personal story. In Silent Hill, Harry exists as a means through which you explore the town; in Silent Hill 2, the town exists as a means through which you explore James.

There is, I've discovered, an advantage to playing a Silent Hill game you're not emotionally invested in: you can laugh at it. The dogs attack by bouncing ridiculously on you. Harry does a stupid little hop backwards if you try to back up while holding the run button, and it's absolutely incredible.

The way they took the trouble to animate Harry slamming straight into walls if you run him at them at high speed is also very good. And falling backwards off stairs. I've decided to play Silent Hill as a slapstick comedy.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
Still talking about Silent Hill 2, I'm afraid! All these years later, and I think it's still the most interesting game I've ever played.


ExpandFull-game spoilers for Silent Hill 2. )


I really like the subtleties of Silent Hill 2's ending system: both the subtle differences like this between the endings and the subtle ways the game determines which ending you should get. Usually, if a game has multiple endings, it'll have clear decision points; you're actively choosing what sort of story you want. Silent Hill 2 will pick up on smaller details about the way you play - whether you keep James in good health, whether you examine certain things, how much interest you show in particular characters - and it uses those details to determine which ending would be the most fitting for the story you're telling. Without foreknowledge, you'd have no idea that these actions are influencing the route of the story. I can't think of any other game I've played that has a similar system.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
Riona: Why does the Silent Hill 2 manual feel the need to tell me that the plank James wields is between 32 and 40 inches long? What am I expected to do with this information?
Rei: Craft a custom dildo.
Riona: I don't like this answer.

My other favourite detail about the Silent Hill 2 manual: each character bio opens with a rundown of age and occupation, but it's just 'Age: Unknown. Occupation: Unknown' for every character. Apart from James, for whom we get 'Age: Unknown. Occupation: Protagonist'.


A few notes I forgot to include in my previous entries on replaying Silent Hill 2:

- It cracks me up that James's reaction, if you try to examine the stage with the pole on it at Heaven's Night, is '...Just a regular stage. There's nothing strange about it,' ellipsis and all. (There's also a great 'James desperately tries not to pay attention to how sexy Silent Hill is' moment if you examine the locker with a poster of a woman in a bikini on it: 'The locker won't open. ...This is no time to be looking at a stupid poster.')

- An unsettling detail I never noticed before: the prison morgue is not included on the prison map, suggesting this is not an entirely above-board affair. Although I should probably have guessed that from the fact that their corpse disposal system appears to be 'just shove the corpses in a big hole'.

- I examined the piano in the hotel, and James's thoughts slightly broke my heart. 'There's a piano here. I remember how much Mary liked to play the piano. She wasn't very good... But I still loved to hear her play. That was so long ago, before we were even married. Why am I thinking of that now...' Oh, James/Mary, one of my longest-standing and most doomed ships.

- Another devastating bit of internal narration I don't remember ever seeing before: 'There's a book open on top of the desk. It looks like a medical book. I've already read enough medical books. None of them ever did any good.'

- I actually missed examining the liquor bottles in Heaven's Night this time around, which I was sorry to realise, because it's the single piece of examination text I remember most vividly: 'Liquor bottles. I don't need that right now. It’s not that I don't drink. In fact, I drink a fair bit. To get away from the pain and the loneliness... But the drinking never changes anything... Anyway, I don't need it now. There's something I have to do.' It feels like a significant characterisation detail; I'm surprised that it's so easy to miss it entirely.

- god, James, you're such a wreck, I can't believe I love you so much

- 'The symbolism of Silent Hill 2 clearly illustrates that James is an ass man,' I appear to have written in my diary at some point. I regret this.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (look at yourself)
Silent Hill 2 fanfiction! It's been a while. I've written assorted crossovers and fics inspired by Silent Hill, but I haven't written a pure Silent Hill 2 fic in... almost exactly fourteen years. I'm feeling very rusty, much like Silent Hill itself.

James and Angela's conversations in the game always feel extremely weird; hopefully I've managed to capture some of that weirdness here.


Title: As Long as It Holds
Fandom: Silent Hill 2
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,200
Summary: If James can get Angela out of the town alive, maybe he'll have done something worthwhile, at least.
Warning: Deals heavily with themes of suicide and trauma. Full spoilers for Silent Hill 2.


ExpandAs Long as It Holds )