Trabia Garden

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated by a tendency amongst gamers to go 'there are implications that this character may not be straight, but I personally believe that this character is straight, THEREFORE ANYONE WITH A DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION IS WRONG'. It's something I've seen a few times, but it was the GTA Wiki article on Trevor Philips that finally made me snap:

Many of his sarcastic [sexually suggestive remarks towards men] have been misinterpreted as sincere statements by players.

IT'S NOT A MISINTERPRETATION

IT'S JUST AN INTERPRETATION

Someone in the article's talk page said, 'Hey, do you think we should mention the possibility that Trevor might be bisexual?' and got the response, 'I think you take what Trevor says far too seriously.' Look, I haven't played much of Grand Theft Auto V (I am the world's worst Grand Theft Auto player; I attempt to play it as law-abidingly as possible, which doesn't really work), but I've seen enough to be fairly certain that 'Trevor has a sexual interest in men' is not an unreasonable conclusion. Still, perhaps I'm wrong! It's not like you ever see him in bed with a man, after all.

All right, sometimes you do see him in bed with a man (who then starts sobbing and apologising to his girlfriend), but perhaps I'm just misinterpreting.

Do heterosexual male gamers try to dismiss this possibility because they feel it'll make it harder for them to identify with Trevor? Trevor Philips is an incredibly horrible person. If that's the point at which you start finding it hard to identify with him, I don't ever want to meet you.

This isn't the first time I've seen this. In The World Ends With You, is Joshua actually gay or does he just flirt with Neku to fuck with his head? Either is possible! If you don't think Joshua is gay, that's absolutely fine, but don't try to claim that people who do think he's gay are deluded. In Final Fantasy XIII, I don't personally interpret Fang and Vanille as lovers - their relationship feels more mother-daughter to me - but I can absolutely understand why people do see them as lovers, and their interpretation isn't any less valid than mine. Different character interpretations can coexist! So long as canon doesn't contradict it, anything is fine. Can't we all get along without dismissing perfectly valid possibilities in supposedly-factual wiki articles?

(If you think Trevor Philips is as straight as y = x, to be honest, I do think your interpretation is slightly less valid than mine. But it's not quite on the level of the 'why are you writing Doctor/Jack/Rose fanfiction? Captain Jack Harkness is straight' review I once got.)

This goes the other way, of course. It's valid to think that Enjolras of Les Misérables shows no interest in women because he is gay or asexual, but it is also valid to think that he shows no interest in women simply because he's busy planning a revolution. Some odd sections of the Les Mis fandom try to claim that 'shipping Enjolras with a woman is morally wrong. It really isn't! (I don't personally feel that thinking 'hey, these two fictional characters could hypothetically make an interesting couple' is ever a moral issue, even if canon leaves no room for interpretation - you can 'ship Kurt Hummel/Santana Lopez if you really want to - but I find the Enjolras/Éponine controversy a particularly perplexing case.)

Today I woke up to find that Kingdom Hearts III had been announced and that Final Fantasy Versus XIII had been rebranded Final Fantasy XV (here's a trailer) and was coming to the PS4.

I'M EXCITED.

(What I really, really, really want to see in Kingdom Hearts III is the Shibuya of The World Ends With You. I don't know how likely this is - there's never been a Square world in a Kingdom Hearts game, after all, despite the presence of Square characters - but Shibuya was mentioned in Dream Drop Distance, so it definitely exists in the Kingdom Hearts universe!)

And of course there's Lightning Returns coming out in February. Square Enix is going to destroy my bank balance and I'm looking forward to it immensely.

(One thing that does annoy me, though, on the subject of bank balances: the PS4 is to cost almost a hundred pounds more in the United Kingdom than in the United States. That's really quite outrageous. I'm hoping the price will have come down a bit by the time the games I want to play are released, though.)


I'm replaying a bit of Final Fantasy XIII here and there at the moment. I love the way the characters communicate during battle in this game. I love that they'll sometimes address each other directly, or call out to check on someone who's been hurt. It's such a small, charming detail. Sazh saying, 'Thanks, Vanille' when Vanille heals him really makes me smile.

I also smiled when Hope, travelling with Lightning in the Vile Peaks, quietly told himself to calm down. Oh, Hope.

It strikes me as a strange decision to have the party broken up into two groups of two for such a long time. It's good on a story level, allowing the Lightning-Hope and Sazh-Vanille relationships to develop, but the battle system really wasn't designed for fewer than three characters. Not that this is the only time Final Fantasy XIII prioritises story over gameplay, of course.

It's difficult to claim that Final Fantasy XIII is a good game, despite the strength of its battle system - it's a game that actively resents being played and takes every measure it can to minimise the player's input - but it's probably my favourite film. I just adore the way it builds up all these relationships within the party. To me, no other cast in the series felt as strongly bound together.


I've also been replaying Dark Chronicle recently, because apparently I'm in a very videogamey mood. I have my issues with Dark Chronicle - although it's fun and pretty, it's also awfully repetitive and makes me feel a bit empty if I play it for too long - but it's got one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. Just listen to that boss battle theme. Or the Gundorada Workshop music. I nearly linked to six other pieces here, but I'll restrain myself.

I wasn't really satisfied with my first attempt at The World Ends With You fanfiction, so I thought I'd try to write something with a bit more spark and direction. This is the result! I hope it's worked; it was certainly a lot of fun to write.


Title: Select Player Two
Fandom: The World Ends With You
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 7,600
Summary: Neku wakes in the scramble crossing, a Player Pin in his hand. Again. Goddammit, Joshua.
Warnings: Spoilers for the entirety of The World Ends With You.


( Select Player Two )

I haven't finished any fanfiction for half a year, so I suppose this is my cautious attempt to get back on the writing horse, get used to the characters of The World Ends With You and get some sort of handle on the strange and fascinating relationship between Neku and Joshua. I hope I'll be able to write something in which these characters go on ridiculous adventures or (inevitably) train Pokémon soon, but for the moment I'm afraid they're mainly talking a lot.


Title: Imprints
Fandom: The World Ends With You
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 3,600
Summary: It's strange, but somehow he misses Joshua.
Warnings: Massive, massive spoilers for the entirety of The World Ends With You; if you haven't played the game and there's any chance at all that you will in the future, don't read this.


( Imprints )

I did manage to find a good picture of smug Joshua in the end, so I've now created two manips of Joshua Kiryu wearing a tiny skirt. I'm not proud. If my previous entry failed to meet your Joshua-in-a-tiny-skirt needs, though (or even if it succeeded; sorry!), here you go:




Here he is posing flirtatiously and looking immensely pleased with himself. As well he should, because not many people could wear that tiny skirt as well as he does.

One reaper in The World Ends With You tells you he'll only let you pass if 'pretty boy' ('You're speaking to me?' asks Joshua) comes back in head-to-toe Natural Puppy, a girls' clothing brand. If you do dress Joshua in Natural Puppy, the reaper will say, 'Wow... you actually kinda work that.' I can readily believe it. (And then he doesn't let you pass after all, because he doesn't have the authority to remove the wall. The game just wanted an excuse to make you dress Joshua in girls' clothes.)

The clothing system in The World Ends With You does create some odd mental images sometimes. In my game, Joshua ended up wearing a patchy biker jacket over a girl's school uniform and work boots. Shiki is wearing a full-body cat suit and a pirate hat. Beat is carrying a rubber duck.

I'm going back over the chapters at the moment, trying to get all the Secret Reports, and there are so many things I missed the first time around! All this optional dialogue! The main thing I've gathered from my further exploration is that Joshua flirts with Neku even more than I'd originally realised.

There was a wonderful moment when I was trying to work out the location of one of the hidden items: I stared and stared at the clue 'SHOWN A DREAM', becoming increasingly frustrated as I had no idea what it meant, and then gave up and exited the menu and realised I was standing directly in front of the gigantic SHADOW RAMEN sign.

Ahahaha, awww, if you buy enough at le Grand the shop assistant develops a massive crush on you. I was already fond of the le Grand assistant because he was one of the few shopkeepers who didn't obviously resent me when I hung around for a while and then left without making a purchase; I suppose that was because just seeing Neku was enough for him. The proprietor of Shadow Ramen, meanwhile, assumes that you have a crush on him and gets really nervous whenever you're around. I'm tempted to max out friendship with all the shop assistants now, just to see how what they say changes (and to stop them getting annoyed when I leave without buying anything; stop making me feel bad, fictional shop assistants! It's starting to make me feel awkward when I leave shops without buying anything in real life!), but that would cost me an awful lot of yen.

I sort of want to write The World Ends With You fanfiction, but I don't have any ideas! Where are you, inspiration?

I finished The World Ends With You yesterday evening and haven't stopped thinking about it since. Such a good cast! Such a good everything!


( Huge spoilers for The World Ends With You. )


Very soon after completing the game, I watched all the cutscenes from Traverse Town in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance; I doubt I'll ever be able to play Dream Drop Distance, because I have no 3DS and no intention of acquiring one, but the Traverse Town storyline features The World Ends With You characters and I couldn't miss it. I was disconcerted by how adorable I found Kingdom Hearts Joshua. Fairly certain that's not supposed to happen.

And then I played the bonus 'Another Day' non-canonical chapter, which is just unashamed crackfic. I love this game. It also contains the following rather delightful exchange, if you head to the Shibuya River. (Note: at this point in the story, the characters have been assigned colour-based code-names. Neku is 'Blue' (or 'Black 'n' Blue'); Joshua is 'Pink'. In Joshua's own words, 'I should be Pink, because Pink is love, and a humanitarian like me loves people.')

Shiki: Sorry, but I'll pass. These boots were so not made for sewer-walking.
Beat: Yeah, this ain't my style either, yo.
Neku: I guess that's understandable. All right, I'll go check it out.
Joshua: Whoa there, Black 'n' Blue. I'm going with.
Neku: You? You seem like the last person who'd want to go in there.
Joshua: I could never live with myself if I let you go alone. Let's spend some quality time.
Shiki: Whoa-ho-ho!
Beat: You guys are... Like, you ain't...
Shiki: Blue and Pink!? Sure, they go... but I didn't know they went LIKE THAT!
Neku: Now look what you've done!
Joshua: Hee hee... Shut up and walk, dear.
Shiki: ...I'm going, too. If something happens, I want to see... I mean stop it.

I was also quite amused by what happens the first time you talk to Joshua in 'Another Day' (which in the 'Another Day'-verse is the first time Neku and Joshua meet). Neku approaches him to challenge him to a game of Tin-Pin Slammer:

Neku: Hey, wanna play me in—
Joshua: Say, did you know? We all perceive the world around us differently, filtered through the lens of our desired reality.
Neku: Huh!? (Is this kid high?)

Oh, Joshua. Joshua.

Might keep a record of Episode Start to Shirtlessness time throughout this series of Merlin. The first and second episodes of the fifth series each took under six minutes to bring a shirtless man onto the screen. I'm expecting the excuses for the knights to remove their shirts to get flimsier and flimsier. OH NO, A MAGICAL FIRE THAT BURNS UP ALL CLOTHING WHILST LEAVING FLESH INTACT IS SPREADING THROUGHOUT CAMELOT.


I've started playing The World Ends With You! It is a magnificent game. It's also scarily addictive; I popped it into my DS for the first time on Saturday, thinking 'well, I'll play for an hour or so, see what it's like', and regained awareness of my surroundings four hours later.

The trouble is that I'm not actually very good at it. I love the style and I love the dialogue and some of the plot developments have genuinely shocked me (THAT THING NEKU DID AT THE END OF DAY TWO), but the battle system is hellishly confusing. You have to keep so many factors in mind! I am completely incapable of concentrating on both DS screens at once.

In fact, you have to keep quite a lot of factors in mind whether you're in battle or not. I tried explaining The World Ends With You to th_esaurus and realised as I was speaking how ridiculously complicated that game is. SO YOU CAN READ PEOPLE'S MINDS AND IMPLANT IDEAS IN THEIR HEADS AND SOMETIMES THEY'RE POSSESSED BY INVISIBLE MONSTERS YOU HAVE TO DISPATCH AND YOU CAN EAT FOOD AND THEN YOU DIGEST IT BY FIGHTING BATTLES AND WHEN YOU'VE FULLY DIGESTED IT YOU GET STAT BONUSES AND YOU CAN ONLY EAT A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF FOOD PER REAL-TIME DAY AND YOU CAN WEAR CLOTHES TO BOOST YOUR STATS BUT ONLY IF YOU'RE BRAVE ENOUGH AND YOU CAN BEFRIEND SHOP ASSISTANTS SO THEY'LL GIVE YOU MORE ABILITIES AND YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF WHAT'S TRENDY IN THE AREA YOU'RE IN BECAUSE EQUIPMENT MADE BY CURRENTLY POPULAR BRANDS WILL GET STAT BONUSES AND DURING BATTLE YOU CONTROL ONE CHARACTER ON ONE SCREEN WITH THE STYLUS AND ANOTHER CHARACTER ON THE OTHER SCREEN WITH BUTTONS AND YOU NEED TO PULL OFF THE RIGHT COMBOS TO GET STARS TO ALLOW YOU TO PERFORM YOUR BEST ATTACK AND

At one point, I failed to pay attention to trends and got into a boss fight that was rendered impossible because my equipment was too uncool. This is exactly what would happen if I found myself in the Reapers' Game in real life.

Joshua and I have got off to a bad start. So far, I don't like him much, although perhaps that's rooted in sympathy for poor Neku's frustration. Joshua can be amusing, at least; I particularly enjoy the fact that, when Joshua and Neku perform their Fusion attack, Neku calls 'Follow my lead!' and Joshua answers 'Screw that!' (EDIT: Except, er, it's actually the other way around. I can't tell voices apart.)

I actually assumed from my first glimpse of Joshua, in the opening video, that he was a villain. He was white-haired (well, ash-blond, close enough) and pretty and looked a bit smug, which in a Square game is roughly as subtle as writing 'I'M THE VILLAIN' on one's forehead in the blood of the innocent. I hadn't counted on him being my white-haired, pretty, slightly smug ally. I suppose that doesn't necessarily preclude his turning out to be the villain, but I can't help feeling that if he actually had evil designs he'd make more of an effort to ingratiate himself with Neku, rather than treating him with unveiled contempt. He's a very Draco Malfoy figure, actually.

Perhaps I'll come to like Joshua more when I know him a bit better? It took me a while to warm up to Neku, come to think of it, and I'm really quite fond of him now.


The day before beginning The World Ends With You, I finished Justice for All, the second Ace Attorney game. The last case of the game was, for various reasons, my favourite. Some of these reasons were perfectly acceptable (Pearl, who is adorable, travels with you for the investigation, being adorable). Some were more worrying; for example, Phoenix tried to bring von Karma tulips when she was in the clinic. She mocked him. I found myself grinning like an absolute fool.

Am I - am I 'shipping this? Am I actually 'shipping Phoenix Wright and Franziska von Karma? Why am I 'shipping this? This is such a bad idea.