Trabia Garden

I've just finished a replay of Uncharted 4! I was a little hesitant about replaying this game, because I have such negative feelings about the 'Nate has a brother' retcon, but in the end I'm glad I did; I had a good time!

Unfortunately, I still hate Sam Drake, so I'm going to divide this post into two sections: grumbling about Sam, and my other thoughts on the game. That way, it's easy to avoid my negative thoughts if you're a big fan of Sam! (And also easy to read my negative thoughts exclusively if you're only here for my complaining, I suppose.)

To start with, here are my Sam-related complaints:


( Being negative about Sam Drake. )


And here are my other notes on the game, which are broadly much more positive!


( More positive notes on Uncharted 4! )


When people ask me what pairings I ship without specifying a fandom, Nate and Elena are the first characters to come to mind. I love them, and it’s been great to reacquaint myself with them by replaying this series!

I've replayed the first three Uncharted games via the HD collection! I didn't make any notes on Uncharted or Uncharted 2, and then I unexpectedly scribbled down a load of rambling while playing Uncharted 3.

Actually, I did make one note on Uncharted 2: Lazarević's 'how many men have you killed just today?' is really disconcerting, because it makes it clear that the gunfights aren't just a gameplay conceit. Nate is canonically killing hundreds of people per excursion. Don't try to bring the gameplay mechanics into the cutscenes, Lazarević; Nate's character only works if we can pretend he isn't a mass murderer!

In Uncharted 3's flashback to how Nate and Sully met, I'd forgotten that Sully buys a beer for himself and a soft drink for teen Nate and then has to rescue his beer when Nate reaches for it. Delightful. I love these characters so much.


( And more rambling about Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. )


Nate goes through a lot in these games, and it is great. Die Hard and Uncharted appeal to me in similar ways; they both go 'hey, want to watch this fictional character suffer a lot of fear and pain?', a question to which my answer is almost always 'yes'.

Things constantly break while Nate is climbing them, seemingly just for the purpose of slamming him into walls or floors! There's that sequence where Nate is wandering alone in the desert, lost and increasingly delirious! Nate stranded in the Himalayas, simultaneously bleeding and freezing to death! Nate in the lost city, hallucinating and terrified! These games know what I like.

I mean, I also enjoy the character interactions and scenery. I'd probably like these games even if they didn't put Nate through hell. But it certainly doesn't hurt. (Or at least it doesn't hurt me.)

(EDIT: Apparently I finished replaying Uncharted 3 on the game's tenth anniversary! I didn't plan that at all, but I'm sort of delighted.)

Here is a sequel to Eden Ablaze, my Last of Us/Uncharted crossover, because sometimes you're suddenly hit with the need to write a sequel to a fic you posted seven years ago.


Title: Harbouring
Fandom: The Last of Us, Part II/Uncharted
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,000
Summary: Six years after they last saw each other, Ellie meets Nathan Drake again.


( Harbouring )

Some more notes on our Glee rewatch! We've gone through the third season and are now in early season four. I originally stopped watching at some point in late season four, I believe, so we're approaching uncharted territory. (But not Uncharted territory. I bet Nate can't sing.)

I love the extreme intensity with which Blaine performs. He's always so into it!

I think Kurt and Blaine may be the only couple in Glee who actually communicate about the problems in their relationship and find ways to resolve them. It's really noticeable in contrast to the other relationship plotlines.

(Their relationship becomes much less functional in season four, which has an early episode where the writers evidently went 'you know, I'm bored of the canonical couples; let's break up ALL OF THEM.')

Season three isn't my favourite (that would be season two), but I do love how much of it is devoted to Rachel becoming friends with everyone. She's come so far!

Blaine having an intense duet of 'Somebody That I Used to Know' with his brother is even weirder than I remember it. If they had an affair, it would explain why Blaine never talks about his brother.

Slightly shipping Quinn and Artie after Quinn's accident in this rewatch, which I wasn't expecting! Artie helping and encouraging her as she gets to grips with the chair is very endearing.

I like that friends in Glee are prepared to say 'I love you' to each other. I love the Kurt-and-Rachel dynamic so much; it's probably my favourite relationship in Glee. I got slightly tearful when Kurt showed up to surprise her at the start of season four, when she was alone and upset in the big city. Rachel's friendship storylines are so much more enjoyable than her romantic ones.


Season four of Glee introduces a bunch of new characters and then only gives them plotlines with each other, which strikes me as an odd choice. Sam and Blaine, in season two, were more successful character introductions because they actually interacted with the characters we already knew and cared about, rather than the show going 'now, after that scene with characters you know and care about, let's switch to a load of strangers!'

I'm pretty interested in what makes a late character introduction work or not work. Obviously, in some cases, such as Doctor Who or Waterloo Road, a general cycling of characters is expected and new characters don't really feel like latecomers. In canons where the cast is mainly static and then they throw in a new significant character, though, what determines whether I'll go 'ooh, I like you' (e.g. Nathaniel Plimpton of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Blaine Anderson of Glee) or 'YOU'RE TOO LATE, THERE'S NO ROOM IN MY HEART' (e.g. Sam Drake of Uncharted, the new Glee kids of season four)?

I wonder whether it depends on how emotionally invested I am in the canon. I was having fun with Glee before Blaine showed up, but I wasn't really invested, so I could cheerfully embrace the new guy. The more I care about the existing characters, the more likely I am to resent new characters for taking screentime away from the ones I'm invested in.

I'd be interested in hearing about late-arrival characters that worked or didn't work for you!

Once upon a time, my brother Fred said to my dad, 'Let's play Bulls and Cows. I'll think of a four-digit number; you throw out guesses; I'll tell you how many numbers in your guess are correct.'

As they played, my dad had the gradual, terrible realisation that the number Fred was thinking of was my dad's PIN.

I feel this is exactly the sort of bullshit Shawn Spencer would pull.


I've now seen the first episode of Psych's fourth season, 'Extradition: British Columbia'.

Gus calls Shawn out on staring at girls. Shawn's response: 'Okay, first of all, the person I'm staring at is a man. He's handsome - dimples, brooding eyebrows - but a man nonetheless.' I love that Shawn's consistently happy to talk about men being attractive, without ever feeling the need to go 'oh, but I'm straight, of course'.

One of my favourite moments in the entirety of Psych so far:

Shawn: The thing is this: I am a psychic. You've seen The Mentalist, right?
Robert: Yes.
Shawn: It's like that.
Gus: Except that guy's a fake.
Shawn: Right. If I was a fake psychic, it would be eerily similar.
Gus: Exactly the same.
Shawn: A virtual carbon copy.

This show is an absolute masterpiece. I love The Mentalist dearly, but that was incredible.

Gus is disconcerted by the fact that Shawn made them a reservation at a romantic restaurant. Shawn's going 'hey, it's fine, don't worry about it, let's just have a nice date.'

This is the second episode in a row where a criminal's tried to play games with Shawn. It's a less murderous criminal this time, at least, but it might have been nice to have Shawn react to the echoes of the Mr Yang case.

Rose petals in their hotel room! I suspect Shawn booked this holiday to go on with his lady friend and then invited Gus when she wasn't available (this is later confirmed), but I'm still delighted that it means their holiday has such a romantic tinge (and that Shawn went 'I'll just do all the romantic stuff with Gus instead' rather than 'let's cancel the intimate restaurant and moonlit carriage ride and do something else').

Shawn, walking alone at night, trying to ease his nerves by talking to raccoons! I still want to work out a way he can interact with Nathan Drake. They share the habit of rambling nervously to themselves in stressful situations!

Juliet: Don't you think it's odd that you're in a relationship now, yet you're inviting me to maybe the most romantic place on Earth?
Shawn: Look, Jules, listen, I made these plans weeks ago. And Gus refused to come, on account he's a man and I'm a man, or some nonsense like that.

Shawn 'Fuck Heteronormativity' Spencer really wasn't what I was expecting when I first started watching this show, but I love it. (Also, I continue to career inevitably towards writing fanfiction about Shawn being in love with everyone. 'Everyone' definitely includes Mr Yang.)

I don't often get really inflexibly rooted in an interpretation of a particular character's sexuality, but I think Shawn Spencer may have joined Shuichi Saihara in my personal 'he's bisexual and I'll fight you if you tell me I'm wrong' corner.

drawsaurus tagged me on Tumblr for a meme:

List your Top 5 Canon and Top 5 Non-Canon OTPs.

As the below was originally written for an audience that doesn’t read my Dreamwidth, it might occasionally restate things I’ve said in previous entries.


This is tough, actually! I ship pretty much everything on a low level; it’s hard to pin down the ships I have more intense feelings about.


CANON:

Nathan Drake/Elena Fisher (Uncharted)

These guys are so cute! They balance each other so well; they have such good chemistry! What a great adventure duo. When I saw I’d been tagged to do this meme, Nate/Elena was the first pairing that came to mind.

I love that Nate and Elena have fun together and they make fun of each other, but they also have moments when they’re vulnerable with each other. In particular, I love that Nate, the big action hero protagonist, is allowed to be vulnerable with Elena, and not just the other way around; Uncharted 3 is great for this.

The sequence in Uncharted 4 where Elena just mocks Nate’s videogame skills is my favourite part of the entire series. I would buy a full Elena Fisher Mocks You While You Play Videogames simulator in a heartbeat.


Jeff Winger/Annie Edison (Community)

The episode ‘Debate 109’ is the fastest I’ve ever gone from ‘I’ve never thought about this pairing’ to ‘I ship this with every fibre of my being’. Jeff Winger and Annie Edison have, by far, the most ridiculous chemistry I’ve ever seen in fiction. It’s absolutely absurd. He’s almost twice her age and I just can’t care!

I was not expecting them to kiss for real in the first-season finale, and I flipped out when it happened.


Mukuro Ikusaba/Makoto Naegi (Danganronpa)

THERE ARE CANONICAL IMPLICATIONS THAT SHE HAS A CRUSH ON HIM; I’M COUNTING THIS FOR THE CANON SECTION.

Danganronpa IF gave me a lot of feelings about Ikusaba/Naegi. I’ve got a huge weakness for redemption storylines, and Ikusaba sort of breaks my heart as a character who has the potential to be redeemed but never had the chance. I also tend to like pairing up cynics with the idealists who make them a little less cynical (other ships I have that fall into this pattern: Jeff/Annie, Sora/Riku, Satoshi/Daisuke, the Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler), and Ikusaba/Naegi is a rare example of that dynamic with a female cynic.


Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane (The 100)

In the early episodes of The 100, I got into the habit of referring to Kane as ‘Councillor Dickface’. I was very confused, during the second series, to realise that Councillor Dickface had at some point become my favourite character.

A lot of the canonical pairings on The 100 follow the formula ‘they have a couple of scenes together with some contrived furtive glances and then they make out’, so Kane/Abby, where they had loads of scenes together and loads of chemistry and persistently didn’t make out, really stood out to me. Taking the time to build the dynamic up made a huge difference. I had such intense feelings when they finally kissed.

One of my favourite parts of the buildup: Abby kissed Kane just by the mouth! And I love kisses by the mouth; they create such a strange tension. They’re halfway between a kiss on the cheek and a kiss on the lips: too intimate to be considered normal, not quite intimate enough to be unambiguously romantic. I rewound to watch it seven times.


Chloe Price/Rachel Amber (Life Is Strange: Before the Storm)

One aspect of Life Is Strange I really love is its portrayal of very intense, slightly unhealthy relationships between psychologically damaged teenage girls. There’s genuine love between Chloe and Rachel, but there’s also manipulation, and things can get a little dark sometimes, a little frightening. Sometimes there are beautiful moments: sharing earbuds on a train and watching the scenery pass by, a kiss on an empty street at night. Sometimes Rachel drags you out of school while concealing her real intentions and ends up starting a forest fire while you watch in helpless alarm.

I love that the Chloe/Rachel pairing isn’t overly idealised or included in the game to titillate; they’re humans, sharing intense experiences, and it’s complicated and beautiful and painful and interesting. Chloe/Max is also great, but Chloe and Rachel make this list because their chemistry is slightly stronger in my eyes.


NON-CANON:

Mike Munroe/Sam Giddings (Until Dawn)

Do I ship these two just because they look like Nate and Elena? I’ll be honest: it’s probably a factor. I was so thrilled when the two of them met back up after their horrible experiences, and suddenly they weren’t alone in this terrifying situation any more. I love that they’re clearly not close friends when the game starts – they just happen to move in the same circles – but they bond so intensely and become such a strong team over the course of this terrible night.

If both Sam and Mike survive, the game ends on a shot of Mike clutching Sam’s arm like it’s the only thing keeping him anchored to the world, and I can’t get over it. It’s also possible for Mike to sacrifice himself to save Sam in the last few minutes of the game; he knows full well he’s going to die, but she’ll die if he doesn’t do anything, and he can’t let that happen.

I have a lot of feelings about these two, and I’ve always been sort of amazed they’re not a more popular pairing.


Mark Corrigan/Jeremy Usbourne (Peep Show)

I shouldn’t have actual feelings about these awful people, but somehow I do. These terrible, terrible men who incessantly ruin each other’s lives. They’ll never escape each other. They sort of hate each other, but they wouldn’t be able to survive apart. It’s the bond of knowing that someone else knows what an absolute mess of a person you are, knows all the worst aspects of you, and yet is somehow still willing to associate with you.


Patrick Jane/the entire CBI team (The Mentalist)

This may not technically be a pairing, but I’m listing it anyway. Jane is so casually flirty and tactile and intimate that I’m convinced he’s in love with everyone he works closely with: Lisbon, Van Pelt, Cho, Rigsby. (I love the episode where he buys all of them ludicrously expensive presents out of his blackjack winnings.) I also feel he’s in love with Hightower; it’s a shame she couldn’t be the boss for longer!

I really wanted to put this in the ‘canon’ section.


Noctis Lucis Caelum/Prompto Argentum (Final Fantasy XV)

I’ll happily ship all the FFXV boys with each other, but I’ve got a particular weakness for Noct/Prompto. Prompto falls intensely in love with anyone who’s even vaguely nice to him! There’s all the ‘I’m a commoner; he’s the prince’ insecurity! They’re both kind of useless with their emotions! Plus their interactions are just really, really cute.


Hajime Hinata/Nagito Komaeda (Danganronpa 2)

If I say I ship two characters, it could mean either ‘I genuinely think these characters would work together’ or ‘I think these characters would be a fascinating disaster, and I want to watch it all burn’. Hinata/Komaeda definitely falls into the ‘fascinating disaster’ category. I love that Komaeda adores Hinata (and all their classmates) and expresses that adoration by manipulating people into murder; he just wants to help everyone achieve their full potential! I love that Hinata is simultaneously repelled by Komaeda and sort of fascinated by him. Trying to keep Komaeda at arm’s length, trying not to think too much about him, never entirely succeeding.

(I’ve also got a soft spot for Hinata/Koizumi and Hinata/Kuzuryuu, which are slightly more functional.)


Honourable mention to Shay Cormac/Aveline de Grandpré (Assassin’s Creed Rogue/Assassin’s Creed Unity), which I considered, because I do ship it a lot, but decided against because the characters, er, aren’t from the same game and never meet in canon. I wrote a huge Sense8 AU for Assassin’s Creed once and accidentally landed myself with this stupid nonexistent pairing.

And I just remembered Arthur/Merlin! I need to stop thinking about ships, because I’m just going to come up with an endless number I regret not including.


If you're reading this and think it might be fun, I encourage you to steal this meme for your own journal! I'd love to see you talk about your ships.

Uncharted fanfiction! I've been revisiting a fair few fandoms this year.

I can only acknowledge Sam Drake's existence if he's paired up with Sully. It's very strange.


Title: A Family Affair
Fandom: Uncharted
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam Drake/Victor Sullivan
Wordcount: 1,200
Summary: Sully and Sam are getting married. Nate is extremely weirded out.


( A Family Affair )

The third of four instalments walking through my fandom history! Apparently my accumulation of fandoms really sped up in my early twenties; I picked up all six of these fandoms within two years.


Waterloo Road

I wasn't introduced to this by a friend or family member, and I didn't see talk of it online and decide to check it out. I got into Waterloo Road by complete coincidence. I was twenty-two years old, on my own in my house in Brighton, with no Internet access. I idly turned on the television. There was some sort of school drama on; two schoolboys, Josh and Finn, were having an urgent conversation in an empty room. This feels oddly homoerotic, I thought, moments before one of them kissed the other.

I watched the rest of the episode for the fallout, then had to look up the television schedule to work out what it actually was that I'd watched. Waterloo Road? I'd never heard of it. But apparently it had been running for over eighty hour-long episodes, and you bet I was going to watch them all. I love stories about teenagers making bad decisions, and Waterloo Road was absolute gold on that front.

(Disastrously, I can feel myself being tempted to rewatch it as I write this.)

Waterloo Road had absolutely no LJ-based fandom; I could only find discussion on soap opera forums, where people did not engage with fandom in a way I was used to. It did have a bit of presence on fanfiction.net, but nobody seemed to be writing about Josh Stevenson, who was the character I really wanted to read about. I took it upon myself to rectify the lack.

My Waterloo Road/Hunger Games crossover attracted some really weird reviews. For example:

this story is very long eh eh

l reely like josh and his dad and jodi (Jodi does not appear in the fic; apparently this reviewer just felt like listing all their favourite Waterloo Road characters.)

i can come to your school

Favourite character: I loved Tom Clarkson, Sambuca Kelly and Tariq Siddiqui, but the subject matter of my fanfiction shows a clear bias towards the prickly, defensive, easily-exploited, struggling-with-his-sexuality Josh Stevenson.
Favourite pairing: Maybe Tom/Karen? I was extremely sad that Tom, who was constantly banging his way through the staff room, never got around to the headmistress. But my main relationship focus wasn't actually a romantic relationship; it was Josh's relationship with his father Tom.
Number of words written: 26,612.

Snippet: I was extremely sad that we never saw Josh meet the girls Tom took in after the death of their mother.

( Waterloo Road unfinished snippet. Josh meets Chlo. )


Glee

I started watching Glee when I was just about to turn twenty-two, but it comes after Waterloo Road in this list because I only started writing fanfiction for it six months later, when the show introduced Blaine. I 'shipped Kurt/Blaine ferociously and immediately.

Glee was an intimidatingly huge fandom. You couldn't be in Glee fandom as a whole; you chose one aspect to be interested in and hung out with other people who were interested in the same aspect. Kurt/Blaine was very much my corner.

The show was a bit of a disaster with inconsistent and occasionally oddly spiteful character writing, and the fandom was weirdly vicious and had intense 'shipwars (although at least it was when the main ammo for 'shipwars was 'CLEARLY THIS PAIRING IS THE MORE CANON AND INTERESTING' rather than 'YOU CAN'T 'SHIP THAT; IT'S MORALLY WRONG'). I still had fun watching and writing for it, though. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch it again; two of its stars died young, one after arrest for possession of horrific pornography, and it's hard to forget that and enjoy the show.

Favourite character: Honestly, it's hard to pick out a favourite character when the character writing was so inconsistent! In the first season, it was Quinn; she was a bully teetering on the edge of redemption in a way that interested me. In subsequent seasons, which increasingly forgot that Quinn existed, it was between Kurt and Rachel, and then settled as Santana.
Favourite pairing: Kurt/Blaine was the entire focus on my involvement in Glee. I 'shipped it from before Blaine was technically introduced; the 'Teenage Dream' performance was released as a preview and Kurt was just so charmingly smitten!
Number of words written: 20,061.

Snippet: Of course I attempted a Glee/Silent Hill crossover.

( Glee unfinished snippet. Kurt/Blaine, Glee/Silent Hill, 2010. )


X-Men: First Class

I watched this with th_esaurus at the age of twenty-two and enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. I very rarely get into films in a fannish way, and this is the only film fandom I have that passes the 'at least ten thousand words across at least three fics' test. I've actually never written for X-Men on its own; the three fics I've written for it were all crossovers (with Misfits, Silent Hill and Pokémon).

This film became a lot harder to rewatch after I realised that every scene ends with a terrible one-liner.

Favourite character: Charles Xavier. I think? It's entirely possible I tell myself Xavier is my favourite character just so I have a favourite character for every letter of the alphabet.
Favourite pairing: For X-Men: First Class, it's Charles/Erik. For X-Men in general, it's Rogue/Logan, which I still have to struggle not to write as 'Rogan/Logue'. Technically, I've never written either pairing, although I've come closer to writing Charles/Erik in the sense that I have actually written fanfiction about those characters.
Number of words written: 11,228.

Snippet: Oh, damn, I should have checked my old notebooks when I was at my parents' place over the weekend! I checked them for a couple of other fandoms, but I hadn't realised I don't have any unfinished X-Men fanfiction in electronic form. I think I had something where Charles had very unethically wiped Erik's memories to make sure they'd stay on the same side.


Uncharted

Jak and Daxter was one of the first videogame series I got fannishly into, so I was interested to check out what else Naughty Dog had done. One of my first purchases for the PS3 I received for my twenty-third birthday was an Uncharted/Uncharted 2 bundle. I was distressingly terrible at shooting and quickly gave up. But then Red Dead Redemption taught me to aim, and I came back to Uncharted after finishing it.

It's fortunate that I bought the first two games bundled. The first Uncharted never really clicked with me; I probably wouldn't have picked up the series again if I hadn't already owned the sequel. But I loved the second game.

Every main-series Uncharted game from the second onwards has a sequence where Nate is staggering around in a state of agony and/or delusion. Naughty Dog know what I like.

Favourite character: Elena Fisher! The first Uncharted character I fell in love with (I came to love Elena in the first game, Nate in the second and Sully in the third), and still my favourite. Smart, sharp-tongued, no-nonsense, well-fine-maybe-a-bit-of-nonsense. Kicked her kidnapper out of a helicopter once. My absolute favourite part of Uncharted 4 is the part where she mocks you while you play videogames. I would buy a full Elena Fisher Mocks Your Videogame Skills Simulator in a heartbeat.
Favourite pairing: Nate/Elena, absolutely no question. They've got such chemistry, they have fun together, and I love that we get to see Nate being vulnerable around her.
Number of words written: 16,195.

Snippet: I've never made any secret of my feelings about Sam Drake, who is the worst, but, weirdly, I do 'ship Sam/Sully. This snippet contains Uncharted 4 spoilers.

( Uncharted unfinished snippet. Sam/Sully, 2017. )


Dangan Ronpa

At the age of twenty-three, I was sitting outside a pub in Ealing with a group of friends, and one of those friends said he'd been reading a fan translation of a Japanese murder mystery game. One of the characters, he said, was me. He showed me some pictures of Touko Fukawa.

He later sent me the link to the fan translation. I swiftly realised he'd been rather uncharitable in comparing me to Fukawa, but by that point I was already hooked. Teenagers! Thrown into a horrible situation! Making horrible decisions! Being overwhelmed by guilt!

This is my third-most-written fandom in terms of wordcount, following Assassin's Creed and Top Gear. I have written Dangan Ronpa fanfiction every year for six years in a row, which is highly unusual. Typically, I'll have a burst of writing activity in one fandom and then move on to the next, but somehow I keep coming back to this series. I've written for the original Danganronpa, Danganronpa 2, Danganronpa: Another Episode, Danganronpa 3 and Danganronpa V3, but 2 is my favourite in the series and the one I've written the most for.

This was the first fandom (to my knowledge) in which I got plagiarised! I wrote a time loop fic that got startlingly popular, and someone put it up on their fanfiction.net account. It was swiftly taken down.

(My other experience with plagiarism: someone took my Doki Doki Literature Club fic Memory Error and put it up on their Pastebin account. I was very puzzled when I discovered this. Pastebin doesn't seem like a practical plagiarism website! It doesn't have any sort of commenting system! Surely you want a way for people to praise you for your stolen fanfiction? It's still up there; I wouldn't really know how to go about getting it taken down. Fanfiction websites have rules against plagiarism, but I don't imagine Pastebin does.)

Favourite character: It's moved around a lot, but I think I've settled on Hajime Hinata as my favourite Dangan Ronpa character. He's just a normal kid, insecure and sarcastic, heart in the right place, thrown into a terrible, terrible situation. He feels very real to me. And that makes him the perfect protagonist for Danganronpa 2, because most of the characters in that cast are incredibly over-the-top, and Hinata is a great way to make things feel grounded.
Favourite pairing: Ooh, maybe Naegi/Ikusaba? But Hinata/Komaeda is extremely fucked up and alarming in a way that appeals to me enormously. I 'ship Hinata with everyone, really, but particularly Komaeda, Koizumi and Kuzuryuu. To be honest, I also 'ship Komaeda with everyone. And Shuichi (but especially with Kaito). I also really like Kaede/Rantaro. Look, I 'ship everything in Dangan Ronpa.
Number of words written: 64,899.

Snippet: For a while I was hoping to write a series of Hinata/Komaeda fics based on classic fluffy fanfiction clichés, but I only managed 'huddling for warmth'. This was going to be 'Komaeda nurses Hinata back to health'.

( Danganronpa 2 unfinished snippet. Hinata/Komaeda 'hurt/comfort'. )


Community

Having heard good things about Community, I checked it out at the age of twenty-three. I thought from osmosis that the show was The Nerdy Adventures of Troy and Abed; I was confused to discover that there were a bunch of other central characters! I knew there was a Britta somewhere, but I had no idea that Jeff, Annie, Shirley or Pierce existed.

I still think the first season of Community is the best series of television I've ever watched, which is impressive, given that it includes a character (Pierce) I don't like at all. Apparently he was not enough to dislodge it from that lofty place in my esteem!

Favourite character: Jeff. Soft-hearted self-interested sarcastic arsehole in love with six people, one of whom is himself. I love him.
Favourite pairing: JEFF/ANNIE. It's a controversial pairing, but, holy crap, that chemistry. I also love Jeff/himself and Jeff/the entire study group.
Number of words written: 11,341.

Snippet: I think Community is in the rare position of being a fandom where I finished every fic I ever started! That usually happens with fandoms where I've only ever written one fic, with no intention of writing any more (Doki Doki Literature Club, Final Fantasy VI and Jiggy McCue, for example). But with Community I've written four complete fics and absolutely nothing beyond that.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy really brought home to me how tired I am of open-world games. I love the Assassin's Creed series, I love Red Dead Redemption, but I think I'm suffering a sort of open-world fatigue; I'm not really getting anywhere with Horizon Zero Dawn, even though it's staggeringly beautiful, because I'm just exhausted by how much there is to do. It felt so good to pick up Lost Legacy and play through a fast-moving game where you're constantly driving things forward.

One of the many reasons I am looking forward intensely to Danganronpa V3's release at the end of the month. Dangan Ronpa games are ALL PLOT, ALL THE TIME and it's great.

I'm feeling more generous towards Final Fantasy XV than I am towards most open-world games at the moment, because that game isn't really about the plot; it's a game about arsing around with your friends. Of course you should waste time on stupid sidequests; wasting time with people you care about is important!

Wait, maybe the problem isn't open-world games; maybe the problem is games where the protagonist is alone. In Lost Legacy, you spend most of the time hanging out with Nadine; in Final Fantasy XV, you've got three pals with you. I just want constant dialogue! And that's just not something you get in, for example, the Assassin's Creed games. (As much as I love Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, I'm sad that it went, 'Twin protagonists! You can choose which one to play! But the other twin doesn't tag along with you, sorry.' I want Evie and Jacob to snipe at each other while I'm running around London!)


...okay, I wrote the above in part because I was dithering on whether to play Infamous: Second Son, as a means of passing the time before Danganronpa V3's release. On the one hand, it had good reviews and my housemate had it, so it would cost me nothing to try it out. On the other, I was so tired of open-world games, and I'd tried the original Infamous once and hated it instantly.

I needn't have worried. I came to love Infamous: Second Son just as instantly as I'd come to hate Infamous. Turns out that this game is all about siblings who don't really get along but love each other nonetheless, i.e. my ultimate weakness. Almost at the very start of the game (twelve minutes into this walkthrough video), there was the perfect cutscene, cramming about six things I love into fifty seconds, after the protagonist Delsin got extremely stigmatised superpowers.

And it's so fun to play! Delsin can run so fast and can jump so high and has assorted zooming-and-hovering skills, so you can fly from building to building! He sometimes gives a little giddy laugh as he shoots up into the sky, and it's really endearing. It does suffer a little from Videogame Morality, where it's morally fine to kill the occasional civilian so long as you make up for it by stopping some drug dealers later, but I'm not taking it too seriously. I'm pretty used to suspending my moral disbelief in videogames.

This game further supports my 'maybe the issue is a lack of company in open worlds rather than open worlds in themselves' theory, because Delsin and his brother occasionally have little sarcastic phone conversations while you're running around the city, and it's great.

I'm only two hours into the game, so it's possible my opinion will change, but they have been a thoroughly enjoyable two hours.

My first reaction to Uncharted: The Lost Legacy: wow, I'd forgotten how gorgeous the Uncharted games are. This might be the prettiest one yet. There have been so many points where I've just stopped to stare at the scenery for a while.

Early impressions of Lost Legacy below the cut; I'm a couple of hours in. No real spoilers, but some thoughts on characterisation.


( Uncharted: The Lost Legacy first impressions. )


My favourite part so far: there's a bit where you're in a car, approaching a section with enemies. You can get out of the car and sneak up quietly. Or, as I chose to, you can just plough the car straight into their midst.

Nadine: Not one for subtlety, are you?
Chloe: Not really.
(WE'RE GETTING SO SHOT AT)
Nadine: Was this really your plan?
Chloe: Sort of. You don't like it?