Trabia Garden

The Kingdom Hearts Let's Play we've been watching as a household is approaching the end of Kingdom Hearts II, and the plot of this game somehow manages to be even more bewildering than I remember. 'There are two of this one-of-a-kind handmade pouch and crystal. From this we have correctly concluded that the second set came from an alternate universe, and you must be able to get to this alternate universe through that mansion over there, and your kidnapped friend must be there.'

('Everything makes sense,' Hayner says, word-for-word, after putting forward this theory.)

In order to get to the alternate universe, they have to enter an unknown password. They get it first try by entering the flavour of an ice cream a duck found in a box on a different planet.

Meanwhile, Winnie-the-Pooh has an out-of-body experience.

('WHY IS THIS SO ROMANTIC?' I found myself yelling at the screen during one scene between Sora and Winnie-the-Pooh.)

Kingdom Hearts III is going to be so stupid. I'm very excited.

(The opening video, or part of it, has already been released! It fits with Kingdom Hearts tradition in being pretty and weird, and somewhat breaks from tradition in being backed by Skrillex. It also displays admirable restraint in having only two scenes in which characters fall through space for no reason, unless the meteor at 0.11 is actually a person (it's probably a person), in which case there are three.)


I just heard the Backstreet Boys' 'I Want It That Way' and remembered that a primary-school friend of mine once sang me the 'clever' rewrite 'Which Backstreet Boy Is Gay?' (concluding line: 'Okay, we're all gay').

Being an extremely credulous child, I thought these were the actual lyrics and was impressed by the Backstreet Boys' honesty.


While I'm suddenly recalling things, I haven't thought about Stargate in years, but the best moment in the entirety of SG-1 just came back to me: the team go back in time to the Cold War, and a US military man asks them, in Russian, 'Are you Soviet spies?' and Daniel answers, in Russian, 'No,' and they all get arrested.

I can't remember how far I got with Stargate: SG-1. Maybe one day I'll get DVDs and have a proper crack at watching the show through. But half the episodes are so bad! I love the characters, but the episodes are so bad.

(I drew this on a napkin and photographed it in poor lighting, so I'm afraid it looks a bit blurry.)

Yuffie, a friend I must have known for close to nineteen years, got married on Saturday! I was overcome with love for my friends when we were dancing to 'Stacy's Mom' after the ceremony, which is nice but does, bizarrely, mean that 'Stacy's Mom' now has deep emotional associations for me.

(I have to respect anyone who's willing to put that song on their wedding playlist. I personally added 'Cotton-Eye Joe' to the playlist, but sadly I had to leave before it came on, so I didn't get to see how people reacted. Still, there's reward in just knowing that you caused 'Cotton-Eye Joe' to happen somehow, somewhere.)

I was the ringbearer, which is apparently a role traditionally given to a nine-year-old boy or an owl (or a hobbit, I suppose). I am none of those things, but I managed not to attack the best man, so I acquitted myself better than some notorious ringbearers.

Rei's father, who I hope is ashamed of himself, made the following contribution to the guestbook:

There was a young lady named Yuffie
Who never was pompous or stuffy.
She got off with Chris
And it's all come to this
And I think that I've wrote quite enoughie.

Overheard during the wedding meal: 'How many times in your life have you thought, "I wish I could shit my pants and get away with it"? The problem is that you can't shit your pants any more without people getting upset about it. Society.'

It was a good day!


We were all asked to create something for the wedding, if we could, so I painted a photograph Yuffie had taken:




('I've really fucked up the left-hand margin,' I said in alarm to Ginger while I was working on this. Ginger's response was 'Fuck up the right-hand margin as well and it'll look intentional.')

It's just as well I started painting, really. If they'd asked me this time last year, I'd have been forced to write wedding-day fanfiction.

Mike Shinoda's latest song, 'Ghosts', is catchy and fun to listen to and, moreover, has the greatest music video I've seen in my life. I love it. Having done a few music video paintings, I'm tempted to attempt one for this, but, er, I'm not sure it's in my painting comfort zone.


I've picked up my Danganronpa V3 replay again! I'm in Chapter Five, but this entry has spoilers up to the end.


( Replaying Danganronpa V3. )


We're so close to E3! Are we going to get a Kingdom Hearts 3 release date at last? What a surreal thought.

Dontnod is doing a game called Twin Mirror which looks like it's going to contain playable psychological breakdowns, and I do love those, but it's about a traumatised adult. Booooo. I'm only here for traumatised teenagers, Dontnod! You served me so well with Life Is Strange!

I TRIED SO HARD

AND GOT SO FAAAAAAR

Look, yes, I know the flying whale doesn't appear in the shot I was painting. I had to include the whale. I couldn't possibly omit the whale.

(Sorry for including the whale and not you, Mike. If it's any consolation, you wouldn't be impressed by any attempt at painting you on my part.)

I sent this to my mother and got the response 'Is it a whale in the sky? Why?'

I'm not sure how far I'm going to get with this - I've been weirdly struggling to get engaged with any fiction recently - but I've started up a replay of Final Fantasy X.

Interesting that you meet all the party members within the first two or three hours, even though Auron and Rikku (the first two you meet, other than Tidus) don't actually join the party until several hours later. I feel that's unusual for a Final Fantasy game; there's usually someone you don't meet until you're a good few hours in (Strago and Relm, Cid Highwind, Irvine, Eiko, Fang...). In XV, of course, you meet all the party members immediately, but XV's party is unusually small. I suppose you've met the whole XII cast before long.

I still remember how affronted I was when Irvine joined the party in VIII, my first Final Fantasy game. You're too late, Irvine! I'm already invested in everyone else; I've got no room for you! You can't just barge in here and be one of us! (Sorry, Irvine.)

There's a perfectly good route to Besaid village over land, but Wakka instead insists on going in the direction that means he gets to shove Tidus off a cliff into a lake.

Wakka warms very quickly to Tidus and is very physical with him. I wonder whether there's much Tidus/Wakka. There's a lot to work against it, though: they don't have a frequently-'shipped dynamic, I don't think Wakka's an especially popular character, Tidus is divisive, Tidus/Yuna is popular, Tidus explicitly reminds Wakka of his brother.

The scene where Sin obliterates Kilika is very beautifully lit and absolutely horrific. It's striking that it has no music at all, too. There's also no music when you disembark at the village's ruins. (It feels like practically every settlement you visit in Final Fantasy X is coastal! Stop building coastal villages when you're plagued by a creature that can cause tidal waves, Spira!)


It took me a while to work up the courage to watch Linkin Park's Carpool Karaoke episode with Ken Jeong, filmed a week before Chester's death and aired (with his family's permission) a couple of months afterwards, but I'm glad I did at last! Ken just relentlessly bullies Mike and somehow it's magical.

My favourite parts:


- One minute in: 'This is a weird way to meet somebody. We went straight to "wet dream". Within, like - it was five seconds to "wet dream".'

- Chester being the friendliest guy and so willing to play along with everything. Requesting to be taught the stupid 'hotdogs and ketchup' dance!

- Mike's look of sheer alarm when he's unexpectedly called upon and realises he might be expected to do a heavy metal scream (and his uncertain attempt to 'whisper-scream' afterwards).

- Mike and Ken's incredible, moving rendition of 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing'.

- ALL I WANT TO DO IS BE MORE LIKE ME AND BE LESS LIKE MIKE


I love how delighted Chester is by all the picking on Mike. He just seems to be having a really good time. I'm glad.

I recently watched Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!, the new Pokémon film. An enjoyable experience, but an odd one. It's a lot like the dream you might have if you fell asleep halfway through marathoning early Pokémon episodes and End of Evangelion came on. There was one bit where Ash slipped briefly into our Pokémonless world, and I was rather expecting this to be an important plot point, but there was just... no follow-up, beyond someone going 'you forgot that Pokémon existed? That must have been the worst dream ever!' (DON'T RUB IT IN.)

Of course, there's now a part of me that sort of wants to explore this possibly-a-dream-sequence in fanfiction. Characters existing in multiple realities simultaneously and being unable to tell what's real is my favourite thing. (Of the twenty fics I've posted this year, there's an element of 'I don't know what's real' in eight of them. It's a theme that shows up in about a third of the fics on my AO3 account. I knew there were patterns in my writing, but I hadn't realised they were quite this bad!)

I cried a few times, but not as much as the small boy next to me, who was absolutely bawling into his mother's side during the 'Bye Bye Butterfree' bit. I'm glad that story has been retold to traumatise a new generation.

My main complaint: Team Rocket were wasted on this film! You could have stripped them out entirely and it would have made no difference whatsoever. They never even met Ash. What poor use of great characters.

I'm also a little put out that this film retold Ash's early journey without Misty and Brock. You can't do that!

On the plus side, the relationship between Ash and Pikachu is very, very cute.


I somehow found myself reading the Wikipedia article on Patrick Jane recently, and the line 'When threatened or attacked, his first response is always to run away or hide behind his colleagues' made me smile so fondly. I'm deeply sad that I lost interest in The Mentalist towards the end, because I loved so much of it! It just slightly overstayed its welcome.

It also went 'hey, time to shake things up a bit: romance!' when I wanted it to go 'hey, time to shake things up a bit: consequences! Actual exploration of how the main character has murdered multiple people and essentially made his colleagues accomplices!'

The problem with The Mentalist is that the show it thought it was and the show I thought it was weren't the same show. I was going, 'Wow, what a great horrifying psychological drama,' but it was secretly a light-hearted police procedural all along.

I still adore Jane as a character, even if the show he's from never entirely explored him to my satisfaction. He's just so interesting!

He also seems to be the root of my habit of taking one character and pairing them up with everyone simultaneously. Current tally of characters I've given this treatment in fanfiction: Patrick Jane, Jeff Winger, Nagito Komaeda, Mike Munroe, Prompto Argentum, Alex from Oxenfree, Shuichi Saihara.

In... in writing that list, I caught myself thinking 'hey, I should pair all of these characters up with each other!' No. No, Riona, you shouldn't.


Possibly my new favourite Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song, although 'Unfortunately, I want to have sex with you' still stands as my favourite lyric: 'The End of the Movie'. This is great. (Possibly not to be watched if you're having an existential crisis.)

The surviving members of Linkin Park have put out an official music video for 'One More Light' in memory of Chester, and noooooooooooo I can't handle this. It's a beautiful video, and in a way it's cathartic, and I'm glad to know they've been doing something creative to work through the pain, but also I sobbed so hard while watching this that my chest physically hurt afterwards. These poor guys. I wish I could hug all of them.

Mike did a radio interview as well, and it's really good to hear from him, but also there's a part where his voice starts to get unsteady and it's absolutely unbearable. I think I'm torn at the moment between 'it's really good to hear from the guys and know they're still around and haven't just stopped functioning' and 'I've spent so much time worrying about the pain they're in, and now that pain is even more real because I can see and hear it'.

Linkin Park is still my primary fandom, which means that I've been thinking about this most of the day, every day, for two solid months. It's easier now, but it's still a bit miserable. I'm desperately awaiting the new Dangan Ronpa game's release, hoping it will successfully distract me. Please just let me worry about fictional deaths for a while. No more getting invested in real people. I've learnt my lesson, I swear.

This whole thing has given me a little more faith in humanity, at least. I've seen so much kindness, so many complete strangers reaching out to each other, offering love and support to Chester's friends and fans and family. At heart, people really want to help those in pain.


On a lighter note, here are a couple of incredible things I have seen recently:

- this reinterpretation of High School Musical's 'Get Your Head in the Game'. (This link is actually to a reblog on the Tumblr account I secretly have, but I wouldn't recommend following it, because it's nothing but sobbing uncontrollably over Linkin Park. This blog is still the place I actually talk about things. Tumblr doesn't really suit me.)

- the trailer for American Vandal. Rei and I booted up Netflix, saw the description for this show, went '???????????????????' and had to watch the trailer. We're afraid to watch the show itself in case it doesn't live up to the trailer's promise.

I have now listened through all seven Linkin Park studio albums from beginning to end! I've bookmarked a... frankly ridiculous number of tracks, although most of them were in my bookmarks before I actively started listening to full albums. (Counting non-album tracks, I have bookmarked over fifty Linkin Park songs. Fifty. There are more than half a hundred Linkin Park songs I love. They are the best band ever and all the other bands are just going to have to deal with it.)

Here is my definitive, unfaultable ranking of which albums are the best, determined through the following extremely scientific method:

METHODOLOGY: Which album have I bookmarked the most tracks from?
CONCLUSION: That one's the best.

I am a woman of simple needs. I don't care about how well the songs flow together or how coherent the album's themes feel. I just want a load of songs I like to listen to. As such, I am not going to make adjustments based on the total number of tracks. Screw your percentages. A twelve-track album on which I like eleven tracks is better than a ten-track album on which I like all ten, because it gives me more songs to listen to endlessly. If you think that's unfair, One More Light, you shouldn't have skimped on the tracks!

A couple of caveats:

- I listened to Hybrid Theory from beginning to end many times as a teenager, so I think of it more as a full album than as a set of individual songs. I originally just bookmarked the album playlist. Since then, I've bookmarked a few particular favourites, but I haven't been quite as diligent about going 'ooh, better hang on to this one' as I have been with songs from other albums, because I know I'm never going to lose a Hybrid Theory song; at some point, I'll listen to it in full again. Its position on the list of albums may therefore be lower than it deserves. (I hadn't realised until just now that I'd left the eternal classics 'Papercut' and 'Crawling' off my bookmark list. Better fix that.)

- The entire One More Light album is now pretty painful. I listened to it from beginning to end before we lost Chester, but I haven't been able to bring myself to since. There are songs on there I might decide to bookmark if I heard them another time or two (e.g. 'Battle Symphony'), but right now I just can't.

Weird discovery in the course of this adventure: 'New Divide' was never on a Linkin Park album? Really? Are you sure? I mean, I wasn't expecting 'Rolling in the Deep' or that silly song about jellyfish to be on any of their studio albums, but 'New Divide'?

I don't particularly expect anyone to be interested in this entry, but TOO BAD, I'M WRITING IT ANYWAY.


( The definitive, absolute scientific ranking of Linkin Park albums. )


I found myself feeling unexpectedly chipper whilst compiling this entry! Chipperness has been in short supply for the last few weeks and I was terrified it might have fled me entirely, so this is great news. I just love this band! I love talking about this band! And maybe I can never enjoy them in the same way again, but I'm relieved to realise that doesn't necessarily mean I can't enjoy them at all.

(IMPORTANT EDIT FROM THE FUTURE: this absolute scientific ranking is wrong and Hybrid Theory is better as an album than Meteora (in my heart). Even if Meteora has individual tracks that are better than anything on Hybrid Theory, Hybrid Theory is the one I'd choose if you invited me to listen to one from beginning to end.)

I posted a thread about Chester Bennington on an anonmeme and got some nice replies, so I'm going to link it here in case I ever want to look back at it. (I'm not good at being anonymous. I was thinking 'isn't it weird to link to something I posted anonymously?' and then thought 'well, it's not as if anyone who happened across that thread wouldn't have been able to guess it was me.') It felt really good to celebrate his music, rather than just mourning his death.

So I'm going to do some more celebration of his music here! Two songs for each of Linkin Park's seven studio albums, one popular (more than ten million views on the official Linkin Park YouTube channel) and one more obscure (fewer than five million). Compiling this list really made me realise how varied Linkin Park's output has been.


( In which I ramble about a load of Linkin Park songs. )


As a bonus, my favourite non-Linkin Park song by Chester: Inside of Me, Dead by Sunrise. I love the pace and energy and ferocity of it, and I find it really difficult to resist a well-timed 'whoa-oh'.

I'm also pretty sad that this apparently never became a full-length song. 'Down on the fairytale path, there is a wizard awaiting you...'


So many songs in this entry, and it barely scratches the surface of Chester Bennington's contribution to music. Sometimes I can hardly believe he was a real person. He once broke his wrist at the start of a live show and went right on singing for the next hour. What a guy.

If you're particularly fond of any of his songs, incidentally, I'd be interested to hear about them!

This entry keeps accumulating sad bits. Let's cut out the sad bits. I'm tired of being sad.

magistrate has reminded me of this 'does music make food taste better?' experiment with Chester and Mike, which can still make me smile even after this loss. They sing a screaming rock song about cup noodles about two minutes in. It's incredible. Gladiolus would be proud.

I'm also enjoying 'Things in My Jeep', a Lonely Island song on which Linkin Park feature. I don't know why Chester screaming about trivial things makes me so happy.


It's been hard to focus on much, but I've started watching Pretty Little Liars, and it's the most effective distraction I've found so far because everything is SO STUPID. It's just wall-to-wall teenagers making the worst decisions possible, and it's incredible. Nothing's ever boring! There's always a new ridiculous plot development around the corner! I almost crowed in delight at the inevitable 'surprise, the guy you slept with is YOUR NEW TEACHER.'

'We're only on episode six!' I found myself yelling at the screen at one point. 'How can so much possibly have happened?'

I really like Hanna. She's not at all the character I thought she would be. She's shoplifting a pair of sunglasses when we first meet her, which isn't the best of first impressions, and I thought she was going to be the stereotypical shallow 'queen bee' character - a bit of a Regina George. But she's got a good heart. When she learnt about the relationship between Emily and Maya, I wasn't sure what her reaction would be; I was really touched when she started subtly, awkwardly trying to let Emily know that she'd have support if she came out.

I really like everyone's complicated feelings about Alison as well. She's the worst! They're all extremely aware that she's the worst! But that doesn't mean they don't miss her, and the way she made them feel part of something special.

(I just looked up Pretty Little Liars on IMDB to check the spelling of Alison's name, and apparently Alison's actress appears in every single episode. That's pretty impressive. She's constantly, constantly, constantly present in their lives, even if she's not physically there.

Also HOW ARE THERE 160 EPISODES, I'VE ONLY WATCHED EIGHT AND THEY'VE ALREADY CRAMMED IN JUST ABOUT EVERY STUPID PLOT DEVELOPMENT POSSIBLE.)