Trabia Garden

It's been months since the first instalment of the character-number questions, but I have not forgotten about them! I'm just really slow.

Here is the second instalment! Fandoms represented are, as before, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIII, Peep Show, Phineas and Ferb, Red Dead Redemption, Portal, Uncharted and The Mentalist, with the inevitable mentions of Silent Hill and Pokémon.


( Some day I'll just have 'a delicious piece of cake' as the ninth character. )


There are yet more answers to come! Goodness knows how long it'll take me to get to them, though.

Having seen 'Read It and Weep', the latest My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode, I really want people to write the self-insert Rainbow Dash/Daring-Do fanfiction that Rainbow Dash is no doubt scribbling enthusiastically right now. It wouldn't be good, but it would be hilarious and adorable. And it could include reviews from the other ponies! And Rainbow Dash's responses to those reviews! NOBODY CARES ABOUT SPELLING, TWILIGHT.

Rainbow Dash is so conflicted whenever awesome things need to be done in her fanfiction; for example, who should awesomely backflip over the manticore and hit the release lever for the trapdoor conveniently located beneath the manticore's feet? On the one hoof, Daring-Do is awesome and Rainbow Dash doesn't want to give the impression that Daring isn't awesome by doing all the awesome things herself. On the other, Rainbow Dash wants to do all the awesome things.

I would also quite like to see fanfiction in which Nathan Drake and Daring-Do go after the same treasure. They have a lot in common, which is unsurprising as they both seem to be inspired by Indiana Jones. Daring's cutie mark caused me great amusement, because I had previously seen this ponified Uncharted fanart. I wouldn't be surprised, frankly, to find out that the human Nate actually did have the points of the compass tattooed on his arse.

Elena is, of course, also invited. 'So... remind me why we're competing with a talking pony version of you?'


If you move the analogue stick rapidly in circles on Final Fantasy XIII, the character you're controlling gets pissed off with you. They'll roll their eyes and facepalm, or wave their hand as if swatting away a fly. It's a nice touch, if a little fourth-wall unfriendly. I know I wasn't the only one who made the characters run around in endless circles on Final Fantasy VIII; finally the characters themselves have caught on.

Also, I'd forgotten how depressing Palumpolum was. I'm trying to help you guys! Why do you all hate me so much? Well, all right, you hate me because you think I'm here to kill you horribly, fair enough.

XIII-2 has now been released, and I'm hoping to have in my possession within the next few days! I have no idea what to expect from this game (beside, you know, the world's silliest chocobo theme), but I'm itching to play it.

I've been playing Portal 2 for the past few days and would highly recommend it! I don't think I've ever played a game that gave me such a strong sense of achievement before. The puzzles that frustrate me the most when I'm trying to solve them tend to be the ones I like the most in retrospect; it's so satisfying to have a sudden breakthrough just when you're reaching hurl-the-controller-through-the-window levels of exasperation.

I'm in a really videogamey mood at the moment, actually. EVERYONE GET INTO VIDEOGAMES AND THEN TALK ABOUT THEM FOR ME. This is such an exciting medium! It's changing and developing at an incredible rate! Nobody knows what it will do next! And yet the mainstream media still consider gaming a weird niche thing that people should grow out of, and that makes me really sad.

A few months ago, The Times had two articles in the same week over which I scribbled furious 'NO, YOU ARE WRONG' notes. The first was a report on the controversy surrounding Battlefield 3, in which the reporter expressed the belief that 'plots in video games are about as sophisticated as those in porn films', making it quite apparent that he doesn't play videogames himself. You wouldn't find a mainstream newspaper commissioning a journalist who had never been to the theatre to report on a controversial play; a piece on a controversial game should be written by someone who knows about games.

The second article was an extract from You and Me: the Neuroscience of Identity by Susan Greenfield, and contained the following:

When you play a computer game to rescue the princess, it is not because the princess is meaningful or significant to you - you probably won't care about her as a person - but because of the thrill of the process of playing and winning. Yet when you read a book, it is because you care about the characters, their relationships with others and their fates: their past, present and future and interrelations with other characters give them meaning.

There is indeed a game in which an essentially meaningless, characterless princess is kidnapped as a simple excuse for the actual gameplay. It's called Super Mario Bros, and it was released in 1985. That was more than a quarter of a century ago, and in the interval since then games have gone from looking like this (Super Mario Bros, Nintendo, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1985) to looking like this (Uncharted, Naughty Dog, PlayStation 3, 2007). Is it possible that game storytelling has become more sophisticated as well?

I've warmed a little to it now, but when I first started playing the Uncharted series I hated the combat system. I was terrible at it. I died all the time. Despite not liking a huge chunk of the gameplay, I carried on with the game, and I carried on with the game because I cared about the characters. In this case, I wasn't playing for 'the thrill of the process of playing and winning'; I was going through that process because I really, really wanted to metaphorically rescue the metaphorical princess.

Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII contain about ten hours of cutscenes each. If the story and character interaction in those games were conceived as a flimsy excuse for the actual gameplay, Square put in a frankly surprising amount of effort.

The ending of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days made me cry until I couldn't see the screen. Just listening to the final battle music afterwards could still make me sob. I can assure you that I wasn't crying because I was so thrilled to have won the game.

I'll happily admit that some games are focused almost exclusively on gameplay and don't give much thought to plot or characterisation, and that's fine, but dismissing games altogether as a storytelling medium absolutely infuriates me. I opened this entry by praising Portal 2 for its satisfying puzzle-solving gameplay, but even a game as gameplay-focused as Portal has a backstory and sharply-drawn characters. If you say that videogames have no plot, no soul, no characters worth caring about, you are wrong. It's as simple as that.


Well, that was an awful lot of ranting at people who probably aren't reading this journal! Something positive to finish: it may interest you to know that penny_lane_42 is hosting a fic-request meme for interaction between female characters. Enjoy!

Oh, no. Okay. Deep breath.

Everyone stand back: I've attempted a sex scene. Historically, such attempts on my part have not gone well. It's a fairly mild sex scene - if this were a film, the cameras would be carefully positioned so you didn't see any genitalia - and it's extremely talky, which is a distraction, but I'm still a bit nervous. Not least because it's primarily an Elena/Sully sex scene, of all things, and I'm afraid the Uncharted fandom is going to run me out. I don't think I have the guts to post this to any communities.

I came to the conclusion whilst writing this that I actually prefer the 'Sully as father/uncle figure' interpretation of his relationship with Nate and Elena, so I don't think I'll be writing Nate/Elena/Sully again. But I did think at least one Nate/Elena/Sully fic should exist. Now it does! I hope I've done the concept reasonable justice.

MILLION DISCLAIMERS OVER. I can't imagine many people will want to read this, but I hope you enjoy it if you do! Many thanks to sai_salamander for giving me the courage to post this. There's still a possibility I'll freak out and take it down. We'll see!


Title: Did I Ever Tell You About Portugal?
Fandom: Uncharted
Rating: R (not-hugely-explicit sex)
Pairing (trioing?): Nathan/Elena/Sully (with an emotional focus on Nathan/Elena and a physical one on Elena/Sully, but there is some Nate/Sully in here)
Wordcount: 2,800
Summary: Elena and Nate decide to bring Sully into their relationship. This is possibly ill-advised on the part of the characters and definitely ill-advised on the part of the author.
Warnings: Although this is set before Uncharted 3, there's an Uncharted 3 spoiler in here. Fairly large age gap (Sully is around sixty, Nate and Elena in their mid-thirties).


( Did I Ever Tell You About Portugal? )

I have now finished Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception! Spoilerless thoughts:


- I find it really endearing that Nathan Drake constantly talks to himself when he's in a dangerous situation on his own.

- I love the tweaks that have been made to the hand-to-hand combat system. In the previous games, I was constantly shooting; in this one, PUNCH EVERYONE ALL THE TIME. In addition to conserving ammo and preventing the enemy you've engaged from shooting you in the face: kind of hot! (Amazing fact: you can get a trophy called 'He's Gonna Need a Sturgeon' by knocking three people out with a fish.)

- The credits felt about as long as the game itself, bloody hell. On the plus side, they were absolutely gorgeous. (I've just looked up how long the credits are. They are fourteen minutes long.)

- What a fantastic game.


Spoilerful thoughts below the cut:


( Spoilers right up to the end of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. )


Has - has anyone written Nathan/Elena/Sully? Can't lie: I'd probably read that.

Fics I'll Never Finish Theatre: have six hundred words of an Uncharted AU set in the world of Final Fantasy XIII. I'll never finish this because, the fact that it would have no market aside, it would need to be some sort of ridiculous epic (I cannot write long things at all), and moreover I have no idea what their Focus would be, and moremoreover l'Cie AUs present the unique problem of being almost impossible to end with anything other than 'and then they turned into crystals!' or 'and then they turned into hideous monsters!'

Also I'm not sure whether people say 'goddamn' on Cocoon, and obviously you can't write anything concerning Sully without the word 'goddamn'.

In conclusion, this is an impossible fic for me to write. But, you know, here's the snippet I wrote of it anyway.


( Uncharted/Final Fantasy XIII snippet: in which a treasure hunt goes very wrong, which of course is a unique scenario in the world of Uncharted. )


I hope you enjoyed that, if you read it! But, er, I hope you didn't enjoy it too much, because, as I said, I really can't see myself finishing this.

(I am still playing Uncharted 3, still enjoying it immensely, but what has happened to Elena's face? She doesn't look like Elena any more! I am really distressed by this!)

Idle musing: I wonder what would happen if the cast of one Final Fantasy game happened to be dropped into the plotline of another?

The cast of Final Fantasy VIII in the plot of Final Fantasy XIII: Squall's a bit less angry than Lightning, so there's probably less punching, but otherwise I imagine it would be extremely similar. Rinoa takes Snow's place as the idealist who keeps everyone going; she's not particularly Snowish personality-wise (Snow is probably what would result if Seifer, Zell and Rinoa all tried to raise a kid together - well, Snow and explosions), but I can see the characters fulfilling the same role. Gradually, Squall comes to care about the people with whom he has found himself stuck. I would actually be really interested in reading a fic along these lines.

(I would also probably read the fic in which Seifer, Zell and Rinoa try to raise a kid. It would go so badly.)

The cast of Final Fantasy XIII in the plot of Final Fantasy X: Lightning is a Summoner! SCREW YOU GUYS; SHE DOESN'T NEED GUARDIANS. This causes complications when she eventually tries to obtain the Final Aeon.

...and around here my musing came to an end, because I realised that too many Final Fantasy plots are basically incoherent for this to be a successful line of thought.

The Final Fantasy XIII concept - a group of people find themselves thrown together and ostracised by the world, with a time limit set on their lives and little idea of what to do to save themselves - is generally quite an interesting one to plug various characters into, though. Someone should probably write about the cast of The Mentalist or Glee or Friendship is Magic becoming l'Cie.

(Here, from one of my notebooks, are some scribbled-down thoughts on treasures Nathan and Elena could find in potential Uncharted fic:

- morphing cube from Animorphs (Escafil Device?)
- Pokéball
- MAYBE SOMETHING THAT WON'T NECESSITATE A BIG DAFT CROSSOVER
- or maybe something that will necessitate a big daft crossover and is specifically a fal'Cie. What an incredible statue! Wait, is - is it alive? AND THEN THEY BECOME L'CIE. WOW, THERE WOULD BE NO MARKET FOR THIS AT ALL.)

The problem with using Final Fantasy XIII as a basis for concept crossovers (I don't know whether that's what they're called: what I mean is a work of fanfiction that uses only characters from Fandom A and simply borrows a concept from Fandom B, so it's essentially a Fandom A fic that happens to use an idea from another fandom) is the amount of specialist vocabulary involved. Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy provides a great basis for concept crossovers in Noise: people broadcast their thoughts constantly for other people to hear! It's quickly explained, easily understood, and a concept crossover that makes use of Noise can be read and enjoyed by someone who's never heard of the Chaos Walking trilogy. With Final Fantasy XIII, though, a person who hasn't played the game will find themselves going 'l'Cie? fal'Cie? Cie'th? Focus? What?'

Basically, what I'm saying is 'I know I write a lot of fanfiction with practically no market, but a crossover between The Mentalist and Final Fantasy XIII would have literally no market, and that's probably why I throw a lot of Final Fantasy XIII crossover ideas around on my journal but never actually write them.'

And also that Seifer, Zell and Rinoa shouldn't raise a child together.

So apparently there's something about Uncharted 2 that makes me want to write embarrassingly gratuitous hurt/comfort.

Er, please enjoy this embarrassingly gratuitous hurt/comfort. Be aware that it is embarrassingly gratuitous hurt/comfort, to such an extent that I seriously considered titling it help help who is driving the train? (answer: the author's id).


Title: After, Before
Fandom: Uncharted
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Nathan/Elena
Wordcount: 2,900
Summary: Elena finds Nathan after the crash.
Notes: Set during the second game.


( After, Before )

More Uncharted 2! Here are some things that are causing me to warm more and more to Nathan Drake (and are less worrying than 'he was covered in blood and it was hot'):

– he is a gigantic dork who started trying to play Marco Polo with Chloe when I flung him headlong into a swimming pool (and who later tried to persuade Chloe to get in as well when I went for a swim in the temple; Nathan is now established in my mind as a man who is incapable of passing a pool without throwing himself into it)

– he wants to save everyone, to the extent of physically lugging Guy He's Known For Ten Minutes to safety whilst being shot at (I have a big weakness for characters who really, really want to do the right thing, particularly when they're not always very good at it; PRETTY VIRTUOUS FOR SOMEONE WHO BURGLED A MUSEUM, NATHAN DRAKE), and

– his diary, amongst the useful information and plot-relevant things, contains incredibly stupid doodles. (LOOK AT THIS PAGE, THIS PAGE IS AMAZING. I am completely incapable of seeing the 'angry mouth' as anything other than a giant angry moustache. Nathan's diary also contains a photograph of Elena! Awww.)

(Regarding Nathan and Elena: make out, you guys)

(I mean, it's fine if you don't want to)

(but you both clearly want to)

(make out)

Elena is still delightful. I was a bit annoyed when she kept going 'hey, have you forgotten about me? open the door!' at me - I was trying to open the door! What did she think I was doing? - but then after five minutes of trying to find something to jump to I suddenly realised I could in fact shoot the door open from where I was dangling, so she sort of had a point. Also she punched Flynn in the face and it was great. (I was so pleased to see her! And Nathan defended her to Chloe! ♥!)

Unexpected but pleasant side-effect of playing Red Dead Redemption: I am now actually capable of playing through the shooty bits in the more difficult Uncharted! Both I and Nathan Drake thank you for teaching me how to aim, John Marston. (Although Red Dead Redemption couldn't prepare me for the Press Circle to Not Die bits, so I picked up Uncharted for the first time since playing Red Dead, cleared the firefight I'd left off at and then impaled myself on a fence, forcing myself to do the firefight all over again, three times in a row.)

I wish I cared more about the characters of Uncharted. Perhaps the caring will come. At the moment, my thoughts are 'quite like Elena, not terribly interested in Nathan'. Although I did laugh out loud when I sent Nathan out for the second time to climb about on the side of a building, far above the sea, and his reaction was 'OH GOD WASN'T I JUST OUT HERE?'

Also, curiously, despite not being massively invested in the characters, I seem to be 'shipping Nathan/Elena a bit. I certainly like Nathan more when he's in her company. (Possibly it's taking me a while to warm to Nathan more for reasons related to the company he keeps than because of anything about Nathan himself; he was with Sully at the beginning of the game, after all, and I was unfond of Sully. I think Elena is a better influence on Nathan.)

Whilst I think this is a pretty great game, a note to whichever Uncharted designer decided it would be a great idea to include a level in which you drive upriver on a jetski whilst people shoot at you and hundreds of explosive barrels float inexplicably downstream: please step forward to receive your punch in the face. You know it's no less than you deserve.

...all right, so I've played a bit more since writing the above and SUDDENLY UNCHARTED DECIDED THAT IT WANTED TO BE A SILENT HILL GAME

I DO NOT WANT YOU TO BE A SILENT HILL GAME, UNCHARTED

OH, I'LL JUST COWER IN THE CORNER, SHALL I? I'LL COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT AIMING PROPERLY AND JUST RUN AROUND IN CIRCLES, SPRAYING BULLETS IN A PANIC. WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, UNCHARTED? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE GETTING.


unrelatedly I watched Fresh Meat yesterday (episode seven) and there was a bit in which JP, who is an awful awful human being and moreover played by Jack Whitehall (I don't mind Whitehall, but I've never found him even slightly attractive before), sat his geology teacher down to a bribe of a takeaway in an attempt to find out what was to be on the upcoming exam and started going 'oh, but you've already eaten part of it, it's far too late to go back now' like some sort of evil genius and help me it was sort of hot. I think the hotness was based entirely in the sound. Apparently Whitehall does a really good subtly threatening voice.