Trabia Garden

When 2020 was looming, I posted an entry about the media that had made a real impact on me in the 2010s. I had fun with this, but it's hard to narrow things down across an entire decade! Maybe I should start doing these media roundups more frequently? Every half-decade, perhaps?

Oh, hey, it's 2025.

In alphabetical order, here are ten canons from the last five years that I think I'm going to remember! Note that this is media I originally experienced between 2020 and 2024, rather than necessarily being media that was originally released in that period.


1. Celeste. One of my absolute favourite games. Great music, charming characters, satisfying gameplay. It's tough, but I rarely found it frustrating, and I was delighted to realise how much I'd improved when I went back to replay from the beginning. Playing Celeste is a lot like playing the piano, learning the right pattern and timing of button presses through repetition until you can run smoothly through a level. I'll often find myself replaying Celeste levels when I've got a little time and nothing else is grabbing me, in the same way I'll often take a moment to sit at the piano and play a few pieces I know by heart.

2. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. The relationship between these siblings is just so awful and intimate and fascinating; I can't get enough of it. I want to swim around in all this hideous codependency. When I first drafted this list at the start of the year, I noted, There's a chance I'm being too hasty with this one; I discovered it right before 2024 ended, so I haven't had time to be sure it's going to be a lasting interest. But, having had my mind obliterated by the latest chapter, I can now say with confidence that I am never going to stop thinking about this horrible game.

3. Lost. What an experience! I love it when characters are stranded together and forced to bond under high pressure, and this is an absolutely stellar example. Went in some wild directions, too; I said 'what the fuck' so many times while watching this show. Jack Shephard is a wreck of a man in a way that I find fascinating.

4. Omori. This game fucked me up. A lot of it is fun and charming! And then there are the parts that severely messed with my head. Two separate aspects gave me trouble sleeping. Some really interesting uses of gameplay, including one of the best-executed plot reveals I've ever seen.

5. Person of Interest. In a lot of case-of-the-week shows, the case itself is the least interesting part for me. In Person of Interest, I found the individual weekly cases absolutely gripping. The fact that the murders they're investigating haven't happened yet gives each case a living main character, usually the would-be victim, which makes them so much more fun to watch. I really enjoy Reese as a character, too.

6. Persona 5. I picked up Persona 5 in lockdown, when it was heavily discounted. I'd heard good things about the Persona series, but I'd always been intimidated by how long and complicated the games sounded. Still, it was 2020, and I wasn't able to leave the house, so it seemed like the right time for a hundred-hour RPG. It was an incredible decision. What a stylish, fun game! What great kids! I played it non-stop for a month and a half and had an absolute blast.

7. Persona 4. I was a little concerned about going back to Persona 4 after playing 5. I'd loved Persona 5 so much; what if the previous game was a disappointment? But I ended up loving Persona 4 just as passionately, largely because of Yosuke; he's a good-hearted but slightly shitty disaster of a teenage boy who's helplessly in love with the protagonist, and I find him endlessly endearing.

8. Severance. I've always been compelled by stories about weird things happening to people's memories, and by stories about people developing intense relationships while isolated together, so Severance is essentially the perfect canon for me. By a long way, it's the most gripping show I've ever watched. I'm so nervous when I sit down for a new episode; I never know what to expect!

9. Taskmaster. What a show. It makes me laugh like nothing else. The way it keeps a single set of contestants for each series adds a lot to the experience; you really get to know the contestants and their approaches to these ridiculous tasks over the course of a series. The New Zealand and Australian versions are just as great to watch; Greg Davies remains an unparalleled Taskmaster, but, if I'm honest, Paul Williams is my favourite assistant.

Wait, that's only nine! Okay, I'm going to add a tenth, but this is definitely cheating:

10. Death Note. I absolutely did not first experience Death Note between 2020 and 2024; I've enjoyed it since 2008! But I feel it sort of fits in my 'canons of the last five years' post because I got back into it in 2023 in a way I'd never been into it before. I watched the stage musical, absolutely lost my mind and spent months thinking about nothing but Light Yagami. Let's say the tenth canon here is Death Note: The Musical.

Honourable mention to The Quarry for the burst of intense ficwriting it inspired in me! I wasn't that drawn in by the canon itself, but the potential in Travis and Laura's relationship really grabbed me by the throat.

EDIT: WAIT, I just thought of a legitimate number ten!

10-2: Die Hard. We were locked down for Christmas in 2020, and I was sorry that I couldn't visit my family, but the upside was that I joined in my housemates' Christmas tradition of watching Die Hard. This film was such a delightful surprise for me! I went in expecting a badass, stoic action hero; I got a desperate, terrified mess. I found John McClane's suffering so compelling. What a blast.

I tried out the first episode of Person of Interest years ago, but, for whatever reason, I never watched any more of it. I remembered finding it interesting, though, so I'm giving it another shot. I'm five episodes in!

To be honest, my main recollection of the first episode was 'macho and ridiculous, but entertaining', and that impression stands on a second watch. I like macho action protagonists if I can easily picture them crying nude on the bathroom floor, a test that John McClane of Die Hard absolutely smashes out of the park, and I'm pretty sure John Reese also passes.

Reese seems fucked up and I am, predictably, into that. I loved him waking up cuffed to a bedframe, hearing screams in the next room and fighting wildly to free himself, nothing but animal instinct. I liked him going 'someone probably murdered these people and covered it up like this' and Finch going 'how do you know that?' and Reese going 'that's how I would have done it'. I hope he has multiple horrible breakdowns; it seems like he has good potential for it.

The other recurring characters have yet to really catch my attention, but there's time! In the meantime, this series does a surprisingly good case of the week, so I'm engaged enough to keep watching. I tend to think of the cases themselves as the least interesting aspect of case-of-the-week shows, but I keep getting genuinely invested in the Person of Interest ones, perhaps because it's a show about preventing murders rather than solving them.

At first glance, 'it's basically a detective show but the murders haven't happened yet' sounds less tense than a show with actual murders, but of course the stakes are actually much higher. If Patrick Jane messes up a case, a murderer just doesn't go to prison; if John Reese messes up a case, someone gets killed. It also feels like there's more scope to mess up cases in Person of Interest; in a standard detective show, of course the murders are always going to be solved, because otherwise there's no narrative payoff. I'll be interested to see whether any cases do get fumbled.


On another note, I finally played Journey! I've been putting it off for years because I was so intimidated by the concept of being able to meet other players; I don't like online multiplayer because I worry about humiliating myself in front of strangers.

In the end, I went through a whole character development arc while playing this two-hour game. I started out avoiding other players so I could focus on my journey alone, then got attached to someone I met while slowly freezing on the mountain, and the game ended with me and my friend singing to each other as we walked into the light together. I've heard people talk about Journey's multiplayer being a moving experience, and I wasn't sure whether it would be the same for me, but there really is something striking about the way it lets you form a brief, wordless connection with a stranger.

On a rewatch, Die Hard remains shockingly relevant to my interests. All I want out of fiction is to watch characters physically and psychologically disintegrating, and Die Hard delivers in spades.

I didn't bother to watch Die Hard for so long because I assumed it was just a generic macho power fantasy! John McClane, shirtless and panting with pain, sweating and bleeding and apologising to his wife? That's someone's fantasy, but it's not the one I was expecting.

McClane isn't the unshakable badass I thought he would be at all; he's deeply vulnerable and deeply afraid, and it both makes him a more interesting character and makes his badass moments much more badass.

Verdict on the other Dice Hard I've seen so far: Die Hard 2 was pretty unmemorable, but Die Hard with a Vengeance was an absolute blast. McClane isn't falling apart in the same way he is in the original, which makes sense - he's more experienced, he's less isolated and he's on his home turf - but teaming him up with Zeus makes for a fun dynamic, and I like that they tried something a little different with this one.

I love how desperate and messy John McClane's fighting style is. He's got no finesse; he's terrified and he's fighting for his life. He doesn't care about honour or a good fight; he'd prefer to catch you unawares and slam a door on you repeatedly.

I went far too long without this series in my life. I could watch John McClane having a terrible time all day. He's a terrible fuckup disaster man, and it's great, and I love him.

And he lives in New York, which, come to think of it, is also home to another fictional disaster I hugely enjoy. I'm not necessarily going to write fanfiction where John McClane and Peter Parker team up, or find themselves at odds, or both. I'm just saying I could.

(I've been replaying Marvel's Spider-Man for PS4 and rewatched Into the Spider-Verse on Boxing Day, so I've been thinking a lot about how much I love Spider-Man. It's strange; I tend to bounce off most superhero media, but... okay, I didn't start this sentence with the intention of making a bad webbing pun, but I can now see it barrelling up and I'm just going to stop talking before it happens.)

Nobody ever told me Die Hard was so relevant to my interests! How have I been allowed to go this long without seeing this film?

We watched Die Hard on Christmas Day. I sat down expecting a badass, confident action hero, and instead I got a guy who's cornered and terrified and falling apart, increasingly bloodied and in pain. It was... well, like Christmas.


Tem and I finished playing Raging Loop a couple of weeks ago. It is perhaps the stupidest game I've ever experienced.

We mentioned how stupid it was to Rei, who asked, 'Stupider than AI: The Somnium Files?'

'Yes,' Tem and I replied in unison, without hesitation. AI: The Somnium Files includes a scene in which your eyeball lures terrorists into dancing in Minecraft in order to get them abducted by aliens. But Raging Loop is stupider.

It feels like Raging Loop fell into our world from a parallel universe, or was written by aliens who've researched humans thoroughly but haven't quite managed to grasp everything. Both the actions and the reasoning of the characters are incomprehensible. Haruaki leaps to absurd conclusions on the flimsiest evidence, and everyone goes 'ah, that makes sense' when he explains it, and he is always correct.

We both started yelling at the screen in disbelief when Haruaki started going, 'Ah, yes, obviously there's not actually anything supernatural going on here; it's all just human activity.' YOU ARE CAUGHT IN A TIME LOOP. You've been able to gather all this evidence of human involvement BECAUSE YOU ARE CAUGHT IN A TIME LOOP.

There were aspects of this visual novel I enjoyed! I love the bit where trying out two options, both of which get you killed, unlocks the ability to throw a tantrum because you keep getting killed, which also gets you killed. I liked Mocchi and Kiyonosuke 'let me help you hit on my crush; here's my business card' Nosato and Chiemi; Chiemi's dynamic with Haruaki ended up being fascinatingly screwed up. I enjoyed this magnificent exchange:

'Is this what a fight between adult women looks like?'
'Pretty sure adult women fight by slapping each other with their tits.'

(Also a great line: 'After she killed me sixty-three times, it finally started to get to me.')

But the plot is just nonsense. I've enjoyed plenty of stories where the plot is over-the-top and ridiculous, and I love a well-executed stupid twist, but the plot of Raging Loop flat-out does not make sense.

It's entirely possible that Mocchi is my favourite character because he's supposed to be a weird person, so the fact that everything in this game is SO WEIRD bothers me less when he's involved.