Trabia Garden

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!

There are only three episodes of 10 O'Clock Live left! I'm going to miss it when it finishes, even though it doesn't have nearly enough interaction between the presenters. It was very wobbly indeed when it started out, but I think it's really found its feet, and the past few episodes have been great.

The problem with 10 O'Clock Live is that it shouldn't be live. In theory, it means the presenters can react on-air to any major events that might occur, but on the occasion on which that did happen - the passing of the Libyan no-fly zone resolution - they couldn't really react, in part because it was live and therefore they didn't have time to gather proper information and in part because the presenters are given so little time to discuss things unscripted.

The reason the presenters don't have time for discussion is because Channel 4 want to limit the risk of something going wrong on live television as far as possible; they can't put themselves in the position of not knowing what their presenters are going to be doing, and they can't risk dead air, so the vast majority of 10 O'Clock Live consists of the presenters performing pre-written pieces. This is a waste of liveness, Channel 4! Either make more room for spontaneous discussion or turn the programme into 10 O'Clock Prerecorded, in which you can keep the things that work, edit out the things that don't and allow debates/fabulous shouting matches to run their course, rather than cutting them short before we get to see whether John Prescott (who has never looked better than he did on Thursday night) is going to punch that arsehole from News of the World.

(THAT ARSEHOLE FROM NEWS OF THE WORLD. 'On Tuesday [Sienna Miller]'s prancing around in front of a camera; why on Wednesday should she complain about it because she happens to get caught by a pap who's maybe listened in to her messages to see where she's gonna go?' THIS IS A VERBATIM QUOTE. If you're happy being in front of a camera on your own terms, what right do you have to complain when people listen in on your private conversations? I MEAN, THAT'S JUST UNREASONABLE. 'Privacy's a place where bad people do bad things.' Saying that hacking celebrities' answering machines is just equivalent to listening to your boyfriend's messages to find out what he's been up to, BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THAT THAT'S ENTIRELY MORALLY SOUND. It was great to see Prescott, with the entire audience behind him, bearing down on News of the World Arsehole like a great big wave of righteousness.)

The other reason 10 O'Clock Live shouldn't be live: sometimes they'll get a very enthusiastic audience, which is unbearable because Brooker and Mitchell have no idea what to do when they're applauded in the middle of a piece. They just sit there, looking uncomfortable. IT'S LIVE, AUDIENCE; APPLAUDING SLOWS EVERYTHING DOWN. Although the presenters do seem to have become a bit better at handling unwanted applause in recent weeks.

(Another annoying thing about the audience: they don't laugh at funny things Lauren Laverne says, and then they crack up when Brooker rephrases them to clarify. I SEE YOU, AUDIENCE, REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE FEMALE PRESENTER CAN BE FUNNY. Part of 10 O'Clock Live's improvement can be attributed to the fact that she's now being allowed to do actual humorous segments, whereas before there was a sense of 'oh noooo, we can't give her jokes', presumably because the same material would be much better received delivered by another of the presenters because the audience are sexist idiots.)

Also, although this is just a personal reason, I find live television really uncomfortable to watch because of the constant threat that the presenters might seriously cock things up. This is a potential that might amuse me in other programmes, but when I like the presenters I just get very embarrassed on their behalf.

Although it does mean that Charlie Brooker occasionally interrupts political discussion to point out that a fly has just landed on his nose, which is rather delightful.


For those who don't watch 10 O'Clock Live, have a performance from a 1976 episode of Top of the Pops. It's pretty incredible. (On Mother's Day, my mum decided to have a 1970s-themed evening and we watched the entire episode containing the linked performance. I enjoyed the fact that, during another performance, the entire audience were standing completely still except for one girl dancing away in the background. Oh, seventies television.)

Finally, in news irrelevant to everyone but me, my tongue feels as if a family of Borrowers are trying to convert it into a bungalow. Ow ow ow ow ow.

Sora: Do I know you?
Mickey: Gee, well... sort of. I'm Mickey. Let's just say I know you, Sora. And Sora knows me. We're good friends!
Sora: Oh, well, I guess that makes sense! Sort of. (pause) No, that definitely doesn't make any sense.

A warning to anyone who may be thinking of purchasing Kingdom Hearts Re:coded: it has quite possibly the worst camera system of any game I've ever played. And that's fine in some genres, but in an action RPG with platform elements (and the platform elements are more prominent than usual in this game) it is the most frustrating thing in the entire world. JUMP ONTO THE BLOCK, the game demands. JUMP ONTO THE BLOCK. JUMP ONTO THE BLOCK. I DON'T CARE IF YOU CAN'T SEE IT; JUMP ONTO THE BLOCK. OH NO, YOU MISSED IT, WHAT A SHAME.

Also frustrating (although less of an actual gameplay flaw): Re:coded has special areas called sectors. In these areas you gain points called SP, which can be exchanged for useful items when you exit the sector. On random occasions, a floor in a sector will be infected with a virus, in which case you have to complete a challenge on that floor or lose all your SP collected so far. The challenges are usually things like 'take damage fewer than seven times' or 'complete the floor in under 140 seconds'.

The challenge for the virus I got this morning? 'Play at night'.

OH, YES, KINGDOM HEARTS, I BET YOU THINK YOU'RE HILARIOUS.


( Minor spoilers for Castle Oblivion. )


Overall, I'd say that Re:coded is considerably weaker than Days. Most of the story is just going back over the same ground as the first Kingdom Hearts (we've already done this, Square! In Chain of Memories, and, for that matter, in the first Kingdom Hearts itself!), and the camera problems are quite a serious blight on the gameplay. It's also fairly short (by Square standards, at least); whereas Days took me thirty-eight hours of gameplay to complete, Re:coded took a mere twenty. I enjoyed it enough to play it all the way through, and Sora is awfully lovable, and there's some delightful interaction between him and Riku, but I'd suggest waiting until the price has gone down if you're considering it.

Sudden revelation: wouldn't it be wonderful if Ash Ketchum of Pokémon met Sora of Kingdom Hearts? They're both cheerful, they both go out of their way to help people, they're both inclined to consider someone their best friend ever after five seconds' acquaintance. They would be adorable instant friends. I want a Pokémon world in the next Kingdom Hearts game, even though it wouldn't make any sense.

Has anyone made a GIF of David Mitchell snogging the camera from Channel 4's Peep Show and Tell documentary?

I really do think GIFs are necessary. Strangely hot? Just me?

(And the creator of Peep Show has no doubt that, were the programme to continue for another twenty series, Mark and Jeremy would end up in a passive-aggressive gay relationship! Vindicated. I have always believed this.)

The Christmas episode of Peep Show was a good demonstration of the fact that, although Jeremy would be more likely than Mark to ruin your life if you were friends, in a way Jeremy is the more admirable character. On the rare occasions on which Jeremy does good things, he does them - well, yes, frequently as part of a filthy duplicitous ploy, but he'll also do good things out of love. Mark, meanwhile, tends to be motivated in his good deeds by fear - if he doesn't do this, he'll look bad - or by the desire to make someone feel they're in his debt. Whilst I share many of Mark's qualities (his unease in social situations, his intense fear of humiliation, his irrational but difficult-to-shake conviction that terrible things will happen if he spends money), I like to think that I'm at least slightly more inclined than he is to do things for the right reasons. (Is Mark incapable of really caring about other people? That's a bit tragic.)

Also, Dobby is such a fandom girl. I bet she writes incredibly weird slash.


I hope you had a lovely Christmas, by the way, if you celebrated it! I RECEIVED POKÉMON SOULSILVER AND YOUR POKÉMON FOLLOW YOU AND NIP AT YOUR FEET and basically it is the most charming thing ever. My Dratini hasn't really warmed up to me yet, though, which I find more distressing than I probably should. PLEASE LOVE ME, DRATINI. I love you.

Also, Joey the Youngster keeps calling me up to say 'You remember my super-cool Rattata? My Rattata is different than other Rattata. It's like my Rattata is in the top percentage of Rattata. Do you know what I'm saying?' and then hanging up. I think he's stoned.


I've just found that all the text in my journal is centred when I view it in Internet Explorer. What? That looks ridiculous. I don't approve of this at all.

Does this mean I need to change my layout? My lovely boring-but-functional layout? I've had it for seven years! YES, IT'S PLAIN AND DULL, BUT I AM CHANGE-AVERSE.

Oh, Glee. I love you, but your moral reasoning can be downright incomprehensible at times.


( Thoughts on episode 2.07 of Glee. )

I turned twenty-two a few weeks ago, and so it seems an appropriate time to post about something that's been troubling me: the ages of female characters in the Final Fantasy series. And videogames in general, and media in general, really, but I'm using the Final Fantasy series in particular to illustrate this problem.

About a year ago, rimon made an entry asking about the sorts of female characters people wanted to see in videogames. Considering this made me realise that, whilst I could easily name a few significant male videogame characters over thirty, thinking of female characters in the same age range was considerably more tricky.

Curious, I looked up all the humanoid main-party characters in the main-series games from Final Fantasy IV to Final Fantasy XII, disregarding characters such as Fran, who is more than fifty years old but looks much younger on account of not being human.

The ages of the male characters ranged from five to seventy.

The ages of the female characters ranged from five to twenty-two.

I love the Final Fantasy series, but this is ridiculous. Beatrix from IX is twenty-eight (and awesome!) and Edea from VIII must be over thirty, but both of these are temporary party members, playable only very briefly. Permanently playable male characters over the age of twenty-two, meanwhile, include Edward, Edge, Yang, Cid (IV), Tellah, Galuf, Locke, Edgar, Sabin, Setzer, Cyan, Strago, Vincent, Cid (VII), Barret, Amarant, Steiner, Wakka, Auron and Basch. That's at least one playable male character older than the oldest female characters in the entire series (Aeris and Lulu*) in every one of these games bar VIII.

And that bothers me. Why do the women always have to be young and pretty? I do love most of the ladies of Final Fantasy, and I don't think for a moment that they're there solely to be attractive; they're characters, with strengths and flaws and insecurities and roles in the plot. But they're limited in age and appearance, and there's no reason for them not to be as physically varied as the men.

I'm not saying that videogames have to stop having young, pretty women in their casts, but would it be too much trouble to include the occasional female character who deviates from that template? Really, now. I don't want to feel that I'm going to be past saving the world from a giant flying whale in a mere twelve months.


* I always thought Lulu was around thirty. I was astonished to realise she was only twenty-two. I mentally age both Lulu and the eighteen-year-old Quistis up eight years when I'm playing their games.

Lulu doesn't look twenty-two, so why make her twenty-two? There's no reason for her not to be thirty. Wakka doesn't look twenty-three, either, so he could have been aged up as well had their romance been a concern.

And, of course, in Final Fantasy X-2 Lulu is twenty-four and, ta-da, no longer a playable character. TWENTY-TWO IS THE ABSOLUTE CUTOFF FOR LADIES TO HAVE ADVENTURES. HERE, HAVE AN EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD INSTEAD. I do like Paine very much, but the way in which Lulu is sidelined does seem a bit odd.

Hello! First, a call for help: are you from the East Midlands? Are you aged between eighteen and twenty-five? If so, and if you have the time, please consider popping over here to help sparklenight, my fellow English Language student, with her dissertation on accent features of the East Midlands. It would be extremely kind of you.


And now, alas, although I generally try to keep this journal a place of happiness, I have to take a moment to express how appalled I am by the way in which certain parts of the Supernatural fandom are reacting to the news that Jared Padalecki and Genevieve Cortese are engaged.


( Under the cut. )


Er, sorry about the rant. Congratulations to Jared and Genevieve, and I hope they're very happy! Have some adorable dancing Pikachu videos to make up for this entry: one, two.

I wasn't a big fan of 'Red Brick and Ivy', largely because it was written by a man who seemed worried that we wouldn't realise when Patrick Jane was joking unless another character said 'lol you just made a joke'. The first time it happened I thought 'oh, please don't unnecessarily point out that that was a joke' before the man said, 'Ah, humour! Good!', so I suppose it must have happened in previous episodes, although I can't think of any specific examples (I think it may previously have taken the form of people saying 'you think you're so clever, don't you?', which is at least better than just saying 'AH, THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF HUMOUR').

I promise you, Mentalist writers, Patrick Jane can stand on his own. If you feel the need to point out to the audience that he is clever and witty by having other characters comment on how clever and witty he is, you're probably not writing him as clever and witty enough. Most of the time this isn't a problem, and Patrick Jane is his wonderful self without requiring a flashing sign over his head telling us how wonderful he is, but that particular episode really frustrated me.

I did love the driving exchange between Lisbon and Jane at the end, though. Obviously Jane is Sam and Lisbon is Dean. Er, a Dean who disapproves of overly fast driving. Yes, all right, the parallel may not be exact. (Also, I want Lisbon and Jane to have incredibly filthy sex against a wall, whereas I think I'd just be a bit taken aback were that to happen with Sam and Dean.)

And then 'Red John's Friends' had the team showing enormous, beautiful loyalty to Jane, and I forgave everything. I love them.


Is there a single family in The Mentalist that could be described as 'functional'? About three quarters of the ones that have shown up so far have been blighted by adultery, and the members of the other quarter have generally been murdering each other. I sort of want the CBI to find themselves working with a completely happy family, just so I can watch Patrick Jane cry.

Wait, did I say that? I meant something much less cruel, of course. Just, er... for a change?

Sorry, Jane.


Sort of related to Patrick Jane crying: I'm about halfway through the first season (just watched 'Red Rum'), and I've realised that we haven't seen Jane at his home since the first episode. He's always working on a case, or with his team, or sleeping on the sofa in the office. Because, of course, he doesn't want to go home.

I'm a bit afraid that one day I'll meet Simon Baker on the street and go, 'Hi, um, I know you're not actually your character but you look a lot like him and he really needs a hug and I suppose hugging you would be the closest thing and - and - why are you running away?'

Something it took me a long time to realise: Rinoa wasn't trying to change who Squall was. She was trying to persuade him to interact more with the world: to change an aspect of his behaviour and outlook, not of his personality. Rinoa doesn't want to shape Squall into some romantic ideal; she wants to help him, because in isolating himself Squall may avoid being hurt, but he's not happy. Squall, although he is so determined not to let his burdens become anyone else's, can't cope on his own. Rinoa wants him to realise that it's all right to form emotional bonds with people and to ask for help. That's not a bad thing.

I identified a lot with Squall on my first playthrough. I could probably have used a Rinoa in my teenage years.

Seriously, Rinoa can be pushy and immature, and she does admittedly get kidnapped quite a lot, and I'm not the greatest fan of Squall/Rinoa as a pairing (even if, bizarrely, I have found myself considering claiming it for 1sentence, just because the 'Gamma' theme set would work so well for it), but she does not deserve the hatred she gets from the fanbase. It is fine to dislike her, but so much fanfiction paints her as a weak idiot who spends half her time clinging to Squall's arm and the other half screeching (I have actually seen Rinoa referred to as 'the harpy' in the narration of fanfiction multiple times), and whom the rest of the team despise.

(That last part particularly annoys me. They have their arguments, but Rinoa and the rest of the team are friends. You can't project your feelings for the character you don't like onto the characters you do! Kairi is similarly mistreated in a lot of Kingdom Hearts fanfiction; one wonders why Sora and Riku expended so much energy trying to find her if they disliked her so much.

Also, Rinoa is the strongest character in the game without junctions. By miles. So there, fanfiction that depicts her being beaten up by a Bite Bug. Plus she is extremely accurate with an attack that is not dissimilar to firing a boomerang. That's impressive. Maybe she and Sokka could hang out.)

Essentially: dislike Rinoa all you like, but when you disregard her good qualities - her positivity, her playfulness, her willingness to stand up for her friends, her sense of justice, her strength, her determination - and turn her into a gross parody of herself, and when you turn her from a loved and valued member of the Final Fantasy VIII team into an annoying hanger-on about whom the other characters constantly complain, I'm going to take issue.

(I have never seen any of you guys do this, by the way. I've just failed one too many times in my quest to find good Squall/Zell fanfiction in which Rinoa isn't considered an irritating waste of space.)


Have I ever mentioned that there is a small part of me that can see Rinoa/Zell as a pairing? I just think that the bit where Zell persuades Squall to lend him his ring so he can give it to Rinoa is really cute. My favourite Final Fantasy VIII pairing is Squall/Zell, and that scene is part of the reason, but there's also a touch of Rinoa/Zell in there, and it could be adorable.

Dear University of Sussex,

You have been ranked the second-best place to study linguistics in the country! Congratulations! Do you:

a) axe the Linguistics department, or
b) not be stupid?

Take your time. This is not a trick question.


( Cut for anger. )


Anyway! I do not like my entries to be entirely full of misery, so now it is time for something happy! AND I HAPPEN TO HAVE JUST THE THING.

A couple of days ago, I received a notice that someone had sent me a letter with insufficient postage, and so I had to pick it up from the handling office. (This, as it turned out, was a good thing, because otherwise it would probably have been crammed through the letterbox and damaged.) In excited anticipation, because man do I love getting post, I set off.

Now, you may have noticed that I am ever-so-slightly prone to exaggeration, and in particular to use of the term 'best thing ever'. Here is the problem with this: when something actually is the best thing ever, how does one express it?

The first sheet I drew out of the envelope was a drawing of Derren Brown in Silent Hill, holding a ukulele.


( Beneath the cut are scans of Derren Brown meeting the Doctor, the Master, Silent Hill, High School Musical and ukuleles. They are all wonderful. )


In conclusion: sos_your_face is amazing.