Trabia Garden

I've seen a couple of you posting ways to reflect on the year that looked fun, and I'm going to steal them for this post!

Firstly, doreyg posted this entry about favourite characters from the year, both new discoveries and returning champions.

I'm going to do something similar; I'm going to take a quick look at the longstanding favourites who've particularly occupied my mind this year, and then I'm going to comb through my 'first impressions' tag and give my favourite character from each canon I first posted about in 2024. (If no favourite character comes to mind, I'll skip the canon.)


( My favourite characters of 2024. )


My favourites are disproportionately male, I note, but my favourites are also disproportionately the main character, so perhaps the issue here is that the main character is disproportionately male. I'm pretty easily won over; I often just end up liking the character I spend the most time getting to know!

And that's the end of the character rambling, but APPARENTLY I STILL HAVE MORE TO SAY.

walgesang posted an entry on the three canons that had the largest impact on him in 2024. Here are the three that had the largest impact on me!

Our household gave Severance a try back at the start of the year, and it's one of the most compelling shows I've ever watched. We were all silently riveted to the screen. The concept - what if, when you're at work, you can't remember anything of your life outside the office? - is fascinating, and it's executed so well. The second season is expected to come out early in 2025; I'm looking forward to it!

Omori was a real rollercoaster of a game! Sometimes it's charming and whimsical; sometimes it's unsettling; sometimes it fucked me up so badly I had trouble sleeping. It's hard to think of another canon that haunts me in quite the same way. I finished it in May and haven't stopped thinking about it since.

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley captivated me when I played it in November. It didn't have quite the same 'wow, this is really cleverly executed' factor as Severance and Omori; it just went 'hey, I know what you want' and dropped a catastrophically fucked-up sibling relationship into my lap. And, yes, it turns out that this is exactly what I want.

Honourable mention to Metaphor: ReFantazio: I loved the hell out of it, but I don't think I can say it really impacted me. I had a great time while I was playing it, but I don't expect it to linger with me in the way these three canons do.


There are six minutes of the year left, so I suspect this is going to be my last post of 2024. Happy new year! I look forward to discovering what fictional characters I'm going to be weird about in 2025.

It's time for the end-of-year fic meme! Once again, I've become impatient and filled out this meme right at the start of December. I'll feel like a fool if I write anything else before the year is over.


Number of fics written in 2024: twenty-six. You can find them on my AO3 account: Riona. (EDIT: Wild Lands and Two Become One bring this up to twenty-eight!)

Fandoms: Severance, Erased, Scrubs, In Stars and Time, If We Were Villains, Danganronpa, Danganronpa 2, Death Note, Ace Attorney, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Omori, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, Life Is Strange 2, and assorted Final Fantasy games: VII, VIII, XIII, XV and XVI. (EDIT: And Divilethion and Better Half!) Thirteen (EDIT: now fifteen) videogame fandoms, two television fandoms, two anime/manga fandoms, one book fandom. A roughly even balance of new fandoms and ones I've written for before.

Two crossovers: Always Believe (Ace Attorney/Death Note), in which Phoenix Wright defends Light Yagami in court, and Crossroads and Crosshairs (Life Is Strange 2/The Coffin of Andy and Leyley), in which Sean runs into Andrew and Ashley and ends up in a great deal of trouble.


( End-of-year fic meme, 2024. )


I always feel bad for the fics that don't get mentioned when I make these entries! Sorry, guys.

abyssal_sylph did this fandom meme over the summer, and I thought it looked like fun! The full list of questions was originally compiled by trobadora and can be found here. To keep my entries to a reasonable length, I'll just do a few questions at a time, rather than posting the entire thing at once.

What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?

The biggest change is that I've got a website now! It's great to have a space on the Internet I can just talk about Final Fantasy VIII as much as I want (I say, as if I didn't already do that in this journal).

Your newest fandom.

In Stars and Time, maybe? I've written a couple of fics; does that make it one of my fandoms? It's a time loop game with a lot of charm; I had fun with it, but I don't really think of myself as in the fandom.

The last thing I got into and ended up thinking about a lot is Omori, a game that absolutely haunts me and will probably do so for a long time. I haven't actually written for it and don't have any fic ideas, but I found it fascinating and I often find myself seeking out fanart.

The last thing I got into so heavily that it qualified for a 'my fandom history' writeup was Severance, back in February. Such an interesting concept! One of the most absorbing shows I've ever watched.

Writing-wise, this year has been more about revisiting older fandoms than launching into new ones, now that I think about it.

You've got your OTP, you have to throw a third into the mix (from the same fandom), creating an OT3. Who is the OTP, and in your opinion, why would they make a perfect third for them?

The first pairing I thought of was Nate/Elena from Uncharted, and the ideal third - Victor 'Goddamn' Sullivan, the third point of their adventure trio - is so obvious that I've actually written that threesome already.

Some potential thirds for assorted other pairings that came to mind, discounting pairings (e.g. Sora/Riku) where the third is so obvious it goes without saying:

- Jeff/Annie from Community: I think Britta would probably be the best fit, but I strongly prefer Jeff/Annie on its own. Their chemistry is so weird and intense!

- Light/L from Death Note: Misa, obviously. Or some weird thing with Ryuk, where L is unaware that there's a third entity in their relationship. That had not occurred to me before this instant, but I'm sort of fascinated by the idea now. Ryuk joins Light and L in the bed, forcing Light to suppress his reactions in order to hide the fact that he's having a threesome when, from L's perspective, only the two of them are there. Someone please write this; it's not in my skillset!

- Kane/Abby from The 100: Jaha is the only option coming to mind. This could either sort of work or go very badly, depending on the point in canon that Jaha is coming from.

- Jack/Kate from Lost: Sawyer? Probably Sawyer, as if Jack and Kate don't have enough potential to crash and burn on their own. For less guaranteed disaster: Charlie. For even more guaranteed disaster: Locke.

- Hinata/Komaeda from Danganronpa: I know Hinata/Komaeda/Nanami is popular, but I think I might be more interested by the thought of Hinata/Komaeda/Kuzuryuu. WAIT, NO: there's a correct answer here, and it is Makoto Naegi. Hinata/Komaeda/Naegi would be incredible; Hinata/Naegi would be very cute, and then they'd both desperately have to try to cope with the presence of Komaeda.

- Travis/Laura from The Quarry: Max or Ryan, I suppose? I prefer Ryan, but Max has the fun 'Travis kept me imprisoned' aspect. Travis and Laura aren't great candidates for an OT3, though; they're at their best when they're isolated and weirdly fixated on each other.

- Keiji/Sara from Your Turn to Die: hard to envision, because Keiji has zero interest in anyone who isn't Sara. Maybe some sort of fucked-up situation with Sou?

- Yosuke/Yu from Persona 4: Chie's probably the most obvious candidate, but I think adding Kanji to the mix here would be very funny. Yosuke and Kanji are both disaster boys with a lot of anxiety about their sexuality; it'd be fun to throw them together!

- Zell/Squall from Final Fantasy VIII: Rinoa! Rinoa, no question. This would be adorable.

- Beatrice/Battler from Umineko: oh, God, there's no good answer here. Jessica? Shannon, Kanon? Ange??? (Teenage Ange, to be specific, which by no means prevents this from being a fucked-up relationship but does at least make things a little less fucked up.) There's a huge amount wrong with Beatrice/Battler already (I say, with deep fondness), and adding any possible third would only make things worse.

- Utena/Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena: again, there is no good answer here. I think the only way out is to accept that and pivot to choosing the worst possible answer: Akio. An Utena/Anthy/Akio scenario, focusing on how the girls eventually manage to escape him. Wait, that's just Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Oh, wow, I have gone severely overboard on this question. It's an interesting one to think about, though! Feel free to share your own answers in the comments, if you'd like.

Here's my first attempt at In Stars and Time fanfiction!

In canon, Siffrin uses he/they pronouns. From the fact that their friends regularly switch between the two, I've assumed that Siffrin likes to be referred to with a mix of pronouns, and I've used both 'he' and 'they' in the narration of this fic. I've tried to do this as smoothly as possible, switching here and there based on what feels clear or sounds good, so hopefully it's easy to follow!


Title: Life After Looping
Fandom: In Stars and Time
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4,200
Summary: It can be hard, sometimes, for Siffrin to remember that the loops are over. Sometimes that's just frustrating. Sometimes it's dangerous.
Warnings: Disordered eating and references to suicide, but not quite as dark as those warnings make this fic sound.


( Life After Looping )

I'm currently in act three of In Stars and Time! Here is a rambling and incoherently structured entry of my thoughts so far.

In Stars and Time is an indie RPG set in a time loop. It opens just before the final battle, when the party have already spent a long time travelling together and they're nearing the end of their quest. It's an interesting place to start an RPG; it's something I haven't seen before!

I've played a fair few games about time loops. I think, more than anything else I've ever played, In Stars and Time manages to capture the frustration of being caught in a time loop.

This has its advantages and drawbacks! I really feel I understand Siffrin's growing despair and apathy. But also, unsurprisingly, being caught in this game's frustrating time loop is, well, frustrating.


( Spoilers for In Stars and Time. )


I find In Stars and Time frustrating to play on occasion. Sometimes that's by design; the protagonist is frustrated, and the game wants to impart those feelings to you. Sometimes the frustration comes about as a result of unintentionally frustrating game design. Game, you can't expect me to remember the location of seemingly unimportant things I saw sixteen hours of gameplay ago! You've included a character with the role of giving me hints; would it kill you to have Loop say 'you should check out those articles; didn't you see something like that on the first floor?' rather than just 'you should check out those articles; maybe check the places you've already been'?

Overall, though, I'm enjoying this game a lot! I like the art (although it took a while to get used to playing a game in black and white!); I like the battle system; I like the character writing; I like watching Siffrin increasingly fall apart. I look forward to seeing how the rest of it plays out!