Trabia Garden

I've seen a few of you post this shipping meme lately, and it looks like it could be fun! Let's have a crack at it.


1. List three shipping tropes you love

'I'm a cynic, and you're the idealist who makes me a little less cynical.' Ninth Doctor/Rose, Satoshi/Daisuke, Riku/Sora, Cox/JD, Jeff/Annie, Ikusaba/Naegi.

'You're weird and unsettling and I don't trust you, but I also reluctantly find you fascinating, and in these circumstances we're going to have to spend a lot of time together; there's no avoiding it.' Hinata/Komaeda, Neku/Joshua, Sara/Keiji, Laura/Travis, Battler/Beatrice.

'We'd probably never look at each other romantically under normal circumstances, but we've found ourselves isolated together, and maybe that's changed things.' Mike/Sam, Celes/Sabin, Hope/Serah, Mark/Helly.

BONUS FOURTH ANSWER: 'I'm quietly and intensely in love with you, but I don't ever expect my feelings to be returned, and I don't have any plans to pursue you romantically. I'm just in love with you; it's an inescapable fact of my life.' Riku/Sora, Satoshi/Daisuke, Gilbert/Oz, Goh/Ash.


( The rest of the meme is under the cut! )


I want to give honourable mentions to all the ships I didn't talk about in this meme, but we'll be here all day if I do!

doreyg tagged me to answer these questions about fanfiction on Tumblr, and I thought I'd post my responses here as well! As I originally wrote this for a Tumblr audience, I'll probably end up reiterating some things I've already said on here.


How many works do you have on ao3?

On my main account, Riona, it’s 234. I also have 130 works across two pseuds on my secondary account, rionaleonhart (for older works and ficlets), so in total I’ve posted 364 works to AO3.

What’s your total word count?

My combined total on AO3 is 1,136,030 words. If I look at the documents in which I keep all my writing archived, it’s slightly higher - 1,266,834 words - because I haven’t posted everything I’ve ever written to AO3.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

My most popular fic, by a long way, is And Again (Danganronpa, Naegi is caught in a time loop, 7,227 kudos). This was the first fic I ever posted to AO3, and I was startled by the way it blew up! For a while I was slightly intimidated to post anything else in case I let everyone down.

The others in the top five: Life Imitates (FFXV, Noctis/Prompto, 5,566 kudos), Vessels (Deltarune, 2,635 kudos), Visitors (Assassin’s Creed/Sense8, 1,607 kudos) and Memory Error (Doki Doki Literature Club!, 1,551 kudos). Most of these were an accident of timing: I happened to post just when the fandom was starting to get big. The exception is Visitors, which mainly picked up readers because it ended up expanding into a vast cowritten series.

Interesting to note that four of my top five fics are gen; I wasn’t expecting that!


( More talking about fanfiction. )


I've really slowed down on writing crossovers, thinking about it. I should send someone to Silent Hill at some point; it's been years!

Had a home karaoke evening with my housemates to celebrate my birthday!

As I knew everyone who was present very well, I thought it would be a good opportunity to perform some tricky songs, secure in the knowledge that nobody there would judge me if I fell flat on my face. However, this meant I forgot until the last moment that I'd need something easier for the first song, to warm up my voice. I cast desperately around and eventually, perhaps regrettably, decided that my opening performance would be the Ass Crack Bandit song from Community. It's a pretty fun song to sing with a completely straight face.

Rei was also struggling to come up with a first song. As a joke, I suggested 'Dance Around with Pokémon'. Rei actually performed it. I'm so sorry, everyone.

Once we'd warmed up, I launched into the songs I'd been nervous about: 'Haunt Me' by Koethe, 'The Violence' by Rise Against, 'It's Only Money, Tyrone' by Marah.

They didn't go as badly as I feared they might! In fact, Rei asked who 'Haunt Me' was by, and the next day I overheard them listening to it as they worked. I'm delighted I managed to perform it well enough for someone to conclude they liked the song! (I also enjoyed Rei's 'Tragic Symphony' by Hanson enough to check out the actual song, but, to be honest, I think I like Rei's version better.)

The trickiest song I performed was actually chosen at random. YouTube's 'My Mix' function autogenerates a playlist of songs you've been listening to on the site. I thought it might be fun to generate a mix and attempt the first song with lyrics it suggested.

The first song was 'Emu ~for my dear~' by Gackt.

'Emu ~for my dear~' is in Japanese.

I decided I'd give it a go. I don't speak Japanese, but I'd listened to the song so much as a teenager that I at least had a good idea of how it sounded, which would help me to follow along with the lyrics. I roped Rei in to help out, though, as they do speak Japanese. (Rei performed the Neon Genesis Evangelion theme song 'The Cruel Angel's Thesis' just before we launched into Gackt, and singing along with that in the background was a good warmup.)

Singing Gackt with Rei was, it turned out, an intensely nostalgic experience! Suddenly we were teenagers again, swapping Japanese songs on burned CDs.

Tem and I, wearing matching Death Note shirts, also performed a duet: 'Playing His Game' from Death Note: The Musical. We'd done this one before, but it's always fun to hear the room's reactions to the intense homoeroticism between Light and L.

Tem and Rei, incidentally, are both half a foot shorter than me, so sharing the microphone is a real challenge! The easiest way to keep my balance while singing together is if we put our arms across each other's shoulders, which of course only improves any depiction of Light and L's rivalry.

To wind down the evening, I sang 'I Found a Way' by First Aid Kit, a song I first heard in Life Is Strange 2, and then Tem, Rei and I all sang Hikaru Utada's 'Simple and Clean' from Kingdom Hearts. We belted it out in a thrilling variety of octaves with our arms around each other's shoulders. We probably sounded terrible. It was amazing.

My quest to introduce Tem to the Kingdom Hearts series is almost at an end; we've made it to Kingdom Hearts III!

It's weird that these games think there always has to be a plot reason for characters to change clothes. Riku can't just decide he's in the mood to wear gingham; he's required to put on special gingham clothes that protect him against darkness.

The Toy Story world opens with a fake advertisement for a game called Verum Rex. It doesn't match Kingdom Hearts either visually or tonally, and it is incredibly disconcerting. 'What is happening??' Tem demanded. 'Riona, stop laughing and answer me!'

When I first played Kingdom Hearts III, I genuinely thought for a moment that Square had decided to stick an advertisement for another game in the middle of it. I wouldn't put it past them!

When the Toy Story world kicked off, I ran around Andy's room, testing what I could play with. Could I move the balls? Yes. Could I ride on the skateboard? No. But, hey, I could push these letter blocks around! The physics were a bit awkward and it would take some finesse, but maybe I could spell something out with them?




Proud of my work, I took an in-game photograph and sent it to th_esaurus over the PlayStation chat function. 'RD won't like this,' I commented aloud. 'Toy Story is her most beloved childhood film.'

'I like that you just sent it with no explanation,' Tem said, 'particularly as the last message in your chat was from 2022.'

(I don't think RD has seen the message yet, alas, so I can't report on her reaction! That or she's decided to respond with stony silence, which would be extremely fair.)

Having spent a good ten minutes rearranging the blocks, I finally embarked on the actual plot.

Riona: Okay! Let's help these toys find their missing loved ones.
Tem: Imagine if someone came to our house, and we went, 'Oh, thank God you're here; Rei has been kidnapped,' and they went, 'Don't worry, I'm here to help.' And then they spent two hours spelling out rude words with our fridge magnets and giggling.
Riona: Taking photos to send to their friends, with us in the background.

Tem absolutely lost it laughing when 'Let It Go' started up in the Frozen world. Elsa singing passionately over visuals of Donald Duck and Goofy trudging through the snow.

Sora comes across as weirdly in love with Elsa. I suppose that might just be a consequence of him doing his 'hi! we're friends now!' thing to someone who isn't receptive to it at all. Usually, the Disney characters he meets goes 'yep, we're friends!' and then they hang out. It feels very different when he goes 'we're friends now!' and Elsa goes 'no, I need everyone to stay away from me' and then Sora spends several hours worrying about her from afar.

It must be very weird for Kristoff to have Donald Duck and Goofy shipping him with Anna. 'If Donald Duck showed up and started shipping me and Rei,' Tem commented, 'I think we'd have to break up immediately.'

In our adventures through the Kingdom Hearts series, Tem and I have just finished our first route of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

Aqua: Together, always.
Tem: Why does this series keep giving us guy-guy-girl friendship trios who promise they'll be together forever, and then I'm sad about it?
Terra, Ven, Aqua: (in voiceover) That would be the last night we ever spent beneath the same stars.
(Tem gives me an outraged stare.)

Tem: Oh, God, why is Mickey Mouse here? Why is he surfing? Mickey, you could just hold on to the book. You don't have to surf on the book. You don't have to prove your ability to... throw sick waves or whatever.
Riona: 'Throw sick waves'?
Tem: I don't know surfing terminology.

We started out playing as Terra. Some people don't like Terra much, because he has no brain, but I'm fond of him. Like Sora, he's a trusting guy; he just has the misfortune to meet a lot of untrustworthy people!

Maleficent: For a peacekeeper, you're off to an exceptionally poor start.
Tem: How does she know it's our first day on the job?

Tem makes a good point here; I never questioned this before! I assume Terra just radiates 'I have no idea what I'm doing', which would perhaps explain why every villain we run into goes 'I'm pretty sure I can manipulate this guy.' (They're correct every time. Terra is extremely easy to manipulate.)

Riona: Things are going great on our first day. We stole someone's heart, and we forged a D-Link with Maleficent, which I assume means we fucked her.
Tem: Well, I don't know what else it could mean.

Terra has such weirdly good chemistry with Cinderella. I'm bewildered and delighted anew by it every time I revisit this game.

I love Terra's fear that, having already taken Aurora's heart, he can't trust that he won't follow the queen's instruction to kill Snow White. I also love that the queen goes 'bring back her heart in this box' and he goes 'oh, her bullshit metaphorical Kingdom Hearts heart, right?' and she goes 'what, no, her literal beating heart'.

I always get slightly emotional at the scene where Terra puts himself between Eraqus and Ven in an attempt to protect Ven. Terra's a good kid!

Eraqus demanded to know why Terra was fighting against him. 'It's because you explain things poorly and make them very confusing,' Tem commented, 'because you are the personification of Square Enix.' (Tem was very annoyed to learn that 'Eraqus' was an anagram of 'Square'.)

Xehanort: Why do you trouble yourself with remorse?
Riona: (as Terra) 'Because all my decisions are terrible!'
Tem: Terra-ble.

'Oh, God,' Tem said, when Mickey Mouse showed up during the final confrontation. 'I was just thinking how nice it was that we were getting these dramatic scenes without any ridiculous Disney characters.'

Thinking about it, it's no surprise that I'm fond of Terra. He combines two of my favourite character types: a) well-meaning teenage boys who love their friends and go through horrific experiences, and b) characters who make terrible decisions and hate themselves for it. I think he's underrated! Probably my favourite character of the Wayfinder trio, although it's close between him and Aqua.

Come to think of it, Riku also fits both these categories. Kingdom Hearts does a great job of catering to my taste in characters.

Tem and I are still making our way through Kingdom Hearts II!

Why does Hollow Bastion have an emergency self-destruct program? What possible emergency could be improved by destroying the town?

We absolutely lost it at the scene where Goofy is tragically killed by a boulder and Mickey Mouse swears revenge. I love these stupid games.

Never really occurred to me before that Goofy and Yuffie rhyme. I don't know what to do with this information.

At one point, Sora, Donald and Goofy are in peril, but when we next see them they're on the gummi ship. We get a flashback to explain how they got back onto the ship. This explanation is as follows:

- Sora, Donald and Goofy are surrounded by enemies.
- Maleficent, in an effort to help, drops Sora and company into a pit of darkness.
- They end up in a black void.
- A hooded figure sets a box down in the void and disappears.
- Inside the box is an ice cream.
- When Donald Duck attempts to eat the ice cream, it starts glowing and floats into the air.
- The floating ice cream shoots a beam of light, projecting a giant keyhole into the sky.
- Sora unlocks the keyhole with his Keyblade.
- And now they're back on the spaceship, don't ask questions.

Tem is so unhappy to see Donald Duck with tentacles whenever we go back to Atlantica.

We reached the point at which Winnie-the-Pooh has an out-of-body experience and floats off into space. 'I've seen this GIF before,' Tem commented. 'I thought it might make more sense in context. I think seeing it in context has, in fact, reduced the level of context.'

For the benefit of anyone who has not played these games: I swear I'm not just making things up.

Tem and I have now played through Riku's storyline in Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories!

Whenever any villain speaks to Riku, particularly Maleficent or Ansem, they sound like they're trying to seduce him. Ansem's lines include 'Your heart will be mine!' and 'Why do you accept the darkness but still refuse me?'

Speaking of Riku's weird chemistry with every antagonist, Riku and the Riku replica should definitely make out.

Tem cracks up laughing whenever Mickey Mouse shows up out of nowhere. Apparently, when Tem was a kid, xyr dad would suddenly drop in a Mickey Mouse impression to make Tem laugh while reading bedtime stories. It's as if Kingdom Hearts was created specifically to target xem.

I'd forgotten how tragic the Riku replica's storyline was! This poor fake kid. When he's fading away, after we beat him in battle:

Riku Replica: Death doesn't frighten me. Good riddance to a phony life. My heart was never real. I'm sure even what I'm feeling now is probably all fake.
Riku: ...What are you feeling?
Riku Replica: What happens when a fake dies - one like me? Where will my heart go? Does it disappear?
Riku: It'll go somewhere. Maybe to the same place as mine.
Riku Replica: Tch. A faithful replica until the very end.

Agonising! And Riku just had to stand there, trying to offer some comfort as he watched a replica of himself die, having personally killed him. I can't believe this is a scene from a series of games about a kid having adventures with Donald Duck and Goofy.

I also can't believe Riku asks Mickey Mouse to kill him if he's overpowered by darkness. Mickey Mouse was never designed to hear that sort of request, Riku.

Mickey: I heard it from DiZ.
Tem: Who the fuck is DiZ? (pause) DiZ nuts.

Mickey: I'd like to walk that road with you.
Riona: Did Mickey Mouse just propose to us?
Tem: It does feel that way.
Riku: (getting on one knee and taking Mickey's hand) Your Majesty, I'm really flattered... I don't know what to say.
Tem: I can't believe the second half of this game is about Riku and Mickey Mouse discovering their love for each other. I can't believe Riku and Mickey Mouse get engaged in the second game. If you'd told me that before we started playing, I would have laughed at you. I'd have gone, 'Surely they'd save that for later in the series. Where can they go from there?'

'Who the fuck is this??' Tem demanded, when Roxas showed up in the credits. 'In any other series, I'd assume this was foreshadowing for a later game. But I don't trust these games. They might just have gone, "Hey, we came up with this cool character design and we didn't get to use it; let's just stick it in the credits."'

'The second half of the game answered none of my questions,' Tem commented, as the credits wound to a close. 'We'll see if later games explain any of this. Maybe I'll understand things eventually. It must be possible. I've understood things before.'

When the game had ended, I started noting down the various things Tem had said on my phone. Tem spotted me writing.

'Are you writing up your notes?' xe asked. 'So you can tell all your little Dreamwidth friends about how angry I am? Make sure you tell them about my "DiZ nuts" joke; it was my finest work.'

I had, in fact, already written down the 'DiZ nuts' joke.

I've been introducing Tem to the Kingdom Hearts series. We've just finished the first game!

(The first game is called Kingdom Hearts, which is surprisingly intuitive for this series. The third game is called Kingdom Hearts II. Kingdom Hearts III is something like ten games in, coming after titles like Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance and Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage-, the last of which is available only in the HD collection Kingdom Hearts HD II.8 Final Chapter Prologue. I swear I'm not making any of these up.)

Tem's only previous experience of Kingdom Hearts was a Let's Play of the first game that xe had not finished watching.

Riona: So you're at a point where things are still relatively straightforward. There's only one of each character.
Tem: Oh, God.

It never really occurred to me before, but the fact that they kept the original film voice actors for most of the Disney characters means that Kingdom Hearts has much better voice acting than many games of the PS2 era. Although, as Tem points out, it also has the disconcerting effect that the pointless filler bits (which include a lot of Disney characters) have noticeably better acting than the serious plot scenes (which tend to focus more on characters created for Kingdom Hearts).

Tem observed that the Hundred Acre Wood didn't quite fit the tone of the overarching plot. 'You need to save your friend who's lost her heart, and your other friend has turned against you, but you need to take breaks to make sure Tigger doesn't bounce twice on a carrot.'

When Riku stabbed his ally Maleficent with his Keyblade, Tem said 'Riku!' in such a mildly scolding tone that it cracked me up. Riku! Don't stab your allies in the heart; that's so rude!

'Light,' Ansem gasped as the light from Kingdom Hearts poured over him, apparently halfway between agony and ecstasy. 'He's like you when we watched Death Note: The Musical,' Tem commented, murdering me more efficiently than the Death Note ever could.

Tem absolutely lost it laughing when Mickey Mouse turned up. He does love to pop up out of nowhere in the middle of serious plot scenes; it's hard to brace yourself for him!

I still inevitably find tears in my eyes at the end of Kingdom Hearts. I've loved this stupid series since I was fourteen years old. It's such a weird mess! The plot is nonsense! But the feelings of the characters are so achingly sincere, even when everything happening around them is absolutely incomprehensible bullshit.

What an odd game. I'm glad it exists.

I've finished playing Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion, the remaster of Final Fantasy VII prequel Crisis Core! I watched a cutscene compilation of the original back in 2015 and enjoyed it - it gave me a new appreciation for Final Fantasy VII, which I'd struggled to get along with up to that point - so I'm glad the game's finally available on a console I actually own.

Crisis Core is an odd beast. The battle system and soundtrack are excellent, and Reunion is a great-looking remaster. On the plot front, we've got dodgy writing and voice direction, poor characterisation of Aerith, impressively terrible additions to the Final Fantasy VII canon, but sometimes it'll reach into that mess and pull out something genuinely affecting.

Crisis Core is a bit like Kingdom Hearts, in that respect. The writing of the Kingdom Hearts series is questionable and the plot is nonsense, but it's got real heart, and its emotional moments can hit hard.

Angeal: I never use my sword. Use brings about wear, tear and rust.
Angeal: Anyway, Zack, here's your sword. (stabs Zack's sword straight through some wooden floorboards)

Sephiroth said he, Angeal and Genesis used to sneak into the training room 'for fun', and then we got an astonishingly homoerotic flashback to them having a swordfight on top of Junon's enormous phallic cannon, and I'll be honest: it was pretty great.

All the line delivery in this game is so weird. You don't have to pause in the middle of every sentence!

I'm very touched by the way Zack keeps talking to Cloud even when Cloud is barely conscious and not taking anything in.

The ending was agonising, right up until cheerful pop music kicked in at the most inappropriate possible moment and I cracked up laughing. I think that's the perfect encapsulation of Crisis Core as a whole, a game that's simultaneously genuinely emotional and absolutely ludicrous.

I'm so glad this game lets you join a fan club for yourself.

I've just finished episode four of Life Is Strange: True Colors!


( Spoilers for episode four of Life Is Strange: True Colors. )


I can't wait to play episode five. Which is unfortunate, because I'm going to have to wait to play episode five.