rionaleonhart | Entries tagged with language

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!

Some more notes on Final Fantasy XVI! I've just had a three-phase fight against Titan, which was frankly too many phases.

( Notes on Final Fantasy XVI. )

I love that L'ubor laughs at the name 'Clive', because frankly I can't take it seriously either.

Up to episode 4.13 of Person of Interest, 'MIA'!

One interesting distinction between Reese and Finch is that, while they both live under assumed names themselves, Reese respects the chosen names of others, whereas Finch insists on addressing Root by her legal name. Back in 2.06, 'The High Road', when they helped the former safecracker who'd changed his name, Reese made a point of still calling him by his new name after they learnt his legal one. It's important to Reese that you can leave your old identity behind.

In light of this, it's also interesting that the name Reese lives under isn't a name he chose himself; it's a name he was given during a period of his life about which he has very complicated feelings. Finch would undoubtedly whip up a new identity for Reese if he asked, but instead he chooses to remain John Reese. Out of sentiment for Kara, after everything? Out of a determination to remember the things he's done?

It's nice to see Reese and Shaw showing open concern for each other in 'The Devil You Know'. Their dynamic doesn't leave a lot of room for sincerity, but it's clear that they care about each other.

I like that Elias is a crime boss who genuinely cares about his underlings. Villains who want to protect their followers are a lot more interesting than villains who view their followers as expendable. Plus it's a practical attitude; if you keep killing underlings who fail you, you're going to run out of underlings!

Very distracted by an Englishman in London supposedly saying 'There's a hospital three blocks from here.' You can't describe distances in 'blocks' in London, Person of Interest; that's absolutely meaningless. Take a look at a vector map of New York: the roads are straight, the blocks are laid out fairly consistently, you can see how a block might be a measure of distance there. Take a look at a vector map of London and try to make sense of that mess.

Wait, holy shit, this is the source of the 'a chain of four people holding each other at gunpoint in a church' meme? This is like when I first watched Community and went 'WAIT, THIS IS THE FIRE PIZZA GIF.'

( Person of Interest spoilers up to episode 4.13, 'MIA'. )

Given that season five only has thirteen episodes, I suppose I effectively have one season to go. I'm going to miss this show when I've finished it.

We've almost finished season three of The X-Files!

I haven't seen much American television from this era, and I'm struck by the way the shadow of the Vietnam War hangs over The X-Files. In some ways, it's reminiscent of the lingering impact of the Ishbal genocide in Fullmetal Alchemist, although of course the atrocities of the Vietnam War were very real.

I remember being surprised to learn that 'the war' without context is sometimes used to mean the Vietnam War in the US. To me, in the UK, 'he fought in the war' has always meant World War II.

'Pusher': Mulder woke Scully up by stroking her face! They're such weird colleagues. I love it. ('You and your pretty partner seem awfully close,' the murderer they're pursuing observes shortly afterwards.)

I really enjoyed that entire episode, actually! Lots of Mulder and Scully having very intense feelings about each other, and that's very much what I'm here for. Scully slept on his shoulder! Mulder was forced to play Russian roulette with her! They held hands while trying to process their trauma!

When Mulder's in a dangerous situation, we don't see Scully making the decision to go in after him; we just see her going in after him, because of course she does. That was never in question.

Huh! I just looked it up, and apparently the writer of 'Pusher', Vince Gilligan, went on to create Breaking Bad.

'Jose Chung's From Outer Space' was also a hugely enjoyable episode for very different reasons. I loved the different perspectives and Scully censoring all the swearing. And she's so put out to learn someone said she threatened them!

I love the sequence in 'Quagmire' where Mulder and Scully get trapped on a rock in a lake. Asking each other about cannibalism! Mulder aiming his gun at a duck! Strangely reminiscent of the Peep Show episode where Mark and Jeremy get trapped in a building together and have nothing to do but talk to each other.

Scully: You're so consumed by your personal vengeance against life, everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniacal cosmology.
Mulder: Scully, are you coming on to me?

It's fun to consider Mulder and Scully investigating odd happenings from different canons. Mulder and Scully go to Silent Hill to investigate a series of disappearances? Mulder and Scully try to work out what happened on Rokkenjima? Mulder and Scully go looking for Luz Noceda and find the portal to the Boiling Isles? "Have you heard about the morphogenetic field, Scully?" Mulder asks.

THE BOOKENING TITLE #19: Because Internet: Understanding how language is changing, Gretchen McCulloch.

Let's look at the closest thing lolcat has to a peer-reviewed text: a translation of the Bible into lolspeak.

I love linguistics and I've enjoyed Gretchen McCulloch's Lingthusiasm podcast with Lauren Gawne, so I was excited to dive into this book! As with Thinking, Fast and Slow, I'm going to share some parts I found particularly interesting.

- p.76: The first year that over half of Americans used the Internet was 2000, according to Pew Research, although usage rates were already over 70 percent for those that were college-educated or between the ages of 18 and 29. In 1995, a mere 3 percent of Americans had visited a webpage, and only a third had a personal computer. In the space of just five years! I know I started using the Internet around the year 2000; I hadn't realised everyone did.

- p.83: this book raises an issue I've been thinking about myself: my generation, although we started using the Internet fairly young, don't know much about what it's like to have the Internet in your life as an actual single-digits child. I started using the Internet around the age of eleven, because... that's when we got the Internet; it wasn't a minimum age dictated by my parents. I can't look at my own childhood for guidance on when it's appropriate to let a child browse unsupervised, or whether it's right to share anecdotes about someone who's not yet old enough to give permission. I'm not expecting to have children myself, but friends of mine are starting to, so we're going to need to consider these questions.

- p.174: apparently the use of the arrow as a symbol for pointing is only a few hundred years old! What?? This book says it developed in the nineteenth century; this article says it was the eighteenth, but that's still far younger than I expected. (I suppose the book might have been talking about the version without fletching.)

- p.179, on the differences between Western emoticons :) and Japanese kaomoji ^_^: The emphasis on the eyes was important for kaomoji because of a broader cultural difference in how emotions are represented. When researchers show East Asian and Western Caucasian people photos of faces displaying different emotions, the Asian participants tend to make conclusions about the emotions based on what people are doing with their eyes, whereas the Western participants look to the mouth to read emotions ... Happy :) and sad :( emoticons can have the same eyes but must have different mouths, whereas happy ^_^ and sad T_T kaomoji can have the same mouths but must have different eyes.

- p.180: the words emoticon and emoji, despite the fact that they refer to very similar things and start with the same three letters, have completely different etymologies! Emoticon comes from emotion and icon; emoji comes from the Japanese e ('picture') and moji ('character').

- p.208, on conversational turn-taking (I knew some of this from university, but I remember finding it interesting then, so I thought I'd share in case someone finds it interesting now): How do we know when it's our turn? It would be easy to assume that we must pause after we're finished saying something, and that other people notice that pause and interpret it as an invitation to speak. But conversation analysts find that actually we don't pause much, any more than we normally pause between each word. If I ask you a question and you don't start answering immediately, I'll probably treat it as a break in communication. Even if just 0.2 seconds go by, I'm likely to repeat the question again, try a different way of phrasing it, or switch languages ... If you've ever found yourself unable to get a word in edgewise, or doing all the talking around someone frustratingly taciturn, it's probably because your cultural timings are ever so slightly miscalibrated for each other, points out the linguist Deborah Tannen.

(The answer to 'how do we know that someone's finishing talking and we can jump in?', if you're curious, is a combination of things: gesture, eye contact, intonation. When interruptions happen, they're usually at 'points when it seems like the main speaker could be finished talking but it turns out they aren't', rather than mid-sentence.)

- pp.234-5, on a German study of hostility in comments on football blogs: Researchers asked soccer fans to write a comment on a blog post about a controversial soccer issue that already contained six other comments. When the previous comments were hostile and aggressive, so was the new one. When the previous comments were thoughtful and considerate, the new comment again followed suit - and it didn't matter whether such comments were anonymous or linked to real-name Facebook accounts.

Overall, I found this book hugely enjoyable: very lively, very interesting, very surreal at points. (Have you ever seen lolcats or famous Tumblr posts reproduced in a printed book? It's weird!) It's reminded me of how much I enjoyed studying the English language at university. I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in linguistics, or specifically in how the Internet has influenced language.

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/514019.html

I've finished the fourth season of The 100, and with that I've now watched every season of The 100 available with my Amazon Prime trial. I've had a great (if frequently distressing) time, but I don't have any current plans to seek out season five. (All else aside, I've heard people saying that season five was bad for my OTP. You bet I love Kane and Abby enough to drop the show that gave them to me for their sake. So long as I don't watch it, they're fine!)

Watching The 100 has been a ridiculous and stressful experience, and I'm glad I embarked on it.

Spoilers for 4.11, 'The Other Side'; highlight to read:

Jasper and Monty continue to clearly be boyfriends right up until the end and I sort of can't believe they didn't kiss in Jasper's (very intense) death scene. Jasper begging Monty 'say you love me' broke my heart.

Rei hasn't watched The 100 but happened to be present for that scene, and was very confused when I expressed my frustration that the characters didn't kiss once in the course of the show. 'Wait, aren't they boyfriends? That was definitely a boyfriends death scene.' I'm glad to have support in my view.

Something that really interests me about The 100 and that I haven't yet talked about in my entries is Trigedasleng, the language the grounders speak. I picked up on the fact that at least some phrases were derived from English (one of the first things I noticed was that 'be quiet', shof op, sounded a lot like 'shut up') and assumed at first that it was a creole. Apparently it's not intended to be a creole, though; it's just a future form of English after rapid evolution. (I was surprised at first that English could have changed so much after only a century, but the creator of Trigedasleng has pointed out that grounders probably don't have much in the way of life expectancy; a rapid turnover of generations and an unstructured society would enable the language to evolve very quickly.)

Some other interesting details from the creator's Tumblr posts:

- The word 'hashta', meaning 'about' or 'in regard to', is derived from 'hashtag'. (source)

- The word 'like' came to take the place of 'is' on account of 'like' as a filler word. 'I'm the Commander': 'Ai laik heda' ('I', then 'like', then 'head'): 'I'm, like, the head'. (source)

- The word for 'bullshit' is derived from 'Trump'. (source)

It's all so interesting! I keep saying the words aloud to myself, trying to work out their roots. In this post, the language's creator says that 'I forgive you' is 'Ai wigod yu op. If you really want to make a big show of it, you can say Ai wigod yu klin.' I regard you up? I regard you clean? (EDIT: I think wigod is actually 'we-good', rather than 'regard'.) Yumi means 'the two of us'; that presumably comes from 'you-me'. Another word for 'us, including you', which can incorporate more than two people, is oso: 'us all'? 'Us, not including you' is osir: 'us here'?

This is making me miss university. Languages are so interesting! Even when they don't technically exist!

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/473478.html

I woke up last night going 'WAIT, WHY DO WE ABBREVIATE WORDS IN THE WAYS WE DO?' and couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm going to research some common abbreviations off the top of my head and see whether there's a pattern.

aeroplane (Greek, 'air wanderer'): plane ('wanderer')
influenza (Latin via Italian, 'influence'): flu (just a syllable that doesn't mean anything in particular)
hippopotamus (Greek via Latin, 'river horse'): hippo (...'horse')
omnibus (Latin, 'for all'): bus (...'for'? It's just another language's dative suffix sitting around in our language, being used as the name of an actual object)
photograph (Greek, 'light writer'): photo ('light')
rhinoceros (Greek via Latin, 'nose horn'): rhino ('nose')
telephone (Greek, 'far sound'): phone ('sound')
television (Greek and Latin via French, 'far sight'): telly (tele, 'far')

...there's no pattern, is there? When part of a word is dropped, the part that remains isn't necessarily determined by meaning; that's clear from the fact that 'telephone' and 'television' are shortened from different ends, and from the fact that we've shortened 'omnibus' to a syllable that means absolutely nothing, and from the fact that we call a hippopotamus a horse. It's certainly not determined by position in a word, although it's more common to take an abbreviation from the start or end than from the middle; cases like 'flu' are unusual. And it's not determined by sound either; if we can take a photo of a rhino or a hippo, why can't we fly in an aero?

So English is ridiculous. Well, I already knew that, but it's nice to remind myself from time to time. And I'm pleased to have discovered that 'aeroplane' means 'air wanderer', so this Internet excursion was worth it.

(I love this stupid language.)

The only consistent aspects of these examples: the full words are all Greek or Latinate in origin, rather than Germanic, and they're all three or more syllables long. (Germanic words tend to be shorter, so these are probably related points.)

Do we bother shortening two-syllable words? I suppose we do shorten common two-syllable phrases: 'thank you' becomes 'thanks', 'good night' becomes 'night'. (Both of these examples are Germanic, actually.) People do still routinely say 'thank you' and 'good night', though, whereas 'photograph' and 'telephone' are rarer in casual conversation, and 'omnibus' will get you strange looks.

Maybe I should poke into this in more depth at some point.

I've been rewatching Supernatural recently, as Rei and I are introducing it to Ginger. We're currently on season three. It's bizarre to remember that there have been another ten seasons since then. (I've seen up to the end of season eight, so I'm only, er, five seasons behind. This show is almost as ridiculous as the English language.)

It was really strange to rewatch the first series, when the show still took itself seriously. As it goes on, it gets worse and worse at keeping a straight face.

I've always liked the episode 'What Is and What Should Never Be', but it wasn't until this most recent rewatch that I realised that its plot is basically the plot of half the fanfiction I write. My Until Dawn fic Wrong Road Home replicates it right down to making a choice between horrible reality and comforting hallucination.

Rewatching this show has also reminded me that I sort of want to write fanfiction following up on some of the victims of the week: the ones who undergo bizarre and horrible experiences but, at the end, still have no idea what's happened. The ones who particularly stand out are Katie's mother from 'The Kids Are Alright' (the scene where she just lets the car holding her 'daughter' roll into the lake is the most horrifying one in Supernatural for me; I really hope Lisa tells her what happened), and the 'Big Bad Wolf' from Bedtime Stories, who, after waking from his trance, is going to learn that he killed three people. Get these people some psychological support immediately.

I'm so sad Henriksen never got to be a hunter.

(Combining these two concepts: Henriksen becomes a hunter, runs into traumatised victims of the week, offers psychological support? I'm not sure Henriksen would necessarily be good at psychological support, but he might offer them answers, at least.)

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/448882.html

A friend of mine expressed confusion over the acronym TFW today, which got me thinking about Internet acronyms and how intuitive they are. This is something that really interests me. TBH ('to be honest') is easy; I suspect that most people manage to work that out from seeing it a couple of times in context. TFW is impossible unless you've already seen the phrase 'that feel when' in the wild. I'm still not sure whether SMH is supposed to be 'shaking my head' or 'so much hate'; either works in the contexts in which it's used. In the case of GPOY, you can't really intuit either what it stands for ('gratuitous picture of yourself') or what the phrase it stands for actually means (usually 'this isn't actually a picture of me and may not even be a picture, but in some way it reminds me of myself (not of you, despite the "yourself" in the acronym)').

When I first started using the Internet, around the turn of the millennium, the only mysterious acronyms I remember encountering are LOL (and its variants), WTF and, unfortunately, A/S/L (not to be confused with American Sign Language). I'm pretty sure I had to look up or be told what LOL meant; I wonder whether I'd have been able to intuit it if I'd been older. Might have been tough, because it's often used on its own, whereas things like TBH get more context from the sentences they're in.

I didn't even realise WTF was an acronym. I thought it was just a confused noise. I pronounced it 'wuhtuf'.

Anyway, doing a bit of investigation into the history of online acronyms, I came across this online newsletter from 1989, which includes (on page 11) a list of emoticons and acronyms apparently in use at the time. Some of these acronyms, like BTW and LOL, are very familiar! Some, like OLM ('On Line Message') and H ('Huh?'), are less so.

It particularly strikes me that :O apparently means 'shout/yawn' and they've gone with the extremely ineffective 8) to represent surprise. For some reason there are also a lot of cup/mug/glass representations I've never seen in use; had they died out by the time I started using the Internet, or were they just not used in the largely Pokémon-related circles I moved in?

Come to think of it, I can't actually remember when I started seeing smilies on the Internet. Were they widespread when I first got online, or were they confined to certain communities? Oh, wait, people were using ^_^! That's right: I saw ^_^ a lot in my early days on the Internet, and :) only came along later. Or at least it did from my perspective, because apparently it was being used in 1989.

^_^ is from Japan, to my knowledge (it might just be Japanese-influenced), so it makes sense that I saw it a lot in my early fandoms (Pokémon and Final Fantasy). But I seem to recall seeing it in Lord of the Rings fandom as well. Was it big in fandom in general, and only later displaced by sideways smilies? I feel I saw a similar move away from Japanese influences in the terminology shift from 'shounen-ai'/'yaoi' to 'slash', but it's entirely possible that shift never happened; maybe it's an illusion that I only saw because I started getting into more UK/US fandoms.

Going back to the 1989 newsletter, I enjoyed 'For some reason, the ICONS in a past Fido Newsletter, were not the icons I have seen in use the past several years!!! Where did the nose come from?' Apparently the noseless/nosed smiley debate is almost as old as I am!

Entirely unrelatedly, I recently saw a dreamcatcher and had a sudden flashback to my childhood. I had a dreamcatcher in my room, and people who slept in there complained of bad dreams, so my mum concluded the dreamcatcher was evil and she set fire to it, stamped on it and threw it in the Thames.

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/442640.html

alwaysbeenasmiler asked this question, and I thought it was interesting, so I've stolen it to ask here: who was your first favourite fictional character? Who was the first character you really loved? Is there a story behind that love?

I won't go into too much detail because I've talked about this before, but Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII was the first character I really connected with. I was an insular, awkward, confused thirteen-year-old, bad at interaction, bad at reading people, and suddenly I found I wasn't alone in any of that; here was a guy who was just like me, only he had a cool gun-sword and fought dinosaurs. I was so excited.

It's a good thing I loved Squall so much, because I was terrible at playing Final Fantasy VIII, and he was the reason I happily persevered with it.

Unsurprisingly, I hate the popular theory that Squall died at the end of Disc 1 and the other three discs were ~just a dream~. It's not interesting; it just makes most of the game feel like a waste of time! Also, Squall is my favourite, so he's alive. Solid reasoning, I think you'll find.

My preferred answer to the question 'why does Squall wake up without a wound after being impaled?' is 'Seifer begs Edea to save him. NOT THAT SEIFER CARES OR ANYTHING. Obviously he just wants Squall to live so they can interrogate him. Obviously. Edea is so amused by this that she heals Squall.'

I'd forgotten how messed up the Second Hand of Time arc in DN Angel is. A young woman is reunited at last with her lost love! Her lost love is a sword that romantically impales her through the chest. DN Angel, you seemed to be a romantic comedy when you started out.

I always resented the fact that the Second Hand of Time arc went 'oh, it's a school play! Satoshi and Daisuke have been cast as the romantic leads! Oh, no, wait: we've set up this classic slashfic premise, but now Daisuke's out of action and Dark has to pretend to be him, so you don't actually get Satoshi and Daisuke acting out romantic scenes together.' But, on this reread, I will concede that Satoshi and Dark trying to get through a romantic scene when they loathe each other is pretty hilarious.

(Speaking of classic slashfic premises: the manga is better than the anime in many ways, but the anime does has an episode where Satoshi and Daisuke are locked in a freezer and have to huddle for warmth.)

It's only just occurred to me that we say dial to mean 'enter a person's number on a telephone' because of the dial on rotary phones. What an odd linguistic fossil.

Crossposts: http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/421480.html

I don't know why I've ended up writing such a huge entry on a game none of you have played, but, er, here you go. (The last few paragraphs of the entry still concern Until Dawn but may be of more general interest to people who play videogames.)

I ended up spoiling myself for just about everything in Until Dawn, because I was far too freaked out to keep watching when I didn't know what was going on, and it's amazing how much of a difference it made. Every QTE was terrifying when I was unspoiled; every decision felt like a matter of life or death. Once I'd looked things up, I was absolutely fine; I could just watch and enjoy this story about a group of flawed teenagers in a horrible situation without being constantly on the verge of dissolving into petrified sobs.

In a way, I do regret robbing myself of the opportunity to play the game blind, making my own bad decisions and seeing who survives to the end. On the other hand, even if a first playthrough is probably a powerful experience, I feel it wouldn't be an experience I'd enjoy.

It's really interesting to see the way the game's situation brings out certain qualities in its characters. Mike and Sam are at their absolute best when they and their friends are in mortal peril (even if Mike screws up sometimes). Emily very much looks out for herself, but she's able to stay focused and keep going. Ashley doesn't do well under pressure at all, although, to be fair, she's put in really horrifying situations. You might die! You might not! It's completely up to the person who's weighing your life against something else, and all you can do is wait helplessly!

I think an Animorphs AU for Until Dawn could work really well: it's a similar 'hey, teenagers, here's an awful situation you've suddenly been thrown into, you're going to have to think strategically to not die, good luck!' concept, and I'd love to see how the Until Dawn characters would handle it. Given that there are eight characters involved, though, it'd probably be too ambitious a project for me to attempt.

(Would Mike be the leader? Sam? Maybe Mike's the leader in name and Sam's actually the one who keeps things together.)

I don't think I'll be writing any more Until Dawn fanfiction, although admittedly I thought that after my first Until Dawn fic, and indeed after my second. But I've written 'Mike and Sam are miserable and make out', 'Mike and Sam are miserable and don't make out' and 'Mike wants to make out with everyone (and is miserable)'. Where else can I go? I can't just write endlessly about Mike being miserable, but it's the only thing my heart is interested in.

(I got a review on my Mike/everyone fic that said 'THIS WAS SADDER THAN I THOUGHT IT WAS GONNA BE. ;A;', which I'm pleased with because it is exactly according to my evil plan. The summary is 'Mike Munroe has a lot of attractive friends, and he'd make out with all of them if he could.' Hey, this'll be silly and fun! NO. NO FUN. MISERY. IT'S UNTIL DAWN.)

If I could write sex, I'd probably write a fic where Mike and Sam are the only ones left alive, they're still trapped on the mountain, and they end up banging unhappily because they're probably going to die anyway and it's the only thing they can think of to do. Alas, it's not in my skillset.

I've been skipping around and watching bits of a lot of different Until Dawn Let's Plays, and not just because I could watch Mike cut his own fingers off all day. I really like watching people slowly warm to Mike. He makes such a bad first impression (the first two things he does are 'participate in a cruel prank' and 'jumpscare you'), and I love the way a lot of players gradually progress from 'who's this arsehole?' to 'actually, I'm really invested in this arsehole's survival.'

Something I found interesting: at one point, when ChristopherOdd was playing as Mike, Jessica called to Mike for help. ChristopherOdd commented on 'the sheer terror in her voice, calling out our name'. When you play as Mike, does Mike's name become your name as well? Referring to playable characters in the first person is common enough; if Nathan Drake falls off a cliff when I'm controlling him, I'll usually say that I fell, rather than that Nate fell. Referring to yourself and the playable character together as 'us' isn't unheard of; you might say, 'Come on, Mike, let's see what's over here' (I'd never say 'we fell off a cliff' in the Uncharted example, though). But thinking of the name of the character you're playing as 'your' name strikes me as unusual.

Then again, if you saw me playing Silent Hill 2 and asked what was happening in it, I feel I might say that I'm looking for my wife. I don't know why names are specifically the point at which I feel a barrier falls between me and the playable character.

Are there any studies on when people refer to playable characters in the first person? Does it happen more with customisable protagonists, with silent protagonists, with protagonists that share the player's gender? Does having more than one playable character in the game affect it? (I feel I don't generally use 'I' in Final Fantasy games, for example, where you can usually control the actions of multiple characters.) Does whether the player likes the protagonist affect it? It's a difficult subject to Google, unfortunately. I don't want to know about first-person videogames; I want to know about people talking about videogames in the first person!

Crossposts: http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/411284.html

Here is an entire entry of rambling about differences between the official Dangan Ronpa translation and the Let's Play fan translation that first brought the game to a Western audience, because you can't stop me.

I'm still not happy about everyone addressing each other by first name in the official release. I am especially not happy about Kiyotaka Ishimaru going by 'Taka', for a couple of reasons. Firstly: I cannot imagine formal, traditional, takes-himself-incredibly-seriously, rule-obsessed Ishimaru ever going in for name-shortening. Secondly: you don't tend to get a nickname like that unless you have friends. Canonically, Ishimaru has never had friends. (Sorry, Ishimaru.)

(There are a couple of other characters who go by nicknames in the official translation - Hagakure is 'Hiro' (from his first name, Yasuhiro) and Asahina is 'Hina' - but I don't mind those nearly so much, because they make perfect sense for the characters.)

The other thing I'm not happy about is this: in the original Let's Play, Naegi says that the only noteworthy thing about himself is that he's a little more optimistic than most people. In the official translation, he says he's a little more gung-ho than other people.

Naegi is not particularly gung-ho, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that Naegi's defining trait is optimism. I can't express how important Naegi's optimism is. It is absolutely essential to the plot of this game. I've always loved how that one minor thing he offers up as his sole notable quality ends up playing a huge, huge role.

Say he's more determined, if you like. That's Naegi's other essential quality: he never gives up. But 'gung-ho' makes no sense at all.

This is a ridiculously excessive amount of agonised flailing over the translation of one line that everyone's probably forgotten about by the end of the game. BUT IT'S A REALLY IMPORTANT LINE IN MY HEART.

(Also slightly heartbroken that Naegi's 'If my conclusions are wrong, please tell me. I won't mind... if they're wrong...' in the Let's Play translation of the second trial is now 'If I'm wrong about this, you're welcome to say so. I'm happy to admit I made a mistake, but...' - obviously the official translation was always going to be slightly different, but the unofficial translation really conveyed how much pain he's in at having to accuse a friend of murder.)

None of this is to say that the official translation is bad! In particular, everything Monobear says is delightful (I'm particularly fond of 'Holy moly! You're super mad! Like, just unreasonably upset!'). And Ishida constantly not-quite-swearing ('I ain't got POOP to say to you!') is a stroke of absolute genius. It does feel more polished than the fan translation overall; I suppose I'm just ridiculously emotionally attached to certain aspects of the first translation I experienced.

Crossposts: http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/380077.html

Second episode in a row with no Josh? This is not acceptable, Waterloo Road; pull your socks up. He's in the preview, though, so I am looking forward enthusiastically to next week's episode. (I - I think? Because my thoughts on the preview, apart from 'Josh!!', were 'THIS ALL LOOKS INCREDIBLY DISTRESSING'.)

I didn't think 7.29 was a great episode - it felt a bit fillerish, which is a shame for the penultimate episode of what has generally been an excellent term - but I still enjoyed it, because every time I watch it Waterloo Road sneaks into my brain and snips all the connections to my critical faculties.

Actual thoughts on the episode: WAIT, WHAT, A PUPIL LEFT WATERLOO ROAD AND YET IS STILL IN THE PROGRAMME? This is unheard of! With the exception of Janeece, and that's because she later got a job there. Apparently Waterloo Road doesn't actually exist in some weird dimension where people cease to exist the moment they're no longer a part of the school.

It's almost a shame; I was sort of counting on Kyle ceasing to exist the moment he walked out of the school gates, because he's such a bad influence on Tariq. I was hoping that Tariq would be able to unleash his inner good guy with him gone. But, alas, the writers of Waterloo Road have suddenly remembered that people who leave Waterloo Road are still people; they're just people on the other side of the school gates. In any other programme, I would have gone 'yes, of course Kyle is still a part of Tariq's life, that makes sense'; in Waterloo Road, I go 'what? What? But - but he's not at the school any more. I don't understand. People who've been expelled don't just carry on existing.'

I crowed with laughter when Janeece's password turned out to be 'janeece'. Of course. I was also quite amused (whilst cringing) by the deeply, deeply uncomfortable erectile-dysfunction conversation between Grantly and Tom, particularly when Grantly asked if he could be honest and Tom, his expression quite plainly saying I would rather eat my own leg, barely managed a '...'course.' And, although I probably wasn't supposed to be, I was amused by all of Michael's talk about turning the school around. They were trying to turn the school around all the way back when Jack Rimmer was headmaster! Are you telling me that not one headteacher has managed to turn the school around in the seven series since then? Have they perhaps started to turn it around? Maybe it's now at a ninety-degree angle from its starting position? Or has the school been turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, therefore finding itself in need of being turned around again? What exactly is Waterloo Road's rate of rotation?

Serious matters: Scout broke my heart a bit. And FINN, YOU IDIOT. YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT. I'm fond of Finn, and bless him for his behaviour after he realised what an idiot he had been, but when Tariq beat him up I could almost have applauded.

(Tariiiiiq please be a good person I love you. Maybe I should attempt fanfiction in which Tariq keeps an eye on Josh after Josh gets back from hospital, and Finn - of course - assumes that their developing friendship is just an attempt on Tariq's part to piss him off. Mastering Tariq's voice might be tricky, though; his speech is peppered with slang that doesn't come naturally to me. Writing Waterloo Road fanfiction is a continuous struggle against dialects I don't quite know the rules of.)

I sort of love that the point at which I immediately started posting far too much about Waterloo Road was the point at which Tom and Josh hugged. I don't think I've ever had such a specific, pinpointable trigger for MASSIVE EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT before. A fictional father and son hug once, and over the subsequent month I write fourteen entries and fifteen thousand words of fanfiction. It - it was a really good hug.

Crossposts: http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/339134.html

SO PLEASED. Josh was all over episode 7.22 of Waterloo Road and, from the look of the trailer, he's going to be the central focus of the next episode. I am delighted by this! Waterloo Road has a near-infinite number of characters, and they all drift in and out of focus, and so it's terribly exciting when my favourites take centre stage, particularly as the entire September-November stretch of episodes was about characters who didn't really interest me. Suddenly the writers have remembered that Josh exists!

And Tom referenced the drug incident from series five! I'm glad he did; it would have been ridiculous had he forgotten. Although I notice nobody's pointed out the 'when Josh takes drugs, horrible things happen to pregnant women' connection. Obviously that's the angle to go for if you want to deter Josh, Tom. Although pregnancies go awry so often at Waterloo Road that Josh and Tom might both assume the horrible things are a natural part of pregnancy.

(Tom also, I note, physically dragged Josh to his feet and then shoved him into a toilet cubicle, presumably for

apiphile and

suzie_shooter's benefit.)

Josh, holding a breast implant in each hand and looking terrified: 'This really isn't my area of expertise.'

Bless him.

In news not related to Josh but still (sorry) related to Waterloo Road: Trudi was absolutely right to protest against the new initiative, and I'm frustrated that Michael managed to talk her around. You can't ban slang! I'm guessing this isn't the last we've heard of this, though. Certainly I'll be surprised if the writers of a programme with slang and nonstandard dialects all over the place believe that EVERYONE HAS TO SPEAK CORRECTLY OR ONE DAY THEY'LL WAKE UP TO FIND THEY'VE BEEN UNEXPECTEDLY INITIATED INTO A GANG.

Right, I've stopped talking about Waterloo Road; you can look now. Here is the coolest advert I have seen in a very long time. Also slightly unsettling! It came on during 10 O'Clock Live yesterday, and I was very confused until I realised what it was advertising.

(I still find it absolutely delightful when Brooker and Mitchell snipe at each other. 10 O'Clock Live really doesn't give them enough time for spontaneous interaction, but at least they have more opportunities than they did last year. You guys are my favourites. Be on everything together, up to and including Waterloo Road.)

Crossposts: http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/332735.html

Regarding the Livejournal situation:

- I may start crossposting from Dreamwidth in the nearish future, so my Dreamwidth will become more of an actual journal, rather than just an occasionally-imported-to backup.
- If I do start crossposting, you'd be more than welcome to continue commenting on Livejournal, so, really, if you're still on Livejournal, the only change will be the appearance of a crosspost link. I'll probably do this even if Livejournal alter the new release to something I find acceptable, in fact, because it makes things easier for people on DW without any real negative impact on people on LJ.
- I do not intend to delete or stop using this journal, or to disable comments. Even if I make the move to Dreamwidth, I'll still check my flist here as long as people still post.

What this essentially boils down to is 'in the future this journal will be available in two places, no other changes'. My Dreamwidth is also at rionaleonhart; please add me if there's any possibility you'll be moving over there, because I'd hate to lose contact with any of you guys.

If (like me) you're change-averse, or if (also like me) you don't like the way everything hovers in the middle of the screen on the Tropospherical Dreamwidth schemes, some amazing person has created a nice blue Firefox/Chrome skin for the Tropospherical Purple scheme that makes it all blue and white and old-Livejournally and gets rid of the massive margins. Thanks to

draegonhawke for the link!

Right, that's quite enough actual information for one post in this journal. FANDOM TIME.

The Mentalist episode 4.06, 'Where in the World Is Carmine O'Brien?':

JANE TEACHES LISBON'S NIECE HOW TO PICK POCKETS

WORST INFLUENCE

I LOVE HIM. It breaks my heart whenever I see him interacting with kids, though. Oh, Jane.

I also love how uncomfortable Annie makes Rigsby. aaaah aaaah this fourteen-year-old girl is asking about whether I have a girlfriend and whether I love my girlfriend and whether my girlfriend is cute and what is the subtext of this conversation what do I do???

I generally like Annie quite a lot! She'd already managed to capture my attention about ten minutes into the episode, in fact. She's so sneaky and manipulative and mischievous and confident; she has the sort of cocky charm that you often see in male characters but rarely in female. I think she should leap from The Mentalist over to Supernatural and become a hunter; she'd love it. Someone create a completely nonsensical Supernatural spinoff in which Jo Harvelle and Annie Lisbon are a hunting duo, please. (I only realised in the process of typing that that that duo would consist of Annabeth and Joanna Beth. Also, I don't think I've ever written a grammatically correct sentence containing three 'that's in a row before.)

I enjoyed the little touch of Lisbon's inability to stop calling her Annabeth, because that's such a family thing. You know how I sometimes mention my brother Joseph here? Nobody else calls him Joseph. He's been Joe everywhere except my head for years.

Tears in my eyes at the Lisbon siblings' conversation at the end. Lisbon! ♥!

!!!

Dear whoever just anonymously bought me paid time: who are you? You are the best, that's who you are. Thank you so much! ♥!

I'd like to do something in return, but obviously as I don't know who you are I don't know what you'd like. What I've decided to do, therefore, is make a new Entry of Interesting Things (here is the one from last year, where I learnt, amongst other things, that eleven of the twelve men who've walked on the moon were in the Boy Scouts and it's legal to duel in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors). If people contribute, there should be something to interest you, kind anonymous person, and with any luck there should be things to interest everyone else as well.

Therefore!

Tell us something interesting in the comments of this entry. Multiple interesting things are, of course, more than welcome! And then you can read the other comments and learn new things and, assuming you like learning, it will be great.

Some starting facts for you:

- The 'lb' abbreviation for the pound stands for libra, which is Latin for 'scales' (as in the measuring device, hence the name of the astrological sign) and the name of an ancient Roman unit of mass, roughly three quarters of the modern pound.

- The shape of the ampersand (&) derives from that of the word 'et', Latin for 'and' (Wikipedia, that great fount of accuracy, has a visual comparison of ampersands through the ages).

- I don't have the book from which I learnt this with me (The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely), so I'm afraid I can't tell you who actually performed this study, but here it is: if you place a rat in a box with a food-dispensing lever and then introduce a bowl of food, the rat won't just eat from the bowl, even though that takes less effort; at some point it'll go back to press the lever. Animals like to work for their food. This held true for every animal tested except cats, who cannot be bothered with that 'effort' business.

- From Kevin Dutton's Flipnosis: an experiment held by George Bizer at New York's Union College required participants to read mocked-up news reports about two fictitious political candidates, Rick and Chris, on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Half the participants had to choose between the statements 'I support Rick' and 'I oppose Rick', the other half between 'I support Chris' and 'I oppose Chris'. The groups then read a news report criticising their chosen candidate; let's take Chris as the example. The people who said 'I oppose Rick' were less likely to change their stance than the people who said 'I support Chris'. They were more reluctant to change their views purely because of the language in which they had been made to express those views. I think that's really interesting.

Any fields are welcome, from mathematics to linguistics to psychology to history to obscure references in videogames. Directing other people to this entry so we can get a wider pool of knowledge would get a hearty thumbs-up but is absolutely not compulsory. Let education commence!

So! Doctor Who.

( Thoughts on 'The Almost People'. )

In other news, a moment from Pokémon White I can't believe I previously neglected to mention:

'This is bad! Badbadbadbadbadbadbad! Bad for Team Plasma! Or Plasbad, for short!'

I love this game.

I almost didn't watch Saturday's episode of Doctor Who ('The Doctor's Wife'), because I was feeling so unwell, but I'm glad I did because it was amazing. I love Doctor Who, but it almost felt like an episode from a different, better show. And it focused on my absolute Doctor Who OTP, which was nice.

Also watched the Eurovision Song Contest with

reipan and a group of her friends. Weirdly, I felt quite a lot better by the end of it. Eurovision is the best medicine?

Afterwards, we switched over to live soft-porn phone-in television, as you do, and watched women jiggling their unclad bums in the air. We became quite concerned by the woman on one of the channels; she was rolling around on a bed whilst looking like the most bored person in the world, and we started wondering whether we should call in just so she could have a nice chat.

Riona: We could ask philosophical questions.
Rei: 'What is the meaning of life?' 'Is it really worth it? If you're alone at the end of the day...'
Riona: 'What's your favourite Pokémon?'
Helen: 'I like a Slowpoke.'
Riona: I hate you.

One of our party began reminiscing about SM:TV Live. Lea, who did not grow up with SM:TV and was probably confused by the context, assumed that SM:TV Live was live footage of couples engaging in S&M practices. It gave me terrible mental images of Ant and Dec.

I've also been watching more My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (the title confuses me a bit; 'is' should generally be capitalised in titles, because it's a verb, but when the title is displayed onscreen it clearly doesn't have a capital letter, so I suppose it's correct to write it lowercase for this specific series), and it is a joy of a cartoon. The 'Winter Wrap Up' song brings nostalgic tears to my eyes, which is odd because a week ago I'd never watched anything My Little Pony-related in my life.

Idly trying to sort the ponies into Hogwarts houses. Tentative assignations: Twilight Sparkle is a Ravenclaw. Fluttershy and Applejack are in Hufflepuff, although the latter is borderline Gryffindor. Rarity is a Slytherin. Rainbow Dash could fit into Gryffindor or Slytherin; she's definitely not a Hufflepuff, which is slightly odd because she's meant to represent loyalty. I don't really know what to do with Pinkie Pie; Hufflepuff, maybe?

I'm trying to settle on my favourite pony, but I can't. They're all so wonderful!

In more legitimate nostalgia news, I've now bought Pokémon White! But this entry is getting a bit long, so I'll post about it later. For now, suffice it to say that I'm enjoying it very much and, although rarely do I have a pure Normal-type on my main team, my Herdier is a fantastic scrapper who carried me through the first two gyms and I refuse to give her up.

Channel 4 broadcast a really interesting Derren Brown special on faith healing last night: Derren Brown: Miracles for Sale, in which Derren attempted to illustrate and expose faith healing scams by sending a member of the public undercover into Texas as a 'faith healer'.

I have a lot of respect for Derren Brown, to whom I once sent a ukulele in a fit of madness and who, rather than ignoring me or taking out a restraining order (both of which would have been entirely understandable reactions), sent me an extremely kind letter in return, and that respect was bolstered last night when he chose to protect the reputation of a PR company by deciding not to use it to promote his fake faith healer. (Of course, Derren is a deceiver and a showman, and it's perfectly possible that some of the situations in the film were deliberately engineered for drama, but I can believe that he did think 'on second thoughts, let's not endanger this innocent man's livelihood for our programme.' Whilst Derren Brown generally has quite a sinister image, most evidence seem to point towards his actually being a really nice guy.)

Whilst I'm on the topic, I will say that I was a bit disappointed by Derren's autobiography, Confessions of a Conjuror. I adore his earlier book, Tricks of the Mind, but I suppose his style doesn't really lend itself to narrative. The police aren't going to come after you if you let the occasional noun slip past without an adjective, Derren, I promise.

Derren Brown's Miracles for Sale is currently available on 4oD here. (I don't think it's available outside the UK, I'm afraid.) In case the religious amongst you are wary about watching it: it's not an attack on faith itself, but on people who exploit that faith for profit, sometimes with terrible consequences for the exploited (for example, if they are misled into believing they're healed and so abandon treatments that they in fact need).

In other news (although not the sort of news that most newspapers would bother reporting), I have rewatched Glee episode 2.16, 'Original Song', and I now have a couple of thoughts that aren't just 'omg Kurt and Blaine are the adorablest ♥' (although they are, of course, still the adorablest).

Regarding 'Get It Right': it's a lovely tune, but I think it's a shame that the 'original song' that New Directions use to open Regionals is in fact a great big mass of clichés. I mean, take the first few lines:

What have I done? I wish I could run
Away from this ship going under.
Just trying to help, hurt everyone else;
Now I feel the weight of the world is
On my shoulders.
What can you do when your good isn't good enough
And all that you touch tumbles down?
These are all incredibly hackneyed images, Rachel! If you're trying to express your own pain, you really should use your own words. Your voice still gives me chills, though, so well done there. (Yes, 'gives me chills' is also a cliché, but I'm not relying on my lyric-writing ability to win a competition, am I?)

It's a particular shame after an episode of songs with lyrics as creative as 'So sick with love I think I'm coming down with rickets.' Oh, Puck.

The Warblers' cover of 'Raise Your Glass' makes me dance ridiculously in my seat. I can't help it. I punch the air and everything. It is a very good thing that I've never listened to it in company.

I find it weirdly hilarious that Darren Criss's voice is frequently layered over itself during the Warblers' performances, giving the impression that there's another Warbler somewhere in there who sounds exactly like Blaine, or possibly that they have an invisible Blaine clone contributing vocals. OH MY GOD, WAIT: or that my fic in which all the Dalton students' thoughts are audible is true. It answers so many questions! ...by which I mean that it answers one question and raises many, many more.

Despite the lyrical issue and the fact that it didn't do as much with the Rachel-Quinn relationship as I was hoping, 'Original Song' is still my favourite Glee episode to date. It is packed with so many delightful things and I love it endlessly. (Did I mention how charmed I am whenever the Warblers and New Directions cheer each other on? Awww.)

Things are a bit stressful at the moment (you know the Mitchell and Webb theory that housemates fall into the categories of 'people who are annoying' and 'people who become annoyed'? I am an annoying housemate; the friend with whom I live is an annoyed housemate, and she is at the moment actively annoyed, and when people are annoyed with me I tend to get very upset and run around trying to cook them meals and buy them chocolates (please do not exploit this knowledge for chocolates)), and so, seeking a distraction, I invite you to share extracts from silly things you wrote in your childhood. (EDIT: Silly things you drew are also very welcome!)

For my part: recently, looking through some of the things I drew and wrote when I was a child, I stumbled across the following poem I'd written about my name:

H is for all of the harvest fruit
A for all the apples on the tree
R is for the redcurrants on the bush
R is rabbits for you and me
I for ice cream
E for eaves
T for Tutancarmoon* the egiptians believed

* lol

I clearly sort of gave up halfway through. Eaves, Little Riona? Eaves? Really? You genuinely couldn't think of another word beginning with 'E'? Tutankhamun was really something you associated strongly with yourself?

There's also a card I've written to my dad. It says, 'Dear Daddy. Happy Birthday! I hope you like your Presents. Love From Reepicheep.'

I had completely forgotten that I used to pretend to be Reepicheep when I was younger. I'd walk up and down the house, pretending that I was on the Dawn Treader and had to keep my balance. (He's a swordfighting mouse; who wouldn't want to be him?) The idea of my dad fathering Reepicheep is a tiny bit alarming, frankly.

Also: 'Daddy has his article that he is reading titled "Becketts Bass ruling proves the fallibility of convential wisdom". It does not seem to make sense at all. Why dosen't he just read the Beano?' I concur, younger self; who needs newspapers when you could be reading comics? Honestly. (Ooh, a search turns up the article in question and therefore allows me to date this particular pearl of wisdom! I would have been just about to turn nine. Bit appalled by the fact that I couldn't spell 'doesn't' at that age, although I'll let 'convential' slide.)

And there are the beginnings of a made-up language! To my amusement, 'fic' meant 'shut up' and, although the language had only thirty-four words, one of them meant 'pretend to be a mouse'. I knew where my linguistic priorities lay.

A question to those who've played Final Fantasy XIII: as I don't have a console that can play that game and can't see myself acquiring one in the near future, I'm thinking about watching a playthrough on YouTube. Like a film! A really, really long film. Would this be a really bad idea?

(I typed out that question and then promptly went off and watched the first hour, so possibly it is already too late to be asking. The environments are so gorgeous and the direction so cinematic that I'm actually not getting bored by watching someone else fight. It almost feels as if it should be treated like a film.)

Notes!

– I love watching Lightning move. I don't know why.
– SNOW, WHAT IS THAT STUPID DESIGN ON THE BACK OF YOUR TRENCHCOAT? WHY IS IT ONLY THERE WHEN YOU'RE FIGHTING? IS IT A WOLF? IS IT A BEAR? YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS.
– Snow actually looks sort of like an older Hip Young Seifer of Kingdom Hearts. Sorry to break it to you, Seifer of Final Fantasy VIII, but this guy from another game looks more like your younger self than you do. On the plus side, a large part of the reason he looks more like your younger self is because he has clung to the ridiculous hat that you so wisely ditched.
– Seriously, Snow's clothes annoy me to an irrational degree. Nothing against you yourself, Snow; I was admittedly expecting to dislike you, because your clothes made you look like a prat, but as it turns out you seem to be rather a sweetheart, if blustery. ('If you don't know who you've got to save, you just protect them all, right?' Awww.)
– Vanille has an interesting voice. Is her accent Australian? I can't stop listening to her vowel sounds. (She also behaves quite oddly; it's as if she's not in entirely the same world as everyone else.)
– Speaking of accents: ahahaha, obviously XII introduced the localisation team to the delight of using English accents for villains and they're never going back.
– When Lightning uses a Potion to heal Sazh in battle, he says 'I appreciate it'. Does this response change at different points in the story? 'I appreciate it' is polite but not especially friendly, and this is a battle taking place just after a cutscene in which Sazh was a bit annoyed with her. In any case, I approve of Sazh's politeness. (EDIT: It does change! Later, when he becomes more sympathetic to Lightning's cause, he says 'Much appreciated'. I like that a lot.)
– What with Lightning and Snow, I sort of wish they had named all of the main characters after weather types. It would have been very funny. Four of the main characters have nouns for names, at least, but that's not specific enough. Hope could have been Hail! Vanille could be Drizzle!
– It's all very science-fictiony, isn't it? First Final Fantasy since VIII to have a prominent science-fiction feel, if I recall correctly, although X did have the 'fantasy world grown out of a collapsed science-fiction one' aspect. The inside of the fal'Cie-holding place (the Pulse Vestige?) reminds me a bit of Zanarkand Temple.
– Come to think of it, it's also similar to VIII in the fact that your teammates visibly follow you between battles, although their following motion is slightly more realistic than DIRECTLY BEHIND YOU IN SINGLE FILE. And they say things as you run around! I love it!
– I've heard Final Fantasy XIII criticised for its linearity, but, hey, at least the running-down-corridors means I don't feel I'm missing things! Final Fantasy XIII: the first Final Fantasy game designed specifically to be watched on YouTube.

If anyone else wants to experience Final Fantasy XIII but doesn't have the means to play it themselves, here is the first video in the walkthrough I'm watching. The person recording it hasn't been talking over things, for which I am grateful.

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Entries tagged with language

Shutting The Fuck Up Is A Speciality Of Mine.

Now It Is You Who Shall Bow To Me.

They Step Over Me Like They're Bonnie And Clyde Or Something.

Please Explain To Me The Scientific Nature Of The Whammy.

A Typical Keysmash Might Look Like 'Asdljklgafdljk'.

She Stays. She Stays. She Stays.

Choppy Words In A Sloppy Flow.

I Looked For A Sign.

What Does 'Junction Magic' Mean? I'm Sure It's Not Important.

For Pete's Sake, Go Away.

Makoto Naegi, Who's Known For Being A Cutie-Patootie.

Don't Be So Hard On Yourself.

They'll Probably Give Them A Gold Medal Just For Being A Fucking Baby.

Red John Could Easily Be A Demon.

Also A Fact: You Are My Favourite Person Right Now.

Or Headbad For Short.

It's Like Kissing, Only There's A Winner.

At Least 'My Headband' Was New.

I'd Also Written A Thank-You Letter To Myself From The Zoombinis.

Snow Reminds Me A Bit Of Avarus, Actually. HEROES DON'T RUN.

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