Trabia Garden

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

Oh, hey, it's 2025.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

I posted a meme over on Tumblr, which I’m going to reproduce here:

Give me any two (or more) characters I’m familiar with, and I’ll tell you how they would cope in an ‘oh no, there’s only one bed’ scenario!

I got a good number of requests on Tumblr, and I had a blast with all of them. There’s a surprising amount of scope for variation in an ‘only one bed’ situation, and it’s interesting to think about how different character combinations would react to it! My responses exist on a spectrum from ‘general thoughts’ to ‘tiny ficlet’.


( Danganronpa: Makoto Naegi and Mukuro Ikusaba )

( FFVII/FFVIII: Cloud Strife and Squall Leonhart )

( Silent Hill 2/Death Note: James Sunderland and Light Yagami )

( Final Fantasy X: Auron and Jecht )

( Final Fantasy VIII: Seifer and Zell )

( Ace Attorney: Ryunosuke and Kazuma )

( Danganronpa 2: Hinata and Koizumi )

( Pandora Hearts: Oz and Elliot )

( The Last of Us: Ellie and Jesse )

( Lost: Sayid and Jack )

( Ace Attorney: Edgeworth and Gumshoe )

( Doctor Who/The Mentalist: the Ninth Doctor and Patrick Jane )

( The Good Place/Doctor Who: Michael and the Master )

( The World Ends with You: Joshua and Neku )

( Final Fantasy VII: Barret and Cloud )

( Final Fantasy VII: Barret and Tifa )

( Lost: Jack and Kate )


If there are any characters you’d like to see confronted with a one-bed situation, feel free to make requests in the comments!

Been having some weird, intricate dreams lately. Here's one of those dream roundup posts.


( A few recent dreams. )


Huh! Seeing them laid out together like this, I've been in some stressful situations in my dreams lately. But at least I got to talk to my terrible boyfriend Jack Shephard.

It feels good to be able to make polls again! It's been a long time.

I usually don't include 'I can't answer this' options, because they can drown out other responses. I've included them for question three, though, because I'm curious about how many people aren't answering because they don't know the characters versus how many people aren't answering because they don't like the characters. You can still submit the poll if you haven't responded to all the questions, so feel free to skip anything you can't answer.




The final question is based on a dream I had a while ago, in which it was a meme to make one-page 'fact sheets' about canons. These fact sheets always ended with 'QUIZ TIME!', a simple question in allcaps, and the answer options 'A) A COCONUT       B) AN OLD MAN'.

'Who could have played Until Dawn?' was the only question I remembered from the dream, and I felt compelled to bring it to life.

I've been watching From, because I keep finding myself tempted to rewatch Lost, which seems silly when it's only been a year since I first watched it. I often see From recommended to people who enjoyed Lost, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Having watched the first nine episodes, I haven't entirely worked out how I feel about From. I think part of my issue is the way it deals with its mysteries.

Lost obviously had an 'ooh, what does this mean?' mystery aspect, but I feel it mainly used its mysteries to tell stories about its characters and their relationships. I never felt that the mysteries were the most important part of Lost, which is probably just as well, because, from the discussions I've seen, it sounds like people who watched Lost primarily for the solution to the mysteries had a much less satisfying experience than I did.

From leans very hard on its mysteries, and I don't think they can take the weight, because they don't really feel like mysteries to me. When the characters strip the protective coating off the cables leading to lamps in the town, they find there are no wires inside! So how does the electricity work? They're going to dig a big hole to follow the cables! Ooh, what will they find?

I'm not invested in trying to work out where the electricity is coming from, because the answer obviously isn't going to be anything that makes sense by real-world standards. If there are no wires, there's no electricity, which means the lamps work by magic. Unless someone is pulling an Umineko, there's no mystery here. What's going on is clearly impossible. Therefore: magic.

How does the road out of the town just lead straight back to the town despite not looping around? How can you enter a hole in a tree and emerge from a basement on the other side of town? Magic; there's no other possible explanation. I have solved all the mysteries.

There might be more intricacies to the magic, of course. Maybe the cables lead to a sentient ball of lightning that sends electrical zaps to the lights; maybe they lead to a gigantic frog that whispers magical electric incantations along the empty cables. But I'm not going to spend time trying to work it out, because, whatever it is, it's not going to be something that fits into any set of rules I understand.

There's nothing wrong with weird, inexplicable things happening in a story, of course! But I feel From is focusing too heavily on presenting these things as a mystery to be solved, when its audience does not have the tools to even try to solve these mysteries. I didn't start watching this show about people being trapped in a weird town because I want to know all the intricacies of the town's weirdness; I started watching because I'm interested in how people cope with being trapped together.

I don't know if I have any coherent conclusion to draw here. 'If you're telling a story that includes mystery elements, be aware of whether you're telling a mystery story or a story about how people cope with mystery', maybe. Either is a valid choice, but, if you're telling a mystery story, you'll probably want to make sure it's actually possible to solve it.

Even if I'm a little unsure of how successful From is as a show, though, the title sequence is pretty cool! Very atmospheric and creepy.

It's time for the end-of-year fic meme! I realise December has only just started and it's not impossible I'll write more before the year is out, but I'm impatient and I really enjoy doing this meme.

'What icon should I use for talking about writing?' I thought, before the obvious answer hit me.


Number of fics written in 2023: twenty-four. You can find them in my 'fanfiction (really this time)' tag or on my AO3 account: Riona.

Fandoms: Person of Interest, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Lost, Zanki Zero, Little Hope, The Quarry, Final Fantasy XVI, Death Note, The Last of Us. Five videogame fandoms, two television fandoms, one anime/manga fandom, one film fandom. I went through several distinct fandom phases this year - Person of Interest, then Lost, then The Quarry, then Death Note - so I did a little less rocketing around than usual.

One crossover: Connecting Strands (Person of Interest/Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). While it's not strictly a crossover, there's also Across the Ocean, a Lost fic inspired by Sense8.


( End-of-year fic meme, 2023. )


The Quarry might be a bit underrepresented here because I wrote six thematically similar fics for it in the space of a month. I had a blast with all of them, but it can be a little hard to distinguish them in my memory!

It's time to archive some of the recent dreams I've noted down on my phone. As ever, I'm doing this mainly for my own benefit - I don't expect other people to be especially interested in my dreams - but feel free to read if you're curious!


( Archiving assorted dreams. )


Finally, here's one outside the cut, for a preview of the sort of thing I dream about:

Dreamt Light Yagami was strangling me with a face mask. Fabric mask, elasticated ear loops. I was on my back; he was on top of me, pressing the stretched elastic down hard against my throat. I'll be honest: it was not a comfortable experience.

Not a great dream, but I have to respect my subconscious mind's characterisation of Light Yagami. No 'I meet my favourite character and he finds me enrapturing' here; I meet my favourite character and he immediately murders me.

A few times over the years, I've tried to pin down my ten favourite fictional characters and have quickly given it up as an impossible exercise. I love so many characters! How can I possibly narrow it down?

At long last, though, I've actually managed to put a list together! The key was imposing a rule on myself: characters only qualify if I've loved them for at least ten years, so I can be sure that this is a long-lasting affection and I haven't just been blinded by something new and shiny. Sorry, Jack Shephard; you might have been a contender if I'd watched Lost when it first came out.

Fun fact: only one character on the final list has never intentionally killed anyone, and half the characters on the list are outright murderers, which I'm going to define as 'have intentionally killed someone who posed no immediate danger to them'. (Possibly more than half. There's one weird borderline case.)

I'm going to post a little writeup for each of the characters on my 'favourite characters' list, probably in three parts: one post with four characters, two posts with three. Here's the first set!

I'm not posting these in order of preference (I could not possibly pin down an order of preference); the four characters in this post are just the four whose writeups I finished first, and I've listed them in alphabetical order within the post itself.


Elena Fisher, Uncharted


Who is this character and why do you love them? It's strange to think back on it now that Nate and Sully have won me over, but, back when I played the first Uncharted game, I wasn't really a fan of any of the characters. I liked Elena a reasonable amount; I disliked Sully; I was uninterested in Nate. But then Elena kicked her kidnapper out of a helicopter, and I went from 'I like you okay' to 'I think you're wonderful'. And, having won my heart, she made me like everyone else through her interactions with them. She's bold, she's adventurous, she's playful, she refuses to take any shit, and she elevates any other character she's around. She reminds me a little of my sister-in-law, actually.
Do you ship this character with anyone? Elena/Nate is one of my absolute favourite pairings of all time. When I try to think of pairings I ship, my mind will usually go to them first. They play so well off each other, they have fun with each other, and I love how much Nate admires her. I really like that the games allow Nate to show vulnerability around Elena, too.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Familiar and Strange. I enjoyed Uncharted 4, but I was hoping it'd focus more on the established characters rather than newcomer Sam. This fic envisions how Uncharted 4 might have played out if Elena had been more involved from the start.
Are there any similar characters you love? Teresa Lisbon of The Mentalist is very like Elena, I think. I was actually half-debating whether to put Lisbon or Elena on this list, but another character from The Mentalist was on the list already, and I thought it made sense to keep it to one character per canon. (Yes, I'm talking about Patrick Jane. I don't know why I'm trying to play coy. Of course I'm talking about Patrick Jane.)
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? Elena poking fun at you while you play Crash Bandicoot is my favourite moment in the entire Uncharted series, and I think Naughty Dog should come out with a full-length Elena Fisher Mocks Your Videogame Skills Simulator. I can tell you right now that it would be the best game ever made.


Joshua Kiryu, The World Ends with You


Who is this character and why do you love them? Joshua Kiryu is an obnoxious little shit who causes problems on purpose. When I first met him, I hated him; I just wanted Shiki back! But Joshua was just so unapologetically and gleefully awful that somehow he ended up winning me over. He's so much fun!
Do you ship this character with anyone? I'm a big fan of Neku/Joshua in which Joshua spends the entire time driving Neku up the wall. Neku's feelings for Joshua are so complicated and interesting.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Select Player Two, in which Joshua drags Neku into another round of the Reapers' Game. It is a blast to write Joshua being as annoying as possible at all times.
Are there any similar characters you love? Like Joshua, Beatrice of Umineko: When They Cry gleefully launches herself into ensuring everyone has a terrible time. There's also Nagito Komaeda of Danganronpa 2; Komaeda isn't quite as intentionally awful as Joshua, but he definitely inspires similar 'holy shit, why are you like this and why do I have to put up with you?' feelings in the people around him.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? My current laptop is named Joshua, after Joshua Kiryu, because it's tiny and silver and pissed me off the moment I met it. It made me jump through so many hoops if I wanted to save files onto the hard drive by default instead of onto the cloud!


Squall Leonhart, Final Fantasy VIII


Who is this character and why do you love them? Squall Leonhart was the first character I ever really connected with. As a deeply socially awkward thirteen-year-old, I was shocked to discover this character whose inner thoughts were just like mine; he didn't want to hurt other people, but he didn't know how to talk to them. I felt that this game understood me, and I wasn't used to feeling understood.
Do you ship this character with anyone? Squall/Zell was the first pairing I ever wrote fanfiction for, at the age of thirteen, and I'm fond of it to this day. There are echoes of Squall/Zell in Ryuji/Joker, Yu/Yosuke and Prompto/Noctis, all of which I ship enormously. Apparently I have a weakness for pairing the quiet protagonist up with his energetic, loyal, compassionate friend who very openly admires him.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? With These Signs Upon Our Souls, a Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII crossover, in which the characters of Final Fantasy VIII become l'Cie. It's the longest continuous story I've ever written, and I'm proud of myself for finishing it. (It's 26,000 words, which I know isn't actually that long in the grand scheme of things, but it's long for me!)
Are there any similar characters you love? Other characters who are socially inept in a way I find relatable include Noctis Lucis Caelum of Final Fantasy XV and Mark Corrigan of Peep Show. I also love Lightning of Final Fantasy XIII; I find her brand of social ineptitude less personally relatable, but I do think she's generally very similar to Squall.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? If you were planning to erase my memories of every fictional character I'd ever loved and you were only letting me keep one, that would be a weird thing to do, but I'd keep Squall. I don't think I'd consider him my favourite character of all time, but he's definitely the character who's most important to me.


Light Yagami, Death Note


Who is this character and why do you love them? Light is a terrible kid who discovered an untraceable murder method and decided to kill off all the criminals to make the world worship him, and somehow I find everything about him enchanting. I love watching him come up with convoluted plots that screw over everyone around him, himself occasionally included. I love watching him firmly convince himself that he's totally, totally justified in the terrible things he does. I love that his ego will never let him resist a challenge or an opportunity to rub his victory in someone's face. I love the tiny hints of warmth that we occasionally catch glimpses of - his love for his family, his fondness for Ryuk - and I love that, even if that softer side exists, it's not enough to stop him from going too far; he's absolutely prepared to bury it if he has to.
Do you ship this character with anyone? I ship Light Yagami with himself, hard, in every possible variant. Light interacting with another version of himself in dreams or visions? Perfect. Light encountering an actual duplicate of himself, and the two of him attempting to seduce and murder each other, because they can't both be gods of the new world but they can't just write 'Light Yagami' in the Death Note? Magnificent. Light just masturbating while thinking about how great he is? Beautiful. I apologise for posting yet another entry about Light Yagami masturbating.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Shackles, in which Light and L are toxic soulmates. 'They're both in love with each other, but they will not hesitate to destroy each other' turned out to be a fun dynamic to work with! I'm pleasantly surprised by how enthusiastically this fic was received, too; the Death Note fandom is remarkably active, considering that the canon ended over a decade ago.
Are there any similar characters you love? It's actually hard to think of anyone like Light. Light's not the sort of character you usually see committing atrocities. He's not an outcast, he hasn't had a hard life; he's a golden boy. He's smart, he's polite, he's popular; he's used to being praised and admired. He works hard, but he knows he'd still beat everyone without really trying. And, because he's gone through life without ever truly being challenged, he assumes he can murder thousands of people and get away with it. (EDIT: Wait, Akechi! Goro Akechi from Persona 5, particularly the expanded Royal edition, is very Light in both appearance and personality.)
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? It can be tricky to talk about liking Light Yagami, because some parts of the fandom can interpret 'Light is my favourite character' as 'I think Light was right'. No! Light was wrong! Everything he does is terrible! That's why I love him so much! I keep getting his musical song 'Where Is the Justice?' stuck in my head, because it's a banger, but it doesn't feel great when I catch myself singing 'where is the justice when the guilty all go free? why don't we lock them up and throw away the key?'

My brother Joseph gave me the first season of True Detective on disc for Christmas. 'I didn't know if you'd watched it before,' he said, 'so I searched the tags on your blog to see whether you'd talked about it. I think you'll like it. It's about two men having a very fraught, intense working relationship.'

The title sequence is extremely cool! Striking cinematography throughout the show, too.

More thoughts under the cut! These thoughts were written while watching, so some of my feelings change over time.


( Thoughts on season one of True Detective. )


A high-quality show! Good tension, acting and writing; gorgeous cinematography. I don't think I'm the audience, and I don't mean it's not my thing; I mean it was made with a particular audience in mind, and I don't think I'm part of that audience. An uncomfortable and unwelcoming watch, but well made and interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The show had a bit of a disadvantage because it's the first thing I've watched since finishing Lost, which I loved a frankly unreasonable amount.

To be honest, though, my brother is indirectly the reason I watched Lost as well! I wasn't in a position to start True Detective straight away, but Joseph's 'it's about two men having a very fraught, intense working relationship' comment made me think 'I do like that sort of thing', which led me to watch Person of Interest, which led me to watch Lost. So, Joseph, if you see this, I have to thank you for not only giving me True Detective but accidentally introducing me to two other shows I hugely enjoyed.