Trabia Garden

I was in Manchester for a wedding over the weekend, which entailed a couple of long train journeys! To pass the time on the journey, I revived one of my favourite memes on my Tumblr:

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!

Here are the results! (You can also find my responses from the last time I did this over here.) As before, my responses exist on a spectrum from ‘general thoughts’ to ‘tiny ficlet’. The Danganronpa, Hundred Line and Omori scenarios contain spoilers.


( The Hundred Line: Takumi and Eito )

( Spider-Man: Peter, Harry and MJ )

( Umineko: Beatrice and Battler )

( Danganronpa: first-game survivors, Hinata and Kuzuryuu, Koizumi and Tsumiki )

( DN Angel: Daisuke and Satoshi )

( Top Gear: writer’s choice )

( Severance: Helena and Cobel )

( Sonic the Hedgehog: Sonic and Tails )

( Omori: Sunny and Basil )

( Zero Escape: Carlos, Akane and Junpei )

( Persona 4: protagonist and Yosuke )

( Your Turn to Die: Sara and Sou )

( Deltarune: Noelle and Susie )


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

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

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

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


( My favourite characters of 2024. )


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Titles are something I've always struggled with when writing fanfiction. I thought I'd take a look back at the fics I've posted this year and note down exactly why I chose the titles I did.

What I'm hoping is that, if I force myself to think consciously about why I choose story titles, the process might become a little easier in future. And, hey, even if it doesn't help, it might be an interesting exercise.

In reverse chronological order, my fic titles for this year:


( Rambling about why I chose fic titles. )


I've kept an eye out for patterns during this title analysis exercise, and what I've deduced is that I like ironic titles and titles with dual meanings or dual relevance. And, er, absolute copout titles where I just grab the first half-relevant word I can think of.

I wrote my recent Omori fic A Helping Hand very quickly; it went from a mental image to a complete (if short) oneshot within an afternoon.

Because of this, I've got an unusually clear view of how this fic developed! I thought it might be interesting to note down a bit about the writing process while it's still fresh in my mind.

Like the fic itself, these notes contain spoilers for Omori and mentions of fictional suicidal ideation.


( Analysing the writing process for my Omori fic. )


This fic was a little unusual in that I wrote it almost from beginning to end; my writing process is usually a lot less linear! But, in the way I started with a vague idea and just expanded on it until I saw an opportunity to tie things together, it's a pretty accurate reflection of how I usually develop a fic. This is why I usually write one-shots; I don't have the advance planning skills to write something both coherent and long!

I've been thinking recently about silent protagonists.

It tends to put me off trying a videogame if the protagonist is silent. I often find it hard to get invested in silent protagonists, and that can really impair my enjoyment of a game. If I'm going to spend hours inhabiting a particular character, I'd like to care about that character!

However, in recent years, I've discovered a couple of silent protagonists who really clicked for me. I thought it might be interesting - for me, if no one else - to consider which silent protagonists work for me, and what makes them work.

Therefore: here's a list of silent protagonists from games I've played, in roughly descending order of fondness!

I'm defining 'silent protagonist' here as a character who hits both of the following points:

a) They are unvoiced or minimally voiced. They might have voiced action grunts or brief battle quotes, but they're never going to say an eloquent line of dialogue aloud.
b) If they speak at all, it's exclusively or almost exclusively through occasional dialogue options chosen by the player. They don't paraphrase or elaborate on the dialogue option; the text in the option is all you get.

I've omitted characters from games I never really played enough of to form a strong impression of the protagonist, e.g. Bloodborne and the various Zelda games I've unsuccessfully attempted to get into. I've also probably omitted some characters just because they slipped my mind.


Silent protagonists I love:

Protagonist (Persona 5). I've never seen another silent protagonist with quite as much personality as Joker. Plenty of voiced protagonists don't have as much personality as Joker. His animations are stylish and distinctive; his dialogue options are frequently hilarious. He's a bold, playful, sarcastic little shit and I love him.

Sunny (Omori). The game really immerses you in Sunny's head, in a very literal way. Although he never speaks, I got a strong impression of his fears and delusions and psychological struggles, and I ended up getting very attached to this kid. Omori doesn't typically give you choices more complex than 'yes/no', but I found it interesting that the game would sometimes offer yes/no choices as a way of indicating hesitation, fear or reluctance; there are times when just the fact that you're being offered the choice tells you something about Sunny's character, because it means he's torn between the two options.

Kris (Deltarune). I find Kris fascinating. There's something so strange and dark and unsettling about them, and the glimpses we get of their character paint an interestingly complicated picture. They're lonely, they're bored, they're an outcast, they're sentimental, they have a cruel streak, their friends mean a lot to them. The player, in their role as the one controlling the protagonist, is able to make Kris do things against their will, but it's unclear how Kris feels about the player's presence overall. I'm so interested to see how the rest of Deltarune goes.


Silent protagonists I like:

Chell (Portal). Chell is truly silent, never gets so much as a dialogue option, but the gameplay conveys an impression of her character as relentlessly determined. She also stands out to me for being a female silent protagonist, which I haven't seen many of! It often feels like protagonists aren't allowed to be female unless there's somehow a reason for them to be female, so I appreciate the fact that Chell is a woman despite the fact that, if she were a man, pretty much nothing about the game would change. She's not a woman for plot purposes. She's not a woman for eye candy purposes; it's a first-person game and you almost never see her on screen. She just happens to be a woman.

Protagonist (Persona 3). I'm talking about the original game here, as I haven't yet played Reload. The Persona 3 protagonist doesn't have anywhere near the amount of personality that comes through in Persona 5's protagonist, but I still got a slight impression of his character. The Persona 3 protagonist generally comes across to me as clueless and eager to please, which is mildly endearing.

Protagonist (Persona 4). Again, I only got a faint sense of personality from Persona 4's protagonist, but there's still enough there for me to pick up on something: a quiet, serious, dedicated kid who cares very strongly about his friends. He also loves cats; that's important!

Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog). Sonic gets an unfair advantage here because I used to watch The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and read Sonic the Comic! But his animations still give him some cute personality as a silent protagonist, e.g. the way he gets visibly impatient if you leave him motionless.

Amaterasu (Okami). I considered putting Amaterasu in the 'basically indifferent to, but they get points for being cute' tier below! But, in addition to being cute, she gets extra points for the touch of personality in her reactions, and in being able to bite anyone.

Stanley (The Stanley Parable). As with Chell, Stanley is truly and completely silent, but the nature of the gameplay gives you an impression of his character: rebellious, contrary, curious. He's really only made interesting by the narrator's obsession with him, though.


Silent protagonists I'm basically indifferent to, but they get points for being cute:

Ori (Ori and the Blind Forest). Ori is, to be fair, very cute, and a little personality comes across in the story cutscenes. It's possible I'm ranking Ori down slightly because I hated the ending of Ori and the Will of the Wisps so much that it impacted my feelings about the entire series.

Dixie/Donkey/Diddy Kong (Donkey Kong Country). There's some personality in their animations, but I never became invested in them as characters.


Silent protagonists I'm indifferent to:

Frisk (Undertale). There's some cute personality in some of the ACT options, but overall I didn't get especially attached to Frisk.

Jak (Jak & Daxter). In the first game, I had no real interest in Jak; the most interesting thing about him is probably the fact that this quiet kid is friends with the non-stop chatterbox Daxter. (Which works out pretty well; as a quiet kid, I found it comfortable to be friends with other kids who were happy to talk without much input from me!) In Jak II he gained the ability to talk (and a lot of trauma) and immediately became a lot more interesting to me!

Reycho (World's End Club). This kid has basically no personality, but he escapes last place because he joined in the stupid 'A human, a human, a human!' dance that made me crack up.

Mario (Super Mario series). Mario is, of course, a classic videogame protagonist who has starred in a lot of well-crafted games! But I do not care about him as a character.


Separately, there's a 'this isn't a character; this is just me' section that doesn't really fit into the fondness ranking:

Protagonist (Pokémon). The protagonist of Pokémon games is just me. It's a kid, and it's often a boy; in Pokémon games where you choose the protagonist's gender, I'll just go with whichever protagonist I prefer the design of. But it's still me.

When I'm playing as a boy in Pokémon games, I usually name the protagonist Rakuni. (If I'm playing as a girl, of course, I'll go with Riona.) But 'Bulby is the protagonist's Bulbasaur' or 'Bulby is Rakuni's Bulbasaur' would be an absolutely insane thing to say. Bulby is my Bulbasaur.

There are Pokémon protagonist designs I like more than others; my favourite is the male protagonist (Hilbert) in Pokémon Black and White. But I can't rank the characters by fondness; they're all just me.


I'm not sure what conclusions I can draw from this exercise!

I suppose, looking back over this list, I find it interesting that my three favourite silent protagonists each caught my attention in different ways. Joker's personality shines through in his charming animations and fun dialogue options. Sunny's trauma and inner thoughts are conveyed to the player through the game's environments and mechanics. Kris is a mystery who you learn about primarily through the way other characters react to or talk about them.

So I suppose there are multiple ways to create an interesting silent protagonist! It's still rare for games to present me with a silent protagonist who really catches my attention, but it's good to know that it can be done.

Has a videogame ever made you feel like a bad person? Or, to broaden the question for the non-players amongst us, has a work of fiction ever made you feel like a bad person?

I've wanted to make this entry for a while, but I've been dragging my feet on it. I've mainly been reluctant to type up my own example, because, uh, you'll never believe this, but thinking about it makes me feel like a bad person.

My personal example of a videogame making me feel personally awful comes from Omori. Heads-up: there's discussion of animal harm and suicide below the cut. This takes place within a dream sequence in a videogame, though, so it's doubly removed from reality; no people or animals are harmed either in the real world or in the 'reality' of the game.


( I recommend reading the above content warnings before opening this cut. )


Wow, I did not enjoy typing that out. Please share your own stories of guilt-inducing moments in fiction, and we can feel bad about ourselves together.

Here is a meandering and spoilery entry about Omori. I thought at first that it was going to be about how silent videogame protagonists can be given a sense of character, but then it ended up being about how player action - or, in the case I'm thinking about, player inaction - impacts on videogame storytelling.


( Late-game spoilers for Omori. )


That was a lot of rambling about one specific moment in a videogame! I'm just fascinated by the way the interactive nature of videogames can allow players to alter the way a story is told in small ways, even if the game isn't technically presenting them with a story-branching choice.