rionaleonhart | Entries tagged with pokémon

I've just finished my first playthrough of Pokémon Sun! I am extremely timely.

Being able to stroke your Pokémon is great, but why can you hit them?? I don't want 'whoops, you hit your Pokémon by accident' to be a feature in my Pokémon games!

There's always room in my heart for an angry teenager who thinks he's cool, and Gladion is a top-notch example. I think he might actually be my all-time favourite character from a Pokémon game. Which isn't as big an achievement as it sounds - it's rare for characters from Pokémon games to grab me - but it's an achievement of note nonetheless. The parts of this game where you're spending time with him are easily my favourites.

Unfortunately, Gladion has drawn up all the characterisation in this game and left none for the player character!

It feels very strange that the protagonist of Pokémon Sun wears a constant vacant smile, no matter what's happening. Just changing their expression in serious moments would really help them to feel more like a real person. Tragic that my avatar essentially feeling like a block of wood is preventing me from having the chemistry I deserve with Gladion.

To be honest, if I were a member of Team Skull and I saw this kid wearing his blank smile as he battled his way through our headquarters, I'd be absolutely terrified.

My battle team has ended up being unusually unbalanced because I keep seeing Pokémon and going 'I WANT THAT' with no regard for type. My Pokémon Sun team includes two Fire types (Kit the Incineroar, Skessel the Salazzle) and both a Rock and an Earth type (Kes the Lycaroc, Siffrin the Mudsdale); the others, just so they don't feel left out, are Erik the Magneton and Shu the Slowbro. This means that two thirds of my team are weak to Earth, which causes real problems at points!

WAIT WHAT WHY IS MY MAGNETON EVOLVING

I always thought Magneton needed to hold a specific item to evolve into Magnezone; I didn't realise it evolved if levelled up in specific locations! I thought Magneton would be Erik's final form; I was not emotionally prepared for him to turn into a Magnezone! I considered cancelling the evolution, but, if he feels it's time to evolve, I suppose I should let it happen.

Oh, wow, the plot of Pokémon Sun gets a lot wilder than I typically expect from the Pokémon series. Somehow I appear to have ended up riding God into a parallel universe in order to fight a woman who's fused with a jellyfish.

It's interesting to realise that you, as the player, are not the main character of Pokémon Sun. The main character is Lillie; the story is about her journey, her development and her relationships. You're just sort of there.

To be honest, I think Pokémon Sun would be a better game if Lillie were the player character. You're telling a story about Lillie; embrace that. Get rid of the silent protagonist; they don't add anything here.

At the same time, I can understand why the developers didn't make Lillie the protagonist. The Pokémon series hinges on the idea that these are your Pokémon and you're the one building a relationship with them. Can you imagine the fanbase's reaction if the protagonist wasn't a player stand-in?

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!

It's time for another dream roundup!

( Dreams from October and November. )

I haven't even posted this entry yet, and I'm already regretting the terrible pasta pun I'm planning to use for the title.

It's time for one of those posts where I ramble about an aspect of videogames! I've been thinking about how videogames guide the player to where they need to go.

My first experience with videogames, if I recall correctly, was the Sonic the Hedgehog games we had for our SEGA Master System II. Working out where you're supposed to go in a 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game is pretty simple. There are two directions: left and right. When you start the level, Sonic is facing right. Go right.

'The character is facing in the direction you need to go' is simple and clear. You'll see it in a lot of sidescrolling platformers, such as the Donkey Kong Country series and early Mario games. Unfortunately, as environments become more complex, 'just point the character in the correct direction at the start of an area, and the player can just continue in that direction until the area is finished' becomes less helpful.

I was eleven years old when I played Pokémon Red. It was my first RPG. It wasn't sidescrolling; you could move in four directions. But, to start with, I was able to deduce where I needed to go.

In Pokémon Red, you start in your bedroom, which has one exit. Great; obviously I left the room. You talk to your mum, who says that Professor Oak, next door, is looking for you. Perfect; I know where I'm supposed to be going. I left the house and went to the building next door, which, according to the sign outside, was Oak's research lab.

In the lab, Oak's grandson told me that he wasn't there.

I was extremely confused.

Was I... was I supposed to wait for Professor Oak?

What you're supposed to do is try to leave town, at which point Oak will show up and tell you it's dangerous. The game designers had assumed the player would want to explore, and would naturally end up taking the road out of town. But they'd made the mistake of giving me a clear but unachievable goal: meet Professor Oak in his lab. Professor Oak was not in his lab. Therefore, I concluded I was expected to wait for his return.

I just checked whether the FireRed remake changed this sequence at all. The answer: it doesn't change the dialogue, but it does make a small visual change to the path out of town - removing the long grass for the first couple of steps - to make it clearer that it's a path, and Oak now shows up just before you actually enter the grass, rather than just afterwards. If you're playing the original for the first time and don't know how to interpret the 'long grass' texture, you might not realise you can walk on it at all.

It's easy to slip up when you're trying to guide the player, particularly if they're a new player and not yet fully acquainted with the conventions of games! But there are a lot of tools developers use to tell the player where to go next, both obvious and subtle. For example:

- The character faces the direction you need to go, as mentioned. This tends to be most useful in 2D games where the possible directions are tightly limited.

- You're told where to go with an icon on a map, or overlaid onto the environment. This is common in open-world games, where the environment is vast and freely explorable. If 'run two hundred miles away from the objective and do something else' is an option, you need to make sure the player will always be able to track the objective down easily, regardless of where they are in the game world. This is a very reliable way of making sure the player can get where they need to go, but it can be immersion-breaking, so some games, such as Assassin's Creed or Horizon Zero Dawn, come up with an in-world explanation for why these helpful 'your destination is here' icons exist.

- You're told where to go through dialogue. This is pretty straightforward. For example, at the start of Final Fantasy VIII, Quistis tells you to go to the Fire Cavern and that it's 'east of here'. Unfortunately, there's no way to double-check this instruction; if the player gets distracted exploring the nearby town, they might forget where they're supposed to be going. I once had to restart Final Fantasy VII from the beginning because I'd set it down for too long and I had no idea where I had to go next. Final Fantasy IX is the first Final Fantasy game that really accounts for the possibility that the player will forget their destination; if you visit any marsh in the world, you can ask the moogle there for directions.

- A companion indicates where to go. You'll see this in the Uncharted series, where the protagonist is often travelling with allies. Sometimes your ally will travel ahead of you, so you just need to follow them. Sometimes they'll just stand near where you're supposed to be going, as a way of drawing your attention to it. Occasionally, if you've lingered in the same area for too long and the game concludes you're not sure where you're meant to be going, your companion will call to you to point out, for example, a ladder.

- You're told where to go using light. This is a useful one for dark sequences. If you shine a light on the door the player needs to go through, the player's attention will be drawn to the light and they'll notice that, oh, hey, there's a doorway there.

- You're told where to go using bright, eye-catching colours. When you're looking around an area in The Last of Us, the way out is often marked with yellow, e.g. you'll need to pass through a gate that has torn yellow caution tape attached to it. In games where you're expected to climb, climbable ledges on a dark wall or cliff face will often be white to contrast with the background. As with the use of light, the goal is to catch the player's eye and make them realise there's a way to progress over here.

- You're not told where to go. The player is expected to explore with minimal guidance until they stumble across their destination; they may be given a map that fills itself in as they explore, so they can check where they haven't yet been. You'll see this in survival horror games, which are designed to keep the player uncertain and off-balance. It works best in enclosed environments, such as a building; if an environment is too large and open, it can be frustrating and confusing to try to find where you're meant to be going. In the case of Silent Hill 2, I can navigate the hospital or the hotel, but I often get lost when I'm in the streets of the town.

Those are the player guidance methods I can think of! Let me know if you have any to add.

There are definitely things I haven't covered here. For example, I'm sure game designers have clever ways of indicating 'this is a surface you can stand on' versus 'this is just part of the background', but they're so clever I can't pin them down. I suppose Spyro games will visibly put gems in out-of-the-way places to indicate to the player that it's possible to get there; I wonder what strategies less collectible-heavy games use.

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.

I've had to devote an entire entry to this particular question from this fandom question meme, because I somehow ended up going on an entire journey in my attempt to answer it.

How did you first get into fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote fic for?

I got on the Internet around the turn of the millennium, when I was eleven or so. As an enthusiastic Pokémon fan, I spent a lot of time looking through Pokémon websites created by fellow fans, learning cool new things like why particular episodes were banned from broadcast outside Japan.

One day, I was browsing a site called Mewtwo's Dungeon. (A lot of Pokémon websites were called Mewtwo's Dungeon! I tried to find the site again later, but I was never able to dig it up in the sea of Mewtwo's Dungeons.) The site included a work of Pokémon fanfiction. I don't remember any of the details; I just remember that it was about Mew and Mewtwo, and that discovering it was the most mindblowingly exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

I dragged my younger brother to the computer and went YOU HAVE TO READ THIS. I don't think he quite understood why I was so excited! But my entire life had changed.

For a little context, I read obsessively when I was a kid. When we stopped at places with racks of leaflets on car journeys, I would grab one of every leaflet just to have something to read. I remember being disturbed when I first learnt that my mum had been calling for me from the next room, and I hadn't heard her at all because I'd been so absorbed in the book I was reading; I hadn't known that was possible.

I had a passionate love for Pokémon, and I would have killed for novels about it. I'd read the novelisation of Pokémon: The First Movie, but I'd found it a little underwhelming, perhaps because I'd seen the film already; I wanted something new.

But there was a story here! About Pokémon, one of my favourite things! Focusing on Mew, one of my favourite Pokémon! Just sitting here on the Internet, and I could read it for free; I didn't even have to go to the library to check it out!

And it turned out that there were hundreds of these things! There were whole sites dedicated to hosting people's Pokémon fanfiction! I could just keep reading Pokémon stories, and it wouldn't cost me anything, and I'd never run out!

Unsurprisingly, Pokémon was also the first fandom I wrote fanfiction for. I was a member of the Pokémorphs forum, a community for fans of a Pokémon/Animorphs crossover written by rache01. By following a banner in someone's forum signature, I came across Neglected Pokémon Lovers Unite!,

zarla's Pokémon website. Her fic Howl of a Growlithe made me think, Hey, maybe I could write my own story about a Pokémon journey?

And I did! And that's how we ended up here.

Holy shit, there's a Fanlore page for Pokémorphs, with a Wayback Machine link to the original site. This is an absolutely insane blast from the past. It's the first fandom community I was ever really a part of!

HOLY SHIT, the Wayback Machine has preserved my forum bio from when I was eleven.

In January 2001 I made a second account called 'Evil Mew Of Darkness', because now I was twelve and cool. I didn't fill in a bio for that account, but I have managed to unearth my very cool userpic and forum signature:

I am the last of the Mew. The great race has risen and fallen, once the rulers of the galaxy, now but a myth. But I still remain. I alone stand amongst the ruins of the great Mew empire. But I am not like the others. I am the shadow of darkness. I am the father of evil. I- AM- DARKMEW!

HOLY SHIT HOLD ON I COULD MAKE AN ICON OF DARKMEW FOR DREAMWIDTH

Done! I hope my twelve-year-old self is proud of me.

Here's the third instalment of these fandom questions from

trobadora!

A pairing – platonic, romantic or sexual – that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

I'd never thought about Kirigiri/Togami before, but

doreyg opened my eyes to the ways in which the characters echo Light and L, and that was all I could think about on my next Danganronpa playthrough. Before I knew it, I'd written a fic.

What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?

A genuinely terrible Pokémon website, which I have since seen cited in multiple places as an example of bad website design. The first fic I contributed was Rachel's Pokémon Journey, a thinly veiled self-insert I started writing at the age of twelve; you can find an annotated version in my Old Fanfiction Book Club tag.

Do you remember your first OTP? Who was in it?

The first pairing I shipped was Squall/Zell from Final Fantasy VIII. The first pairing I got really invested in was probably James/Mary from Silent Hill 2, which absolutely broke my heart, although Satoshi/Daisuke from DN Angel might also be a candidate; I definitely shipped Satoshi/Daisuke earlier, but I can't remember quite how invested I was. The first pairing I wrote fanfiction for in large quantities, rather than just a fic or two, was the Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler from Doctor Who.

What is your favourite source text for fandom stuff (e.g. TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

Videogames! Most videogames contain a lot of detail that isn't strictly plot-relevant and let you personally explore the setting, meaning you can get to know the world very intimately. They also tend to be long, so you have plenty of time to get to know the characters. And the popularity of Let's Plays on platforms where it's easy to skip to a specific timestamp, such as YouTube, means it's often easier to double-check a canon detail in a game than in, say, a TV show.

All of this means that, when writing for videogames, I'll usually have a strong grasp of the required elements, and there's plenty of scope for fanfiction ideas. I've written about 1.25 million words of fanfiction in total, and over half of it is for videogames.

How many fandoms have you written for? How many have you been in, and how many are you still in?

Oh, God. The exact number depends on how you count, but I've definitely written for slightly over a hundred fandoms.

How many I've been in is trickier. Going by the 'five fics, or 10,000 words across three fics' criteria I use for 'my fandom history' writeups, I've been in about forty fandoms.

If we take 'being in a fandom' to mean 'belonging to and actively participating in spaces dedicated to discussion of a particular fandom', things narrow further: Pokémon, Final Fantasy, Red Dwarf, Jak and Daxter, Silent Hill, Doctor Who, Scrubs, Top Gear, Glee, British comedy RPF, Derren Brown RPF, Assassin's Creed (sort of; the fandom space in question was a series of Google Docs in which two fellow fans and I enthusiastically plotted out a lengthy cowritten AU), Life Is Strange, Your Turn to Die, Lost, The Quarry, Death Note and, weirdly, Lord of the Rings, a canon I enjoyed but have never actually been that into. And, uh, I went to a Supernatural convention, so that probably counts.

How many am I still in? I'm not actively in a community for any specific single fandom at the moment, but there are plenty of canons I still talk about and occasionally write about, and I'm always just a rewatch or replay away from flooding your reading page with rambling about something I haven't thought about in years. I am still in all and none of my fandoms.

Has social media caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

The author's social media has severely complicated my feelings about Harry Potter.

For the most part, social media doesn't usually harm my feelings about a canon. If I don't like what I'm seeing from fans on social media, I'll just seek out fans whose approach I prefer.

What fandom broke your heart?

Oh, dear. That would, of course, be Linkin Park. The lead singer died right when I was at the peak of fannish obsession, and I, er, didn't handle it very well. On reflection, I think my subsequent year-long mental breakdown would probably have happened sooner or later anyway, but that's what ended up breaking the dam.

Linkin Park recently reformed with a new singer, which I was excited to see! I think going with a female singer is a smart choice; any male singer would inevitably be compared to Chester constantly, whereas welcoming a woman to the band makes it clear that they're doing something new, rather than trying to replace him. Their new single, 'The Emptiness Machine', is pretty cool.

Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you dislike or even loathe.)

I'm going to stick specifically to characters I dislike so much I wish they weren't in the canon at all, which makes this a challenge!

I like the way that, after his time in prison, Sam Drake of Uncharted is a little out of step with modern technology; that's a fun little detail.

Pierce of Community has a few good lines; 'If it's so serious, why don't they call it meningitis?' really got me.

Teddie of Persona 4, er. Oh, God, I can't do it. I'm so sorry.

Probably one instalment of these questions to go!

Some more questions from this fandom meme! The full list of questions is here at

trobadora's journal. I managed not to ramble for five hundred words on a single question this time.

What are the origins of your penname/username?

I misread Rinoa's name as 'Riona' when I first played Final Fantasy VIII. When I realised she was actually called Rinoa, I went, 'Well, Riona's a nice name' and used it to create my fanfiction.net account; I knew I wanted a straightforward, namelike username that I could easily be addressed by. I've gone by Riona online for over twenty years now, so I think this handle is here to stay!

'riona' was already taken when I signed up to Livejournal, so I added 'leonhart': the surname of Squall Leonhart, my favourite fictional character. It had not occurred to me that this would make me look like a Squall/Rinoa shipper who can't spell. (I didn't envision myself as married to Squall; I just liked the name!)

'rixareth' is a username I occasionally use, generally when I'm a little uncertain about a site's culture and I'm not sure I want my account to be too easy to connect to my Riona identity; I used it for signing up to Tumblr and Reddit. I'm more relaxed about letting the usernames mix now! In Kingdom Hearts style, it's an anagram of my name with an added X.

What's a fandom that you wish had a bigger following?

There have been a lot over the years! It's hard to narrow it down. I'm going to say Zanki Zero: Last Beginning, a fascinatingly weird game about traumatised bisexual clones struggling to survive together after the apocalypse, with a grand total of thirty-two works on AO3 and a great OT7 that nobody but me has written for. It's a flawed game in many respects, but it has such strong fandom potential!

What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it? Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

I think Final Fantasy VIII is probably the most consistently I've been into something over a long period of time. I've loved Pokémon for longer, but Pokémon is more quiet background radiation in my life, whereas I spend more time actively thinking and talking about Final Fantasy VIII. There are periods when I don't think about it much, but I always find myself back there.

The most time I've spent actively in a single 'main' fandom was the fifteen months I spent writing for Top Gear. Wow, was it really only fifteen months? I was so immersed in that fandom; I wrote so much; we had so many in-person meetups! I was sure it was two years at least!

What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?

I don't typically pack up and intentionally leave a fandom; I just drift away when my interest shifts to something else. Terrible real-world associations - e.g. something awful coming out about the creator - might make me hesitate to pick something new up.

What are some things that squick you in fandom?

Extreme underage, gore, depictions of surgery. Wounding is fine! Wounding is hot! The moment internal organs are visible or a precise incision is being made, though, I am out of there. People are free to write what they like; these are just the things I find personally offputting.

What's the hardest thing about writing, and why are titles the Worst™?

I often struggle with finding a direction for a fic I'm working on. I've got a rough concept, maybe a scene or two, but I don't know where to take it or what endpoint I'm aiming for. Once I've managed to come up with the ending for a fic, everything usually starts to fall into place. Titles are pretty bad, though!

Do you have a fandom that you follow - either regularly or casually - with little to no knowledge of canon?

I have never read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, but I've followed

zarla's JTHM fic Vargas, and the little fandom that's sprung up around it, for over twenty years. I have written fanfiction for this AU of a comic I've never read.

Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

I've always got assorted low-level background ships going on, but I'm not really in passionate shipping mode about anything at the moment. I've been replaying the Uncharted series, so I've been thinking about my deep fondness for Nate/Elena. Other than that, I suppose Barret/Tifa/Aerith/Cloud of Final Fantasy VII Remake is the most recent ship I've had strongly on my mind.

A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

The Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler of Doctor Who never worked for me; I found their dynamic a lot less compelling post-regeneration. Which is slightly tragic, because I love the Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, and the two pairings are often bundled together in discussion or gifsets! It's a real challenge when your OTP and your NOTP are technically the same pairing.

Do you prefer art, fic, or vids? Why? Bonus: If someone was to give you a fandom gift, what format would it be?

It depends on the fandom, come to think of it! I'm usually more of a fic person, but there are a few fandoms where I often find myself seeking out art. These tend to be for canons with a lot of interesting symbolism that fanartists can do cool things with, e.g. Death Note, Omori, Revolutionary Girl Utena.

I started watching Pokémon at the age of about ten, and I think it's the first show I ever watched with a real sense of progression across episodes.

I was used to episodic cartoons in which the status quo rarely changed: Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, Dexter's Lab. Pokémon was completely different. It had story arcs! The characters were on a journey! Sometimes they'd catch or release or evolve a Pokémon, and later episodes would take that into account; if Ash caught a Bulbasaur, he'd be able to use it in battles later!

I wonder if that's part of why I found Pokémon so much more engaging than anything else I'd ever watched. If you'd asked me at the time what set it apart, I doubt I'd have been able to articulate it. But events progressed meaningfully across episodes, and I didn't know television could do that.

This might be why 'Bye Bye Butterfree' was such a hard-hitting episode for me and, I suspect, for a lot of other kids. In a way, Butterfree leaving was a soft introduction to the concept of character death. Ash had caught Caterpie in the second episode, we'd watched it grow up and evolve, and now, twenty episodes later, it was leaving; this character we'd come to know wasn't going to be in the story any more. I hadn't seen anything like it before; it's not as if The Powerpuff Girls was ever going to have an episode called 'Bye Bye Buttercup'.

It still manages to be hard-hitting in the film retelling, it turns out. I watched Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! in the cinema, next to a small boy, who ended up crying uncontrollably into his mother's side when Butterfree left. I've been there, kid.

It's strange to think about this in an age when episodic television has become much rarer. When I was a kid, 'this episodic show also has an overarching plot' was mindblowing! Now that I'm an adult, shows focus on the overarching plot to such an extent that I find myself thinking longingly of episode-by-episode stories.

My housemates and I were discussing this a few days ago. With the shift in expectations from 'you'll watch one episode of this a week' to 'a batch of episodes will come out simultaneously and you'll watch them in quick succession', episodes have started to feel like segments of a long film, or like chapters in a book.

In many modern streaming-era shows, episodes don't have a self-contained story of their own; they only focus on progressing the overarching plot. Whereas you could watch an episode of the pre-streaming House and come away satisfied, having experienced a complete story, you'll often have to watch an entire season of a modern show to experience any narrative payoff, or even the entirety of the show. If it's cancelled, you might not get any payoff at all. Streaming services don't want you to go 'okay, that was a satisfying episode, I'm going to bed'; they want you to watch the next episode right now.

I love Sense8 and Arcane and Severance, all of which are streaming-era shows, but I'd give you such a confused look if you asked me to name my favourite episode. I can't tell you what happens in any one episode of those shows, because all the episodes blend into a single mass. If you gave me the title of pretty much any episode from the first three seasons of Supernatural, though, I'd be able to tell you roughly what that episode is about.

This modern focus on the overarching plot and only the overarching plot also means that there's no space for the characters to breathe and do other things. In older shows, there would be 'filler' episodes, which weren't plot-essential but allowed the viewer to spend more time getting to know the characters. In modern shows, as Tem points out, it's more common for the runtime to be expanded by throwing obstacles into the main storyline, which can make the plot feel padded and overstretched.

Television shows are structurally unique. It's hard to think of another medium in which it's common to see a series of short, largely self-contained stories about a consistent set of characters; the closest equivalent I can think of is serialised comics. The longer, continuous stories of novels or films or videogames are also valuable, of course! But it's sort of a shame to see television losing one of the things that makes it stand out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another roundup of dreams! I feel these have been getting more frequent; have I been remembering my dreams more often lately? The first of these is mildly sexual; the rest are clean.

( Dreams from June and July. )

What proportion of my dreams are fandom-related? There tends to be a lot of fandom in these roundups, but that might just be because I'm more likely to bother to write down my fandom dreams. If I wrote down every dream I'd managed to retain on waking up, there would probably be a lot of 'dreamt of trying to find the right platform for my train again'.

I was recently looking at Neglected Pokémon Lovers Unite!,

zarla's Pokémon website, which she's kept online since the late 1990s. This was my favourite place on the Internet when I was twelve years old, and it's the website that first inspired me to write fanfiction of my own. I'm glad it's still around, a little piece of a different time. (There's an essay on the NPLU itself about the time the website was born into, and how things have changed.)

Looking back at this online part of my childhood has got me thinking about the old web. Like many people of my generation, I started using the Internet around the turn of the millennium; I think it was probably 1999 when I got online, at the age of eleven. It was a very different time!

In the twenty-five years since then, the Internet has gone through a lot of changes, from its overall structure to the ways people choose to communicate. There's still a lot of text on the Internet, of course, but I think there's been a broad shift in focus over time, particularly on social media, from text (LiveJournal, EZBoards) to images (Tumblr, Instagram) to video (TikTok).

Anyway, in the interests of online preservation, I thought I'd note down some of my recollections of what the Internet was like when I first started using it!

( Looking back at the Internet of the early 2000s. )

If you have any recollections of your own from the earlier days of the Internet, go ahead and share them in the comments! I think it's worth trying to preserve this history, and there are undoubtedly things I'm forgetting.

(For example, I just remembered Newgrounds! I didn't mention Newgrounds or Flash videos at all! It really felt like the end of an era when Flash support was dropped.)

I think a lot of you started using the Internet around the time I did, but, if you're a later arrival, you can still share your own memories; I'd be interested to hear them! Someone who came to the Internet in the 2010s could probably identify the differences between that Internet and the one of the present day more clearly than I could.

On a final note: oh, wow, the cute little sprites that used to be on every Final Fantasy VIII website are archived over here!

And, of course, a couple of those ubiquitous Pokémon sprites are still preserved in the beautiful 'home' button I created for my own Pokémon website when I was twelve, which seems an appropriate way to conclude this entry:

I forgot the last thing I'd looked at on my phone was this image, so I unlocked my phone an hour later and was immediately confronted by Light staring at me, judging me.

(Heads-up: the image in question is, er, suggestive. Fully clothed, but definitely suggestive. I apologise if you end up judging me along with Light. Or, alternatively, you're welcome.)

In the interest of giving credit, this picture comes from the Death Note fangame Bound Prince, a spirited work of absolute filth I probably wouldn't recommend looking into unless you're feeling particularly adventurous.

In less disreputable Death Note news, I mentioned on Tumblr that I was thinking about what Pokémon Light would have, and

wyomingsmustache sent me a message in response: 'Light having an internal monologue to decide which starter to choose based on which won't out him as Kira'.

I was so tickled by the idea that I immediately had to write Light's internal monologue:

Bulbasaur is the obvious strategic choice; it has a type advantage against the first two gyms. Does that mean it's the choice Kira would make? Too much cold logic, not enough emotion? Most people would just choose the Pokémon they like the most.

Then there's the fact that Bulbasaur is part Poison type, making it an obvious choice for a killer. Plus it can learn Sleep Powder, which could be useful if I ever find myself cornered. But, if I've thought of that, L's probably thought of it too.

The correct move would be to choose Bulbasaur. I can't give up the strategic advantage. But I have to convince L that I've chosen it because I think it's cute.

I love Light's tendency to overthink everything. It's so easy to envision him going into endless internal calculations when presented with literally any choice in front of L. And, because he's a master of rationalisation, his conclusion is usually 'the correct thing to do is coincidentally the thing I want to do'.

I don't know what Pokémon L would have. Maybe a Porygon that lives in his computer systems. I feel he probably wouldn't be great at taking care of a pet, so it's best to give him something he wouldn't have to feed.

I was going to say Misa had either a Gothorita or a Gothitelle, and then I checked Gothitelle's Pokédex entries, which include the detail that it can see people's lifespans. Was... was this Pokémon designed specifically for Misa Amane?

Over the past few years, I've noticed a pattern where I go into a spiral of writer's insecurity after posting certain types of fic. These are usually little ficlets, or fics made up of thematically connected scenes.

Basically, the fics that set off my insecurity are fics that don't have a story; they're little pieces of character introspection or interaction that don't really go anywhere. I worry that I'm wasting people's time with them.

This is extremely silly for a number of reasons, among which are:

- I don't judge other people for writing similar things at all! Why would I? If it's something I'm not interested in, I don't have to read it; if it's something I am interested in, I'll be delighted that it exists.
- Fics made up of thematically connected scenes are extremely common! The '5+1 Things' format is an entire fanfiction genre devoted to it, and there are 32,000 works with that tag on AO3.
- My fanfiction is not taking up vast tracts of space on the Internet that could otherwise be used for more 'worthwhile' writing. AO3 isn't going to run out of space to host someone's novel-length masterpiece because I posted something frivolous.

Anyway, in an effort to be less silly about this, I thought I'd attempt some low-pressure frivolous writing. Therefore: am I actually going to post a fic request meme? I haven't done this in over a decade!

Tell me a fic concept you'd like to see me write, and I'll attempt to write a few lines of it.

If you're not sure which fandoms I'm familiar with, the fandom list on my AO3 account is probably a good place to start. If you have multiple ideas, feel free to make multiple requests and I'll pick which one(s) to write.

There are a handful of things I'd personally prefer not to write, e.g. suicide, sexual content involving characters under fifteen, Teddie from Persona 4. If you're not sure where my boundaries lie, though, you're welcome to suggest your idea anyway; I can always just opt not to write it.

Also, if someone else in the comments posts a concept that appeals to you, feel free to write it yourself!

I watched Die Hard 4 with my housemates over Christmas.

Riona: I'm glad McClane is finally bleeding.
Farrell: I'm not a doctor, but you look hurt.
McClane: Yeah. Sexy, right?
(everyone in the room laughs at me)

How dare you, John McClane?

Die Hard 4 was fun enough for an evening's entertainment, but it felt glaringly sexist in a way the previous films didn't; McClane wasn't exactly a feminist icon in the first Die Hard, but the original film treated that as the character flaw that it was. I also missed McClane being a terrified mess, but of course it makes sense that he'd be hardened to all the ludicrous bullshit he goes through by this point.

The fourth film is better than Die Hard 2, which tried too hard to replicate the original, but I'd rank Die Hard 3 above it without hesitation, and the original Die Hard remains the best in the series.

Speaking of, I showed my dad the original Die Hard, and he actually watched the whole film; he didn't fall asleep or leave the room once! This is a huge achievement for any film. I'm very pleased.

The DNA of Uncharted's Nathan Drake is so clearly visible in John McClane. Both perpetually in the wrong place at the wrong time, skilled but scared, prone to making bad decisions and talking to themselves to calm themselves down. They're both great and I love them.

Mum: I've been watching this BBC reality show called The Traitors, where people have to vote off who they think the traitors are, and every night the traitors murder someone.
Riona: Pfft, this sounds just like one of my murder games.
Mum: We should watch the final two episodes together!
Riona, wearing full-face clown makeup: Good thing there's no chance I'm going to get emotionally invested in this!

Anyway, I got invested in The Traitors and I'm very sorry. I'm not planning to go back and watch from the beginning, though; I think the final two episodes were exactly the correct amount to watch. You get the full, largely self-contained story of the final remaining traitor picking another person to convert, and all the dramatic fallout of his choice. It was regrettably fascinating.

Please let me hold to this, self. Please don't go back and watch The Traitors from the beginning, because we all know that ends in fanfiction.

(To clarify for anyone wondering: the people on this reality show are not actually getting murdered.)

I got a Pokémon puzzle book for Christmas, so I showed my baby niece the picture of Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle on the inside and asked her what she would choose as her starter. She grabbed the book, flipped it shut and pointed at Pikachu on the cover.

In conclusion, my niece is Ash Ketchum, but with more agency.

(I can't believe Ash is being retired as the protagonist of the Pokémon anime! I hope he and Goh get married.)

It's time for another fic for a twenty-year-old fandom!

I hadn't really registered until just now, but, between Utena, Final Fantasy VIII and Full Moon wo Sagashite, I've written for a surprising number of twenty-year-old fandoms over the past three months. This is the most dormant yet; the last fic posted to AO3 for Full Moon wo Sagashite was in September 2021.

(The Do Revenge fic in the midst of all the older fandoms has resulted in some wild variation in my AO3 stats. Kudos counts for my last four fics, working backwards: one, seven, 513, eleven.)

Incidentally, this is the first self-indulgent Pokémon crossover I've written in six years. I'm losing my touch.

Title: Negi Ramen Blasts Off
Fandom: Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon
Rating: G
Wordcount: 6,000
Summary: Takuto and Meroko are struggling Team Rocket members, but maybe their luck is changing. If they can deliver this Mitsuki girl and her rare Pokémon to the boss, all will be forgiven. Everything’s going to be fine. You know, so long as they don't get attached.

( Negi Ramen Blasts Off )

Last year,

zarla posted some interesting thoughts on Hypnospace Outlaw and the way the Internet has changed over time, and I thought I might check the game out if I got the chance. I picked it up in an itch.io bundle earlier this year, and, after the Spamton Sweepstakes ignited my nostalgia for the old web, I finally sat down and gave it a try.

Hypnospace Outlaw is one of the strangest and most interesting games I've ever played. It's also extremely absorbing; I wasn't prepared for how thoroughly it would get its hooks into me. It combines the addictiveness of browsing personal webpages in 1999 with the addictiveness of constantly progressing by performing small tasks in a videogame, and I found it extremely difficult to put down.

I also found Hypnospace Outlaw very stressful at points. I don't want to have to download malware! I don't care if it's fake malware that will only mess up my fake operating system!

While I enjoyed myself, I do have a couple of complaints. The first is that, at times, what I was supposed to do felt a little too obscure. I ended up losing confidence in my ability to work things out for myself and relying a lot on walkthroughs. Hypnospace Outlaw is basically a puzzle game, and puzzle games don't really work if you don't trust them to present you with reasonable puzzles.

( Spoilers for Hypnospace Outlaw. )

Even if there are some aspects of Hypnospace Outlaw I'd change, the core of the game is the reproduction of what the Internet was like in 1999, and that was so, so well done. I loved the variety of sites, from well-laid-out websites with a clear purpose to unfocused single-page websites made by people who are just trying this new thing out. And cool experimental things like the Freelands! Also, 'Ready to Shave' is the raddest song about shaving I've ever heard.

I collected all the Squisherz and displayed them proudly on my desktop. Obviously. Of course I couldn't resist the fake Pokémon. I'm glad there was a Pokémon analogue in Hypnospace Outlaw; 1999 wouldn't feel right without it.

In our ongoing tradition of playing strange plot-twisty games together, Tem and I have finished World's End Club!

World's End Club is extremely weird. It feels very much like a murder game aimed at small children. My First Murder Game.

Tem pointed out that all the characters look like they could be Pokémon gym leaders, and xe's right. It's disconcerting.

( Spoilers for World's End Club. )

World's End Club is not a very good game. It's awkward to play, the characters are largely one-note and the English voice acting is extremely variable. But I wasn't bored, so I'll consider it a success. I was extremely confused, but I wasn't bored.

Our cat Zuko wasn't bored either. He loved watching me play, and he went wild attacking the screen during one boss fight. It was delightful, even if I was concerned at points about whether our television would survive his interest.

Also, I've had the Go-Getters' Club theme stuck in my head for hours.

pict demanded to know all my ambitious fic ideas, which reminded me of something I've been thinking about doing for a while: archiving the fic ideas I've been scribbling down in my diaries.

Every year, I buy the same style of diary, which has a couple of blank pages at the back. I've been using these blank pages to note down fic concepts since 2013. Some of these get written! Many of them don't.

If I type up the unwritten concepts, maybe one of them will inspire me? (Or indeed inspire someone else? Feel free to let me know if you're interested in writing any of these!) At the very least, they'll no longer be languishing in old diaries I rarely look back at.

These are sorted in alphabetical order by fandom; the notes under any particular fandom may contain spoilers for the canon. Some ideas are extremely vague; some are very specific. Crossovers are filed haphazardly under whichever fandom feels right in the moment. The tags on this entry should give you an idea of which fandoms are represented, if you're wondering whether anything you know is in here!

( A huge pile of unwritten fanfiction ideas. )

I'm not sure this exercise has actually sparked any inspiration, but it's good to have all these ideas in one place. If any of these would particularly interest you, let me know!

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/572937.html

Here are a few scattered notes on media!

I've been watching Tem play Tangle Tower, which is a delightful murder mystery game. The characters have so much personality in their art, their animations, their writing! Detective Grimoire and his sidekick Sally have a great rapport, and I enjoy the fact that Grimoire seems to be a bit of a disaster.

I didn't know anything about Tangle Tower when we went into it - I'd never heard of the Detective Grimoire series at all - and it's been an extremely pleasant surprise. Worth a look for Ace Attorney fans!

I mean, we haven't finished it, so for all I know the mystery could completely fall apart, but the journey is a thoroughly enjoyable one.

We've been watching some more recent series of the Pokémon anime, and I'm really enjoying Pokémon Journeys!

The Sun & Moon anime series was cute, and I enjoyed all the friendships, but it never entirely clicked with me. In particular, Team Rocket were wasted. They weren't even doing anything evil! They were just running a small business and getting dragged into a disturbing relationship with a Bewear!

Pokémon Journeys, meanwhile, is great fun. Team Rocket are entertaining again! Goh is endearing, and I enjoy the fact that he clearly has a massive, massive crush on Ash.

It's sort of hilarious that Goh operates by Pokémon Go rules and can therefore catch anything just by throwing a Pokéball at it. Ash must be so confused.

I'm bewildered by the episode in which Goh's giant Magikarp jumps too high and goes into orbit, thereby being disqualified from the Magikarp Jump competition, which requires that contestants come back down.

In early October, I embarked on an overambitious project: a screenshot Let's Play of Exit/Corners. I started out and went 'oh, my God, this is so much more work than I anticipated' and then 'IT'S TOO LATE, I'M INVESTED IN THIS PROJECT NOW, I'M COMMITTED TO IT.'

If you're wondering why I've slowed down on everything else, it's because this project has been taking up a lot of my free time for the past two months! I apologise to everyone who's been waiting for fic comments from me.

If you're not familiar with Exit/Corners (and most people aren't, which is why I wanted to introduce more people to it through this Let's Play), it's a free 'death game' visual novel in the vein of Zero Escape and Your Turn to Die. A group of people are abducted and put through dangerous trials for unclear reasons, and the story follows their struggle to survive and work out why this is happening to them. The characters are interesting, and it's clear that a lot of effort has gone into the writing and assets; it's a shame it's not more widely known!

I'm about a third of the way into the Let's Play. If anyone's interested in experiencing Exit/Corners in screenshot form, you can take a look over here!

(The Let's Play is on the Something Awful forums, so I should probably mention that there's a slightly odd profanity filter. When you're not logged in, 'shit' is changed to 'poo poo', 'fuck' is changed to 'gently caress' and 'fucking' is changed to 'loving'. I promise the characters aren't actually saying 'poo poo' at tense moments.)

I've just realised this entry spans the full spectrum of my fictional interests: something light and fun (Pokémon), something weird and dark about murder (Exit/Corners), and, falling neatly in the middle, Tangle Tower, which is a light, fun game about murder.

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/572610.html

Profile

Riona

AO3

Trabia Garden

Entries tagged with pokémon

Aren't You Cold?

Shutting The Fuck Up Is A Speciality Of Mine.

I've Had A Fusilli Dreams Lately.

You Underestimate My Ability To Get Lost.

That's The Best Part.

Bring You Right Back Home.

I Only Wanted To Be Part Of Something.

It's A Better Username Than 'Sqaull'.

This Was Just Supposed To Be Nostalgia, But I Accidentally Ended Up Presenting A Thesis.

Crossing The River Styx Of Your Ass.

Fortunately, The Charmander Presumably Had High Heat Tolerance.

This Page Is Under Construction.

Don't Look At Me Like That.

It's Enough.

One Step! One Step!

Fanfiction: Negi Ramen Blasts Off (Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon)

Squisherz Are Really Cool.

Please Stop Saying 'Human Sheepification'.

I Do A Lot Of Writing Down Fic Ideas Instead Of Actually Writing Fanfiction.

You Ever Fuck A Book?

Profile