Trabia Garden

About a week ago, I posted an unfinished fanfiction meme to Tumblr, and I thought it might be fun to play here as well!

Name a canon you know I have at some point enjoyed, and I’ll dig up and post an excerpt from the unfinished fanfiction I’ve almost certainly got lying around. (If you name something I don’t have any unfinished fanfiction for, I may write a few lines on the spot. We’ll see!)

I’ve posted this before, many years ago, but don’t worry about avoiding canons that were requested back then; I’ll just try to dig up something else.

Here are the excerpts I posted in response to requests on Tumblr:


Cinder_Quill: For the fanfiction ask meme: any unfinished stories about DN Angel?

This was tricky! But I dug through an old notebook, and I managed to uncover a tiny paragraph. This was from a Kingdom Hearts/DN Angel crossover I have zero recollection of contemplating, in which Kingdom Hearts Riku is talking to Daisuke. Both Riku and Satoshi are self-loathing teenagers who are intensely in love with someone they feel they don’t deserve, and I have a lot of emotions about them.

“Maybe it’s not my place,” Riku says. He glances in Satoshi’s direction. “Or maybe I’m just… projecting or something. I don’t know. But I think you’re important to him.”


academicgangster: Ace Attorney for the unfinished fanfiction meme?

Here’s a snippet in which Apollo and Athena stay up working too late and end up accidentally falling asleep on each other.

( Ace Attorney unfinished snippet: Apollo and Athena. )


futuresoon: Danganronpa!

I took this to be a request spanning the entire Danganronpa series and dug up a little Danganronpa 2 snippet. Major Danganronpa 2 spoilers under the cut.

( Danganronpa 2 unfinished snippet: Hinata and Komaeda. )


wyomingsmustache: Okay so I know it's been well over a decade since you've written anything Top Gear related but I was showing my roommate an episode the other day and telling him stuff about my Top Gear fandom days so now I am curious if you've got any bits and pieces leftover from back when, so for the fanfiction meme, Top Gear? (And if you don't, completely understandable)

We’re really getting into the deep lore here. Here’s something… mildly weird and dark? By Top Gear standards, at least. Because apparently I decided I should write two crossovers between Top Gear and Silent Hill. But Silent Hill is in Wales, for some reason.

(I know the reason. It’s because this was also going to be a crossover with Torchwood. It’s probably for the best that it never got finished.)

( Top Gear unfinished snippet: the trio unknowingly approach Silent Hill. )


doreyg: Death Note for the unfinished fanfic meme!

I responded with a Death Note/Silent Hill snippet I’d previously posted on this journal. So it wouldn’t just be material I’d already posted elsewhere, though, I also uncovered a few lines from a notebook (a regular non-death notebook):

In another world, you might have been someone else. Nothing special, but enough. Light Yagami, an ordinary man with an ordinary life.

But this is the world you’re in, and you’ve become a god.


tweetymcbastardface: Waterloo Road. Do it.

I can’t believe anyone would do this to me.

( Waterloo Road unfinished snippet: Tom/Izzie/Lorna. )


And that’s all the unfinished fanfiction requests I received on Tumblr! Feel free to request a fandom in the comments here, and I’ll see if I have anything lying around for it, or, failing that, I’ll see if I can scribble something down.

November is just around the corner, and I'm not ready for it!

Since 2009, I've tried to write a little every day during the month of November. I'm not attempting National Novel Writing Month; I just have to write at least a hundred words of fiction every day, on any project. It's a small amount, but I don't have any active fic projects at the moment, so I don't know what to write!

Therefore, I'm turning to you guys.

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 - and I'm hopeless at smut, so you won't have much luck requesting specific sex acts; it'll just end up fading to black. 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.

We don't have to know each other well for you to request a ficsnippet; I'm sorely in need of fic concepts for the coming month, so you'd be doing me a favour! So long as you accept that a) there's a chance I won't write your idea and b) my writing may be a bit rusty if you request something I haven't written before or haven't revisited in a while, go ahead and request whatever your heart desires.

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!

Rei: I got an email from Netflix today about a new show. 'When everyone else mysteriously vanishes from their wealthy town, the teen residents of West Ham must forge their own society to survive.' Sounds like it might be your jam.
Riona: I was about to say 'if it's not High School Musical: The Musical, I'm not interested,' but actually that does potentially sound my jam.

I've now watched the first series of The Society! The concept's interesting: a bunch of teenagers are stranded in an empty town. Instead of going full-on Lord of the Flies, they try to construct a functional society and then have to try to prevent it from falling apart (how do you decide who makes the decisions? how do you make sure you don't run out of food? how do you deal with crime?). I'm not especially invested in any of the characters, though, so I doubt I'll be writing fanfiction (although I've said 'I'm not going to write fanfiction' about many things in the past and I've almost invariably been wrong).

Out of curiosity, I checked AO3 a few episodes in, to see which characters and pairings were popular, and I was surprised to see that the most-written character was Grizz, the guy with terrible hair who up to that point had contributed nothing but pretentious quoting. He does have some better moments in the latest episodes, though.


( Spoilers for the first series of The Society. )


I haven't done a meme here in a very long time, but for some reason I feel like digging this one up.

Ask any fictional character you think I might be able to manage a question, and I'll reply in-character as them with an answer (or possibly reply as myself going 'WHAT THE HELL, I CAN'T DO THIS'). Feel free to ask either as yourself or as another character.

You may, if you wish, ask multiple questions (and/or multiple characters) or attempt to engage the characters in extended conversation.

Goodness, it's been more than half a year since I last made a silly photomanip post. That won't do at all.

The theme of today's entry is 'pictures of James McAvoy doing silly things, accompanied by Pokémon that seem in some way to relate to the silly thing that he is doing'. Original Pokémon and McAvoy pictures are the respective courtesy of Bulbapedia and of wtf r u doin james mcavoy, which is still my favourite tumblr.





Nice work, Kadabra! Now keep it suspended there for a few more hours.





You would be a more efficient cat burglar if you could stop giggling, James.





I don't even know what to say about this picture. James McAvoy, what is wrong with you? I really hope those are thornless.

As ever, you are very welcome to post your own McAvoy and/or Pokémon manips in the comments should you desire! Quality, in case you couldn't tell from the above images, is not an issue.

!!!

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

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

Therefore!

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

Some starting facts for you:


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

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

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

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


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

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt that I was being strangled by a Furby. They don't even have arms!

Anyway, I have been musing on the wonders of the Internet. One of the things I like most about the Internet is the way you can learn all sorts of pointless trivia as you leap about from page to page.

Therefore, here is a pointless trivia entry! Tell me something interesting in the comments, and then everyone who comes by can read it and go 'ooh, I never knew that'. (If your interesting fact comes from a particular field, such as 'biology' or 'linguistics' or 'literature', you could put that in the comment title so people can see at a glance whether it's something in which they would be particularly interested, but that's entirely optional.)

A couple of things to start us off:

- The reason the letters 'i' and 'j' have dots: in Latin texts written in the first millennium AD, 'm' and 'n' were each formed entirely of downward strokes, called 'minim strokes': three for 'm', two for 'n'. 'i' was a single minim stroke, and so the dot was introduced, because otherwise an 'n' and an 'i' next to each other would look exactly the same as an 'm'. 'j' was derived from 'i' (it was originally simply 'I' with a flourish) and therefore kept the dot. (The dot over a lowercase 'i' or 'j' is called a 'tittle', incidentally.)

- It's recently been bothering me that many clock and watch faces inconsistently use 'IIII' rather than 'IV' to represent four whilst still using 'IX' to represent nine. It seems that nobody knows exactly why this is the case, but here is a page of interesting theories.


Feel free to link to this entry if you'd like to draw from a wider pool of knowledge (you should, of course, feel equally free not to link to this entry; there's no pressure). Let's make this the best collection of potential pub quiz answers ever.

Ahahaha, oh, dear, I fear my parents may be becoming concerned by my uneventful love life. An exchange I recently had with my father via the incomprehensible medium of Google Wave:


Riona's Father: Loved the VD Post!

MY DEAREST HARRIET
YOU COULD BE PALLY YET.
IF SOMEONE GRABS YOU WITH THEIR LARIAT
DON'T DILLY-DALLY, PET

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY


Riona: I automatically interpreted 'VD' as 'venereal disease'. I just thought you should know.

OH DAD
DON'T BE SAD
THAT I HAVEN'T YET MET A SUITABLE LAD
UNIVERSITY, AFTER ALL, 'S DRIVING ME MAD
AND I THINK THAT'S ENOUGH UNTIL MAY

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY


Riona's Father: Of course you did.

A scholarly lady named Harriet
Was senseless to Time's Wing-ed Chariot.
Her ramblings eternal
Upon her Livejournal
Did not dispose her to marry yet.


I might have been mildly ticked off had the pressure not been presented in such a hilarious format.


In the comments to my entry on The Bubble, anewcitylife proposed retitling the show The Abuse David Mitchell Half Hour.

I would love to watch The Abuse David Mitchell Half Hour. David Mitchell is needled and mocked, and he makes quietly self-deprecating comments until eventually he snaps and flies into one of his amazing minute-long rants. (Obviously I am not proposing this rather cruel concept out of any dislike for David Mitchell. I adore David Mitchell. I just happen to feel that he is at his most hilarious and adorable when he is nettled. Sorry, Mitchell.)

What are some other television programmes that do not exist but clearly should? There's the documentary about David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker's crime-fighting adventures, obviously; they have no physical fighting ability whatsoever, but their sarcasm is devastating. There's Master Who, the weirdly-reminiscent-of-Tom-and-Jerry Doctor Who spinoff in which the Master attempts to take over the world in every episode but is thwarted by Donna Noble. There's Celebrity Big Brother: Top Gear Edition, in which Clarkson, Hammond and May are locked in a house together and the public make bets on how long it will be before they somehow blow it up. By what do you feel our televisions would be infinitely improved?

My goodness, I haven't posted a stupid manip for ages! Here, to rectify this, is a picture of Sam and Ruby with their Pokémon:




I get the impression that Sam's Espeon knows more than she's letting on. (In fact, I am generally finding the way in which their Pokémon are staring at us whilst Sam and Ruby have their backs turned really quite unnerving. I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FREAKED OUT BY MY OWN PHOTOMANIPS.)

Yes, Dean disapproves of Sam spending time with Ruby, but, Sam argues, she has an Eevee evolution. She can't be all bad.

Dean and his Growlithe roll their eyes and go back to their training. (Man, why won't Dean's Growlithe evolve? He's been trying to get it to evolve for years. No, this is completely freaking not about Dad's Arcanine. Shut the hell up.)


As always, you are invited to make your own Pokémon or Supernatural-related photomanips and post them in the comments! (Extra points for giving Pokémon to the characters of The Mentalist.)

You know, Otacon would be sort of delightful as the Doctor's companion. He would be so fascinated by everything. (He would also be terrified, but he would never be able to leave the Doctor, on account of having fallen madly in love with the TARDIS.)

Other possible companions for the Doctor (I've posted on this topic before, of course, but the possibilities are never quite exhausted): Sora, Riku and Kairi. The trio have been planning for years to build a raft and sail away from Destiny Island together. One night, their island is overrun by Heartless and swallowed up by the darkness. Sora, Riku and Kairi are standing back-to-back-to-back on Riku's favourite part of the island, slashing ineffectually at the little shadowy creatures with their wooden swords, and just when all hope seems lost a blue box materialises before them.

Riku doesn't trust the Doctor at all; he's convinced that he is the one responsible for the destruction of their home. Sora trusts him completely, though, and Kairi, despite some initial wariness, seems to like him, so Riku rolls his eyes and steps into the TARDIS. Just to make sure his friends don't get themselves killed.

...hey, wait. This is completely unrelated to the characters-as-the-Doctor's-companion subject, but does Riku have a Nobody? (Kixur? Kirux?) Surely it would make sense. He did have the Heartless symbol on his chest in the first game, so I sort of assumed there was at least a period of being a Heartless. (I was going to say 'a period of Heartlessness', but of course the Heartless aren't heartless. It's the Nobodies that don't have hearts. In fact, Nobodies are just, er, bodies. DEAR KINGDOM HEARTS: YOUR NAMING SYSTEM MAKES PRECISELY NO SENSE.)


OTHER CHARACTERS WHO SHOULD BE THE DOCTOR'S COMPANION: DONNA NOBLE.

YES, SHE IS A CANONICAL COMPANION, BUT SHE SHOULD BE HIS COMPANION ALL THE TIME.

I love you, Donna.


Unrelatedly: yesterday, when I posted my ill-advised Captain John Hart: Team Rocket Agent manip, dracothelizard asked who his team partner would be.

The obvious answer was 'Suzie Costello'.

They've never met in canon, of course, but I have a feeling that they could make a rather marvellous team. Jack's Houndoom, Gwen's Eevee/Flareon, Ianto's Aerodactyl and Owen's Carvanha had better watch out. (Tosh's Porygon lives in the computer system, so it's probably safe. UNTIL HART AND COSTELLO INFECT THE TORCHWOOD COMPUTER SYSTEM WITH A VIRUS AND IT EVOLVES INTO PORYGON-Z, OH NO.)


On an even less related note: this morning, I received a large envelope in the post.

It contained a High School Musical paper plate and nothing else.

Most perplexing. (wanttobeatree... wanttobeatree? Was that you?)

Troy looks like a Hobbit on it and I don't know why.