Trabia Garden

Before I get into the traditional talking too much about karaoke, I should mention that the annual Three-Sentence Ficathon is underway! Here's the current post, if you want to prompt or write anything.


Here is a very belated post about our karaoke-focused New Year's celebrations! Part of the reason this post was taking so long was because it's a pain to link to all the songs on YouTube, so I eventually abandoned the effort; I apologise for how spotty the linking is as a consequence.

It will surprise no one to learn that our household celebrated the turn of the year with karaoke on New Year's Eve. Here are the songs I performed!

- The Glee version of 'Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah', because New Year's Eve coincided with the seventh night of Hanukkah. A carefully calculated song choice; it's a Hanukkah song, so it was a way of saying 'happy Hanukkah!' to Rei, but it's a Glee song, so it was also a way of saying 'I want to affectionately inflict psychological damage upon you.' Rei responded by singing 'How Do You Spell Channukkahh' by the LeeVees.

- 'You and Me (But Mostly Me)', from The Book of Mormon. I modified the lyrics slightly to make this a solo, which frankly I think is in the spirit of the song. There was a lot of laughter at this one, and my housemates broke into applause at the end. 'Yes!' I declared, opening my arms to the sky. 'I deserve this!'

- At Rei's suggestion, the two of us duetted on 'Guy Love' from the Scrubs musical episode. Tem had not seen Scrubs and probably found the experience slightly puzzling.

- I was concerned that 'Dylan' by Emmy the Great might be too fast, but it turned out to be really fun to sing! This is a song I picked up from my time living with th_esaurus; she used to listen to it a lot.

- 'Last Surprise -Scramble-' from Persona 5 Strikers was also fast and fun! Everyone joined in on the too many 'oooooh's at the end.

- Rise Against songs are always both extremely intimidating and an absolute blast to sing, and 'Help Is On the Way' is no exception. I struggled with the 'RIGHT HERE' screams but had an earnest crack at them.

- Singing Gackt's 'Last Song' with Rei was a very nostalgic experience. I was nervous about singing in Japanese, but I think it went okay. It's amazing how the songs you listened to as a teenager stick with you, even if they're in a language you don't speak.

- Tem and I like to wait until everyone's let their guard down and then throw a duet from Death Note: The Musical into proceedings. On this occasion, the duet in question was 'The Way It Ends', so I got to play smug Light, one of my favourite Light Yagami modes (all of Light's modes are my favourite Light modes).

- I ran out of songs I was confident in, so I had to venture into my 'this is probably a bad idea' picks, which is how I ended up singing 'Big Enough' by Kirin J Callinan. There were incredible reactions from the room when the screaming cowboy kicked in. The fun thing about doing this song for karaoke is that, although it's a meme, only a very specific part of it is well known, so the audience may not suspect you're singing a meme song until you throw your head back and go AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.

- Rei joined me for RichaadEB's metal cover of Touhou's 'Bad Apple', which is fortunate, because I don't think I would have been capable alone! That song really doesn't give you any breathing room.

- I enjoyed singing 'Body' by Marah! I'm always surprised by the vanishingly low viewcount on Marah's songs on YouTube; for a long time I struggled to find their songs on there at all. My brother listened to them a lot when we were teenagers, and I always assumed they were well known, but apparently not; he'd just got into an incredibly niche band, and landed me with a fondness for their songs as a consequence!

And a few others I don't have much commentary on: 'Burning in the Skies' by Linkin Park, 'This Old Sin' by Koethe, a repeat of the sea shanty version of 'Rockstar' by Nickelback.

My favourite performances by Rei included 'Don't Be a Lawyer' from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the unfortunately named 'JAP' by the perplexingly named abingdon boys school, 'Fight Club' by Fitzy, and a couple of Tom Lehrer songs: 'Smut' (with relish) and 'The Masochism Tango' (Rei and Tem briefly tangoed together during this one, although fortunately they didn't follow the song's instructions to the letter).

Rei also performed 'Mother Mary' by Tom Auton, and the lyrics made me suspicious. 'Is this on your Billcifer playlist?' I asked, and Rei hastily shushed me. (Billcifer is Rei's Lucifer-inspired Bill/Dipper Gravity Falls AU; it's here, and I can strongly recommend it if that sounds like your thing! It's been great to see Rei's enthusiasm for working on it.)

My favourite of Tem's performances included 'Gettin' Bi' from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, 'Hurricane' from Death Note: The Musical (always a delight; Tem always puts such passion into 'I AM THE GOD OF A BRAVE NEW WORLD'), 'Godless, Lawless & Non-Monogamous' by New Here, and 'Monochrome' by BABYMETAL (with me and Ginger singing backup vocals).

I'm noting my favourite performances down in part so I can look up the original songs at some point, for those I wasn't familiar with already. One of the fun aspects of karaoke is getting to discover cool new music! However, there's always the risk that I'll seek out the original and go '...actually, I prefer this song when my friends are singing it.'

Rei, Tem and I did a couple of songs as a trio towards the end: 'Wait for It' from Hamilton and 'Six Feet' by Patent Pending. I was afraid that the Hamilton song would be too ambitious, but I think it worked out!

Tem and Rei did a magnificent duet of Sarah and the Safe Word's 'Something Is Afoot on Old Man McGrady's River', and wrapped up with the occasion-appropriate 'This Year' by the Mountain Goats. A great way to see 2024 out!

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.

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.

I definitely feel I've been remembering my dreams more often since I started posting these dream roundup entries. Interesting side effect!


( Dreams from August and early September. )


Finally, the dream of this batch that amused me the most:

Dreamt that Odo of Star Trek: DS9 came to our house and found a contraband chocolate orange and we were in big trouble.

I've been a little quieter than usual lately, at first for slightly unfortunate reasons - I went down with an unpleasant stomach bug - and then for very good ones; I've been having adventures in Iceland with my dad! My mum found Iceland an unappealing prospect, so Dad asked if I wanted to go with him instead.

I wrote this entry while repeatedly listening to 'Þú ert stormur' by Una Torfa, an Icelandic song I heard on the radio during our holiday.

Iceland is a land of strange contrasts. I've seen landscapes there so beautiful they didn't seem real; I've seen some of the most offputting scenery I've ever come across. It's like being on another planet sometimes, when there's nothing but flat black sand or strange bulbous stone shapes all the way to the horizon. We were driving for forty minutes from the airport before we first saw a tree.

It's weird when it never gets dark, too; it never entirely feels like a new day has started. You go to bed when it's light; you get up when it's light; it's light if you wake up at one in the morning. The sun did technically set (11.30 in the evening) and rise (3.30 in the morning), but it never went far enough for true darkness. When I glanced out of our hotel window at half past midnight, the scene was cast in a half-hearted twilight, like someone had just thrown a light blue filter over the world. I'd occasionally find myself thinking 'what if we have to find our way back to the hotel in the dark?' and then remembering that that just wasn't a concern.

But I saw such cool things in Iceland! I'd never seen geysers before, or glacial lakes, or ice-strewn beaches with black sand, or a waterfall on the scale of Gullfoss Falls; I'd never relaxed in a hot spring. On the drive back to the airport, we caught tiny glimpses of distant erupting lava out of the car window.

We passed through the perpetually foggy Vik, which apparently boasted a lava show. The website gave the alarming description 'LAVA SHOW recreates a volcanic eruption by superheating real lava up to 1100°C (2000°F) and then pouring it into a showroom full of people.' We decided not to attend the lava show.

There's so much about Iceland that you can't really capture in a photograph. I can take a picture of some big rocks, but I can't convey the sense of looking up at these boulders and knowing that they are so big and you are so, so small. But here are some photographs nonetheless!


( A handful of photographs from Iceland! )


( Talking about the birds I saw in Iceland. )


In conclusion, Iceland is a really interesting place! I'm glad I went. It's good to come back to the things I previously took for granted, though, like 'trees' and 'getting dark at night' and 'summer temperatures of over 10°C'.

If you've been following this journal for a while, you've probably got an idea of what I talk about. I talk about videogames; I talk about television; I talk about my family and friends; I occasionally talk about language or writing.

Here is a load of rambling about birds.

I am by no means a bird expert or a serious birdwatcher, so I can't actually say anything insightful; I just like birds. They're cool, varied little living creatures that pop up all over the place, and it's fun to watch them move!

Here is an assortment of birds I've seen in London, and some brief thoughts on each of them. This is not a list of every bird I've seen in London; it's just the birds that came to mind while I was writing this entry. I'm still thinking of others, but it's too late; I've written the entry now! Sorry, thrush.

I don't know if any of this is worth reading, unless you're queenlua, but sometimes you just have to talk about birds.


( My thoughts on the birds of London. )


I've just realised I haven't even got into water birds! But this entry is already too long, so I'll set those aside for now. I will mention, however, that a year ago I looked out of my window, saw a heron in flight, and for a moment I genuinely thought, I know dragons don't exist, but I have no idea what else that could be.

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


( Archiving assorted dreams. )


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

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

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

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

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

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


( Thoughts on season one of True Detective. )


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

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

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

I'm on holiday in Italy! Felt a bit perverse to be writing Lost fanfiction on the plane, if I'm honest.

The sky in Italy feels bigger than it does in England, somehow. It's a feeling I get in America, too; the sky seems huge. Maybe it's because being able to see far-off hills or mountains gives a sense of scale and distance, and much of England is relatively flat. Maybe it's just the awareness that you're standing on a huge continent, instead of a small island.

I played badminton with my brother while the sun set over the hills in the background. We'd found a bucket of cheap falling-apart shuttlecocks, and our game was half actual playing and half just watching in fascination as the shuttlecocks increasingly disintegrated.

Lots of little lizards around the place, which are always exciting. Apparently the UK does have lizards, but I don't think I've ever seen one at home.

I saw a little glowing creature hiding in a crack in a wall! A firefly larva, maybe, or a glowworm? I'd never seen any luminescent creature outside an aquarium before and was so puzzled to see a little green light in the wall; I was very excited to realise it was a living thing, rather than, say, a camera spying on us. Extremely cool!

Later, my brother pointed out that there were adult fireflies about! Little bright flashing lights moving through the dark! Again, I had never seen fireflies and actually seeing them in action is incredible. How can living things light up so brightly?

Lots of butterflies! Mainly species you'd see back in the UK - large and small whites, meadow browns, some beautiful little holly blues - but earlier today I caught sight of a scarce swallowtail in flight. Some sort of lovely fritillary that wouldn't let me get close enough to get a good look, but maybe a Queen of Spain fritillary? There was also a butterfly I thought was a meadow brown until it opened its wings and I realised its oranges were much more exciting; looking it up, I think it was a small copper.

(When I last went to Thorpe Park with RD, I kept exclaiming over the birds and butterflies we saw there - a wagtail! a brimstone! - and eventually she demanded to know how I knew their names. The answer is mainly my dad; he likes being able to identify birds, and we'll sometimes go out butterfly-spotting in the summer.)

Some lovely jays and swallows, and a magnificent pheasant strutting across the road in front of us. My most striking bird sighting of late was actually the day before the holiday, though; I was watching a family of coots when a heron swept in, grabbed one of the babies and flew away with it. 'Oh, Jesus!' I exclaimed aloud, involuntarily. I was so torn between 'that was a cool moment of nature in action and I'm lucky I was there to see it' and 'that was awful and now I'm sad'.

The weather is variable here, but that's no downside; it just means we can see the surrounding forested hills in different conditions. Right now, as I write these lines, I'm taking shelter from an intense downpour in the middle of bright sunshine, and it is astonishingly pretty.

Sometimes the rain falls so thickly it looks like static over the landscape, like we're in some sort of beautiful green Silent Hill. I very much hope we're not in Silent Hill, but, if we are, at least it looks good.

Last night I dreamt I was a Taskmaster contestant. I went to the Taskmaster house on a day I wasn't filming, for some reason, and found Alex sitting outside it. 'Oh, I'm so sorry, am I interrupting filming?' I asked. Alex said, 'Well, yes, but only in a very small way.' We chatted for a short while, and then one of the other contestants emerged from another part of the garden and announced to Alex, with an air of accomplishment, 'I've killed them all.'

In fact, while I'm thinking about dreams, I'm going to drop some of my other dream notes into this entry, so they don't get lost if something happens to my phone.

This is mainly for my own benefit, of course; I realise that other people's dreams aren't that interesting to most people! You're welcome to read if you're curious, though. One of the dreams is a bit dubcon, so I'll include a warning before that one.


( Archiving a handful of dreams. )


Happy new year! Sorry for kicking it off with a post that's solely of interest to me.