Trabia Garden

A while ago, I attempted a set of one-sentence fics about Wander and Agro, the main character of Shadow of the Colossus and his horse, for 1sentence. I failed, because Shadow of the Colossus is the sparsest game you can imagine and there simply isn't enough material in it for fifty one-sentence fics. (Also, I'm such a dialogue person, so it's really difficult for me to write something completely devoid of speech.)

I did manage just over half the Alpha prompt table, though, so here are some Wander-and-Agro sentences for you. Posted in chronological order.


( Twenty-six sentences on the relationship between Wander and Agro. )

I don't post about it much nowadays, but I still love Top Gear so much. It is a beautiful, brilliant series about three charmingly useless friends who go out and have adventures. It's tense (that part where Jeremy was trying to get around the other car on the Road of Death, augh), it's touching, it's hilarious, it is generally wonderful. The full-episode specials wouldn't look out-of-place in a cinema. I wish full-series DVDs were available; I really can't understand why they aren't.

I miss writing for it, actually. I haven't written Top Gear fanfiction for about two years, but the trio really were a delight to write for. I just don't know whether I'd be able to fall back into their voices after such a long period away from them. Also, very few of those of you I first met in the Top Gear fandom are still active there; it is now full of strangers, which is a bit scary. I do occasionally yearn for the days when the Top Gear fandom was ridiculously close-knit and we all met up to be dorks in West London.

Jeremy Clarkson is one of my favourite characters ever. He is such fun to write and watch! He is an amazing, ridiculous lunatic who will strap an enormous engine to a pickup truck and drive it across the English Channel, who is incapable of venturing near anything remotely flammable without somehow setting it alight, and the fact that he is a real person (even if he is putting on a bit of a persona) just makes it so much better.

(And more terrifying, admittedly.)

With particular reference to yesterday's Bolivia specia: my goodness, that trio are dedicated. I am awed. The number of times they nearly got themselves killed in the name of making good television: ridiculous. The oxygen-deprivation and parts of the Road of Death were actually painful to watch.


More musing on Shadow of the Colossus: how many videogames are there in which the fact that the hero becomes stronger with every enemy he kills is a plot point?

I love it when videogame stories do things that wouldn't work in any other medium.

I really need to stop playing Shadow of the Colossus, though. It's not good for me. I'm trying to get the Time Attack items at the moment, but killing the colossi is more harrowing every time I attempt it. The fight with the thirteenth is my favourite, in terms of both visuals and gameplay, but my enjoyment is somewhat hampered by the fact that it is also the fight that makes me feel most guilty. It is so pretty and graceful and doesn't even try to attack you! Shadow of the Colossus is making me hate myself.

It's actually making me feel guilty for my actions in other games as well. In videogames, I am used to 'Here are your enemies; they are evil, or at best mindlessly vicious. Kill them to save the world.' In Shadow of the Colossus, it's more 'Here are your enemies; they are unique and beautiful and, given the emptiness of this land, probably not hurting anyone. Some of them don't even want to attack you. Kill them for, essentially, personal gain.' And now I am questioning my true motives in other games. I WASN'T KILLING ALL THOSE SOLDIERS IN FINAL FANTASY XII TO SAVE THE WORLD; I JUST WANTED THE ITEMS FROM CHAINING.


Last night, I half-watched quite a lot of Peep Show, then fell asleep and dreamt that Mark and Jeremy (Usborne, not Clarkson) were snogging on a bed whilst Mark internally freaked out.

Not that I am complaining about such a dream, but now I have a bizarre urge to write Mark/Jeremy fanfiction. This is a bad idea for many reasons. My writing and Peep Show have entirely incompatible styles of humour! I'm not sure Peep Show even has a fandom!

Today, a small package arrived in the post. I unwrapped it to find a box labelled 'Whack-a-Zombie' (tagline: You Can't Keep A Good Zombie Down), containing a miniature inflatable zombie punching bag, and a note saying 'IT MAY BE DANGEROUS. TAKE THIS.'

There was no name.

Thank you very much, mysterious gift-giver! When the zombies attack, I shall have had practice.


In other news, I have completed Shadow of the Colossus!


( Spoilers for the ending. )


Here are some awesome things that I have discovered about this game since my last entry:

- If you call Agro in a cave or tunnel, your voice will echo.
- If you shoot a Colossus with an arrow, the arrow will stick in its flesh. You can come across your arrows later whilst clambering about on its body.
- If you pray in front of a fallen Colossus, you'll get to fight it again in a flashback (it's called 'Reminiscence Mode'). The flashback is sepia-toned and grainy, like an old film. It's really pretty.
- It is gorgeous. Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. Yes, I knew this before my last entry, but I made that before I tackled the thirteenth Colossus. The entire fight has to be one of the most ridiculously beautiful things ever programmed into a videogame.

Even though Shadow of the Colossus scares me silly, it is a wonderful, beautiful game. Thank you so much for letting me play it, firefly99!

Yesterday, I went to Thorpe Park with th_esaurus, neobubble and meisalliam!

Colossus (hisssss) completely buggered up my back, to my distress. The thought occurs that it may have been angry with me for killing its brethren in Shadow of the Colossus. This seems a slightly disproportionate punishment. THE COLOSSI ARE COMPUTER-GENERATED, COLOSSUS. MY BACK PAIN IS VERY REAL.

As it was the first ride we went on, the back injury sort of limited my ride options for the rest of the day, alas. But it was still a lovely day; I drank hot chocolate and ate ice-cream and had wonderful company, and neobubble and meisalliam managed to get pretty much the best rollercoaster picture ever. Spending time with you guys was easily worth the entrance fee.

My back still hurts today, but I've regained the ability to look up and I'm not quite as hunchbacked as I was last night, so with any luck I won't have permanently damaged myself. I suppose I'll see a doctor if the pain hasn't gone by the end of the week.


On Monday, th_esaurus and I went to watch District 9 (verdict: mostly good, but flawed in several respects). I spent half the film inexplicably convinced that Christopher was a female alien whom the humans had assumed was male because the aliens did not have secondary sexual characteristics.

I have no idea why I thought this. (Spoiler: he is not, or at least he wasn't intended to be.) Possibly because there was a general dearth of female characters and my mind was trying to redress the balance? I do hope it wasn't just because he had a child; that would be a dreadful assumption.

(Seriously, where were the women in that film? There were, if I recall correctly, three - the wife, the mother, the documentary lady - and they had perhaps five minutes of screentime between them. How bizarre.)


Finally:

Every day tempted to Twitter something like 'I just killed someone!' to see what happens. Dangerous toy.

Oh, Derren Brown, I adore you. And, of course, if he actually does kill someone and Twitter about it now, nobody will believe him. How very cunning.

(Post-Control the Nation, a thought: Derren Brown doesn't need any ropes for bondage. Hmm.)

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt that reipan, sacred_sarcasm, lo0o0ony_lauren and I were staying with Derren Brown at his enormous mansion. I fell down all his many stairs and then failed to be impressed by his correctly telling me things about my house because I couldn't remember any of them myself. Everyone laughed at my rubbishness. LOOK, I MIGHT EXPECT THIS FROM DERREN BROWN, BUT YOU GUYS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE MY FRIENDS. I EXPECT AN APOLOGY THE NEXT TIME YOU SHOW UP IN MY DREAMS. Yes, all right, I was quite rubbish.

I decided to give Shadow of the Colossus (thank you, firefly99! ♥!) a try yesterday. It is a very beautiful game, and I'm enjoying the running-over-the-landscapey bits, but it turns out that I am absolutely bloody terrified of the colossi. When one turns up, I completely freak out and run to hide behind the nearest walkthrough, which would be pathetic in any game but is especially pathetic in a game consisting more or less entirely of puzzle bosses. You're supposed to work out how to defeat them yourself! That's the entire point!

(I had similar moments when playing Silent Hill 2. 'I don't want to be in this town! Hold my hand, Internet!' When I walked into the huge, dark, empty courtyard in the prison, I panicked, exited immediately and refused to enter again until I'd looked it up online and found out what was in there. Basically, if anything in a videogame genuinely frightens me, I immediately lose all my credibility as a gamer. It is shameful.)

Anyway, I'm about four colossi in, and when I next play the game I am going to try to be a little more brave and a little less walkthrough-dependent. The colossi are really scary, though.


Of course, the terror of the colossi pales next to the terror of going to see Derren Brown in person. Yesterday evening, sos_your_face, reipan, hippyjolteon, sacred_sarcasm, _afterism, cryforthemoon and I went to the Adelphi to see Enigma, his latest stage show.

This isn't going to be much of a reaction post, I'm afraid, because we have been sworn to secrecy and cannot tell you anything of what there transpired. Here are some things I can tell you:

1) Derren Brown is incredibly frightening,
2) Derren Brown is incredibly hot, and
3) these two facts may not be entirely unconnected.

Also, it was excellent and I really enjoyed myself. Derren Brown is hilarious and charismatic and fantastic to watch, whether you're impressed by his tricks or not (I was, for the most part; whilst I could work out how some of it was probably done, some aspects have me entirely stumped). And the very end was a moment of absolute magical genius. And, whilst none of us were called up on stage, some members of our group had interesting experiences.

Much of the evening was spent accusing various members of our group of being Derren Brown. Today, waiting at the train station, sos_your_face and I came to the conclusion that we were, in fact, collectively Derren Brown, each of us representing a different aspect.

sos_your_face: I'm his shortness.
rionaleonhart: Yes, you're his height complex. What am I?
sos_your_face: You're his narcissism. All the writing fanfiction about yourself.
rionaleonhart: (laughs) Yes, if I am Derren Brown, I'm definitely very narcissistic.
sos_your_face: reipan's the part of him that gets really bouncy and excited about things. Who's his creepiness, though?
rionaleonhart: ...that's a good point.
sos_your_face: None of us are really that creepy.
rionaleonhart: This is frustrating! Our Derren Brown is incomplete! We need to find a really creepy person to join our group. (pause) Wait, we didn't meet lasayla, did we?
sos_your_face: We didn't! I bet she's creepy. Obviously she wasn't with us because she was up on the stage.

We're sorry, lasayla. I'm sure you're not really the physical incarnation of Derren Brown's creepiness.