Trabia Garden

I've now watched the latest episode of Severance! Here's a whole lot of rambling speculation and theorising.


( Notes on Severance episode 2.02. )


Riona: I need more ideas for Severance fanfiction.
Ginger: You should write a fic where Ms Cobel is banging Mark, and then it turns out to be a fantasy she's having while she's wanking.
Riona: That seems cowardly. I should write about her actually banging Mark.
Rei: You should write a fic where Ms Cobel is banging Mark, and then it turns out to be a fantasy she's having while she's wanking, and then that turns out to be a fantasy he's having while he's wanking.
Riona: I should write a fic where Ms Cobel is wanking, and then it turns out to be a fantasy she's having while she's banging Mark.

In conclusion, maybe it's actually best if I don't have more ideas for Severance fanfiction.

'Riona, how's your resolution not to read Taskmaster fanfiction going?'

We don't need to talk about that. Let's just talk about Taskmaster instead.


( Talking about Taskmaster (mainly series eight), and only very slightly talking about Taskmaster fanfiction. )


We're two episodes into series nine, and it's making me laugh more than series eight did, but that's not an indictment of series eight, which still made me laugh a lot! There's so much debate over which series of Taskmaster are better than others, but it feels like a pointless distinction to make when they range from 'I'm laughing enough to give myself a headache' at the high end of the scale to 'I'm merely having a great time' at the low end.

I've now seen the first six episodes of the World Ends with You anime! It's not a bad adaptation, but it does feel very videogamey. This is because it's adapted from a videogame, of course, but seeing the characters completing obvious videogame missions does sometimes leave me wondering why I'm watching this, rather than playing it. It's a great story, but it's very much a story that works best in the original medium.

I also feel the anime waters down the characterisation slightly. Joshua, in particular, is not enough of an unbearable little shit. If I don't want to strangle him within sixty seconds of meeting him, he's not Joshua.

Also, Joshua is too tall! I always envisioned him as noticeably shorter than Neku; it's very weird to see them around the same height. Joshua's supposed to be tiny and frail!

I think Joshua may actually be taller than Neku in the anime, which is obviously illegal. In the game, Neku thinks 'this pipsqueak is my new partner?' when they first meet!

All that said, the anime does have some nice little additions, particularly with regard to Eri. And it's cool to see the characters in motion! I love how closely the art style matches the game. (The World Ends with You has a very distinctive graffiti-inspired visual style: bold designs, thick black lines.)

Plus there's some weird, sinister homoeroticism between Neku and Joshua, and that's very important.


More notes on Persona Q! I've just finished the Evil Spirit Club labyrinth. (The Evil Spirit Club is much more unsettling than I expected of a non-horror game on the 3DS and I do not like it at all. I slowed down on playing Persona Q for a while because it was entirely too scary.)

I'm glad this game gave me the opportunity to say that Yosuke is one-third handsomeness, but also why is it letting me flirt with Yosuke if it won't let me follow through?

('Whoa... C-c'mon, you're embarrassing me!' Yosuke responded, blushing.)

Holy shit, Tentarafoo is a lifesaver. I never realised how useful it was before. I've started using it at the beginning of every battle.

heck yeah, gonna hide from a cursed doll in a bathroom stall with my boyfriend

(and also Mitsuru and Ken I GUESS)

'Sorry, I was daydreaming, so I'm not sure what you asked me.' I'm glad Persona 3 protagonist Kosuke is living up to my 'clueless weirdo' headcanon characterisation now that he actually has dialogue.

It's lovely to see Kanji clumsily offering Ken advice and support!

'I'll show you what a man I am,' Kanji mumbles in his sleep. I love Kanji.

Elizabeth left me a secret message, and Yosuke was really unreasonably excited by the prospect that she might be confessing her love to me, just absolutely thrilled, and I felt pretty bad about having to tell him that the note said 'the price tag is still on your clothes'. It's okay, Yosuke; you don't have to settle for vicariously being with me.


I'm glad Persona Q has reminded me of how much I love Yosuke Hanamura (it's a lot), but now I'm torn between 'I should write more fanfiction about Yosuke!' and 'I don't have any inspiration'. I checked my list of unwritten fic ideas to see whether it had anything to offer, but the only Persona 4 concepts listed are unhelpfully vague:

- something about Persona 4 inspired by Higurashi (small towns!) or maybe Silent Hill (fog!)? Either of these would probably be a good opportunity to psychologically destroy Yosuke. (Or anyone else, but, let's be honest, it's going to be Yosuke.)
- Persona 4/FFXV: can you make Yosuke and Prompto meet? (Should you?)

Come to think of it, the Evil Spirit Club labyrinth makes a Silent Hill-esque Persona fic strangely plausible.

Yosuke meeting Prompto does sound potentially delightful, but I'm a little afraid that, if I attempted to write it, they'd end up sounding exactly the same and I'd be exposed as a fraud who can't differentiate characters.

Maybe at some point I should try to write a hundred words of every concept on my 'unwritten fic ideas' list and see whether any of them get a foothold. (Although I'm not sure about some of these ideas. 'Community/Utena. Jeff at Ohtori Academy. Meets Akio, goes "wow, so much better than the dean", gets banged.')


I think Persona 4 might be my favourite Persona game, which is impressive, because I played Persona 5 and went 'holy crap, I love this game, this is incredible. I suppose I'll check out Persona 4, but there's no way it won't be a disappointment after this.' And then I loved Persona 4, if possible, even more.

The Persona series isn't perfect by any means, but it's brought me so much joy during a worldwide joy shortage. Easily my best discovery of 2020.

After I first watched ERASED, back in 2016, I said I wasn't sure I'd ever watch it again. I really enjoyed it, but it was so intense I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle a rewatch.

I'm glad I came back to it. It is very intense, but it's also very good. And it's only twelve episodes, so it kicks you in the gut with DRAMA and EMOTIONS and then politely leaves to let you patch yourself up, rather than continually kicking you in the gut.

If I had to recommend an anime series to someone who'd never seen one before, I think ERASED would probably be the one I'd choose, with the caveat that it deals heavily with child abuse.

( Full-series spoilers for ERASED. )

I think ERASED has my favourite opening sequence of all time. Not just because of the part where the protagonist is clutching his head and writhing in emotional agony under a bridge, although that is very good.


I've been thinking fondly recently about Higurashi and how much I love watching Keiichi slowly losing his mind with terror. So I ordered the two-volume manga of the first arc (Onikakushi, called the Abducted by Demons arc in the manga).

I think this is the first time I've read a manga that's an adaptation, so I didn't entirely know what to expect. Fullmetal Alchemist, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Death Note, DN Angel, Full Moon o Sagashite, they were all manga to begin with. But Higurashi started out as a visual novel. Would the manga adaptation be good? Would it feel too compressed?

My reservations turned out to be unfounded. I enjoyed the Higurashi manga a lot! Even if it suffers slightly from going TITS TITS TITS too much before getting down to the business of psychologically pulling its characters apart. (The manga changes the early scene where Mion and Keiichi are playing 'hey, Keiichi, show me your dick' chicken to be about Mion's breasts instead! Outrageous.)

When the manga does start ripping Keiichi to shreds, it does it very effectively, although of course I can't say how it would have impacted me if I'd read the manga before the visual novel. In some ways the visual novel portrays the horror more effectively by having less to work with visually and more to work with in terms of sound, and by having more time to really dig into Keiichi's mind, but it was still really cool to see the characters having more expressions. And to see Keiichi's face!

(Keiichi's increasingly petrified, sleep-deprived, conflicted face. These poor kids.)

Reading the manga when I've played up to Tsumihoroboshi, and therefore have slightly more of an idea of what's going on, absolutely ripped me apart. Everything is agonising!

( Spoilers for the Onikakushi/Abducted by Demons arc of Higurashi: When They Cry. )

This has prodded me into beginning a replay of Higurashi. I'm doing some sprite editing this time around, though, because a few of the Steam sprites bother me; I wasn't a fan of Rena's embarrassed/anxious expression, for example, so I've changed it from this to this. I was going 'I wish I could play a version with a few of the sprites altered' and then 'wait, I have access to the game files! I have the power to do this!'

I just finished the second instalment of Umineko: When They Cry, and I am way too confused to theorise, but I've got a handful of thoughts on it anyway.


( Thoughts on the second instalment of Umineko: When They Cry. )


'Hats' is a nickname many of my friends use for me, so I was amused to see 'by the courtesy of HATS UNLIMITED, INC.' in the credits. Was I involved in the creation of this visual novel? It would explain a lot.

Riona: I wrote something that wasn't fucked up! I'm proud of myself.
Ginger: Are you sure? You've thought that before.
Riona: Yes, but I really think this fic... oh. Right. Connor does murder an android in it. I forgot.
Ginger: Why does he murder it?
Riona: He's trying to sneak through a house, and the android threatens to alert the house's owner, and Connor just rips its heart out of its chest.
Ginger: ...
Riona: BUT IT'S NOT MESSED UP, GINGER, IT'S FINE.


I've got all these Detroit: Become Human fic ideas, but none of them are clicking. Concepts currently floating around inside my head:

- Connor antagonistically makes out with a duplicate of himself while Hank looks on in horror. (Maybe he doesn't make out with himself, but there should definitely be weird interactions with an uncomfortably sexual undertone and Hank should definitely be unhappy about it. Connor... sexually disassembles himself? THIS IS A BAD IDEA AND I CAN'T WRITE IT.)

- Hank gets into the bad habit of killing Connor whenever he needs to let off some steam.

- Connor loses control of his 'preconstruction' function and is unable to tell what's prediction and what's reality (WHAT A SURPRISE).

- Connor is killed while accessing another android's memories and those memories are accidentally uploaded into his next body with him, meaning he functionally ends up sharing a body with Kara or Markus.

They're all interesting to me, but I can't work out where to take any of them! It's very frustrating. (Also, none of them let me go 'HA, GINGER, I CAN WRITE THINGS THAT AREN'T SCREWED UP.')

Another concept I just found scribbled down in my notebook: Are androids designed to respond differently to different humans? To be protective of children? Is it possible that Carl and Markus became involved when Carl was younger, and then as Carl got older Markus went 'oh crap my "see you as a father figure" programming is kicking in'? This is probably a very bad idea and definitely doesn't fit into the game's timeline; Carl must have been in his sixties at least when he received Markus.

Also in my notebook, although these are more general ponderings than fic concepts:

How do androids make decisions? What heuristics do they use? Is there an element of randomness?

Both Kara and Markus cry. Androids are designed to cry? Under what circumstances?

I've only seen the first two episodes of Netflix's Queer Eye, but I'm already sad that only eight episodes exist. If you have Netflix, you should definitely watch it to improve the chances that it will be renewed! And also because it's delightful.

Seriously, I wasn't expecting to enjoy this. A reality show? A makeover show? But it's so charming; it's got so much heart! My housemates and I keep cooing and awwing at the screen. The Fab Five meet these isolated, lonely, insecure guys, and they don't just teach them to take care of themselves; they teach them to like themselves. It's incredibly sweet. I may have shed a couple of tears.

The third episode, which I've watched since typing the above, was somewhat less adorable on account of focusing on a Trump-supporting police officer over whom I was not always inclined to coo, but it had some interesting moments. In particular, I'm glad that Karamo was allowed to go 'yeah, that fake pull-over was a horrible joke and I was genuinely terrified' in front of the cameras, rather than being forced to go 'ha ha, what a hilarious jape that definitely didn't make me fear for my life'.

And then there's the fourth episode! Which is lovely! Antoni is extremely attracted to AJ and it's a delight.

Here's the worst fanfiction idea I've had in a long time: a Queer Eye-inspired AU for Final Fantasy XV. Noctis is isolated, directionless, sleeping constantly, untidy, generally bad at taking care of himself. Enter the stars of Lucis's hottest reality show to help him get his life together! Gladio gets him more active; Prompto makes him feel better about himself; Ignis is in charge of food and drink, and interior design, and grooming, and fashion, and... look, Ignis does everything. It's not clear why the other two are even on the show. But Noctis bonds with all of them, and, when they've parted ways at the end of the week, Noctis sets out to get them back into his life. He knows what he wants to do with himself at last!

This is a really bad idea. This is such a bad idea. I shouldn't want to read it as much as I do.

strangely adorable Linkin Park GIF from linkinparkftw on Tumblr. Some of you may already have seen this, as I put it in the comments of my last post, but too bad; it's cute and I want it in an entry.

Linkin Park is still happening to me. I'm very sorry.

A couple of my favourite short clips from my apparent quest to watch every Linkin Park video on YouTube: I very much enjoyed Chester talking about his most embarrassing experience on stage while Mike cracks up (from this interview, about forty seconds in), and this extremely silly acoustic version of Numb (I'm so sad that the full version is nowhere to be found, but Chester's stupid dancing is brightening my day).

I'm finding it a little difficult to pin Chester down as a 'character', which I suppose makes sense, as he's not a character; he's a person. A few things do stand out. He's very openly affectionate; he talks a lot about how much he loves the band and his bandmates and his family. For all the anger in his singing, I've only seen him express anger in an interview once, talking about fans who call the band 'sell-outs' for experimenting with new styles, and he reflected on his comments and apologised a couple of weeks later.

Chester Bennington is intense and ridiculous and apparently possessed of boundless energy, he's built his career on screaming, and yet one of the first words that came to mind when I tried to list out his characteristics was 'quiet'. Is he quiet? Is that right? It seems unlikely. One of the first non-music videos of him I watched was an interview where the interviewer focused much more on Mike, which started me off with the probable misconception that Chester was shy, when in fact he just wasn't having much directed at him to respond to. Maybe the 'quiet' in my head is a holdover from that?

I'm still not going to write fanfiction. I'm not going to do it. My RPF days are behind me. I'm just trying to pin down the band members' characteristics as an innocent mental exercise. Don't give me that look.

A couple of specific fics I'm not going to write:

- Pokémon AU. Chester has a Loudred and every Pokémon in his team knows Roar.
- Supernatural AU where Dean is secretly a huge Linkin Park fan, he uses a haunting as an excuse to go to a gig, and he is very confused when Linkin Park take care of the haunting themselves. Turns out they're actually a team of hunters, fighting ghosts using the power of song somehow. This is an atrocious concept.

Another My Little Pony: Equestria Girls film came out when I wasn't looking! I came across it when scrolling through Netflix, crowed with laughter, and then (inevitably) watched it.

Legend of Everfree pretty decisively sank Twilight Sparkle/Flash Sentry, which I'm sad about, because I'm the only person on the planet who genuinely enjoyed that romance subplot. Their interactions were really cute!

Also, I'm fascinated by the potential dynamic between Flash Sentry and always-a-human Twilight Sparkle.

For those who haven't seen the Equestria Girls films, i.e. most sensible people: there's 'our' Twilight Sparkle, the pony, who takes human form when she crosses to the Equestria Girls parallel universe, but there's also human Twilight Sparkle, Twilight's counterpart in that parallel universe. So there are two Twilight Sparkles, and the one Flash Sentry first met was the pony one (although he didn't know she was usually a pony at the time). Pony Twilight Sparkle, the one Flash knew (and had an oddly cute semi-romantic dynamic with, bearing in mind that he is a teenage boy and SHE IS A PONY) has now returned to her dimension; Human Twilight Sparkle has recently appeared on the scene.

Early in Legend of Everfree, we get this scene between Flash Sentry and Human Twilight Sparkle:

Flash Sentry: (hands Twilight her backpack) Here you go, Twilight.
Twilight Sparkle: Thanks. It's... Flash, right?
Flash Sentry: Yup, that's me! (remembers that this... isn't actually the Twilight Sparkle he knows, crap) And you're you. And... we don't know each other very well. (turns away and mutters to himself) Cool story, bro.
Twilight Sparkle: Right. I guess I'll... see you around.
(Flash leaves. Twilight looks helplessly at Sunset for an explanation.)
Sunset Shimmer: You know how there's that girl who looks just like you when she's here, but lives in another dimension, and she's a pony princess?
Twilight Sparkle: Uh-huh.
Sunset Shimmer: Flash kind of had a thing for her.
Twilight Sparkle: Oh.

The stranger the relationship dynamic, the more a pairing tends to appeal to me, and I already thought Twilight Sparkle/Flash Sentry was pretty cute. How could I resist the added weirdness of pairing Flash Sentry up with a different version of Twilight Sparkle when he still had feelings for the first version?

But then Human Twilight Sparkle went off and got a crush on SOME ARSEHOLE (I really didn't get along with Timber Spruce), and Flash Sentry was advised to get over the girl who is separated from him by dimensional barriers and also a pony, and I was deeply disappointed. I wanted weird, slightly unhealthy romance built on a foundation of 'I have a crush on an alternate-universe version of you'! Yes, all right, perhaps it wouldn't be terribly appropriate for a colourful children's film, but it would be interesting!

There's a part of me that actually wants to write 'I'm pining after your pony counterpart, we should definitely get together, this is a fantastic basis for a relationship' Flash Sentry/Human Twilight Sparkle fanfiction. It would be incredibly regrettable. I will try not to write this, but I can make no promises.

This is the worst entry I've ever made. I'm so sorry.

At first I was disappointed that the present-day protagonist of Assassin's Creed IV was a faceless, voiceless player stand-in rather than a character I already cared about (or a new character I could get attached to), but the possibilities are just starting to occur to me. Shaun appears to be manning the coffee stand at Abstergo. You know what that means? Shaun is canonically in the same building as me. I could write fanfiction about me hanging out with him (and suffering the Bleeding Effect?), and it would be entirely canonically plausible.

I mean, I won't. Obviously. But it's nice to know it's an option.

I say interaction between us is 'entirely canonically plausible', but the problem is the characters involved. Shaun isn't exactly the most warm and personable of people. I'm shy and I don't drink coffee, so why would I end up in conversation with the git who runs the coffee stand?

Unless I recognise him as Shaun? In some sort of... weird reality where I've played the previous Assassin's Creed games and yet am also inside the Assassin's Creed universe and made the obviously terrible decision to accept an employment offer from Abstergo?

And, presumably, the even more terrible decision to recognise someone at Abstergo as an undercover assassin and approach him about it?


"Look, I'm not actually the biggest fan of killing people," Shaun says irritably, tightening the bonds, "but it is sort of in my job description, which obviously you'll know already if you know who I am, so why you didn't just keep your mouth shut..."

He takes a step back, folding his arms.

"I mean, yes, ultimately it's probably better for us if Abstergo employees make it clear when they know more than we'd like," he says. "But this does make things very unpleasant for me personally."


Wait, what am I doing? Forget everything you saw here. As you were.

(EDIT: Played a bit further, and Shaun and Rebecca totally canonically (albeit very briefly) talked to me. (Shaun called me 'incredibly rude', which frankly is a bit rich.) How did this game know it was my birthday?)