Trabia Garden

I'm still wandering through rewatching the first season of Lost, but at a much more relaxed pace than my first watchthrough, so you're no longer being bombarded with five posts about Lost per week. I'm sure you all miss it.

It was a good decision to revisit the first season after falling in love with Jack! I am a predictably big fan of his 'I've been going crazy trying to make everyone feel safe. I haven't been sleeping because I want everyone to feel safe' in 'Solitary'.

In my ongoing quest to understand everything about Jack Shephard, I'm compelled to note that, according to 'Raised by Another', Jack talks in his sleep! A girlfriend told him but didn't tell him what he said; 'Whatever it was, she didn't like it.'

Lost creators, I demand to know more about this. Was his girlfriend angry, or was she worried about him? (I'm leaning worried; Jack's a mess, and I feel whatever he's saying in his sleep is likely to highlight that.) What was he saying? Was he desperately shouting instructions to colleagues who weren't there, trying to save patients he'd lost in real life? Was he just sobbing and apologising in his sleep? Was he reciting all 386 Pokémon at the time in National Pokédex order?

'All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues' is a great episode to watch now that I've developed an intense love for Jack and a correspondingly intense desire to see him suffer. He's so desperate! He has no idea how to stop! He's trying to hard to keep his tone professional, but he doesn't quite manage to keep his voice steady or his eyes dry while turning in his father! He falls down a hill and someone stamps on him!

I bet Jack absolutely hates being tied up in bed but also finds it really turns him on, so he's conflicted. I made this note because I just woke up at three in the morning and suddenly it's all I can think about.

(The next morning, I woke up, went 'I feel like I wrote something down last night?', checked my phone and laughed aloud to find the above lines on it.)

Below the cut, I talk briefly about what I'd change about Lost if I could, with full-show spoilers.


( Things I would change about Lost. )


Lost isn't perfect. There are times when it isn't even good. But it's so passionate and uncynical; it hands you these characters and goes, 'Look, these are all disasters, but they were created with love and we hope you love them too.' It's the sort of heartfelt mess I can't resist; there's a reason VIII and XV are two of my favourite Final Fantasy games.

I just checked my phone and discovered that I'd apparently written the line 'You'd think, with all Rimmer's interest in military history, he'd be keener to be executed by firing squad' on it, with no context, at six in the morning.

Did I think this was a line I could use in a Red Dwarf fic? It's hard to imagine a context in which it would be appropriate, given that Rimmer is already dead for the vast majority of his screentime.


Here are a handful of notes I've made here and there while watching Supernatural, between seasons nine and twelve, because apparently I'm still slowly working through Supernatural!

Supernatural 9.02, 'Devil May Care': that was a pretty hot scene between Dean and Abaddon. (I made this note so long ago that I cannot remember this scene at all, but I'm going to trust my past self on this one. Knowing myself, I suspect it involved blood.)

When speaking to Ezekiel-in-Sam's-body, Dean always looks like he's painfully aroused and really uncomfortable with it.

I'm confused by how much I wanted Ed and Harry to kiss in '#Thinman'. It was a lot!

There's almost no Ed/Harry fanfiction! What?? I'm genuinely surprised by this. I thought Supernatural fandom had everything! It's not as if Ed/Harry doesn't have a solid basis in canon!

I can't believe it took so long for anyone to call Castiel 'Asstiel'.

'Everything you have, I will watch it burn,' Rowena says to Crowley. Rowena, it's Hell.

I'm predictably fond of Claire, the angry teenager making terrible decisions.

11.11, 'Into the Mystic': I love Eileen and Mildred, I love that they defeated the banshee together, and I hope they end up becoming a hunting duo. (Also, I was mildly disappointed that Dean and Mildred didn't bang.)

Season eleven has managed to perk up my interest in Supernatural a little, when it had struggled to engage me since season eight! I'm liking the writing of the boys more than I have in a while.

Season twelve: I like Mick a lot more than I expected to at his first appearance! He kills people but feels very bad about it, which is exactly what I want in a character.


( And some spoilery notes. Spoilers up to Supernatural 12.17, 'The British Invasion'. )


The trouble with Supernatural is that the stakes have been so relentlessly high for so long that I've more or less run out of emotional investment. Can't we occasionally just be trying to save a person? Does it always have to be the whole of creation?

I think this might be a preference of mine for stories in general, actually; small, personal stakes tend to grab me more than save-the-world tales. I'd like to see small stakes more often in JRPGs.

There's a scene in Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia between two Final Fantasy Type-0 characters. Rem asks King to keep her illness a secret from the others, and King goes 'sounds like it's really serious, then' and Rem says 'no, I'm fine, really, everyone is just so nice that I don't want to worry them' and hurries off. 'What a terrible liar,' King says to himself, and then, 'If only he were here for her. He'd know what to do.'

There is, I'll be honest, more characterisation detail in that one-minute cutscene than there was in the entirety of Type-0.

I was frustrated by Final Fantasy Type-0. It never really lived up to its interesting concepts and cool character designs. It had too many characters, and their characterisation was paper-thin. Fantastic soundtrack, though, and the battle system was fun.

(King: it would not be better if Machina were here for her, because Machina is the worst.)

Opera Omnia also has a wonderful little scene between Rem and King later on. They're from a world where, as soon as someone dies, all memories of that person are erased. They share their fear that they're not in their world now; if one of their companions dies, are they going to remember them? It's a horrifying prospect to them, whereas, in our world, I think most people would find the prospect of losing those memories much more horrifying.


More Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

Willow speaking up in Buffy's defence in the episode 'Reptile Boy' was a really nice moment. You never let her have any fun, Giles!

The 'everyone turns into their Hallowe'en costumes' episode was extremely silly and, I'll be honest, I enjoyed it enormously. I think I might prefer Soldier Xander - serious, wary, observant, inclined to take any order that's issued to him with enough authority - to regular Xander. (Also, Giles's reaction to Willow walking through the wall was glorious.)

'I enjoy cross-referencing,' Giles protests, accused of not having hobbies. GILES.

'These two have absolutely boned,' Rei said when Ethan and Giles met up again. 'Yeah; they've only exchanged two lines and I'm getting that,' I said.

Buffy trying to comfort Giles by inviting him to mock her taste in music, at the end of 'The Dark Age', was extremely sweet.


I've been using the Notes app on my phone to write down my thoughts as I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I opened it halfway through 'Reptile Boy' and discovered a note made a few days earlier, at half past three in the morning, which I had no recollection of writing:

'I am the Lord of Dicks and I demand that you take this seriously,' Giles just said in my dream. I was so confused I woke up.

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 just checked my e-mail drafts and found this in an otherwise empty missive, with no subject and no recipient. I don't know why I wrote this.


Admittedly, Ross didn't have a spotless track record with marriages, but he felt pretty good about this fourth one. He'd figured out the one common factor in all his failed relationships, and this one was going to work out. Probably.

'Hey, man,' Chandler said quietly to him at the reception, 'I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think your spouse is gay.'

Ross stared at him for a long moment. 'Please tell me you didn't marry me just so you could make that joke.'

'Sorry,' Chandler said. 'I actually have the divorce papers with me.'


In other old-fandom news, I'm rewatching House! It's been so long. I really want Chase, Cameron and Foreman to have a weird threesome where they spend the entire time complaining about their boss.

In a way, this rewatch is a bit embarrassing. I usually like to read my old entries on things I'm rewatching or replaying, so I can see what I thought of it the first time around and how my perception has changed. But most of my entries on House are from about ten years ago, when all my entries were very breathless and fangirly and overemphasised EVERYTHING.

I'm still a breathless fangirl, of course, but I have at least cut down slightly on the italics and allcaps.

It seems I've never entirely let go of my Cameron/Foreman 'ship from all those years ago. There's an episode where Dr Hamilton (the doctor Foreman previously worked under) offers Foreman a partnership. Hamilton asks whether Foreman is seeing anyone, and Foreman replies, 'Kinda-sorta,' and Hamilton asks whether she'd be willing to travel if Foreman took a new job. And the next scene was Foreman telling Chase and Cameron about the job offer, and I really wanted him to take Cameron aside and ask if she'd come with him. I was very sad when I realised his 'kinda-sorta' was actually referring to the girlfriend I'd forgotten he had.

Even though Cameron and Chase are my favourite characters in the show, I always slightly resented the canonical Cameron/Chase for not being Cameron/Foreman.

My favourite moments in House are the ones where House's underlings form very unprofessional emotional attachments with the patient of the week. Particularly when it's Chase or Foreman; I love Cameron, but she forms intense emotional attachments with people who are suffering very easily, so it stands out more when it's one of the boys. DON'T COMFORT A DYING WOMAN BY PRETENDING TO BE HER DEAD HUSBAND, FOREMAN. I mean, do, because it's interesting, but you really shouldn't.

I keep remembering how people really hated Cameron back in the day. She's such a sweetheart! And not just a sweetheart, but an interestingly screwed-up one!

I wonder how House fandom would be different if it were around today. Cameron and Foreman (but, alas, probably not Cameron/Foreman) would be more popular, I think, and House himself less so. On the downside, I fear there would be enormous, tedious arguments about whether it's morally wrong to 'ship House with any of his underlings.

Haru is probably my favourite character in Free!. At first glance he appears to be the typical serious, emotionless protagonist, but a viewer will quickly come to realise that in fact he is driven by a powerful emotion.

'Ah, yes,' you might say, nodding sagely. 'He's driven by his deep-seated love for his friends. I've seen this before.'

You would be incorrect. Haruka is driven by his uncontrollable desire to be immersed in water at all times.


Here are some notes I scribbled down on the train yesterday, illustrating why I should probably not write Free! fanfiction:

I sort of want to write a Haru/water fic, but I've got no idea how to make it work. Possibly for the best. Makoto keeps walking in on Haru and... water... in compromising situations? THIS IS DIFFICULT TO ENVISION.

Haru wouldn't be remotely abashed, either; he'd just stare at Makoto with his perfectly serious expression.

(Later:)

Haru wears his swimsuit in the bath. Is it more intimate, in his eyes, to be in his swimming gear in the water than it is to be nude in the water?

Am I seriously thinking about this question?

This makes a compromising Haru/water situation even more difficult to depict, particularly if Makoto is to recognise it as such. Blast!

(Later:)

How do you write about a guy losing his virginity to a swimming pool???


Part of the problem, I think, is that I'd want to take the Haru/water pairing seriously if I ever wrote fanfiction for it, because my Haru/water 'shipping is entirely sincere; it's easily the truest pairing in Free! and possibly the truest pairing in any work of fiction ever created. But it's inherently absurd! If I try to write about it in a serious style, the mere fact that I'm working in a serious style will make it seem silly! So I think this will probably have to remain unwritten. Sorry, Haru; I've failed you. You'll have to assuage your disappointment by sitting in a fountain and staring unsettlingly at passers-by.

I'd forgotten what a terrible craving I get for the Red Dead Redemption world after playing in it for a while. Apparently this craving is not much reduced when that world is full of zombies. IT'S SO PRETTY. (The final treasure map location on Undead Nightmare, in particular, is breathtakingly beautiful. I was becoming quite frustrated, endlessly sliding down the mountainside in my efforts to reach it, and then I managed and got that fantastic view of the whole area and forgave the game designers everything.)

New favourite John Marston quote: I was trying to lasso Famine, one of the horses of the apocalypse, and failing miserably. Marston, evidently as frustrated as I was, shouted, 'Stupid nature!'

I have now completed Undead Nightmare! It is a cracking expansion pack. Frustrating at times (perhaps there are people who can comfortably pull off a headshot without the use of Dead Eye; I am not one of those people), and not as varied as Red Dead Redemption itself, but great fun. I love that it never quite takes itself seriously. I love being able to hear John Marston's fantastically sexy voice again. I love that I was able to ride a unicorn across the Mexican wilderness, leaving a rainbow trail behind me and singing 'Always' by Erasure.

I think Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is ripe for a respectawoman crossover, actually. The ladies originated from a zombie game; zarla already came up with a Western AU for them; what could be more logical than throwing them into a Western zombie apocalypse game? Most of their infected forms have Undead Nightmare counterparts, too: Smoker would be a Retcher, Hunter a Bolter, Charger a Bruiser. SOMEBODY WRITE THIS.

(I've been wondering which horses they would ride. Smoker rides Pestilence; that's easy enough. Hunter, who has a bit of an aggressive streak, could ride War. Bit torn on Jockey: my first thought was Death, because she has such a strange relationship with the concept of death, but then it occurred to me that if there's a butterfly-surrounded rainbow-trailing unicorn to be had, you can bet that Jockey will ride it cheerfully through a horde of zombies. No idea about Charger, though.)


In other news, it's time for Strange Things I Have Discovered In My Notebook Theatre:


CHORUS
We are but students, with empty bellies
And so we call upon the God of Cakes,
Dionysus, probably, as he is god
of many interesting things.
Surely the gods will not abandon us in our hour of need
(for cakes).

MESSENGER
I have such a wonder to relate!
An eagle swept down from the sky,
right in front of my eyes, swift as a ship
(a swift ship, obviously), and at my feet
it dropped some Jaffa Cakes - not one packet,
but two, enough for every student here
unless I have miscounted.

CREON
Pah! Jaffa Cakes are not real cakes!

MESSENGER:
And who are we to question cakes from heaven?

CREON
The cake is a lie, my city!
You must eat only the cakes of Thebes!

(And so on.)


I miss studying Greek tragedy. Also, I'm really confused. (I think - I think - that my plan was to sneakily leave this work of art and a couple of packets of Jaffa Cakes on a desk before a Tragedy seminar, but sadly (tragically, in fact) I never carried it out.)

Single best sentence in the written records I keep of my dreams: Dreamt that Boris Johnson kneed me in the stomach. How do I not remember this?


I don't own a PSP, so I haven't played either of the Dissidia Final Fantasy fighting games. However, because I am very interested by the prospect of characters from different Final Fantasy games interacting, I've been watching some of the pre-battle quotes on YouTube.

Whilst I love most of Yuna's lines - encouraging the heroes, showing her resolve when facing villains - I have a few issues with the portrayal and perceptions of Squall.

Squall to Cloud: Another lost soul, like me...

Awful. No. Squall doesn't romanticise his isolation; he just sees it as necessary. (The portrayal of Cloud is a different issue, best addressed by someone more familiar with the character than I; I never felt I could entirely get to grips with the cast of VII, largely because of the poor translation.)

Squall to Squall: There can only be one Squall.

I don't like this one because, in my eyes, Squall keeps a fair amount of self-loathing under his skin. 'There can only be one Squall' implies arrogance, whereas I think Squall feels on some level that it would be better if there were no Squalls.

In Duodecim, Squall's quote when fighting himself is, 'If you are me, then you understand,' which I prefer. Squall has always been fighting himself; when there are physically two of him, of course they're going to fight.

Kuja to Squall: I'll crush your confidence.

Squall is not a confident person. He is sure of his own ability in battle; he is a seething mass of insecurity in basically everything else. I don't like this line because Kuja strikes me as fairly perceptive, capable of picking out and needling at the things that really bother someone; I think he'd be able to see through Squall's front, and having him fall for the front implies to me that the scriptwriters have also fallen for it. Speaking of which:

Squall to Cloud of Darkness: I have no fear.

Utterly, utterly, utterly untrue. This line's sort of excusable, though, because Squall does like to tell himself that he's not afraid.

Tidus to Squall: What's on your mind? Spill it!

I do like this one, mostly because it makes me think of how hilarious it would be if Squall and Tidus spent any real amount of time together. They would not get along at all, although it wouldn't be for lack of trying on Tidus' part.

Yuna to Squall: Don't you want to be with the others?
Squall to Yuna: Can't you fight alone?

And these are perfect; don't change a thing. Squall and Yuna have always been opposites on this point: Squall views relying on others as a sign of weakness, whereas Yuna believes that her friends are the source of her strength. What would happen if, in some strange collision of the VIII and X worlds, Garden assigned Squall to be Yuna's guardian?

Squall to Vaan: ...you're hard to deal with.

ALSO PERFECT. Poor Vaan.

Kefka to Kefka: Ooh, who's that handsome devil?

This quote has nothing to do with Squall, obviously, but I am including it because it is the best.

Also brilliant: Vaan asks Ultimecia how old she is. VAAN. And I never finished Final Fantasy V, but Bartz has some great quotes: 'Would it kill you to smile sometimes?' (when fighting Squall), and 'Light, give me strength! ...or whatever.'

I suppose part of my issue with Squall in Dissidia might just be that I don't really like Doug Erholtz as his voice actor, but I suppose that was inevitable; because I'm English, I tend to imagine that non-voiced characters from worlds other than ours are speaking with some form of English accent, and of course they'll almost always be voiced by Americans if they later appear in voiced works. Ah, well.

Here are some things I have seen whilst walking through Brighton:

- a vast convoy of people on bicycles being held up by police whilst an exasperated man bellowed 'MOVE TO THE LEFT OR YOU'LL BE HIT BY A CAR AND NOBODY WILL GIVE TWO SHITS' through a megaphone.
- a man covered in live pigeons.
- a man tightrope-walking between the trunks of two trees.
- a very tall man saying 'As far as I'm concerned, Harry Potter is no longer in my life' into his mobile phone.
- a man with what I assume was his significant other's name tattooed on the back of his shaved head, which I think is quite clever placement; if you break up, all you have to do is grow your hair out.
- a man, in tears, saying 'But the thing is I never tell anyone anything' and then, in response to his female companion's 'You can tell me': 'I can't! I literally can't.' There was nobody else around (it was one in the morning and snowing), so, as it would have been too obvious had I stopped to listen, I kept walking. There's a story I'll never know the ending to.
- literally hundreds of nude cyclists. I had to stop at the side of the road and wait for about five minutes for them all to go past so I could cross. This happened twice in one day.

I'm not going to be living in Brighton for much longer, but I don't think I'm going to forget it. (Then again, perhaps I'm wrong; I'm definitely forgetting things I could have included here, after all. The first five of these were all from one walk.)


I've just stumbled across a page in my notebook filled with bad Final Fantasy XIII crossover AU ideas I'd forgotten about.

Final Fantasy XIII/The Mentalist: Patrick Jane is a fal'Cie and accidentally makes Lisbon and her team into l'Cie with the Focus of catching Red John. He is horrified when he realises what he's done.

Final Fantasy XIII/My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Twilight Sparkle is a l'Cie, having become one after venturing into the Evergreen Forest on a fact-finding mission. OR MAYBE THEY ALL BECOME L'CIE IN EPISODE TWO. Pony l'Cie have their cutie marks fade away over time; if you don't complete your Focus before it completely disappears, that's it. If they're all l'Cie, it's a story of SIX PONIES AGAINST THE WORLD; if only Twilight Sparkle is a l'Cie, it's a heartwarming tale of eventually being accepted by your friends despite being feared by society in general. And then you turn into a monster. No, hang on...

Final Fantasy XIII/Glee: Kurt is a McKinley l'Cie with the Focus of winning Nationals. MCKINLEY L'CIE ARE FEARED BY ALL OF DALTON.


Finally: th_esaurus has drawn Charles and Erik with their Pokémon! So adorable. I want to see it reblogged all over Tumblr.

(She protested that Magneton was too obvious. I maintain that it is exactly obvious enough. If a Steel-Electric Pokémon is composed largely of magnets and has 'Magneto' in its name, I'm fairly certain that not giving it to Erik Lehnsherr is illegal.)

Do you guys remember Man-Spider: the spider with the powers of a man? I've drawn a few more of his rather mundane adventures since then, if you'd like to see them. (He also now has a nemesis!)

Still on the lined paper of my diary, I'm afraid. It's become a tradition now: I doodle an adventure on a napkin when I'm out with my friends, and then I have to copy it down into my diary before reipan inevitably steals the napkin. (She was a little too quick with her theft last time, which is why you're not seeing The Victorian Adventures of Man-Spider here.)


( The Further Adventures of Man-Spider. )


I am fully expecting a call from Marvel within the next few days.