Trabia Garden

Some more questions from this fandom meme! The full list of questions is here at trobadora's journal. I managed not to ramble for five hundred words on a single question this time.

What are the origins of your penname/username?

I misread Rinoa's name as 'Riona' when I first played Final Fantasy VIII. When I realised she was actually called Rinoa, I went, 'Well, Riona's a nice name' and used it to create my fanfiction.net account; I knew I wanted a straightforward, namelike username that I could easily be addressed by. I've gone by Riona online for over twenty years now, so I think this handle is here to stay!

'riona' was already taken when I signed up to Livejournal, so I added 'leonhart': the surname of Squall Leonhart, my favourite fictional character. It had not occurred to me that this would make me look like a Squall/Rinoa shipper who can't spell. (I didn't envision myself as married to Squall; I just liked the name!)

'rixareth' is a username I occasionally use, generally when I'm a little uncertain about a site's culture and I'm not sure I want my account to be too easy to connect to my Riona identity; I used it for signing up to Tumblr and Reddit. I'm more relaxed about letting the usernames mix now! In Kingdom Hearts style, it's an anagram of my name with an added X.

What's a fandom that you wish had a bigger following?

There have been a lot over the years! It's hard to narrow it down. I'm going to say Zanki Zero: Last Beginning, a fascinatingly weird game about traumatised bisexual clones struggling to survive together after the apocalypse, with a grand total of thirty-two works on AO3 and a great OT7 that nobody but me has written for. It's a flawed game in many respects, but it has such strong fandom potential!

What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it? Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

I think Final Fantasy VIII is probably the most consistently I've been into something over a long period of time. I've loved Pokémon for longer, but Pokémon is more quiet background radiation in my life, whereas I spend more time actively thinking and talking about Final Fantasy VIII. There are periods when I don't think about it much, but I always find myself back there.

The most time I've spent actively in a single 'main' fandom was the fifteen months I spent writing for Top Gear. Wow, was it really only fifteen months? I was so immersed in that fandom; I wrote so much; we had so many in-person meetups! I was sure it was two years at least!

What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?

I don't typically pack up and intentionally leave a fandom; I just drift away when my interest shifts to something else. Terrible real-world associations - e.g. something awful coming out about the creator - might make me hesitate to pick something new up.

What are some things that squick you in fandom?

Extreme underage, gore, depictions of surgery. Wounding is fine! Wounding is hot! The moment internal organs are visible or a precise incision is being made, though, I am out of there. People are free to write what they like; these are just the things I find personally offputting.

What's the hardest thing about writing, and why are titles the Worst™?

I often struggle with finding a direction for a fic I'm working on. I've got a rough concept, maybe a scene or two, but I don't know where to take it or what endpoint I'm aiming for. Once I've managed to come up with the ending for a fic, everything usually starts to fall into place. Titles are pretty bad, though!

Do you have a fandom that you follow - either regularly or casually - with little to no knowledge of canon?

I have never read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, but I've followed zarla's JTHM fic Vargas, and the little fandom that's sprung up around it, for over twenty years. I have written fanfiction for this AU of a comic I've never read.

Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

I've always got assorted low-level background ships going on, but I'm not really in passionate shipping mode about anything at the moment. I've been replaying the Uncharted series, so I've been thinking about my deep fondness for Nate/Elena. Other than that, I suppose Barret/Tifa/Aerith/Cloud of Final Fantasy VII Remake is the most recent ship I've had strongly on my mind.

A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

The Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler of Doctor Who never worked for me; I found their dynamic a lot less compelling post-regeneration. Which is slightly tragic, because I love the Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, and the two pairings are often bundled together in discussion or gifsets! It's a real challenge when your OTP and your NOTP are technically the same pairing.

Do you prefer art, fic, or vids? Why? Bonus: If someone was to give you a fandom gift, what format would it be?

It depends on the fandom, come to think of it! I'm usually more of a fic person, but there are a few fandoms where I often find myself seeking out art. These tend to be for canons with a lot of interesting symbolism that fanartists can do cool things with, e.g. Death Note, Omori, Revolutionary Girl Utena.

More adventuring through my fandom history! All three of my real-person fandoms are in this instalment, so it's easy to skip if RPF makes you uncomfortable.


Scrubs

First saw this when I was seventeen. I don't remember exactly how I got into it, but I think maybe my brothers were watching it? I was surprised by how little fanfiction there was at the time.

I haven't revisited Scrubs in a very long time. I'm curious to know how it would hold up.

Previously I'd mainly written angst and introspection, but in this fandom I took tentative steps towards writing more dialogue and humour. I enjoyed it a lot. (I've sort of fallen back into angst and introspection nowadays! And I didn't entirely escape angst with Scrubs; I wrote the inevitable Silent Hill crossover, after all.)

Favourite character: Dr Cox! Very angry, very sarcastic, very unprepared to engage with his feelings. I had a lot of fun writing him.
Favourite pairing: JD/Cox. I'm pleased to look back and realise my taste in pairings has always run towards the slightly unhealthy. I also enjoyed Cox/Ben and was strangely taken with Elliot/Janitor, although I never wrote fanfiction for the latter.
Number of words written: 35,548.

Snippet: I once wrote a JD/Cox fic where JD was handcuffed to a radiator, then a sequel, then a retelling of the first fic from Dr Cox's point of view. This was going to be the Cox-perspective sequel to that.

( Scrubs unfinished snippet. JD/Cox, 2006. )


Top Gear

thegreatesthits/gayjunglefever was the first online friend I ever met in person (we went to see the Silent Hill film on our first meeting; she was not familiar with Silent Hill and was incredibly confused). One day, when I was just about to turn eighteen, I went to her house, and she enthused about Top Gear, and I went '...that's a show about cars, isn't it? I'm not really interested in cars.'

She showed me the episode where they make their own amphibious vehicles.

I spent the next year and a half writing fanfiction.

Top Gear fandom was an absolute blast. I found a lot of lasting friendships (hi, guys ♥). I found a housemate! I met up with a whole bunch of you in real life to have adventures in London, which probably did a fair bit to help me overcome my extreme shyness. I owe a great deal to Jeremy Clarkson, which isn't good, perhaps, but it's true.

This was the first real-person fandom I wrote for, and Richard Hammond had his jet-car crash right after I started writing fanfiction. A lot of people in the fandom felt really guilty for writing stories about car crashes beforehand. It shaped my personal approach to RPF; if I'm writing about real people, I cannot write about anything terrible happening. (Well, anything plausible and terrible, at least. Going to Silent Hill is still fair game.) After an even worse 'something horrible happened right when you were getting really into these guys' experience with Linkin Park, I doubt I'll ever pick up a real-person fandom again. But the ones I've been in have been a lot of fun.

Favourite character: Jeremy Clarkson. Extremely obnoxious, extremely fun to write.
Favourite pairing: Jeremy/Richard. I think James/Richard was the most popular pairing in the fandom, but I just wanted Jeremy Clarkson being obnoxious all over the place, and it was particularly fun if he was being obnoxious at Richard, because Richard was worse than James at enduring it.
Number of words written: 90,357.

Snippet: Jeremy and James discuss how to deal with the fact that Richard Hammond is a werewolf.

( Top Gear unfinished snippet. Werewolf Richard, circa 2007. )


Supernatural

One of two shows I got into because I had a dream about them and went 'I'm going to take this as a sign I should watch this show' (the other was Atlantis, although I never wrote for that). I started watching this when I was nineteen. (I can't believe it's still running.) The first episode I saw was Faith, which definitely caught my interest. The second or third was Malleus Maleficarum, which was so revolting I almost stopped watching then and there. Fortunately, I persevered!

I got extremely invested in Supernatural. Fictional siblings! Unhealthy coping mechanisms! What a great combination. The only fandom I've ever attended a convention for.

Favourite character: Dean Winchester. What a mess.
Favourite pairing: I don't think I 'ship anything in Supernatural much, actually. I dabbled a bit in Sam/Dean when I first got into Supernatural, back in season three, when Sam/Dean was pretty much all that existed, but I ended up concluding I preferred them as brothers. I do have a certain strange fondness for Castiel/Bobby. (There's barely any fanfiction, which perhaps isn't a surprise. I read a couple of Castiel/Bobby fics recently and went '...actually, this feels not entirely unlike Hank/Connor.')
Number of words written: 52,383, although this is counting the finished-but-never-posted Derren Brown/Doctor Who/Supernatural fic chapter (see below).

Snippet: I wish I'd finished this Supernatural/Pushing Daisies fic.

( Supernatural unfinished snippet. Supernatural/Pushing Daisies, 2008. )


Derren Brown

How did I get into Derren Brown? I was twenty years old. I think I caught his stage show Something Wicked This Way Comes on the television. He temporarily deprived himself of oxygen, then lay down on a bed of broken glass and made a man stand on him. I'll be honest: it was hot. I promptly created derrenbrownfic. It never got hugely far off the ground, but people did write a few things, which is impressive given that there was only one 'character' involved.

Derren Brown is the only celebrity to whom I have sent a ukulele in the post. He sent back a very nice letter.

Favourite character: There is literally one character.
Favourite pairing: Derren Brown/the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who, which obviously makes vast amounts of sense.
Number of words written: 27,206.

Snippet: From the Supernatural chapter of my and moogle62's overambitious Derren-as-the-Doctor's-companion project. The chapter was going to be called 'In Which Derren Is Shot, and Things Get Worse from There'. I actually finished writing the entire Supernatural chapter, but we had a couple of other chapters planned to come before it, so I never posted it!

( Derren Brown unfinished snippet. Derren Brown/Doctor Who/Supernatural. )


British Comedy

British comedy is obviously a fairly expansive fandom, but I was in the Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell corner of it. I'd liked Mitchell for a while (I first became aware of him when Joseph introduced me to Peep Show), but I only got into British comedy as a fandom after discovering Brooker at the age of twenty-one.

This fandom was great, great fun. As with Top Gear, many of the members lived in London, so we met up and hung out a lot. Even better: a lot of comedy shows are recorded in London, and you can apply for free tickets! I went to twenty-something comedy recordings with other members of the fandom and wrote them up on my 'recording recaps' tag. It was great.

This entire fandom manifested at the start of 2010, thrived for six months and vanished pretty much overnight when Brooker got married, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

Favourite character: Charlie Brooker. Crude, hilarious, self-deprecating, surprisingly soft-hearted, worryingly attractive.
Favourite pairing: Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell. I also loved David Mitchell/Victoria Coren and was ecstatic when they got married. First time an RPF 'ship of mine turned out to be canon!
Number of words written: 20,435.

Snippet: This was a work of Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell romantic angst that I never finished because it seemed like more fun to write about them training Pokémon.

( British comedy unfinished snippet. Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell, 2010. )

Assassin's Creed is now the single fandom in which I have written the most by wordcount. In about six months, it managed to beat the record it took Top Gear a year and a half to set. I loved my time in Top Gear fandom, and it was where some of my strongest fandom friendships were forged, but it was a slightly odd thing to have at the top of my writing leaderboard for almost a decade.


I finished playing Final Fantasy Type-0 HD a couple of days ago! It's an interesting game. On paper, it's not great: it's a PSP port and looks it; the plot never really gripped me; it throws a load of incomprehensible jargon at you the second you start the game up; there are so many characters that none of them get any real depth or development, although most of them are likeable enough (and then there's Machina, who is the worst). But the battle system is great fun, and the ending really stayed with me and, I think, retroactively made me care a lot more about everyone. Possibly even Machina. I can't imagine how much it would have affected me if I'd been more invested from the start.

Final Fantasy Type-0 also deals with a concept I find fascinating; it's set in a world where, as soon as someone dies, all memories of that person are erased. It's interesting to see the different ways people cope with that. Some people are glad not to be held back by grief, or find it reassuring to know that their loved ones will be able to move on if they're killed; some fear being forgotten. One character writes down the names of everyone she meets; if she looks at her list and finds a name she doesn't recognise, she'll know that someone she once knew has died. Everyone carries a tag with their personal details on it, so that it's possible to establish who they were and contact the next of kin who won't remember them. It could be an interesting thing to borrow for AUs.


On a very different note, I attended a recording of The Unbelievable Truth last week, courtesy of reipan! I can remember very little, I'm afraid (I don't know how I used to write up those huge recording recaps five years ago), but here are a couple of pieces. The guests were Jon Richardson, Henning Wehn, Susan Calman and Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Entry, i.e. Jack Dee; the host, as ever, was David Mitchell.


Calman spun a bizarre tale in which absolutely nothing sounded remotely plausible. Everyone sat in silent confusion, not daring to buzz. Eventually, Wehn buzzed just to exclaim, in despair, 'Something has to be true!'

At the end of her lecture:

Mitchell: And at the end of that round, Susan, you've managed to smuggle four truths past the rest of our panellists.
Richardson: Not the bloody lasagne sandwich.
Mitchell: One of them was the lasagne sandwich.
(Richardson expresses his emotions by knocking over his water bottle)

I just like it when they make jokes that will never work on radio. At one point, Calman sang the praises of Boris Johnson and said we should leave the EU, then shook her head and mouthed no. Richardson pointed out that the broadcast could very well end up misrepresenting her views.


When other people buzzed in, the light indicating Henning Wehn would sometimes incorrectly light up. During Henning's first lecture, there was a buzz and Mitchell did a wonderful double-take. (buzz) 'Henning. - Henning???'

Given that this error couldn't be reliably reproduced, Mitchell started to wonder whether he was just imagining Henning's name by the light.

Mitchell: (looking at Henning, frowning) Maybe I love Henning.

Videos I didn't realise were essential to my life until I discovered they existed: Jensen Ackles holding a tiny pig. I love that you can see him steadily becoming more and more fond of it.


I'd forgotten how much I 'shipped Dean Winchester with both of his parents in 'In the Beginning'. That's, er, that's unfortunate. (To my mild surprise, the only Supernatural fic idea that's really struck me since I started this rewatch is one about Dean teaming up with his mother to hunt in 1973. JUST TEAMING UP, I PROMISE; IT'S NOT ANYTHING CREEPY. I was expecting something about the brothers, but I'll take whatever inspiration I can get. I'm also half-tempted to write something about Dean and Bela meeting again in the space between the third and fourth seasons; they infuriate each other, but in a weird way they also help each other cope.)

Dean twitching on the hotel bed during his nightmare in 'Wishful Thinking' really got to me. He looked so young and vulnerable and I really, really wanted to give him a hug. To be honest, I want to hug Dean fairly frequently whilst watching Supernatural.

'Heaven and Hell' is an interesting episode; it contains a fair few things that don't quite work for me (lengthy awkward sex scene with very little chemistry, too much focus on Hell as a place of physical rather than psychological torture, Dean's awestruck and improbable 'It's beautiful' upon seeing a tree), but it also contains a lot of things I adore. In particular, I love that Sam, Dean and Ruby spend the entire episode working together. They make an amazing, amazing trio and I wish we could have so many more episodes of them working as a team. And Dean comes to respect and trust Ruby!

'Heaven and Hell' is also the episode that convinced me Castiel had a great big crush on Dean, incidentally, and the episode in which I wholly embraced Genevieve Cortese as Ruby. And, if I recall correctly, it's the first episode in which Sam refers to the Impala as 'she', which makes me smile so much. It's an imperfect episode, but in many ways it's a good one.


A few nights ago, I dreamt that I was Annie Edison of Community, and I teamed up with Dean Winchester and Jeremy Clarkson to fight our evil doppelgangers. Dean ended up kissing my double, for some reason. Much affronted, I demanded that he kiss me as well. He did. I woke confused but intrigued.

(EDIT: My brother has shown me that I am in fact in the wrong. I am a fool, and I apologise to Professor Layton for casting aspersions on his puzzle expertise.)

DEAR PROFESSOR LAYTON:

NO. AN ANALOGUE CLOCK'S HOUR AND MINUTE HANDS DO NOT PASS OVER EACH OTHER TEN TIMES BETWEEN TWELVE NOON AND TWELVE MIDNIGHT; THEY PASS OVER EACH OTHER ELEVEN TIMES. YOU SAY 'THEY START AND END ON TOP OF EACH OTHER SO TWO OF THE TWELVE HOURS DON'T COUNT', BUT TWELVE TO TWELVE INCLUSIVE IS THIRTEEN HOURS.

YOU ARE A TERRIBLE PUZZLE EXPERT AND I WANT MY PICARATS BACK.

I'm enraged by this silly puzzle in a silly DS game to such an extent that it's actually sort of hilarious. Seriously, though, if you're going to make a game based entirely on puzzles, you really do need to make sure that all the puzzles are correct.

(The American version of Professor Layton and the Curious Village has a different puzzle featuring a digital clock, apparently. I HOPE IT IS A LESS RAGE-INDUCING ONE.)

It's a good game! I am just smarting at the injustice of it all.

(And then I stumbled across this wonderfully silly piece of dialogue and I forgave everything:

Stallholder: You want to take some sausages home with you? These are some links you don't want to be missing!
Layton: No, thank you.
Stallholder: Too bad! Not to bust your 'chops' or anything, but the deal was a one-time offer! Maybe you would've said yes if you'd known what was at 'steak'! Har har har har!
Layton: I think we're done here, Luke.
Luke: I couldn't agree more, Professor.)


A couple of nights ago, I dreamt that Jimmy Carr was almost run over by a car.

In the ocean. The ship he had been in with Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Richard Hammond had sunk, and they were all treading water, and the car came CHARGING TOWARDS HIM OVER THE WAVES.

Hammond managed to barrel it out of the way before it hit him.

I'm just posting this because I'm amused by the Carr-car thing.

I was on a train for a while today, so I decided to play a game I've seen around on LJ before: put your music player on shuffle, then write a ficlet for each song that plays. You have only the time frame of the song itself to write; when the song ends, finish your sentence and move on.

Below are the results! The length of each song is in brackets after the song name. Obviously, having been hastily scribbled down in the span of a few minutes each, they're not great works of literature, but I had fun with them. May have to try this again.


( Waterloo Road (two ficlets, both with series two finale spoilers) )

( Final Fantasy (two for VIII, one for X) )

( Glee (one, Kurt/Blaine) )

( Top Gear (one) )

Here's an attempt at a self-imposed writing challenge: alphabet ficsnippets! The first snippet contains one character whose name (first name, surname or nickname) begins with A and one whose name begins with B, the second a B and a C, the third a C and a D and so on until Z and A. (You're welcome to try it yourself, although this will obviously be easier for people who have eight million fandoms.)

Below the cut is the first half of my crack at this challenge: A/B to M/N. Fandoms represented are Pokémon, Supernatural, Blackadder, The Mentalist, Phineas and Ferb, Doctor Who, High School Musical, Fullmetal Alchemist, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VIII, Merlin, Life on Mars, Katawa Shoujo, Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle version), Avatar: The Last Airbender, Top Gear, Jak and Daxter, Death Note, Harry Potter, Peep Show, Shakespeare's Othello and zarla and jazaaboo's Left 4 Dead OC survivorverse.

There is a possibility that I have too many fandoms.


( Alphabet ficlets, A to M )


It's only been a couple of months since I last wrote something, but I still feel oddly rusty. I hope you enjoy these, anyway!

Well, that's university over and done with.

...bit anticlimactic, really, isn't it? Hang on:

You defeated UNIVERSITY!

Thank you so much for your support, both in the comments to my previous entry and over the past four months of stress. I am so lucky to know all of you. (I suppose it's conceivable that You, The Reader might be someone I do not, in fact, know, but I'm sure you're excellent anyway.)

I feel a bit odd now. I don't quite know what to do when I don't have a massive deadline looming over me, it seems. What do people do when they're not panicking over dissertations?

Ooh, I can start writing again! Well, yes, I was writing before, but now I can write without guilt. The drive to write may well have scarpered now that the allure of procrastination no longer hovers about it, but let's give this a go anyway:

Give me a prompt (or several), and I'll write you a one-sentence fic.

(I should become slightly less terrible at responding to things now. Let's hope.)

I have been to see the recording of the first episode of the second series of You Have Been Watching, with anewcitylife, causethesounds (EDIT FROM THE FUTURE: causethesounds at the time) and derryderrydown! (It's a shame my username isn't 'bionaleonhart'; we almost had an alphabet theme going.)

My companions were wonderful. The recording was extremely enjoyable; not quite as funny as the recordings of The Unbelievable Truth, but, for reasons that are about to become clear, just as engrossing. The problem is that I am going to be unable to provide a detailed report, as I was more than a little distracted throughout by how much I needed to have sex with Charlie Brooker.

Seriously, we found ourselves sitting only four rows back, so we had an excellent view of his stupid weird attractive face, and I proceeded to spend the next three hours fighting back bizarre sexually-frustrated noises and the urge to run onto the set and, I don't know, lick him or something. This is not something that has ever happened to me before. How can that man exist?

I was actually shaking afterwards. It's ridiculous.

(Oh, yes, there were panellists, weren't there? They were David Baddiel, Liza Tarbuck and Kevin Bridges, but I'm afraid you won't see a great deal of them in here. LOOK, I CAN'T HELP IT IF I WAS STARING AT BROOKER THE ENTIRE TIME.

Actually, I've managed to recall a little more than I thought I would be able to.)

The episode will be broadcast tomorrow (Thursday) at ten in the evening on Channel Four, but obviously I'll be covering some things that won't be in the final cut.


( You Have Been Watching recording! )


Oh, I can't remember anything else. THE POINT OF THIS ENTRY: CHARLIE BROOKER IS A SEXY BASTARD. I don't know how or why, but it is true.

Thank you so much for being so lovely in the comments to my panicky previous entry! My dissertation supervisor has proposed a course of action that means I can simply add a couple of explanatory paragraphs to my dissertation and keep my sentence analyses as they are. The day is saved! (Seriously, I would have had to redo everything.)

Naturally, this calls for celebration with stupid crossovers. Have the beginning of an incredibly ill-advised Top Gear/Prison Break fic; I wrote this a while ago, but it never actually got anywhere.


"Good evening!" Jeremy addresses the camera, beaming despite his obvious exhaustion, the thin layer of grime coating his features and the inexplicable forest setting. "Now, eagle-eyed viewers may already have noticed that we are not in our traditional studio for this episode, and there's a very good reason for that." He pauses, apparently for dramatic effect. "We are on the run... from the law."

Another pause, this one somewhat less dramatic.

"James?"

James, sitting on the ground behind Jeremy, gives the camera a look of deepest misery.

"Well, as James is sulking, I suppose the task of introducing the segment falls to me," Hammond says, coming into shot and somehow managing to project a sense of soul-deep exhaustion and bouncy energy at the same time. ("It's our lives," James mutters audibly in the background. "It's not a 'segment', and what we should be doing right now is covering our tracks, not making a bloody television programme.") "As a car programme, one of the questions we're always getting asked is, of course, 'what do I do if I accidentally crash a home-made tank into an American government building and get arrested for terrorism?' Well, fear not, people of Britain; tonight we have your answer." He nods solemnly. "You can't say we're not thorough."


I think I was planning to have Jeremy sharing a cell with Scofield. This seems unwise. Quiet break-outs are difficult enough even when one's cellmate isn't the loudest, most unsubtle man on the planet. (Hammond, meanwhile, was going to be with T-Bag. That could not possibly have ended well.)


I just flicked to another page in my notebook and came across the line 'Dreamt about Charlie Brooker fighting Mewtwo'.

It can't have happened more than a month ago, but I cannot remember this at all. How was he fighting Mewtwo? Physically? Mentally? With the power of scorn? Why were they fighting? Who was winning? We may never know. (But I suspect that Mewtwo was winning. Sorry, Brooker, but Mewtwo has incredibly powerful psychic abilities and it does not know compassion. Your psychic powers are moderate at best.)