Trabia Garden

It was my birthday yesterday! I went with my parents to the London Wetland Centre, a little nature reserve where you can see a thrilling variety of waterfowl.

I spotted over thirty different species of bird! Some were ones I often see around London; some were rarer sights. Many of them were entirely new to me!

The birds I remember (and could establish the names of; I have no idea what some of the cool birds I saw were called), starting with the familiar and progressing to 'wait, what's that??': pigeon, mallard, coot, moorhen, crow, seagull, tufted duck, rose-ringed parakeet, heron, stork, some sort of huge grey crane with a red patch on its head (probably a common crane), goldeneye, bufflehead, smew, hooded merganser, red-breasted goose, great crested grebe, Cape teal, Cape Barren goose (this was so huge!), white-faced whistling duck, fulvous whistling duck, white-headed duck. The name 'white-headed duck' was a surprise to us; we found its blue bill a lot more distinctive!

My favourite sightings:

- We saw a family of moorhens: two parents, three chicks. The chicks were little balls of black fluff with comically tiny stubs of wings. They must have barely hatched; there were still unhatched eggs in the nest!

- I spotted a large cloud of seagulls from a hide, wheeling around. I usually see gulls moving separately, even when they're flying in large numbers; it was interesting to see them all moving together, like starlings. I was too far from them to determine the type of gull, but they were great to watch!

- The great crested grebe was so large and serene, just floating there in the water. Very handsome bird!

- The white-faced whistling duck was perhaps my favourite new bird discovery. According to the information board, they form very strong bonds and call out to their mate if they're separated. And, indeed, we saw two pairs of white-faced whistling ducks, each travelling around as a duo, rather than lone birds. One of the pairs sat facing each other in the grass, their necks forming a little heart shape as they nuzzled each other. 'Did you see them kissing?' my mum asked, deeply charmed.

- I saw an otter! An Asian small-clawed otter, specifically, swimming in the water and climbing on logs and squiggling around on the earth. It looked like it was having fun!


In the evening, I had a delicious Victoria sponge Rei had made for me, and I watched Weathering with You with my housemates. I've actually owned this film for a year and a half, but this is the first time I've seen it! For a long time I didn't have the nerve to watch Weathering with You, because I loved Shinkai's earlier film Your Name so much that I was worried I'd just resent it for not being Your Name.

I needn't have worried; I had a great time with Weathering with You! I don't love it as much as I love Your Name, of course, but I didn't expect to, and I still really enjoyed it in its own right. Stunning to look at, and it very much succeeded at getting me invested. It was a real rollercoaster of a film; it felt like the plot went zooming off in a new direction every few minutes. I was so startled when a gun came into play; it didn't feel like it was going to be a film with a gun in it!

At one point the protagonist Hodaka fires the gun, almost hitting someone with it, and I would be fascinated to see how events would have played out if he actually had shot that guy. It was so nearly a very different film!


necrophilia, who is incredible, gave me six months of Dreamwidth paid time for my birthday! Suddenly I'm swimming in icon space! I'm very excited about this.

This also, of course, means that I have the ability to make polls. Brace yourselves.

I've been vaguely wondering whether to do a reflection on some of the media that most stuck with me in the 2010s, and then owlmoose made an entry along those lines, which finally nudged me into actually getting it done. In alphabetical order, here are ten canons from the decade that I think I'm going to remember.

Note: this is media that I first experienced in the 2010s, rather than necessarily being media that was originally released in the 2010s. Community, Uncharted, Higurashi and Umineko technically originated in the decade before.


1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. This one crept right under the wire for me. My mum received this book for Christmas this year. I'd never heard of it, but I opened it at a few random pages and genuinely started crying because it was so beautiful. It's sort of philosophical whimsy in the vein of Winnie-the-Pooh or The Little Prince, it's gorgeously illustrated, and I'd recommend it without hesitation if you enjoy those books. I was really surprised by how deeply it affected me. Friendship!




2. Community. Community didn't manage to keep up the same level of quality throughout its run, alas; it's definitely stronger at the beginning than it is by the end. But the beginning is so strong. I've said this before, but the first series of Community is the best series of television I've ever watched. Almost perfectly crafted. It's so funny, it's got so much heart, and the characters are delightful. (Well, apart from Pierce.)

3. Danganronpa series. The series that kicked off my collection of weird videogames about murder. An interesting twist on the murder mystery genre: rather than bringing the 'detective' in after the murder occurs, it lets you get to know all the killers and victims well before the murders actually start happening. And then you're emotionally invested in all of them, and it's terrible! But also it's great. Interesting mysteries; fun characters; weird, irreverent, comedic tone that keeps things from getting too dark, but still gives events enough emotional weight for them to feel like they matter. I crowed with laughter at the end of Danganronpa V3 because I was so delighted by the weird plot twists.

4. Final Fantasy XV. This game's a mess. The pacing's catastrophic. But it's heartfelt and gorgeous and fun to play, and it's got so many charming details, and at its core it's a story of intense friendship that I can't resist. I got so happily lost in this game. I've written so much fanfiction. I love these boys so much.

5. Higurashi: When They Cry (visual novels), instalment six: Tsumihoroboshi. I've played seven instalments of Higurashi and I enjoy the series a lot, but Tsumihoroboshi in particular is perfect. An incredible story about the power of friendship and the power of murder and the strange ways they intersect. Guilt! Paranoia! Being haunted by things you did in time loops you can't remember! Dramatic friendship speeches before hiding corpses together! Triumphant scenes of two friends fighting to the death and having a great time doing it! It's a bizarre, cathartic delight of a visual novel and I absolutely loved it.

6. The Last of Us. I remember my first encounter with this game: I watched th_esaurus play through the opening, and I was so tense it physically hurt. An absorbing, incredibly done story of learning to care again after loss. Wonderful performances, great writing, fascinating worldbuilding. Ellie is one of my favourite characters of all time, and I'm both excited and nervous to see her again in Part II.

7. Life Is Strange 2. I love sibling relationships, I love stories about two people against the world, I love people suddenly being ripped out of their normal lives and thrown into overwhelming situations. I loved every moment I spent playing as Sean Diaz, this wary, sarcastic, loving, vulnerable kid, watching him struggle and suffer and push through that for the sake of his brother. He has no idea what he's doing, but he's trying so hard to do right by Daniel. I sobbed my heart out when I finished the game; I hadn't cried so hard at a work of fiction in eight years. I was thinking solidly about it for a fortnight afterwards.

8. Umineko: When They Cry (the visual novel series, rather than the anime). Umineko is a murder mystery, and a story about how we create our own realities, and the strangest, most beautiful love story I've ever experienced. The pacing is wildly variable (I struggled to push through the slow opening on my first attempt and dropped it until I was persuaded to give it another go by, of all things, a Simpsons meme), but I really think Umineko is something special. I played it while I was recovering from a bit of a psychological collapse, and I was surprised and delighted to learn that fiction could still affect me so deeply. Its message about having hope in hopeless situations came to me at a time when I needed it, too.

9. Uncharted series. Even though the gameplay isn't necessarily my thing, I adore these games. The first one hadn't entirely found its feet, but then they established themselves as a gorgeous, fun series of shooty tourism simulators, where you run around and climb pretty buildings and listen to the characters bantering. As with Danganronpa or When They Cry, there's emotional weight, but the tone's also frequently a lot of fun. I love fictional suffering, but I can struggle when it's completely straight-faced all the time; it's good to be able to laugh as well.

10. Your Name. This is my favourite film in the entire world and crashes straight through my heart every time I watch it. I've never seen anything that impacts me quite like Your Name does. I'm always afraid to revisit it because I'm thinking 'what if I don't love it as much as I remember?'; I always end up loving it more. The most visually and emotionally beautiful film I've ever seen.


This is probably going to be my last entry before 2020, so a happy new year to you all! I'm glad we're all here.

Puzzling autopilot malfunction recently: sitting on the loo, I took off my socks, neatly tucked one inside the other, and tossed them into the bathroom bin.

I think in my head I was changing my sanitary towel.


I watched Your Name for a third time, started crying approximately one second in, and was a sobbing mess over the closing credits. (Fortunately, I did most of my crying at the start and end; I was a little afraid at first that I'd just be bawling non-stop for the full two hours.)

It's my favourite film; I think it always will be. Nothing else has ever hit me in quite the same way. I've never wished for a sequel, or gone looking for fanfiction; it's absolutely self-contained and absolutely perfect.

I mentioned my passion for this film to my housemates afterwards.

Ginger: I've never seen Your Name.
Riona: Did we not watch it as a household?
Ginger: I don't think so. I remember we watched... er, it's not called Mambo No. 5.
(long pause)
Riona: I really want to know what you're thinking of.
(long pause)
Ginger: Big Hero 6.


Dontnod, the developers of Life Is Strange, have put out a trailer for a new game: Tell Me Why, due out in summer 2020.

It's another game about siblings! You're spoiling me, Dontnod! In fact, it's about identical twins, one of whom is trans, which seems like an interesting dynamic. Apparently it's the first ever trans protagonist from a major videogame developer.

It's a Microsoft exclusive, unfortunately. This is very much a Sony household, and I doubt my laptop has the power to run it. But Ginger's also intrigued by the concept and has a gaming laptop, so I'll probably end up watching them play.

(I can't believe the last instalment of Life Is Strange 2 is out in eighteen days. I'll never be ready. I'm far too invested in Sean and Daniel, and I really hope I can get a good ending for these boys.)


Coming back to the opening of this entry: if you have any stories of bizarre things you've caught yourself doing while your mind was elsewhere, I'd love to hear them!

I played a couple of hours of Oxenfree last night! It's very pretty and colourful, which is an interesting design choice for a horror game. All the landscapes sort of look like they've been made out of coloured paper.

You have to make decisions within a few seconds in Oxenfree, which I find very stressful, even when most of the decisions are just 'what do you want to say now?' (I feel a bit spoiled by Life Is Strange, which not only gives you as much time as you like to choose your response but allows you to rewind and redo things if you change your mind.)

At the very beginning of the game, just after you get off the boat, I refused to speak alone with Jonas because my mind was working by Until Dawn rules: DON'T SEPARATE, BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. th_esaurus pointed out that this was very early in the game, nothing bad had happened yet, and a brief conversation with my stepbrother was unlikely to get anyone killed. I felt so bad for turning Jonas down that I restarted.

At this point I set the first and most important of several goals that would help me make decisions in the future: I want to get along with my stepbrother.

Later, after panicking during the 'who do you meet up with first?' decision at the radio tower, I came up with my second goal: I want to improve my relationship with Clarissa.

My third goal, after telling Ren there were other fish in the sea and TOO LATE realising that the game might think I want to be his fish: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES can I end up in a romantic relationship with Ren.

('The game won't let you romance your stepbrother,' th_esaurus said, with deeply felt sadness. I laughed at her.)

I feel a lot more comfortable making quick decisions now that I know what I'm aiming for. Even if I still miss Life Is Strange. (The soft colours and loading-screen Polaroids really remind me of Life Is Strange, actually. Although I'm puzzled by the fact that Jonas took a picture on his phone and it appeared on the loading screen as a Polaroid.)

I'm playing this game at th_esaurus's flat, so I don't know exactly when I'll be able to pick it up again, but I hope it'll be soon! There's a lot of intriguing mystery. And I like Alex, which is unusual; I usually have trouble warming to characters who communicate entirely through dialogue choices, because they can end up feeling like an empty vessel for the player rather than a character in their own right, but a lot of personality comes through in everything she says.


Here are a handful of things I experienced in 2016 but didn't post full entries on:

- I watched the anime ERASED (it's available legally on Crunchyroll here), which is about a man who goes back to his childhood and tries to prevent the abduction and murder of a classmate. It was very good and very gripping, but I don't know whether I'll ever watch it again; it might be a bit too bleak and serious without the 'but what happens next??' drive to keep going. Still, I loved that it told a very compact, intense story in just twelve episodes. It also has one of the coolest opening sequences I've ever seen. The shots of the empty school give me chills.

- I saw Your Name in the cinema and loved it. The basic concept (two strangers keep swapping bodies across a great distance and can only communicate with each other by leaving notes) is exactly the sort of idea I find irresistible: people being drawn together by weird experiences, unable to talk about them with anyone but each other! Inevitably, I'm now wondering whether it could be employed in fanfiction for other works.

- Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a much, much better show than you'd think from the title. A couple of my favourite songs:

I've kind of got a girl crush on you, by which I mean I wanna kill you and wear your skin like a dress.
FACE YOUR FEARS. RUN WITH SCISSORS.

- The second series of How to Get Away with Murder is, I'm delighted to report, just as stupid as the first. The scene in 'Meet Bonnie' where the students were going 'pfft, we've screwed up our lives, might as well have an orgy' inevitably delighted me. Has anyone written the fic where they follow through? I'm going to be so disappointed in fandom if nobody's written that fic.


Inevitably, the combination of fandoms in this entry is making me ponder a How to Get Away with Murder scenario in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, in which Rebecca somehow ends up killing someone and has to try not to get caught. It's actually a worryingly plausible scenario.