Trabia Garden

Embarrassingly, I can't stop listening to 'Theme of King JJ', the song that JJ skates to in Yuri on Ice. At first I just went 'oh, my God, this is the most hilariously arrogant thing I've ever heard, I must listen to it fully to get a better idea of the ridiculous lyrics,' and by now I actually dance along to it while I listen. I LOOK IN THE MIRROR, THE KING LOOKS BACK AT ME. I'M BRAVE ENOUGH TO FIGHT THE ENEMIES.

Then again, I've been nostalgically listening to a lot of Linkin Park lately, so this might actually be an improvement.

(I typed this and then went back to dramatically mouthing along to 'Leave Out All the Rest', whoops. SAVE ME, KING JJ.)

In honour of my terrible taste in music, I've titled this entry with a line that could plausibly come from either 'Theme of King JJ' or a particularly angst-fraught Linkin Park song (it's the former).


I've been replaying Uncharted 4: A Thief's End recently. I like it more than the first Uncharted, but I definitely love the second and third games more, which is a shame; I'd have liked the series to end on a higher note (although most of my issues with A Thief's End are very subjective, so I imagine it was a good ending for many players). I'm going to grump about Sam under the cut, so you may not want to click if you're a Sam fan.


( Grumbling about Sam. Uncharted 4 spoilers. )


OKAY, COMPLAINING OVER. Here are some great things in Uncharted 4 to balance it out:

- The opening credits are gooooorgeous. You can see them over here. No spoilers for Uncharted 4; they're a beautiful look back at the previous games in the series.

- 'A Normal Life' is possibly my favourite Uncharted chapter ever. I exclaimed aloud in delight multiple times.

- Sometimes, if you put Nate in front of a mirror and zoom in on it, he'll check to make sure nobody's looking and then do finger-guns at himself.

- Nate and Elena have a combat move where Nate lifts Elena up so she can kick the enemy in the face.

- The environments are so, so pretty.

- At one point, you blow up a door with dynamite and Nate goes 'Take that, door!'

Your task is to cleverly deduce, from Rei's beautiful song (to the tune of Cabaret's 'Two Ladies'), what we've been watching lately:

Deedly dee-dee-dee, two Yuris,
Deedly dee-dee-dee, two Yuris,
Deedly dee-dee-dee, and I'm the only Victor.
Deedly dee-dee-dee, I like it,
Deedly dee-dee-dee, they're less keen...

We're three episodes in!

Yuri!!! on ICE is both very cute and very odd. Strangely, I think the character I'm most emotionally invested in might be the hostile fifteen-year-old who's incapable of walking past a tiger T-shirt without buying it, taking a selfie and posting it on Instagram. Although I'm very charmed by Yuri (er, Yuri Katsuki; this is going to be tricky) getting flustered around Victor. And of course Victor is constantly being as flustering as possible. Give the poor boy a moment's peace!


About six weeks ago, I was challenged to write a Yuri!!! on ICE fic without having seen a single episode, using only the bits and pieces I'd picked up from other people talking about it. What I produced was this:


Victor pirouetted on the ice, his possibly silver hair whipping gracefully around him. Yuri gazed with longing from the edge of the rink. How could he dare to ask this legendary performer to tutor him in the ways of skating? It seemed impossibly arrogant.

Yuuri, who was not Yuri but a small child who nobody was allowed to ship with anyone, skipped merrily past as small children do.

Suddenly, Victor pirouetted straight up to Yuri! Yuri had no idea how to react. This man was his hero. How could Victor stoop to notice someone like him?

He had even less of an idea of how to react when Victor seized him and dipped him in a deep kiss. Yuri's glasses fell off and shattered on the ice.

"Let me tutor you," Victor purred. "Also, let's get married."

"O-okay," Yuri stammered. "Can I get my glasses fixed first?"

"No," Victor breathed fondly.


Now that I've actually seen some of this show, I'm impressed by my own accuracy. Well, merry skipping aside. Literally the only thing I knew about Yuri Plisetsky was that there were big arguments about whether it was morally wrong to write shipfic about him (it's not), so I didn't have much to work from there. He'd be furious if he saw this.