Trabia Garden

I've seen a few of you post this shipping meme lately, and it looks like it could be fun! Let's have a crack at it.


1. List three shipping tropes you love

'I'm a cynic, and you're the idealist who makes me a little less cynical.' Ninth Doctor/Rose, Satoshi/Daisuke, Riku/Sora, Cox/JD, Jeff/Annie, Ikusaba/Naegi.

'You're weird and unsettling and I don't trust you, but I also reluctantly find you fascinating, and in these circumstances we're going to have to spend a lot of time together; there's no avoiding it.' Hinata/Komaeda, Neku/Joshua, Sara/Keiji, Laura/Travis, Battler/Beatrice.

'We'd probably never look at each other romantically under normal circumstances, but we've found ourselves isolated together, and maybe that's changed things.' Mike/Sam, Celes/Sabin, Hope/Serah, Mark/Helly.

BONUS FOURTH ANSWER: 'I'm quietly and intensely in love with you, but I don't ever expect my feelings to be returned, and I don't have any plans to pursue you romantically. I'm just in love with you; it's an inescapable fact of my life.' Riku/Sora, Satoshi/Daisuke, Gilbert/Oz, Goh/Ash.


( The rest of the meme is under the cut! )


I want to give honourable mentions to all the ships I didn't talk about in this meme, but we'll be here all day if I do!

I've been thinking recently about silent protagonists.

It tends to put me off trying a videogame if the protagonist is silent. I often find it hard to get invested in silent protagonists, and that can really impair my enjoyment of a game. If I'm going to spend hours inhabiting a particular character, I'd like to care about that character!

However, in recent years, I've discovered a couple of silent protagonists who really clicked for me. I thought it might be interesting - for me, if no one else - to consider which silent protagonists work for me, and what makes them work.

Therefore: here's a list of silent protagonists from games I've played, in roughly descending order of fondness!

I'm defining 'silent protagonist' here as a character who hits both of the following points:

a) They are unvoiced or minimally voiced. They might have voiced action grunts or brief battle quotes, but they're never going to say an eloquent line of dialogue aloud.
b) If they speak at all, it's exclusively or almost exclusively through occasional dialogue options chosen by the player. They don't paraphrase or elaborate on the dialogue option; the text in the option is all you get.

I've omitted characters from games I never really played enough of to form a strong impression of the protagonist, e.g. Bloodborne and the various Zelda games I've unsuccessfully attempted to get into. I've also probably omitted some characters just because they slipped my mind.


Silent protagonists I love:

Protagonist (Persona 5). I've never seen another silent protagonist with quite as much personality as Joker. Plenty of voiced protagonists don't have as much personality as Joker. His animations are stylish and distinctive; his dialogue options are frequently hilarious. He's a bold, playful, sarcastic little shit and I love him.

Sunny (Omori). The game really immerses you in Sunny's head, in a very literal way. Although he never speaks, I got a strong impression of his fears and delusions and psychological struggles, and I ended up getting very attached to this kid. Omori doesn't typically give you choices more complex than 'yes/no', but I found it interesting that the game would sometimes offer yes/no choices as a way of indicating hesitation, fear or reluctance; there are times when just the fact that you're being offered the choice tells you something about Sunny's character, because it means he's torn between the two options.

Kris (Deltarune). I find Kris fascinating. There's something so strange and dark and unsettling about them, and the glimpses we get of their character paint an interestingly complicated picture. They're lonely, they're bored, they're an outcast, they're sentimental, they have a cruel streak, their friends mean a lot to them. The player, in their role as the one controlling the protagonist, is able to make Kris do things against their will, but it's unclear how Kris feels about the player's presence overall. I'm so interested to see how the rest of Deltarune goes.


Silent protagonists I like:

Chell (Portal). Chell is truly silent, never gets so much as a dialogue option, but the gameplay conveys an impression of her character as relentlessly determined. She also stands out to me for being a female silent protagonist, which I haven't seen many of! It often feels like protagonists aren't allowed to be female unless there's somehow a reason for them to be female, so I appreciate the fact that Chell is a woman despite the fact that, if she were a man, pretty much nothing about the game would change. She's not a woman for plot purposes. She's not a woman for eye candy purposes; it's a first-person game and you almost never see her on screen. She just happens to be a woman.

Protagonist (Persona 3). I'm talking about the original game here, as I haven't yet played Reload. The Persona 3 protagonist doesn't have anywhere near the amount of personality that comes through in Persona 5's protagonist, but I still got a slight impression of his character. The Persona 3 protagonist generally comes across to me as clueless and eager to please, which is mildly endearing.

Protagonist (Persona 4). Again, I only got a faint sense of personality from Persona 4's protagonist, but there's still enough there for me to pick up on something: a quiet, serious, dedicated kid who cares very strongly about his friends. He also loves cats; that's important!

Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog). Sonic gets an unfair advantage here because I used to watch The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and read Sonic the Comic! But his animations still give him some cute personality as a silent protagonist, e.g. the way he gets visibly impatient if you leave him motionless.

Amaterasu (Okami). I considered putting Amaterasu in the 'basically indifferent to, but they get points for being cute' tier below! But, in addition to being cute, she gets extra points for the touch of personality in her reactions, and in being able to bite anyone.

Stanley (The Stanley Parable). As with Chell, Stanley is truly and completely silent, but the nature of the gameplay gives you an impression of his character: rebellious, contrary, curious. He's really only made interesting by the narrator's obsession with him, though.


Silent protagonists I'm basically indifferent to, but they get points for being cute:

Ori (Ori and the Blind Forest). Ori is, to be fair, very cute, and a little personality comes across in the story cutscenes. It's possible I'm ranking Ori down slightly because I hated the ending of Ori and the Will of the Wisps so much that it impacted my feelings about the entire series.

Dixie/Donkey/Diddy Kong (Donkey Kong Country). There's some personality in their animations, but I never became invested in them as characters.


Silent protagonists I'm indifferent to:

Frisk (Undertale). There's some cute personality in some of the ACT options, but overall I didn't get especially attached to Frisk.

Jak (Jak & Daxter). In the first game, I had no real interest in Jak; the most interesting thing about him is probably the fact that this quiet kid is friends with the non-stop chatterbox Daxter. (Which works out pretty well; as a quiet kid, I found it comfortable to be friends with other kids who were happy to talk without much input from me!) In Jak II he gained the ability to talk (and a lot of trauma) and immediately became a lot more interesting to me!

Reycho (World's End Club). This kid has basically no personality, but he escapes last place because he joined in the stupid 'A human, a human, a human!' dance that made me crack up.

Mario (Super Mario series). Mario is, of course, a classic videogame protagonist who has starred in a lot of well-crafted games! But I do not care about him as a character.


Separately, there's a 'this isn't a character; this is just me' section that doesn't really fit into the fondness ranking:

Protagonist (Pokémon). The protagonist of Pokémon games is just me. It's a kid, and it's often a boy; in Pokémon games where you choose the protagonist's gender, I'll just go with whichever protagonist I prefer the design of. But it's still me.

When I'm playing as a boy in Pokémon games, I usually name the protagonist Rakuni. (If I'm playing as a girl, of course, I'll go with Riona.) But 'Bulby is the protagonist's Bulbasaur' or 'Bulby is Rakuni's Bulbasaur' would be an absolutely insane thing to say. Bulby is my Bulbasaur.

There are Pokémon protagonist designs I like more than others; my favourite is the male protagonist (Hilbert) in Pokémon Black and White. But I can't rank the characters by fondness; they're all just me.


I'm not sure what conclusions I can draw from this exercise!

I suppose, looking back over this list, I find it interesting that my three favourite silent protagonists each caught my attention in different ways. Joker's personality shines through in his charming animations and fun dialogue options. Sunny's trauma and inner thoughts are conveyed to the player through the game's environments and mechanics. Kris is a mystery who you learn about primarily through the way other characters react to or talk about them.

So I suppose there are multiple ways to create an interesting silent protagonist! It's still rare for games to present me with a silent protagonist who really catches my attention, but it's good to know that it can be done.

On Tumblr, I reblogged a post inviting people to ask my top five of anything. Cinder_Quill asked me for my 'top 5 fictional characters who make the WORST decisions'. This was a pretty fun list to make, so I thought I'd reproduce my answer here!


Oh, man, I love so many characters who make bad decisions! I'm just going to pluck some out of the air.

I'm not sure whether your question was 'who are your five favourite characters who make terrible decisions?' or 'of your favourite characters, which five make the worst decisions?', so I'll give you two lists.


Five terrible decision-makers who I love, emphasis on 'who I love':

- Sean Diaz from Life Is Strange 2. Look, I cannot blame this kid for going on the run with his nine-year-old brother. He was panicking, the police were coming, and a police officer had just ruined his entire life, so naturally he was unwilling to stick around and encounter more of them. It was a deeply understandable decision, but it was nonetheless a decision that fucked a lot of things up.

- Ellie from The Last of Us. I started loving Ellie in the first game, which was before she started making really terrible decisions. But I still love her after her desperate 'if I kill enough people, I'll feel better, right? right???' quest of the second game, and that definitely means she qualifies for this list.

- Jack Shephard from Lost. Jack is a grieving, angry, unstable mess who's been thrown into a leadership position when he's barely clinging on to any form of reason with his fingernails. He has a lot of intense feelings, a gigantic saviour complex, poor self-control and no ability to delegate. Everything he does is a) guaranteed to blow up in his face and b) absolutely fascinating to me.

- James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2. Look, if your dead wife tells you to come to a town, and then the town is full of monsters, you turn around and leave. I feel like there was another big terrible decision he made too, but I can't - I can't quite remember. That's weird. I wish I had a recording or something to jog my memory.

- Light Yagami from Death Note. Light is very smart, but he's also very proud, and he loves using his own intelligence to convince himself that the correct course of action coincidentally happens to be the thing he really wants to do. Yes, if he kills these people in this way, it'll make him look suspicious. But that's what he wants! It's all part of his ingenious plan to catch L, and totally not just because he wants to send L a personal 'fuck you' message. The 'fuck you' is coincidental. This is a very smart move.


Five terrible decision-makers who I love, emphasis on 'terrible decision-makers':

- Seifer Almasy from Final Fantasy VIII. One of the first terrible decision-makers I ever developed a fondness for! Seifer, you can't assist an evil sorceress in taking over the world just because you think it's cool and romantic and you really want to show up your rival at school.

- WD Gaster from zarla's Undertale fancomic Handplates. Gaster is an expert in doing terrible things while convincing himself that there's definitely, definitely no other course of action. He's awful and I love him.

- Chloe Price from Life Is Strange. Chloe is an absolute disaster in a way I find refreshing from a female character. Playing Life Is Strange is a struggle because I want Chloe to like me, but everything she wants me to do is terrible. I don't want to steal money or shoot people or hang up on my distraught friend, Chloe!

- Aaaaand Jack Shephard and Light Yagami again. Fascinating characters. I could watch them making ill-advised decisions all day.


Honourable mentions to the other characters who crossed my mind while I was working on these lists: Mike Munroe, Jeff Winger, Mondo Owada, Dr Cox, Keiichi Maebara, and Lightning 'look, I don't expect punching a god in the face to go well, but I reeeeeally want to punch this god in the face' Farron.

If you'd like to ask my top five of anything in the comments, incidentally, go ahead!

Over the past few years, I've noticed a pattern where I go into a spiral of writer's insecurity after posting certain types of fic. These are usually little ficlets, or fics made up of thematically connected scenes.

Basically, the fics that set off my insecurity are fics that don't have a story; they're little pieces of character introspection or interaction that don't really go anywhere. I worry that I'm wasting people's time with them.

This is extremely silly for a number of reasons, among which are:

- I don't judge other people for writing similar things at all! Why would I? If it's something I'm not interested in, I don't have to read it; if it's something I am interested in, I'll be delighted that it exists.
- Fics made up of thematically connected scenes are extremely common! The '5+1 Things' format is an entire fanfiction genre devoted to it, and there are 32,000 works with that tag on AO3.
- My fanfiction is not taking up vast tracts of space on the Internet that could otherwise be used for more 'worthwhile' writing. AO3 isn't going to run out of space to host someone's novel-length masterpiece because I posted something frivolous.

Anyway, in an effort to be less silly about this, I thought I'd attempt some low-pressure frivolous writing. Therefore: am I actually going to post a fic request meme? I haven't done this in over a decade!

Tell me a fic concept you'd like to see me write, and I'll attempt to write a few lines of it.

If you're not sure which fandoms I'm familiar with, the fandom list on my AO3 account is probably a good place to start. If you have multiple ideas, feel free to make multiple requests and I'll pick which one(s) to write.

There are a handful of things I'd personally prefer not to write, e.g. suicide, sexual content involving characters under fifteen, Teddie from Persona 4. If you're not sure where my boundaries lie, though, you're welcome to suggest your idea anyway; I can always just opt not to write it.

Also, if someone else in the comments posts a concept that appeals to you, feel free to write it yourself!

At the end of 2021, I wrote up all the fic ideas I’d been scribbling down in my diaries over the years. I’m about to switch diaries again, so I found myself thinking about how to continue to archive these concepts in the future.

Therefore, here’s the start of a potential annual tradition! When I finish a diary, I’m going to write up the fic ideas at the back. If I’ve written the fic, I’ll include a link to it. If I’ve started the fic, I’ll share a snippet (or everything I’ve written, if I’ve barely started). If I haven’t started it, I’ll write at least a hundred words on the spot.

Let’s see how this goes!

I’ll start with the ones I’ve written in full. Fandoms: Life Is Strange: True Colors, Deltarune, Uncharted, Horizon Zero Dawn, Doctor Who, Persona 5. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.


( Written fics from my 2021-22 diary. )


Next, let’s look at the works in progress (or at least the works that were started; I’m not sure they’re actively progressing). Fandoms: Bravely Default II, Life Is Strange: True Colors, Exit/Corners, Persona 5. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.


( In-progress fics from my 2021-22 diary. )


And now we reach the scariest category: the fic ideas I haven’t touched and now have to write something for. Fandoms: Undertale, Life Is Strange: True Colors, Until Dawn, Danganronpa 2, Doctor Who, The Great Ace Attorney, Zanki Zero: Last Beginning. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.


( 2021-22 fics I hadn't started... until now. )


And that’s everything! I hope I keep this up in future years; it’s a nice little exercise. Maybe some of these fics will actually get finished? Time will tell.

If I've written at least ten thousand words of fanfiction for a particular canon, across at least three fics, I'll write an entry talking about how that canon fits into my fandom history. With the completion of Vessels (I'm both thrilled and terrified by the amount of engagement this fic got; Deltarune fandom is huge!), Undertale... sort of qualifies?


Undertale...?

I first became aware of Undertale when zarla made a post about it, two weeks after its release. I'd heard of Toby Fox previously, but to me he was just one of the lead composers for Homestuck. I had no idea what to expect from him as a game developer, beyond 'extremely good music'.

Still, zarla's description sounded interesting! I checked out the demo, which intrigued me enough to buy the full game.

I played Undertale at the age of twenty-seven and had an extremely good time! It's a fun, charming game with a fascinating battle system and an undercurrent of interesting darkness.

Why am I so uncertain about whether Undertale actually counts as one of my main fandoms? Well, I've sort of written four Undertale fics. I have also sort of never written an actual Undertale fic. Two of my fics are for zarla's incredible Handplates AU fancomic. Two of them are for Deltarune, another game by Undertale's creator, which features Undertale characters but is not a prequel or a sequel; its relationship to the original game is extremely unclear.

Does any of that count as Undertale fanfiction? Who knows? But I'm giving it a 'my fandom history' writeup anyway.

I suppose I should talk about my experience with Deltarune here as well! I played the first chapter of Deltarune at the age of thirty and fell in love with it as soon as I'd stopped being terrified by it; the opening is extremely unsettling! I love the interaction the introduction of party members adds, and I'm considerably more interested in Deltarune's protagonist than I was in Undertale's; Kris, despite being just as quiet, feels much less like a blank slate.

I'm a lot more active about looking for Deltarune fan content than I ever was with Undertale. Playing Undertale was a fairly self-contained experience for me; Deltarune is the game that dragged me into the actual fandom. I'm looking forward to the next instalment, although I don't imagine we'll be seeing it for a while!


Favourite character: Probably Susie of Deltarune. She's refreshingly straightforward in a game full of mysteries, and everything she says is hilarious. I hope one day you get unbanned from free ham sandwich day, Susie. (Bonus 'that doesn't really count' answer: Gaster from zarla's Handplates AU, who is an incredible self-destructive mess who makes the worst possible decision at every turn while furiously telling himself he doesn't feel bad about it. He's awful. I love him.)
Favourite pairing: I don't ship anything very hard in the Undertale universe, but possibly Kris/Noelle, which has interestingly horrifying potential. It's certainly the only Undertale/Deltarune ship I've actually gone looking for fanart of. (Look at this gorgeous Utena-inspired piece by krismastree!) (Bonus 'that doesn't really count' answer: Gaster/Alphys from Handplates is extremely cute and sad.)
Number of words written: 10,341

Snippet: I didn't think I had any unfinished Undertale fanfiction to share here, but I've just remembered this little snippet, which I actually wrote before any of the Undertale fics I've finished. It's... it's for Handplates, so I still haven't actually written anything for Undertale canon. Whoops.


( Undertale (Handplates AU) unfinished snippet. Gaster and Sans, 2017. )

The second chapter of Deltarune came out a few days ago! I replayed the first chapter, to refresh my memory (and because I'd lost my save when switching computers), and then charged through chapter two at a frankly ill-advised clip.

I made notes on both chapters, which I'll put under separate cuts, in case anyone hasn't finished chapter two yet and wants to read my first-chapter notes without the risk of spoilers.


( Notes on replaying chapter one of Deltarune. )


It's been interesting to refresh my memory! Let's head into chapter two.


( Notes on chapter two of Deltarune. )


I thought after the first chapter that I might like Deltarune more than Undertale, and I can now say it with confidence. Undertale is a good game, but the inclusion of party members in Deltarune really adds something. (And by 'something' I mean 'lots and lots of fun dialogue'.)

I'm going to write multiple AUs of an AU fancomic and nobody can stop me.


Title: False Reset
Fandom: Handplates (Undertale fancomic by zarla)
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4,000
Summary: Gaster finds himself in the past, before he attached the handplates. Perhaps it's an opportunity to make different choices; perhaps he'll make exactly the same choices again. Perhaps the reset isn't as clean as he first thought.


( False Reset )

I don't think I've written a second-person fic since I was a teenager, but somehow Deltarune seems to demand it.


Title: Caged
Fandom: Deltarune
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,100
Summary: Whose soul is this in your chest? Why won't it leave you alone? How can you stop it?


( Caged )

I was thinking 'I wonder what Toby Fox is up to' just recently, and now we know! I wasn't expecting there to be another Undertale game, but I am not complaining for a second.

When you try to install Deltarune, it asks you to accept a licence agreement. The full text of the agreement is 'YOU ACCEPT EVERYTHING THAT WILL HAPPEN FROM NOW ON.'


( Thoughts on the Deltarune first-chapter demo. )


I've no idea when the rest of the game is coming out; it doesn't sound like it'll be any time soon. But I'm looking forward to it!