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Monday, December 14th, 2009
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5:08 pm - PS DON'T TELL ALISON
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Something that struck me whilst playing Shadow of the Colossus: A COLOSSUS'S FIST if you call Agro whilst fighting a Colossus, Wander's cry is much more urgent than it is when you call her in a Colossusless situation. It's a tiny detail, but a rather nice one.
Also, if you're not holding a weapon and press Circle whilst riding Agro, Wander will pat her neck. It is sort of adorable.
The eleventh Colossus is so tiny I am not sure it really counts as a Colossus! Many months ago, I dreamt that I was fighting a 'Colossus' of about the size of a cow and was amused when I woke up by how thoroughly my subconscious had missed the point of a 'Colossus'; I hadn't realised it was foreshadowing.
Then I fell off a waterfall twice on my journey to the twelfth. It was embarrassing and rather horrible. Struggling helplessly against the current! I'm sorry, Wander.
After defeating the twelfth Colossus, I managed to swing the camera at such an angle that it gave me a close-up of Wander, and then paused, puzzled, when I noticed that he appeared to have black veins on his face. Had those always been there? He seemed quite young; it struck me as an unusual character feature.
Then I read up to where I was in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) twilit_wanderer's gamelogs and realised that she'd been commenting on the weirdness of Wander's appearance for some time; I'd kept thinking, 'hmmm, I didn't notice anything, but I'll check that out the next time I play,' and then completely forgetting.
So I reloaded the game, steered Wander into a corner so the camera could have a good look at him, looked up an image from the opening for comparison, and, no, I'm not imagining things. His hands and face and neck are veiny; his clothes are dirty and tattered; his hair is matted and almost black (it was red when the game began). With every colossus Wander kills, his appearance deteriorates just a little more. His girlfriend, meanwhile, is looking far more vibrant than she used to.
I think this is basically the awesomest thing in the world. It's horribly unsettling, of course, but it's such detail in such a minimalist game. I'm trying to think of another character whose appearance gradually evolves over the course of the game, and the closest I can come up with is Seifer's trenchcoat becoming tattered in Final Fantasy VIII.
(I was terrified that one of the effects of Wander's slow transformation was that he NO LONGER AFFECTIONATELY PATTED AGRO WHEN HE DIDN'T HAVE A WEAPON EQUIPPED, OH NO, but then I realised he just didn't pat her when she was actually moving. Thank goodness. Wander's love for Agro is so true, and I would be immensely distressed were he to stop caring about her.)
On the subject of awesome details in videogames: I've never played Left 4 Dead, a zombie apocalypse first-person shooter, but I've looked at screencaps, and this made me laugh really hard. Even in a world of immense danger and no Internet, you can't escape anonymous trolling.
(image source: cowgirlmaxwell's comment in zarla's L4D picspam (fascinating, but beware of many, many, many large images).)
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| Sunday, December 13th, 2009
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12:51 pm - And A Drowsy Numbness Pains My Sense.
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| Saturday, December 12th, 2009
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11:32 am - Van Pelt Could Hang Out With Sara.
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Oh, I love everyone in The Mentalist so much.
( Catching up on The Mentalist. Major spoilers up to 'His Red Right Hand'. )
Entirely unrelatedly, last night I dreamt that I was Merlin (of the BBC Merlin series). Lancelot asked me to marry him whilst we were wrestling on the grass, trying to kill each other. Perplexing! (My response was to bury my head in his shoulder and crack up laughing. Sorry if I offended you, Lancelot, but that's basically the definition of 'mixed messages'.)
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| Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
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12:50 pm - Now To Seek Out Reaction Posts From Weeks Ago.
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I didn't have access to the latest episode of Supernatural, 'Abandon All Hope', for about a week after it aired, and then I had revision delaying my watching of it, but now the exam is over and, after a moment of 'what - what do people do when they're not revising, again?', it occurred to me that I could finally catch up.
( Spoilers for Supernatural 5.10, 'Abandon All Hope'. )
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| Sunday, December 6th, 2009
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1:24 pm - Eddie Izzard Does Not Appreciate Your Threat To His Negative Face.
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Right! I have a rather nasty exam for Communication Analysis on Tuesday. It is one hundred per cent of the mark for the module, and I find myself forced to teach myself more or less everything, because the tutor, although I am sure she is lovely as a person, has generally failed to impart any actual knowledge. I have actually been staying in bed until ten for the past couple of days (it's late for me) because I can't face getting up and confronting all that revision.
So I don't like revising. On the other hand, I like updating my Livejournal, and typing out and rephrasing the things I've learnt will probably help me get them clear in my head.
( Just dumping some revision notes on Conversation Analysis (one of several communication analysis approaches) here. Probably not of much interest to any of you, apart from the one other person taking this exam, but feel free to read them if you'd like. Grice's Cooperative Principle is quite interesting. )
I cannot express how little I am looking forward to this exam. It seems as if communication analysis deals with potentially interesting stuff, but it simply hasn't been made clear enough. I have attended every lecture and almost every seminar, but I feel I could have skipped them all and still found myself beginning my revision from the same point. Doubleplusungood!
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| Saturday, December 5th, 2009
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11:02 am - The Tutor Actually Apologised.
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An incident from my Jane Austen seminar earlier this week:
Tutor: It's a bit like Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson: the genius detective and the really stupid--
Riona: WATSON IS NOT STUPID.
Entire Class: ...
BENEATH THE CUT: possibly the worst crossover idea I have ever had, presented in image form. Beware of flashing image.
( Jedward Cullen? )
I don't know why his clothes are also sparkling. Evidently he is just that sparkly. (And I really don't know why his trousers aren't sparkling if his jacket is. Well, all right, the practical reason is 'the sparkling was starting to hurt my eyes'. Perhaps the trousers are made of extremely dense sparkle-suppressing material.)
To those of you who are not familiar with The X Factor and therefore do not know who these gentlemen are: you are fortunate. Allow me to destroy that fortune with an educational video clip. (WARNING: bad singing. Really, really bad singing. Bad dancing. Bad outfits. These guys are absolutely appalling and bring me so much joy. I laugh uncontrollably every time I watch this clip.)
SO I KNOW WHAT I SHALL NOW BE PICTURING WHENEVER I ENCOUNTER ANYTHING TWILIGHT-RELATED.
Last night, I dreamt that I went to an open-air Supernatural convention on the islands around Sandover Village (Jak and Daxter). Jared and Jensen snogged each other, to amuse the fangirls, and then Jared kissed me (not in front of the fandom, although I remember thinking 'augh, what if someone sees? the fandom will hate me'), presumably to amuse himself. He was very sweet about it. I may now have a bit of a dream-induced crush.
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| Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
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4:17 pm - Allegory, Allegorier, Allegoriest.
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So karma just punished me for going 'hmmm, I'm tired of reading for university, let's take a crack at the Elite Four' by wiping my game of Pokémon Gold. Man, karma, a person cannot revise every moment of the day! Now I'm procrastinating by updating my Livejournal instead, so your stealing my Pokémon from me achieved nothing. Please do not delete my journal, karma.
(Daxyn the Typhlosion, Supersoar (shush) the Fearow, Silver the Shellder, Zuko the Ampharos, Toph the Graveler, Shay the Weepinbell: we may not have become Pokémon masters, but we fought bravely. Let your names stand on my Livejournal as a reminder of your noble efforts.)
Worse things happen at sea (and indeed on land, and indeed to Anthy Himemiya), of course, but the Pokémon trainers amongst you will understand that I am still somewhat put out by this turn of events. Here is an entry of stupid Utena-related things with which I intend to cheer myself up.
It seems appropriate to begin by speculating on which Pokémon the Utena cast would have.
Anthy has a collection of grass types, primarily Tangela, Oddish, Gloom, Vileplume, Bellossom and a vast number of (of course) Roselia. She is particularly fond of one Gloom. Utena suspects that Anthy's refusal to send it out of the kitchen may in part explain her questionable cooking skills.
Akio has something ridiculous. Probably Arceus itself chained up somewhere. Unless he is Arceus, which I suppose is possible.
I was planning to colour-code the Duellists' Pokémon to them, but then my mind gave me the image of Saionji with a Primeape and it won't go away. You've ruined everything, Saionji. Fine, you can have a Primeape. Juri has a Jolteon, and possibly an unwanted shoal of Luvdisc that swim through the air behind her and make her very angry. I can see Touga with a Ninetales, which means Nanami has a Growlithe (Pokémon-assignation logic is an esoteric field), and, er. Sorry, Miki, but I really want to give you a Piplup. I promise the adorable baby penguin doesn't mean I don't respect you as a Duellist.
Wakaba has a Normal or Flying type. Perhaps a little Taillow that sits on her shoulder and whistles incessantly. If Saionji upsets Wakaba, he is in for a great deal of pecking.
Utena herself is really difficult, though. I'm wondering whether perhaps she has an Eevee at the beginning, something with many different paths open to it, and it evolves significantly towards the end of the series. But into what?
And now, a couple of ridiculous Utena videos for you:
- This is the opening video for, I believe, an Utena game for the Sega Saturn, and it actually made me laugh until I cried. Akio, Touga and Saionji simply cannot keep their shirts on.
- I have mostlyacat to thank for drawing my attention to this, a Touga/Akio fanvid set to something called 'The Ding Dong Song'. It is hilarious, and it works disturbingly well.
FINAL HORRIBLE THOUGHT: Akio Ohtori is Edward Cullen. Or, well, perhaps not Edward Cullen specifically (can you imagine Akio driving a Volvo?), but Akio would make an amazing sparkly vampire.
Enjoy the image.
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| Sunday, November 29th, 2009
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9:53 am - Whoops, I Appear To Have Icons.
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So. Er. I've finished watching Revolutionary Girl Utena.
( Spoilers up to the ending. )
I think Revolutionary Girl Utena is going to be one of those fandoms into which I don't feel quite intelligent enough to seriously enter. It is so clever and symbolic! I am intimidated and unobservant! But I love it, and I'm glad I watched, and I am so, so smitten with its main character. You are wonderful, Utena.
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| Saturday, November 28th, 2009
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9:03 am - Dona Dona Dona Dona...
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I am mildly perplexed by the level of technology in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Mobile phones and rotary phones and gramophones? Computers and telegrams? I suppose it's possible for all of these things to coexist, but it does seem slightly odd.
Also, I cannot believe there is an episode named 'Cowbell of Happiness'. That is ridiculous. The episode itself is also ridiculous, of course, but the title is possibly the most ridiculous thing about it. The cowbell didn't even bring that much happiness! (Those of you who haven't watched Utena: you know you're curious.)
( And more Utena ramblings. Spoilers up to episode thirty-two, 'The Romance of the Dancing Girls'. )
Are Touga and Akio having sex? I honestly can't tell. I suppose it's safest to operate under the assumption that Akio is having sex with everyone. (Even you?)
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| Thursday, November 26th, 2009
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11:55 am - I Like Not Being An Invertebrate.
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At the moment, I am re-reading Emma for my Jane Austen course, and I think 'Mr Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile, and succeeded without difficulty upon Mrs Elton's beginning to talk to him' has to be one of my favourite lines ever. You are awesome, Jane Austen. I wish you had a Livejournal.
You know who would be great in Silent Hill? Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey. On some strange level, she'd love it. (On most levels, of course, she'd be absolutely terrified.)
( Thoughts on sibling relationships in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Spoilers up to the fifteenth episode, 'The Landscape Framed by Kozue'. )
My housemate invited me to watch an episode of Spooks last night. This somehow led to the following exchange:
Riona: Do you find the idea of Richard Armitage being waterboarded strangely erotic?
Riona's Housemate: ...I'm not going to answer that.
I enjoy this household.
In more Tales of Riona's Housemate: a couple of weeks ago, a Facebook matchmaking application recommended a rather alarming-looking man named 'Steven' to her.
(Riona and Riona's Housemate are at the computer, looking at Steven's picture.)
Riona's Housemate: He looks like the sort of bloke I'd run away with.
Riona: ...
Riona's Housemate: ...RUN AWAY FROM.
Riona: (never quite stops laughing)
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| Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
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11:09 am - It's Not True.
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( Ramblings on Revolutionary Girl Utena. Spoilers up to the eleventh episode. )
I'm enjoying seeing all the duelists' different fighting styles. I think Touga's is probably my favourite, because mind games are such fun.
I'm up to the fourteenth episode now: the start of the Black Rose saga, and it's all becoming a bit unsettling (but still awesome!). Utena herself is still my favourite character, and I'm starting to wonder whether I should prepare a room in the 'favourite fictional characters ever' section of my heart. She reminds me a little of Yuna of Final Fantasy X (who is already happily established in the 'favourite fictional characters ever' section), but spunkier and more outspoken and with crossdressing and swordfighting. I'm not sure I can imagine a more perfect combination.
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| Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
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11:25 am - Break The World's Shell.
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I have started watching Revolutionary Girl Utena (up to the seventh episode), and I am enjoying it very much, but I am also tremendously confused. Did - did a shirtless guy really just punch out a kangaroo?
I am a bit in love with Utena herself. So gorgeous and noble and brave! Such hearts in my eyes during the ball episode. I love that, although she wears boys' clothes (and they look fantastic on her), being a prince and being a woman aren't mutually exclusive to her. She's boyish, but she's not unfeminine. Not that there's anything wrong with unfeminine female characters (Toph! ♥!), but I really love the blend that Utena manages. She makes me want to be a prince as well.
DEAR EVERYONE: STOP SLAPPING ANTHY. Anthy is a sweetheart! She has a snail named Juliet; you can't not love her. And Miki is adorable, and Juri fascinates me, and Touga seems such an intriguing git, and I generally like this series enormously.
(I hadn't realised it was something I was missing, but so few of my fandoms have female characters at the centre. I love Supernatural and The Mentalist and House and all my other fandoms in which the central figure(/s) is(/are) male, but there's something rather delightful about watching something that centres so clearly on two women for once. Ashes to Ashes and Final Fantasy X-2 are the only other female-focused fandoms of mine I can think of off the top of my head.)
Last night, I dreamt that I was fighting Derren Brown on a bridge over rushing water. With a pole. And a baby. (Seriously, the baby was a weapon. It would fly at him and punch him a lot.)
Eventually, I managed to destroy the bridge so he wouldn't be able to come after us, but then he went into a lecture about mentally tricking one's opponent ("If I say 'there's no bridge, it's just water,' most people will just think, 'oh, well, it must be true'"), so were we really safe?
(An earlier dream that I just stumbled across in my notebook and which rather amused me: Dreamt that Derren Brown was performing a trick with me regarding fear. He managed to make me pull three Jacks out of a deck, having previously informed me that he was afraid of Jacks. Afterwards, I waved them in his face and said 'woooo, Jacks', which was, I'll confess, a bit gittish of me.
If you are afraid of cards, Derren, becoming a magician is a terrible career choice.)
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| Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
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4:15 pm - It's Our Housemate, Jensen Ackles.
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Stolen from wanttobeatree:
1. Write down the names of 10 characters.
2. Write a fic of fifteen words or fewer for every prompt, using the characters determined by the numbers. Do NOT read the prompts before you do step 1.
1. Dean Winchester (Supernatural)
2. Derren Brown
3. Ruby (Supernatural)
4. Merlin (er, Merlin)
5. Balthier Bunansa (Final Fantasy XII)
6. Yuna (Final Fantasy X)
7. Pyramid Head (Silent Hill 2)
8. Patrick Jane (The Mentalist)
9. Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who/Torchwood)
10. Castiel (Supernatural)
( Writing a fic in fifteen words is, it turns out, rather tricky. )
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10:27 am - I'm Not Like You; I Have An Amazing Hat.
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( Thoughts on Merlin 2.09 )
There's something rather nice about having something I can just love wholeheartedly without caring about plot issues or historical accuracy. Merlin is fun, and I love all the characters, and that's all I need from it. I wish there were a new episode to make me smile like an idiot every week, but I imagine that would be rather taxing for the actors.
This series has generally had more Arthur-and-Merlin interaction than the first, which is delightful, because their dynamic is my favourite. Keep it up, Merlin! (Let's have some more Gwen-and-Morgana as well. And, hey, Arthur and Morgana haven't interacted for ages, have they? They have quite a fun relationship. Look, let's just have an episode in which Arthur, Merlin, Gwen and Morgana all go on an adorable adventure together.)
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| Saturday, November 21st, 2009
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10:55 am - Perhaps It Was The Doctor.
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Storytime!
Once upon a time, when I was a fairly small Riona and my brother Joseph was even smaller, he and my (also small) cousin came up to me in a state of great agitation and swore they had seen an alien in my room. It was tall and grey, I seem to recall, and had somehow exited through the window.
Because I was not quite small enough to be entirely credulous about such things, I went into my room to investigate, and my brother followed. (My cousin, I think, may have refused to go in.)
There was a small grey pebble on the inside windowsill, and my brother decided that the alien must have left it there. I was beginning to see what was going on here: they had put a pebble on my windowsill, and now they were trying to persuade me that an alien had been in my room. Well, I wasn't falling for that.
"Look, it's only a pebble," I said, reaching out towards it.
"Don't touch it!" my brother exclaimed.
I touched it.
It exploded.
I have no idea how such a ripe puffball had managed to grow on my window without my noticing, but it certainly made for a traumatic childhood experience.
Shall we share amusing stories about our childhoods in the comments to this entry? I think that could be quite fun. (Whilst we're on the subject: I've been short-sighted since birth, but I didn't have my eyes tested until I was seven or so. Because it is difficult to see rain when one is short-sighted, I used to think it was invisible, like wind. One day, when it was raining particularly heavily, I realised I could actually see the rain if I concentrated hard enough. I thought I had superpowers.)
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| Friday, November 20th, 2009
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12:52 pm - Looking For Elephant; Be Right Back.
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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3:26 pm - Gwen/Thirteen Is Also An Intriguing Possibility.
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I love this meme. It boils my journal down to its absolute essence.
- Write a list of characters and number them.
- Input the number of characters into this random number generator as the maximum and generate two numbers.
- Ramble about how the corresponding pairing/partnership/general interaction would (or, indeed, wouldn't) work. Perhaps write a snippet/one-sentence fic for it if you're feeling brave.
- Repeat to your heart's content.
( Fandoms represented: Derren Brown, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy XII, Supernatural, Harry Potter, Torchwood, House, Silent Hill, Avatar, Scrubs, Kingdom Hearts, Hetalia, The Mentalist, Jak and Daxter. )
I was just looking over some of the writing I did for NaNoWriMo in 2004, and, whilst much of it makes me cringe (the wordcount-padding is embarrassingly obvious), this part rather amused me:
Hero was making a valiant effort to remain calm, but it was terribly difficult. Love Interest, kidnapped? He would obviously have to do something about it.
Friend had teased Hero sometimes that he was falling in love with Love Interest, but he generally just ignored it. She was his friend. Nothing more. The fact that her name happened to be ‘Love Interest’ was clearly an unfortunate coincidence.
MY GOODNESS, SHE'S BEEN KIDNAPPED? I SHALL OBVIOUSLY HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT.
Also, I am mildly bewildered by the fact that one of the characters, Tai, is totally Sokka. I wrote this four years before watching Avatar and several months before Avatar even began, but he is still totally Sokka. How bizarre.
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| Saturday, November 14th, 2009
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12:19 pm - Laura Probably Appears. It Ends Well For Nobody.
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Today, I received a postcard from Dean Winchester, intended for Sam, from Spain. It contains the line 'I need your help on this case because I don't hablo any Español'.
I don't know who amongst you has been in Spain recently, but it made me grin, so thank you!
My goodness, I haven't speculated on Patrick Jane in Silent Hill! Patrick Jane would be great in Silent Hill. They're waiting for you, Jane. And he knows they're dead, and he doesn't believe in ghosts or resurrection or any form of communication from the dead, and he knows he has to go anyway.
The letter must have come from Red John, after all, and maybe - just maybe - there's a chance that Red John will be waiting in this place to taunt him.
And Red John is what he needs.
(He isn't half-hoping that it might be true. He isn't. That's not why he's going. He's not that deluded.
He's not.)
He leaves a note - ending this, be back later - on Lisbon's desk, and the moment she reads it she runs out to find him. He's not answering his phone, probably already halfway across the country, and they're supposed to be working on a case, but they can lose a murderer once in a while. They can't lose Jane.
There's a smiley face drawn in blood on the door of the Lakeview Hotel.
Why hasn't anyone written this?
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| Friday, November 13th, 2009
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7:04 pm - I'm Captain Basch!
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( Thoughts on episode 5.09 of Supernatural )
Hmmm, that wasn't really long enough to justify an entry, was it? What else can I say?
...well, there is a video on YouTube of nothing but Vaan saying 'DON'T LISTEN TO ONDORE'S LIES'. Repeated over and over again. For five minutes.
It is the most inane thing in the entire world (with the possible exception of this), and twenty seconds in I was laughing so hard I was crying.
(I didn't watch the entire thing, if you're wondering. I managed to stop it after a minute or so. Had I watched it all, I wouldn't have been able to post this for shame.
That minigame was a nightmare.)
On the subject of 'WHY DOES THIS EXIST?'-reaction-inducing things on YouTube, have three John Barrowmans dancing to 'Single Ladies' in tinfoil trousers, if you haven't seen it already.
Ah, the Internet. Humanity's finest invention. I think what we can learn from this is that I should always make sure my reaction posts have a fair degree of substance, because otherwise the things I will dredge up to fill the rest of the entry will be incredibly stupid.
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(34 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, November 12th, 2009
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9:51 am - Fanfiction: Time-Travelling Sky Pirates of Ivalice (1sentence)
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