#(i got the aa trilogy and we're playing through it together. i think we're the only people excited to get to 2-3)

[somerunner]

Tagged by @lightflame. Alright, I'm ready to answer these questions. I'm usually on mobile, but for a long post like this I'd want to be on a laptop or PC. Wanted to make this a post that's just as long.

Last song I listened to: "AA EE OO" by japanesecoffee. The artist primarily makes songs using audio samples from the Twitch streamer Jerma985, and they're all pretty catchy. In the past few months I've picked up a new artist's songs, then listen to them a full half of the time I spend listening to music, and then after a couple weeks put them into more even ratios with all my other songs. Put another way, I briefly obsess over artists and then listen to them in ever-decreasing amounts as I replace them with other artists. This artist is just the most recent, and I think it's been about a couple weeks. Other artists I got into around the same time are Jazz Emu and Phil Makes Noise.

Last book I read: "Fractal Noise" by Christopher Paolini. It's good, but a little longer than it should be. It could have been cut down by about a quarter and still tell the story it wanted to tell. However, it's a story about grief and stubborn determination, so maybe the slow pacing was integral. I enjoyed it personally, as someone who's read Worm I'm pretty used to slow and confusing pacing decisions. I'd also recommend it to anyone who's read Worm; however, they should be warned that it's got the same overall tone minus the jaded view of the narrator. By that I mean it's largely depressed in tone and half-inspiring, half-discouraging, and leaves a bittersweet taste in your mouth when it's over (as in, "I really wish that the avoidable suffering was avoided, but I'm impressed by how far the characters made it").

Last film I watched: The Phantom of the Opera (2004). A girl I know wanted to get a watch party together and watch it since she's seen it a bunch of times. I was the only one free. It was really good, and I was surprised by how much I still enjoy musicals. It's been a while since the last musical I watched.

Last TV series I watched: "Severance," several months ago. If we're talking full TV seasons. If we're talking the last full episode watched, then that would be "Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan," an anime. Both of these are very good but extremely different. Google says that "Severance" is a thriller, but I would say it's got enough humor to count as a comedy-thriller. Very surreal, and very high quality. "Life Lessons..." is a comedy about burnout and had me cackling on every episode. I don't have premium Crunchyroll so I'm stuck on the third episode for the time being.

Last video game I played: "4D Golf" by CodeParade. I finished the game in about 10 hours, and it is incredibly good. If you play any mini-golf game, play this one. The developer and composer did a great job, and really makes imagining 4D space intuitive. There aren't that many 4D games out there, and I've only played "4D Golf" myself, so I think this should really be more popular for what it is. Plus, I made my own 9-hole level collection (called it "Unfun Dunes" because it's not very polished). If you're interested, check out the devlogs that CodeParade made on his Youtube channel. They're super interesting and are what got me hyped about the game in the first place.

Last thing I googled: "Grandline 3.5" -- so I was watching a Youtube video about a funny grappling experience by Zee Bashew (funny video, I recommend it -- called "Grappling in AD&D is wild"), and one of the comments mentioned a comic called "Grandline 3.5" which, from the name and context, sounded like a D&D retelling of One Piece. It is just that. I read a few pages and might pick it back up later. I was interested since I've read Darths and Droids up through the original trilogy, and it was pretty formative for me. I read it in high school. I quit reading it a little ways into the retelling of Rogue One, but it's still updating and as far as I can tell is just as good as it used to be. Long story short, I'm always interested in D&D webcomics, especially ones told in the style of Darths and Droids (where it's an established story, but the characters are being played by a D&D group, and they're constantly going off the rails). Yes, I know that Darths and Droids is actually not the first of its kind. That would be DM of the Rings. However, I only found DM of the Rings through Darths and Droids, and Darths and Droids is much longer and just as entertaining. Also, I've never played D&D but I might when I have time and a group.

Last thing ate: Rice and cheddar cheese. Usually I eat spaghetti and cheese. Yes, this is really unhealthy, I should eat vegetables, etc. etc. I eat vegetables maybe once a week, and fruit about the same amount. However, I can also easily run a six minute mile and can run at nine-minute mile pace for over an hour on a good day. Never mind, I take it back. That just means that if I took better care of myself, I could be doing even better.

Amount of sleep: 6 hours (complicated). So, I actually took a lot of naps the day before, so it's more like 8-10 hours total. But uninterrupted? 6 hours. And normally, I get about 8 hours. I'm not sure what I should be getting, though, since I usually stay up late and wake up after I've slept through a class or two.

Currently reading: "Bacon Master of the Apocalypse" by Frank Morin. It's been a few months since I've read any chapters in it, and I started it before "Fractal Noise," but I don't know if I should count serial webfiction that is still ongoing.

To pass it on, I'll tag @king-of-the-oreo, @atlasaurelius, @roosinii, @sirswooshnoodles, and @zarohk. There are other active mutuals that I have, but I've tagged them before in other stuff so I want to make sure I've tagged most mutuals once before wrapping back around. But feel free to reblog if you see this post!

Tagged by @bagadew (Also tagging in @waermeflasche because you tagged me weeks ago and I didn't get back to you)

Last song I listened to: Soap by The Oh Hellos. I burn CDs and listen to them in my car. (The first few I tried to give themes and titles, and select the perfect song orders, but ended up kind of bad and the other was cursed and wouldn't play even though I remade it three times, so I just switched to throwing a ton of songs together on "Random Mixes" and enjoying.) I was listening to my very first random mix on the drive home from work and this one came up. It's a pretty snazzy song. I think Theseus and Hello, My Old Heart are my favourites from the band.

Last book I read: Can I do a couple? I just recently finished Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell. It's the first book of Court of Shadows, the sequel series to his Greatcoats series. Greatcoats is one of my favourite series, filled with swashbuckling action, clever humour, and an absolutely miserable protagonist, Falcio val Mond, who always manages to get back up and keep going anyway. I read everything de Castell writes, and after a string of books with severe pacing problems (check out The Malevolent Seven for a book that doesn't have a second act) and other problems (I have a hard time seeing any book topping Crucible of Chaos as the worst book I've read this year), he finally seems to be back. The book didn't pack quite the emotional punch of some of his other books, but it definitely made me want to jump up and cheer for the heroes at the end.

The other book I just finished is The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. I liked her Winternight Trilogy (look it up and be prepared for some absolutely gorgeous covers, with prose to match), so I was excited to see something new from her. This book was about World War I, with some fantasy elements used for magic realism. (Portraying a soldier's struggle with addiction and PTSD through the lens of him losing his soul to the devil was a brilliant idea.) I most subsist on a steady diet of fantasy books, but this one had me hungering to read a few more historical books. I might have to pick up some books about the Halifax Explosion.

Last film I watched: I haven't watched much on my own for a while, but my friends do a movie night every Sunday. The last two times I tuned in, we watched Jesus Christ Superstar and Pokemon 3: Spell of the Unown. They were both fairly cute movies. I liked Judas's actor.

Last TV series I watched: I've been making my way through The Office for the first time. I'm on Season 3 and this happened to me, actually. There was some stuff I was like, "Wow, that was funny. I should tell my coworkers about it," but then I realized that I can't be the guy who tells his coworkers about this funny new show called The Office.

Last video game I played: If visual novels count, Umineko. I've been working my way through it slowly for about five and a half years and I'm finally closing in on the end. It's peak fiction and the greatest love story of the twentieth century. It's also funny I picked a game this insanely long for my first visual novel. Other than visual novels, I just finished Pokemon Legends: Arceus, after putting in 104 hours this year. Completing the Dex is my favourite part of any Pokemon game, so having it be more involved and include a big checklist made the game basically crack for me. I've also been casually playing some Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) with my brother. Every time we play it, I'm always amazed by how good it is and how much content it has. I want to take command posts forever.

Last thing I googled: "Dandadan Aira". I just started the manga the other day and I like her best, so I wanted to double check her full name, I think? Other than that I'm mostly looking up when books are available at my local stores. I've been religiously checking when The Book that Broke the World will be available and I'm not even sure if I'm buying it.

Last thing I ate: A few snacks from my snack drawer. I also had a Quaker yogurt bar at work. I bought a big box of them last year, but I had to throw them out because of the Salmonella. (Chewed through a lot of them before that came out, though, including eating three on an airplane.)

Amount of sleep: Supposedly seven hours, since I went to bed right after finishing The Warm Hands of Ghosts last night. The only problem is that if I get to bed at a good time, I sleep fitfully, so I'm either sleeping poorly or sleeping well, but not getting anywhere near enough sleep.

Currently reading: I started Empire of Silence, the first book of The Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio, at work today. I've had the first three books sitting on my shelf for a year or two and I finally got around to starting it. (I'd resolved to do both this series and Kushiel's Legacy this year, after having both for so long, and I got that one done at the start.) I'm not very far in, but I enjoy the writing style a lot, even if a lot of the worldbuilding is obviously cribbed from Dune. (Whoa, look, mentats.) I've heard it picks up a lot in the second book, so I'm excited for what's in store for me.

Passing this on, I'll tag @somerunner @lyssq @soulsinshadow @lunawithsocks and @dancerladyaqua. (They also have currently watching and sweet, salty, or savoury as questions, which I didn't do.)

[attllhak]

I want to know every one of your wip’s, but I shall limit myself. May I request self-indulgent fic 119 or 120?

I'm happy to talk about all of my wips if you want to know! Now, as for those two... (hops through tabs...)

Ah, got it. 120 is for the merAU, it's what happens when Sky finds Warriors after going to look for him (and promptly getting absorbed into the family Warriors has been adopted into). I don't have enough for it to provide any snippets just yet though, since I just started it. (It is a rewrite of another story that I'm not happy with and would take too much editing to fix, but a lot of that'll be cut in the rewrite, though I can share snippets of it if you'd like.)

119 is an Ace Attorney fic. If you recall from 117 I ended up elaborating on some of the unseen von Karma family, namely in coming up with Annika, MvK's granddaughter and Edgeworth and Franziska's niece. She's roughly 6 or 7 in that fic, which takes place in the trilogy era. By the time of SoJ she'd likely be 16-17 (possibly 18 depending on how I set up the timeline). Either way, by von Karma standards she's more than old enough to have a degree of some kind. So I had a brilliant idea.

We don't know a lot about the von Karmas outside of MvK and Franziska (and Edgeworth to a certain degree), but from what I can tell being a prosecutor is like, a big deal for them. Family legacy, I think. And one very much pushed by MvK. However, by the time we get past the 7yg, I assume a lot of that family has moved away from MvK's toxic obsession with being perfect. So it means I get to do whatever I want with what field Annika goes into.

I had the fun idea of her still being a lawyer, but going into defense instead. The main plot of the fic is Edgeworth asking his fiance, Phoenix, if he'd be able to hire her since her name has a lot of the firms in Germany turning her away (downsides of a family reputation, 'von Karma' is not a name most clients trust) and he's pretty sure Phoenix wouldn't care. Phoenix does not care, and hires her the second it's explained to him. The fic is supposed to cover a few different cases, one or two where Annika is shadowing the other lawyers at the WAA, and then at least one where she serves as the main lawyer in the case, with some fun exploration of how Annika adjusts to something a little different from the rest of her family and her own way of growing past the pressures her family has always been under.

Progress has stagnated on account of realizing I actually need to come up with multiple cases. Anyone who writes casefic regularly, I salute you. This is hard.

I do have enough of the first part prior to any cases to provide snippets though! Enjoy this collection of scenes, including Edgeworth being the most relatable man on the planet.