#then again i haven't actually read legends and lattes

[greyias]

9 people I want to know better —

Tagged by @commander-krios -- thank you for the tag!

last song: "Love From the Other Side" by Fall Out Boy

favourite color: teal/turquoise

currently watching: Critical Role Campaign 2, I just haven't had the brain to watch much else lately (and it's easy to start and stop)

last movie: God... I think it might have been Cocaine Bear back in March...

currently reading: Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree. It's basically someone writing a D&D coffee shop AU, but it's actually set in a D&D type setting. It's very cozy and fun. A+++ so far, I'm in the middle of it and loving it

sweet/spicy/savory: Hmm, they all have their merits and moments. I think I prefer savory over all, but the other two add spice into the mix

relationship status: all the single ladies

current obsession: Baldur's Gate 3, I cannot stop. Will not stop. Okay one day I will stop but that day is not this day

last thing I googled: "bg3 read minds" -- so, on brand

currently working on: super sekrit gift exchange things, and a few long languishing wips that will get attention again once I find where my brain went

Tagging: @vihola @queen-scribbles @briehalbers and @arideya

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #1

And so a new year begins and i come to you with a weekly reading log a few days late! This is for a few reasons, the first of which is I did not actually do a lot of reading. I did some! but not much. In my daydreams about this stretch of time between visiting home for the holidays and starting up the grad school semester again I thought I would be reading nearly every minute I had. Instead, I spent the first week getting my life in order for the coming year (as millennials and my mother would say: Adulting). What spare time I had was not spent reading, it was spent working on a crochet project. The final reason this reading log comes to you late is that I haven't quite decided how I want to format my reading log this year. It will mostly be the same as last year, but maybe with a few changes to how i color code things. If you have suggestions for formatting feel free to let me know

Finished:

false rings by evilmageclub on ao3

the final chapter of this atmospheric melancholy Samot/Samothes getting-back-together fic was published while I was finishing up the marathon. Everything I hoped for for the conclusion. Also reading this fic made me realize that I imagine this it, Seasons of Hieron in general, and Aubade specifically in the style of Studio Ghibli

Started and Finished:

little cruelties by misspickman on ao3

while somehow i mis-titled this in my journal entry as "literal cruelties" (???), i have been meaning to read this fic for a bit because it's subject matter is of deep interest to me. you love to read a fic about repressed trauma and embarrassing panic attacks while waiting for two hours at the dmv (i was waiting at the dmv, the fictional panic attacks were happening in different situations)

Ongoing:

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

read another chapter of this while spending time with my girlfriend after holidays apart. like i might have said before, don't expect me to finish this anytime soon. it's not a read that inspires urgency, but it is good for reading aloud while cuddling

~~~

While there wasn't a lot of reading for the first week of the year, that won't be the case for the future. I have put in the order for my books for this upcoming semester and already begun to chip away at reading assignments so there is lots and lots of reading to look forward to (and hopefully even some that I choose for myself!)

[kabuwu]

3, 4, 13, and 17!

3) What were your top five books of the year?

literally the 5 books in the Inheritance Cycle.. I started the series again because the 5th book was coming out (it has since come out and i LOVED it) and it made me remember why i loved the series in the first place + had me realize i did NOT understand alot of the story when i was younger!! felt incredibly nice to revisit and my favorite thing about this series is the relationship between Dragon and Rider.. :,)

4) Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

.. this is going to be very strange bc I haven't actually read her work yet + she is an author I found on tiktok (im. very hesitant on taking recs from there and that will reflect in a later answer) --> her name is C.M. Alongi and I really like her current series she's doing on Tiktok that she's writing a book on rn - I really like the way she portrays her characters and her ability in weaving a story together .. idk if that makes sense lol

13) What were your least favorite books of the year?

it was called The Chocolate Kiss.. I actually really liked the beginning of it! The author did a super good job in setting a very magical, cozy scene, and I also really like the dynamic between the female lead and her aunts !! However the male lead was. Insufferable imo .. I mentally kinda checked out of the book when he uh. broke into the female lead's house . and like the book just kinda glosses over it? It was supposed to be romantic in some way maybe? It wasn't for me to say the least, i think part of why i dislike it is the disappointment bc I thought the premise was interesting and the beginning was promising

17) Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Legends and Lattes! This is also a huge tiktok rec - I was wary of it at first bc of that.. I did buy a physical copy eventually but didn't read it for a long while. However, a close friend of mine read it and said she really liked it, so I finally gave it a try !! I ended up REALLY liking it - Tiktok is hit or miss (ALOT of Miss) but I am very intrigued by the "cozy fantasy" subgenre this falls into and hope to find more books that fall into it

End of Year Book Asks - give me one of the numbers and I will answer the corresponding question!

[ryttu3k]

End of year meme! Check out last year's version here!

1. Song of the year?

Måneskin - Honey! (Are U Coming?), although Fifteen's theme from Doctor Who has grasped me over the last few days. More music-specific stuff here!

2. Album of the year?

Strictly speaking the only full album I heard was Måneskin - Rush, and that had… some issues even though I love most of it, haha.

3. Favourite musical artist / group you started listening to this year?

Can we count the BG3 soundtrack as a new artist?

4. Movie of the year?

I rewatched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory last night and that was... it, so that, I guess!

5. TV show of the year?

I still haven't recovered from Good Omens season 2.

6. Episode of TV or webisode that defined the year for you?

Episode 2.06 of Good Omens, Doctor Who - all four specials.

7. Favourite actor of the year?

Honestly it's gotta be David Tennant. Like, between Good Omens and Doctor Who? Yeah. Neil Newbon comes in a very close second, though!

8. Game of the year?

It's a. It's actually a tie which is goddamn unheard of in a Zelda release year, but Baldur's Gate 3 genuinely nearly kicked Tears of the Kingdom aside??

9. Best month for you this year?

Oh man tricky. Do I say October because I went on my first actual proper holiday in eight and a half years? November for the Maneskin concert? Or do they lose points because I had COVID in late Oct/early Nov? Let's skip both and go with June (Vivid down in Sydney and the single greatest sorbet I've ever tried, a super fun VtM tabletop session, and got Operation YEETerus more or less confirmed)!

10. Something that made you cry this year?

Cried pretty much the whole way through the end of Tears of the Kingdom, does that count?

11. Something you want to do again next year?

Ooh I'd love to go back down to Sydney for Vivid!

12. Talk about a new friend you made this year

Shrug emoji. You're all cool.

13. How was your birthday this year?

Super chill. Ordered pizza and ate ice cream, and a few days earlier when my brother came up, we went to one of our favourite Lebanese restaurants.

14. Favourite book you read this year?

A top three - Hell Followed With Us, Space Opera, and Camp Damascus! You can check my book-specific stuff here!

15. What's a bad habit you picked up this year?

Not sure I picked any up? Still haven't ditched the finger-chewing, alas.

16. Post a picture from the beginning of the year

A haul from Sydney in January. Hell Followed With Us and Legends and Lattes were bought new, as were most of the CDs. The other three books and the Sigur Ros CD were second-hand.

17. Post a picture from the end of the year

Okay so on the cruise (late October, I'm gonna say it counts) each floor on the stairwell nearest our cabin had these like, sailing/ships/cruising-type collages, right? Golden Age of Sail, 50s cruising, all that stuff. Which is fine! Great! Except one of them was this!

For the love of god, why would you think an image of the Titanic sinking would be appropriate for a cruise ship?!

18. A memorable meal this year?

The hazelnut sorbet of the gods. Listen. Sydneysiders, listen, if Rivareno Gelato is doing the hazelnut that week you have to try it.

19. What're you excited about for next year?

Australian Literature Festival at Sea! Not until December, but it should be fun as hell!

20. What's something you learned this year?

I did a course on how to make an author site! I should. Do that.

21. What's something new about your place of residence (room, home, or general location) now vs the start of the year?

We started fixing up the old, kinda leaking upstairs bathroom! Gonna be moving back upstairs once it's done!

22. Favourite place you visited this year?

Eden in southern NSW, and Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary in Hobart <3 Both on the cruise. Eden was absolutely gorgeous and Bonorong had critters.

23. If you could send a message to yourself back on the first day of the year, what would it be?

You're gonna get COVID on the cruise. Yes, even wearing your mask and sanitising every five seconds. Bring decongestants because you'll also pick up sinusitis at the same time.

24. Did you keep any New Year's Resolutions?

Didn't make any :D

25. Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

Probably the two main ones are my first two BG3 characters? A custom Tav, Ta'varin 'Tae' Arkenval, and my beloved Durge baby, Tavias. I'm probably most attached to Tavias, he is going through The Horrors while being the pureblooded child of the God of Murder and also just trying to be a nice person. Wish him luck as I enter act 3!

[kingsonne-zedecks]

Song: Wouldn't You Like by Jorge Rivera-Herrans from Epic the Musical. This is just where I left off while listening to the whole thing in the car yesterday. Everyone should listen to Epic. Though the chances you haven't heard about it already if you like Greek Mythology and Musical Theater are slim.

Book: Blackflame by Will Wight. I'm rereading Cradle again, sue me. Or not, maybe just read Cradle yourself. Or reread it for my Cradle mutuals.

Film: Howl's Moving Castle. My wife and I don't watch movies super often, but we've been building up a bit of a blu-ray collection since streaming has become more unreliable for finding specific movies.

TV Series: Digging for Britain. Time Team's latest dig is done, so we've been watching Digging for Britain with Alice Roberts on youtube in the evenings. Highly recommend both for anyone with even a passing interest in history or archeology. Support Time Team on Patreon. They are going to be doing a dig at Sutton Hoo in June, which is very exciting.

Video Game: Modded Minecraft, specifically Fantasy MC Fabric. My wife and I have been playing through a new (to us) mod pack lately. Which is always fun.

Google Search: Ken Burns American Buffalo Streaming. I was having a conversation with my dad about Indigenous history and we ended up talking about the new Ken Burns doc about the history of the relationship between the American Bison and Indigenous people as well as the American extermination of the bison and current efforts to reintroduce populations. We wanted to see if it was streaming on any platforms we could watch it on since we haven't seen it yet.

Food: Everything bagel with too much cream cheese. Breakfast of champions

Sleep: 7 ish hours. Pretty normal for me. The cat's felt like they deserved breakfast an hour early today, like they often think, and woke me up early.

Current Read: Skysworn by Will Wight. Seriously. Read Cradle. It's available on Kindle Unlimited for those that subscribe. Or listen to it. My current read is through the audiobook fantastically narrated by Travis Baldree, author of Legends and Latte's. Read that too.

Now I've never actually tagged people on Tumblr, but I am trying to preserve the traditional social structure of my new social media site, so please forgive me if you don't actually want tags. @politelydisagreeing, @althearaseri, @mattercoil, @sharpasanaro

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.)

[chelociraptor]

Thanks for tagging, @contentwhore ! Took me a few days but finally found time to post.

Favourite colour: Green, especially light/pale/pastel greens, but almost all greens are great. Lime, forest, the kind of blue-green blend that is hard to tell if it's blue or green... 💕 Maybe part of it is the way I feel so refreshed when I'm surrounded by trees, but it's not just that leafy shade, so that may just be a perk.

Currently reading: Haven't settled down with a book in a while, but have heard "There Is No Antimemetics Division" by qntm is interesting, so will probably check that out soon. I have had trouble finding time to really dive back into reading now that my one-year-old is an extremely active toddler, but it's a Plan. I also want to catch up on some fics (especially The Width of a Scar), am quite a few chapters behind at this point.

Last song: "No Children" by The Mountain Goats. Was listening to my Hannigram Spotify playlist, lol.

Last movie: Oh sheesh, uh... hm. I haven't sat down for many movies at home or in theater, lately. I was thinking it might have been "Adam" with Hugh Dancy because I binged a bunch of his stuff recently, but may actually be "Hereditary". I don't normally watch scary movies, but there was a Discord group-watch in one of my groups, so I made an exception. It's been well over a month, though, so I'm a little fuzzy on the exact ordering.

Last series: Currently watching "Doom Patrol", little by little, after baby boy goes to bed, lol. Also watched the newest Doctor Who today.

Currently craving: At this exact moment, not sure... I associate craving with intensity, and I'm actually pretty content. There are things I want very much to happen (like Hannibal S4, with all the teases this year), am looking forward to (new Dexter, Pokemon Legends: Arceus), but I think I'm CRAVING inspiration. I've been in a bleh patch, and I really want to be inspired to write for my WIPs again.

Tea or coffee: This is tough because chai tea latte is tea, but it's tied with fancy coffees that don't really taste like coffee so much as coffee-flavored sugar drinks by the end... I don't like either without copious sugar (thus they are a rare treat, not a regular thing), but I do enjoy tea with JUST sugar (coffee needs sugar AND some type of cream), so tea probably wins. It's apparently very southern of me, but cold sweet tea is delightful.

Currently working on: Similar to the craving response, am trying to motivate myself to get back to working on my fics, both WIPs and the ideas I had started but not posted because I could feel a dry spell on the horizon and didn't want to leave more people hanging than was necessary.

@aheartfullofquestions @feckyeslife @ritualhannibalism @dreadfutures @weareallstardustfallen @unspeakable3 @jedihafren @snapeingturtle @onyourbedroomwall

tag nine people you want to get to know better!

thank you for the tag @intermundia 💜 

favourite color: brown (my kids are always “ew WHY mom???” and i’m always “why not?” and they’re always “poop!!!” and I’m always “chocolate! cookies! peanut butter! crunchy leaves! tree bark! mud! sand!”) (that last one is for them, not me - I’m firmly with Anakin Skywalker on sand) I’m also always aching to use the brown heart emoji but I never do because i don’t know if it would send some kind of unintended message? 

currently reading: nothing but kids’ books and occasional fanfic at the moment

last song: Inaudible Song II - Jared Mees and the Grown Children

last movie: Revenge of the Sith, oh so predictably

last series: (finally) clone wars season 7

currently craving: a week alone in the mountains 

tea or coffee: herbal or green tea for taste, but the smell of coffee is extremely comforting to me

currently working on: myself? lol i mean… the mental health took a hard hit these last few months and i’ve fallen far behind with work, family, and friends. Trying to get things slowly back in order. Also working on my main WIP (and have somehow managed to start two more… which I swore I would never do until I finished A&E, but the ideas came and what could I do??)

Ummm 👉👈 @ragnarlothcat @edge-ofnight @tennessoui @anakinstarkiller @wayfareramongthestars @forcearama @knightjane @theseptemberist @rexismycopilot 

(but look *everyone* I’ve come across in this community is so swell and you won’t all fit in to the nine tags so if you see this and want to do it please consider yourself tagged - I’d love to learn more about you 🤎🤎🤎🤎)