A weekly status update from everyone’s favourite caffeinated weirdo.

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Welcome back to Whatcha Up To! Coffee here, and here’s to the end of another week.

CHRISTMAS IS COMING. And I am very excited about that, haha. Decorating has begun here in the Coffee household. Planning for every single weekend until January has also begun (ugh… gonna be so busy…). Nevertheless, big things have been afoot this week. Here’s what happened:

Whatcha Playin’, Coffee?

Finished Freedom Planet and it was a pretty good game. Well deserved of the hype it received. The bosses can be on the difficult side, though. All in all, I’m happy I got to play it. I might pick up the sequel when it goes back on sale.

I picked up Super Mario RPG from my local library and am currently knee-deep into it. There’s a lot of good quality-of-life changes to the game; examples include causing splash damage with perfectly timed attacks, an accessory that locates hidden chests and stronger enemies that reward you with Frog Coins. I’ve reached Rose Town, but I only have this game until Monday, so I better step it up if I want to finish it by then.

On the Pokemon front, I’ve decided to change my team going into the Elite Four in Fire Red. I’m running with a Charizard, Nidoking, Gyarados, Vileplume, Jolteon and Dragonite. I had to do a lot of training to get them up to speed, but I think I’ve nailed the most optimal team to take on that gauntlet.

Whatcha Writin’, Coffee?

Still working on the latest chapter in Mobius VII. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I should be starting Chapter 27 soon. That one’s gonna be fun to write since the team arrives at Station Square well after the bad guys do. One thing to note is that I haven’t played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at all yet (It’s my reward for finishing the book), so I have no modern frame of reference to pull from for the resort town segment – it’ll follow along the lines of the original game but will feature the extra-special Coffee twist to it.

The Backlog Busting post for Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster is still in progress. Writing for the story has taken precedence over this at the current moment.

Whatcha Readin’, Coffee?

Two of my library holds came in at the same time: A Pirate’s Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne and Shorefall, the second book of the Founder’s Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett. Cozy fantasy has oddly become my most loved genre ever. There’s low stakes, happy endings and just feel-good vibes all around. A definite “balm for the soul” kind of genre, y’know?

I loved Thorne’s first book to pieces and I was not disappointed by the second. I finished that one within a day. Ms. Thorne has a gift for writing witty, quirky and endearing characters. I may take notes. Reading that book kinda gave me the itch to try writing a cozy fantasy of my own. The question is: do I set it in the world I built (you can see snippets of it in The Major Arcana anthology I was featured on), or do I repurpose existing fantasy elements to create a new world. Decisions, decisions…

Shorefall picks up some time after Foundryside. Unlike the book mentioned above, there are some moderate to high stakes in this. I’m chomping at the bit to both find out what happens next and what kind of augmentations our heroes will undergo to overcome those stakes. I just gotta start reading it.

How’s Trainin’, Coffee?

Weightlifting is back in session and just in time for the holiday season. Consistency will be key, but so long as I keep at it, it will come. These training snippets are quite boring, aren’t they? Haha. I don’t vary my workouts very often – bodyweight work one day, weightlifting the next.

That’s it for what’s been happening recently. Anything new on your end? Let me know below. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you next week!

~Coffee