WiPpet Wednesday: gloom and (impending) doom

Sorry for my total uselessness at getting around the blogs last week.  I've been in a frankly ridiculous "blah" mood for a while.  I think it has something to do with the weathers or the seasons or something.  Either way it's irritating.  I'm getting nothing done.

Well, not strictly true.  I'm trying to keep my hands busy so I've been making some jewellery for my mother's birthday.  Well, was, until I ran out of 4mm green bicones, so I have to wait for more to arrive...

The flowers are a necklace (hence being so irritating when I ran out); the diagonal stripes are a bracelet.  She also wants some glasses cords for when her glasses make a break for it, so I'm trying to figure out how best to approach those (have all the materials I need, anyway, including some "how much??" non-tarnish silver wire).

Oh, and a tiny anvil.

It's very heavy.  I think you could brain someone quite effectively with it.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is hosted by the always-lovely K. L. Schwengel, and is a blog hop where participants share sections of their works in progress (hence the name).  All entries should relate to the date in some way, either via simple means or complicated WiPpet Maths.  You can find out more and read the other entries over here.

It's the 16th September 2015, so 1 + 6 = 7; 2 + 0 + 1 = 3 and 3 - 5 = 2.  7 + 2 = 9 for the convoluted maths, or simply 9 paragraphs because it's the 9th month.

The elevator has come to a stop and the doors have opened on Fayth and RQ.  It's... going about as well as you'd expect.

Five weapons of varying sizes were levelled at his face as the elevator door pinged closed behind them.  In his grip, he felt RQ tense, then lean back slightly.  The door sighed open again.

“Any sign of them yet?”  He said, forcing a smile.  “I was just telling the guards how everyone knows the secure block is at the bottom of these things.  We decided RQ was better off upstairs where they wouldn’t think of looking.”

Two guns wavered, then lowered.  The other three sets of fingers edged closer to their triggers.

And still RQ remained silent.  He could break away, make a dash for the safety of the guards and crewmen and there’d be nothing Fayth could do to stop him.  He could scream, yell how he’d been abducted yet again, but he stared at the floor and didn’t say a word.  Fayth should feel grateful, he knew he should, but it was downright irritating; his life was at least partially in the hands of a man who acted more like a spoiled brat.

A third gun slowly lowered, its large owner giving him a long, searching stare.  “Where’s his escort?”

“Two came up here,” Fayth said without missing a beat.  “I guess by the stairs, if they’re not here yet.  The other two said they’d stay down there just in case.”

The speaker looked unconvinced.  Fayth didn’t blame him; he was being incredibly unconvincing.  “There’s nothing on the radar.”

“I bet there was nothing on your radar last time either.  If you could just get out of my way...”

The gun snapped up again.

Perhaps Fayth should stop talking now.

WiPpet Wednesday: pretty distractions

Despite not actually liking dolls because I find them disturbing, I've wanted an asian ball-jointed doll for a while.  And for a while, I mean "at least seven years".  I think I like them because the kind I'm interested in aren't intended to look cutesy.  They're intended to look like grown men and women, which somehow makes them significantly less disturbing.

So somehow, to commemorate me actually completing Ready, Set, WRITE without dropping out and with actually increasing bit-by-bit the amount I wrote, I finally ordered myself one.

It's a tiny bit terrifying.

But the funny thing is...  after over seven years of waiting and wishing, and then finally ordering myself one...

About ten days after that, I ordered another.  So after all this time, I'm now waiting for two!  And I have to admit, I'm particularly looking forward to the second...  He's a limited edition re-run of an old model, and the reason why I ordered him is because the moment I saw him, I realised he looks uncannily like one of my characters.  The character in question is Milos, and he's not a character I ever expected to be able to find, being as he is this guy to the right, a dokkalfa with a quite specific face shape (his nose and jaw in particular don't seem that common...).

So of course, I couldn't resist...

And now I have to wait at least three months for him to even be made!  *whimper*  Even when he gets here, there's so much work that'll need to be done: he'll need eyes (yep, scary...) and hair, and I'll have to paint his face so he's not just plain dark grey resin...

I'm actually really looking forward to it!  Enough that I've finally started working on 2012's NaNo again, which I always felt a little bad about never finishing, particularly since it left a gaping hole in the continuity of the shorter stories.  And best of all, I'll finally to write one scene that's been in my head all this time and throw Milos's partner Alex off a tower block.  *grins*

As to whether doll!Milos will get an Alex as well...  well, I'm categorically not looking for one...  *cough*

WiPpet Wednesday

It's WiPpet Wednesday, a weekly blog hop organised by the always-lovely K. L. Schwengel that shares snippets from participants' works in progress where every entry relates in some way to the date, either by simple means or complicated WiPpet Maths.  You find out more, can read other posts and join in yourself by signing up over here.

Today is the 9th September, 09/09, and the maths is simple: 9 + 9 for 18 sentences that follow not-quite-directly on from last week, but near enough.  Fayth considered shooting RQ in the legs and carrying him instead, but didn't feel too inclined towards being bled on...  (I'm sure RQ appreciated it too.)

Two corridors along he found what he was looking for.  RQ stopped struggling, standing sullenly as far from Fayth as his reach would allow, while Fayth pounded at the elevator call button and prayed it wasn’t occupied when it arrived.

“You don’t understand.”

Fayth thumped the button again, hoping it disguised the way he jumped at the words.  “I don’t understand what?”

RQ wouldn’t look at him.  “Anything.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but the ping of the opening door beat him to it.  There was no point reasoning with RQ now anyway, the determined set of his jaw screamed that he wouldn’t listen to a word Fayth said.  He dragged him inside the elevator instead. 

The problem was, even sulky and obstructive, RQ was still easily the most stunning man Fayth had ever seen.  His mood reflected in the lower lip pooched out without his even realising it.  His blue-green eyes were half-closed and determinedly distant.  He still wore the clothes Fayth had left for the expected woman in his room.  If Fayth shoved him against the wall and kissed him like his life depended on it, it’d only be his own fault, looking as incredible in cheap, flimsy clothes and dangerous surroundings as he did.

Only it’d be all Fayth’s fault, not RQ’s, and he couldn’t inflict that kind of pain on him again.  Not on anyone without their implicit permission, in fact—and hadn’t that fallen flat before, with the kind of situational misreading Fayth hadn’t made since he was a teenager.

Resting his free hand on the pistol in the back of his trousers, he glared daggers at the button panel instead and swore to God that if anyone called the lift on their way to the bay floor, he’d kneecap them.

WiPpet Wednesday: gamey rambling (again) and things not at all going according to plan...

I finally did it!  I worked my little arse off and I finally got G is for Gabrys finished... although I didn't get to do much else between that, work and family time...

As a reward, I'm having a couple of days off (sorry Ais, Lirio, RQ and Fayth...) to play Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain.

I am... not very good at Metal Gear games.  I liked Metal Gear Solid 2 enough to buy it on the Vita after I had it on the original Xbox, although that may have had something to do with a certain put-upon, very dim, blond male character who spends a chunk of the game naked.  I have MGS3 on Vita mostly because it came with MGS2; I don't have MGS4 (despite it also featuring the put-upon, dim blond) because that was PS3 only and the PS4--which, like the PS3, I said I would only get if there were enough games I wanted to play to justify the cost--is not backwards compatible nor is it likely to be.  And I have MGS5: Ground Zeroes, which although I completed I unfortunately did not play enough to unlock said dim blond's level, due to being damn terrible at sneaking.

Also, I have Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which is actually my favourite game out of all of them, not least for featuring the same certain put-upon dim blond and for being far more my kind of game, which means lots of stabbing and no sneaking at all.  Also vast amounts of homoerotic content.  (No, I'm not kidding.)

I've also got a lot of other computer games.  And in those games, there's usually theft of some kind.  You can pickpocket and rob bodies in Assassin's Creed.  You can hack computers and steal cars in Watch_Dogs, or accidentally pilfer cheese in Skyrim.  Most RPGs encourage unsolicited entering of homes, rifling through their drawers and helping yourself to their valuables.  Even in Portal you can pick up and run away with a usually very startled sentry turret.

The Phantom Pain is probably the first game I've played where you can steal the enemy soldiers.

I am having a field day.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a blog hop organised by the always-brilliant K. L. Schwengel, which focuses on our Works in Progress and ties them into the date, either through simple means or more complicated WiPpet Maths.  It's a whole lot of fun filled with brilliant excerpts, and you can find out more and join in yourself here.

It's the 2nd September (02/09, woo, new month!), so my maths is just 9 - 2 = 7, for 7 paragraphs, following on from Fayth deciding that playing nice just wasn't working any longer (though it looks like it might start backfiring...)

This will make sense eventually, honest.  (Also, profanity warning.)

The guard went down with a howl, one hand scrabbling uselessly for his pistol while the other clasped his knee.  The second guard fumbled with the catches on his holster, all the while gaping at Fayth; Fayth shot him in the foot.  Without waiting for either man to get a handle on their pain long enough to process what was happening, he dashed between them and grabbed RQ’s hand.  “Come on.”

RQ jerked back in his grip, struggling to free himself.  “What the hell are you doing?!  Let me go, you fucking madman!”

Fayth tightened his grip and put a second laser hole in one of the guard’s legs for good measure.  “I’m saving your worthless life, that’s what I’m doing, and if you don’t get moving I’ll shoot you in the legs too.”

RQ paled but made no effort to follow.  It took all of Fayth’s strength to drag him forward, muttering profanities under his breath the whole way.  He even had to put a third hole into one of the guards, to add insult to injury: a neat one in his hand because the bastard was going for his gun again.  Clearly incapable of taking a hint.  The other one was a little quicker on the uptake, his own falling away from the butt of his pistol, but Fayth had to reverse up the hallway nonetheless, in part to keep an eye on them, and in part because he suddenly didn’t trust RQ not to brain him if he turned his back.  Just remembering his punch made Fayth’s cheekbone ache.

In front of him, RQ tried to pull free again and yelped as Fayth crushed his hand.  “Don’t you understand I’m trying to help?”  Fayth shouted over the deafening wah-wah of the alarm speaker they passed under.  So far there was no sign of the other two guards.  Fayth had to hope that by now they were at least two floors above them.  “Don’t you know what they want to do?”

His third attempt to wrench himself free unsuccessful, RQ just stared at Fayth with his mouth compressed into a thin line and didn’t say a word.

Fayth shoved the pistol into the back of his trousers, swapping the hand grasping RQ’s for a grip on his slender wrist instead.  Turning his back on him might be a risk, but at least it’d be harder for him to escape.  “I didn’t think you were an idiot but I guess I was wrong.”