Time-Fused Love-Bomb Detonation
So, a love-bomb I set up more than 6 years ago finally detonated.
Back in the day, while I was writing the Zorcerer of Zo RPG, I used Older Niece as a character-generation example and used some photomanipulations of her in the book. My family has known this for a long, long time.
The other day, I’m over my mom’s house where she’s babysitting Younger Niece. I mention getting my softcover copy of Tales of Zo in the mail. Following conversation ensues:
YN: What’s that?
ME: It’s a book of my fairy tales, based on a game I wrote a couple years ago.
MOM: It’s the one with ON in it.
YN: Which one?
MOM: The purple one up on the shelf in Grandpap’s office.
YN: (scampers up to office and retrieves ZoZ; comes back down) This one?
ME: Yup.
YN: (climbs onto me and we flip through the book looking for the pics of ON) She’s little!
ME: Yup. I wrote this a long time ago.
YN: Yeah!
ME: (slyly) You know, you’re in it. But not a picture.
YN: (flabbergasted) What what what?
ME: Yeah, right here. (flips to page 54, “Example of Play”) These pages are all about the adventures of Princess [YN].
YN: No way! YAAAAAAY!!! (laboriously starts reading aloud, then stops) Where’s *my* picture?!?
ME: There isn’t one.
YN: Why not?
ME: Well, how old are you?
YN: Seven and a half.
ME: See, I wrote this book seven years ago. When you were still a six-month old baby. So, we didn’t have a good fairy-tale picture of you like we did for ON.
YN: Oh. Okay. (thinks about it) Well, you’ll just have to fix that.
ME: Fix what?
YN: Put a picture of me in there now.
ME: That’s… not how it works. It’s out, done.
YN: (wrinkles brow) Well, my picture in the next one, then.
ME: Deal.
So, yeah.