I love collectibles with sound, don’t you?
At least, I love them until I put them in the VeVeVerse. At that point, I can officially put the relationship on “it’s complicated.”
Because every time I load up my VeVeVerse, all of my lovely collectibles go off at once and create a total cacophony of madness.
It’s kind of like in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone when they’re all told to just pick any tune to sing, “Hogwarts Forever.” Who needs a Mandrake, when students singing out of tune can kill you just as fast?
Why do I not put on earphones? Because I like my hearing. When that blast hits, it can take you off guard, piercing through everything else you’ve got going on.
Why not turn on the mute button? Well, the trouble is there’s no mute button specifically in the VVV for that, so I have to use the mute for the entire computer. But typically, when I’m in the VVV, I have something else going in the background. I’m either listening to the VeVe fam’s YouTube videos and recorded spaces, or another installment of that one Crypto Guy telling us about the continuing “Bitcoin Dominance” cycle.
Anything is better than silence when you’re sitting over a model of DS9 attempting to line up 30 sensor pallets and arrays, or lining up a row of comics so they’re all at the same height, width, and size. Something has to be going in the background to break up the tedium. Even at times when I’m not working in an area where an accidental click can cause a blaring symphony, there’s the ever-present whomp-whomp-whomp sound of my Back to the Future train or some other item with ambient sound. Admittedly, I’ve gotten to the point I’ve blocked out the white noise, until someone else comes in and asks what the irritating noise is. Then it’s like, “Oh yeah. I forgot about that.”
Some collectibles I just will not put in my builds any more at all, like UR Steamboat Willie. I just could not figure out how to get that thing to shut up. It’s great for five minutes, but I just could not tune it out. Sorry, Mickey, you are no longer allowed to be in any of my builds. I’ll use the silent whistler instead.
The phenomenon of all the sounds going off does have one perk, and that’s when it’s loading up, because some of my builds take a long, long time to load. I can click the space and walk away to do something else for ten or fifteen minutes. I can make coffee, start on the cup, and when I hear that discordant disaster from the kitchen, I know my space has just about finished loading without even looking.
Of course, it also has its drawbacks when you’re attempting to go in quietly and forget to hit that mute button. I have a dynamic household where our twenty-something goes to bed at the same time everyone else is getting up. Chances are, someone’s asleep. So when I forget, it’s often a bit of a rude awakening. Then I have to dash across the apartment to panic-press buttons until I finally hit the mute.
By then, however, the damage is done. I get a grouchy complaint, often followed by, “what can I have for breakfast?” This is not an ideal situation.
So the next VeVeVerse space I build, I am firmly banning all of those klaxon calamities, at least until there’s a way to keep them from triggering on impact.
Sorry, collectibles, that’s just the way it has to be!
From now on, I’m building my spaces safe and soundless.