Got my dual-monitor, dual-computer rig mostly set up. I have more desk space now. I need a better keyboard for the Mac side, unless I invest in a keyboard/mouse switch, too. Probably will borrow the Mac bluetooth keyboard I have in my shop...when my car gets out of the shop it is in.
Progress on Sometimes a Fox. Had to pause to work out the next set of clues, and I've pretty much got the locations picked out that the last set of clues will send her to. As the story progresses, Penny spends more and more time getting to know Paris outside of the landmarks (famous and not) in the book she is following.
Like la Defense, the fancy built-up area around the Defense arc, where she'll take a couple of classes from a pack of traceurs who like to practice there. And still get her butt kicked at parkour, but that's the nature of these stories; she's gaining competence, but she's never going to become an expert martial artist one '80s montage later.
Hux's clues lead from the Rodin's plaster mock-up of The Gates of Hell, which Huxley figured would be at Hotel Biron by the time he wrote up his memoirs (the sculptor hadn't even moved in there when Huxley was in Paris), to the Palais Garnier. This has become almost a three-fer clue; Penny agonizes over trying to solve it and goes off in all sorts of directions, from thinking about Monet's Water Lilies (which have a dedicated gallery now at the Orangerie) to the Van Gogh exhibit; the digital one with the animated paintings. Which I caught in San Francisco but, yes, the original show was in Paris during the time I've set the novel.
And Nathan and his team go to the Van Gogh, too, so I can have her sneaking up on them under Starry Nights and through sunflower fields, but they've jumped ahead because the next clue is so obvious it could only be set at the Paris Opera House.
So she goes from the Pompidou center, where there is an exhibition of the en l'an 2000 "Steampunk" postcard set of 1900 whimsey, and the Herge exhibit, which was actually in Paris but at a different museum that year but never mind; I saw it at the Pompidou. And runs into parkour people playing on the outside of the building and that's where she gets an invite to la Defense.
Then makes the same leap Nathan did to Van Gogh's sunflowers, is lucky enough to trail him and his "rival team," -- because having another team of treasure hunters is so totally part of the pattern -- and finds out when they are going to the Opera.
And has a chat with a student who is amiably picking padlocks off the Pont de Arts bridge (I think that's the one that's currently illegal to put love locks on) and is reminded of her own efforts to learn that skill. Which sets that up as a Checkov's Skill, as TVTropes calls it, but it is false; Nathan's team have jimmied the door.
For no good reason they've worked their way down to the "lake" (yeah, not really a romantic lake, either) and are singing snatches of Phantom but it doesn't take being a Sondheim fan for Penny to be getting really pissed at them. So this is the II/III turn-around, when she decides she's not about friendly competition anymore, but is going to take them down -- or at least, get to the secret before they can cause any more damage.
Part III is largely the Bohemians, and the steampunk superhero comic book Bastien is drawing, and Amelia coming out as a wrench wench. The next clue was les Halles, which is less there, these days (they just opened a renewal version but the old buildings are gone). There's a clue there about singing stomachs. Then a clue to La Petite Ceinture, which is somewhat there although quite abandoned. There's access to the catacombs from there and cataphiles walking through, as well as all sorts of other things. Penny has an encounter with some toughs there, and this happens more or less as Hux finally gets around to explaining the time he and an old French veteran got jumped by some Apaches near Montmartre.
I think she meets up with her cataphiles (or whatever flavor of urban explorer) at the false building that's...in my other notes but it was convenient to the "little belt railway." I found one that's got a video of some guy breaking in to look at it.
And then to this park I've forgotten the name up, which was a fantasy excess built in the 1900s with artificial lake and a lovely grotto made out of the old Plaster of Paris mining operations. With a stop-over at that one station (pont de arts perhaps?) that got the full Jules Verne treatment, because this is the full-costume Steampunk Garden Party.
Where Bastien and Girard are shamed by the others into taking the love triangle with Amelia into a mock duel...although at this point Huxley has gotten to where the friend and roommate of his "excitable little bullfighter" -- one of the colony of Catalan artists atop the butte -- shot at his girlfriend then shot himself.
The reader may or may not have picked up that this guy is a young Picasso. He never gets named in the text. That's the pattern for this one. In Japan, Penny realized she was missing things. Here, she notices Huxley doesn't like Sacre-Couer, his clue is talking about the blood of martyrs spilled there, and right after that she's at the parc louis-michel. And doesn't get any of it. (Eventually she does learn more about the Paris Commune. And, yes, it does figure in the mystery).
The clue at the park probably points to Notre-Dame because I've no more I need to do with Huxley's stuff. There might be another location or two before I get there. In fact, probably will be. Including possibly a Parisian hackerspace. Plus her Bohemians do a special version of their cabaret show which recreates a famous kiss between Colette and Missy (in 1907). Dressed as archaeologist and mummy. Oh, did I mention Penny also finally gets to the Louvre? Egyptian collection, mostly, but gets enough afield in Mesopotamia to learn about Jane Dieulafoy.
Which means I need to write at least two clues before I can complete Part II. The one at the Gates of Hell, and the one at the Paris Opera House.
As far as I've gotten on Gates of Hell is something about the lillies that toil and spin. And probably something about fine raiment because that would also point to the same verse being paraphrase (King James translation).
And the Palais Garnier one is something about looking down from a private box. But nothing about a chandelier. Unfortunately I can't really work a lake into it; that Parc des Buttes Chaumont is a railway and a public market later. (Yeah, I stopped and looked it up).
I thought having two monitors -- both of them now running at full resolution, too -- would give me enough virtual paper to spread all my notes out and solve this. Perhaps. But I just finished installing ControlNet into my Stable Diffusion folder and now I want to see if it can really fix those mutated hands...
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