Oh, he's pretty well fixed for clothes (Shirley raided the supply chain normally used by the 501st's mechanics, who are mostly men), it's just that they're all demilitarized Liberion Army or Luftwaffe issue stuff. He hasn't managed to round up any civvies, or much of any personalization stuff for his room, but it's only been a week or so, and he's been kind of busy. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

But he has a beagle. What more is necessary, really? :)

--
Mr. Fnord

Water occasionally, you know, for the beagle. :P

You guys are just waiting to incorporate the ILM was working on for you, with the big explosions, right?

:)

Really long shots of the Enterprise model. We didn't have time to edit them, so I'm afraid the spacedock scene might have slightly slack pacing.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I've been reading quite a bit of Strike Witches fiction lately (okay, mostly Strike Witches Quest and its derivatives - that's pretty much the only other really good Strike Witches fiction). But this... wow.

Then we did them justice. :) Thank you both!

Indeed you have, IMO. While the torch Mio carries for Minna isn't as clear at first, by even 6 episodes into season 1 its pretty clear that Perrrine is carrying a major torch for Mio. That's why she's so standoffish to Yoshika at first, she feels the new kid is a threat at least to Mio attention, if not her affections.

gotta admit that I got the biggest giggle out of the banter between Gryph, Ursula and Erica. Just the perfect touch to lighten the mood before we dive into resolving the whole Mina / Mio /Perrine triangle; and the links to the music in question really helped, since one could just click instead of having to open a new tab and search and hope that there was a copy in public domain, etc...

And between you, me and the wall? I dont think that even with the controller(s) right there in the DO 17 they could have Maneuvered those troops without crashing the poor schlubs into each other. a single person, certainly. A 'squad' of 10? without some pretty fancy computing power in each of the 162's themselves, there isn't any way the individual 162's could accurately keep station on each other. Someone was going to wind up krispy krittered, either by accidently flying into the fake neuroi fireball or into the danger zone of a wingman's pack or lord knows what else. The fact that the troops were to eject the packs and chute to the recovery area showed there was no way to LAND even a single pilot safely, let alone a squad of 10 that at best would be fixed in a single formation...

And your right in one other regard. Regardless of which definition of fisting one uses, ALL the brass in charge of Salamander and Grass Snake need a good one, not just Otto Skorzny

Have to agree with Drak, this was really well-done. I loved pretty much every scene in this chapter.

Gryph unpacking: "Oh, wait, this one's Trude's." :)

Perrine's concession speech, and the whole gesture: Gorgeous. Absolutely lovely.
And how very, very French.

Mio & Minna: Can I join that round of applause?

I get the feeling we won't be seeing the last of Skorzeny.

(It's amusing, he just got a mention in a StrikeWitchesQuest chapter I was reading. By '89 he's considered something of a hero, the father of modern special operations forces....)

... Whelp, there goes my interest in the only other Strike Witches fic I've heard of.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Enh, it's a one-off comment in a side-story. Don't let it spoil the rest of the 'fic.

(The opinion I got from that character is "Skorzeny was a bastard... but at least he was a bastard to the goddamn Martians.")

The culmination of the scene between Mio and Minna was very touching (I teared up) but I'd like to point out how vividly I was able to imagine the setting, even though there isn't much concrete language on the actual restaurant:

As she and Minna entered the restaurant - unprepossessing from the street, and not as fancy inside as she might have expected - Mio reflected that she had known Perrine was well-regarded in her homeland [...] Tonight, though, Mio felt completely at ease, willing to place her dining future entirely in her auburn-haired companion's hands. More than that, she felt... urbane, witty and relaxed in a way she rarely felt in purely social settings. She could have bathed in Minna's fluent, fluid Gallic as she spoke with the waiter, and the food, when it arrived, arrested her interest in ways food very rarely did. Everything about this evening seemed to be turned up to eleven, but not in a way that applied any pressure - simply a great... richness of texture and sensation, without any particular intensity.

Surely, the excerpts above illustrate Mio's frame of mind, exploring how Mio was relating to her feelings and affections for Minna; however, to me, those words also somehow inspired the entire place setting in my mind's eye:

There is a semi-circular dining room; the straight side facing out towards the street is accented by a series of tall, bistro windows, their glass panes reflecting the jewel-like lights of the night-time cityscape. Inside the room, near the middle but slightly off-center, is set a square dining table, small and cozy for two. The pair of walnut-brown chairs, set at each end, bracket an unadorned tablecloth spread over the table surface, dressed by a simple centerpiece of candlelight and flowers. The glass votive's dancing flame casts golden flickers onto a pair of flowers, their crossed stems held aloft in a thin-necked vase. The white porcelain seemingly sinks into the shimmering white background, allowing the flowers to apparently bloom up from the tabletop itself. Red and orange petals, already striking and rich, are made more vibrant by nearby candlelight; captured through the looking glass of crystal stemware, this spectrum of warm and intimate hues are reflected onto white dinner plates bordered in shimmering gold-lattice.

Even after I googled the restaurant and found an actual photograph of the interior (http://www.truffletravel.com/truffle-tours/la-petite-chaise/), I liked the image in my mind better. :)

My point is, Gryph & Co's writing has been polished and refined to inspiring images of scenery without even defining the scenery. That's some judo-zen coolness there. Your kung fu is strong.

So, thank you. It was beautiful. That was very nice indeed. ^_^
-T.Z.

Ah, poor Perrine. It seemed rather a cruel thing to do to her on the day before her birthday (which is today - although that was a complete coincidence), but at least, as the others noted, she can be proud of how she handled it.

(For the record, I quite like Perrine, even though - or possibly because - she can be a bit difficult. Character-wise, she grows the most of any of them over the course of the canon, which is in large part what this bit sprang from - and she's not done yet.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I think it's of note that whatever read Gryph got off the Kaiser, it told him to Just Tell The Truth, which is pretty damn high praise - and justified, it would appear.

All things considered, it probably wasn't a bad plan regardless of what happens. He's already proven that he can fly the He 162, which makes him more valuable with the 501st than anywhere else. If the Kaiser concluded that Gryphon was mad as a hatter, it would still be a relatively harmless madness that doesn't affect his ability to fight the Neuroi.

Peter Eng
--
(Somebody who could fly the He 162 could probably get away with claiming he's the Kaiser's bastard son as long as he didn't try to usurp the throne.)

The Zargh Thalekh school of assessing whether a combat asset's evident daftness is worth worrying about:

"You may keep... the mad Augment; his insanity is evidently no impediment to his loyalty or his usefulness, and so of no consequence to me."

:)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Well, to be fair, the last two attempts at using Neuroi tech failed in part because they used a full core. Maloney didn't seem to understand the danger, while the Fuso Navy thought they did and could keep it under control. Reichenberg seems to have learned from their mistakes by avoiding the use of a full core, but didn't seem to anticipate that a partial one would still present problems.

The next step would likely be to try to reproduce the emissions of the partial core artificially, preferably far away from inhabited areas and with witches on standby. Just figuring out a signal that could draw a Neuroi to a particular area could prove a boon, allowing planners to draw them into an ambush or break up formations through conflicting signals. Even better, if the signal itself is what identifies Neuroi to each other, having witches who could transmit that signal would allow them to sneak up on the enemy or to confuse them in a dogfight.

Whether he intended to or not, Reichenberg may have just laid the groundwork for Electronic Countermeasures in the fight against the Neuroi.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Nope, I have the single they released ahead of it, but had more or less forgotten when the full album was coming out and wasn't watching for it. So thanks for the reminder...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That said, and although "Jet Pack Blues" doesn't (in grand FOB style) seem to have much of anything to do with its title, some of the imagery in it sticks with me.

--G.
she's in a long black coat tonight / waiting for me in the downpour outside...
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.