LAST EDITED ON Jun-17-13 AT 07:06 AM (EDT)
 
>That bears thinking about. The "mini-story" tool has rather exceeded
>its original spec - they were supposed to be specifically
>non-vital pieces of work, so that people not using the Forum
>for whatever reason wouldn't miss out on anything important,

I actually only started using the forums (in that I'd come here and read them) a couple-three years ago, and it was because I'd ask Phil "Have I missed something? Who the hell ARE these people" and he'd say "Oh, they're from the mini-stories. There's a bunch of them that AREN'T in the omnibuses."

More generally, a number of the "Mini" stories are in fact at this point LONGER than stand-alone stuff in the Golden Age and Exile sections.

>On Rannoch, almost certainly not. However, the Rannoch Hegemony was a
>fairly big space nation. Among Tali's people, there are persistent
>legends - more like articulated dreams, really -
>
> (snip)
>

That's a fascinating look into the sort of stories the quarians tell themselves ABOUT themselves during their long exile.

>No, that isn't the custom among quarians, at least in UF (no data
>existed about such conventions in the games that were out when
>Star-Crossed was written, and I haven't played the third one).

The third one has some fascinating tidbits about quarian/geth history (for example, in ME, it turns out that the geth LET the flotilla go; they'd won and saw no reason to pursue the quarians through the relay) but nothing specifically about their naming conventions.

Oh, wait, no; there was one thing. They don't have a separate signifier for "lives on a planet" or "lives on a ship" like you do in UF. In ME, if you're a quarian who resettles on a planet, you're just "vas Planetname."

Re: not the playing the third one, lord knows I have my own giant stack of unplayed games, but if you haven't actually BOUGHT it yet (as opposed to having it lying around unplayed) I would submit that now is probably the most opportune time; it's down to twenty bucks or so used (a used copy of ME1 actually sells for MORE than a used ME3 copy) and if I recall the price curves that ME1 and ME2 took on both the direct and the secondhand market, ME3 is going to bottom out somewhere between sixteen and twenty months after initial retail release and then actually tick UPWARDS slightly before settling down into it's long-term "Greatest Hits" level of pricing.

(I used to sell video games. I keep track of how the market works at retail.)

>>Big risk to run just for some healthy organs.
>
>There's a fine thread of extremely dark comedy running through Dr.
>Saleon's intentions, actually: He thinks she's human. If he'd
>succeeded in his acquisition, he'd have discovered to his dismay that
>nothing he just acquired is of any use to anyone but its original
>owner. So he'd have incurred the complete shutdown of Brown
>Sector and the kind of search-and-destroy mission you only read about
>in Mark Bowden books for nothing.

I find that hilarious in two ways.

The first is just because it's hilarious on it's own right. The second is that, it occurs to me that due to her unique physiology, Lyneh probably makes sure Kaname donates blood twice a year a year in case she (Kaname) ever needs a transfusion, as Kaname is unlikely to be able to absorb any old random bag of O positive.

Which means somewhere in the Voronda Elendil's medbay, there's a medical cooling unit with a sticky note on it that says "Kana-chan's Blood. DO NOT USE FOR OTHER PURPOSES."

... well, I think it's funny.

>particularly into it (ISTR reading once about an Army study in which
>it was found that only about 10% of soldiers in combat even attempt to
>actually shoot anyone, which the Army, being the Army, found shocking
>and disgraceful),

You recall correctly, although it was closer to 20%.

That's also a very old statistic; it dates to the Second World War, I believe, or at least that rough time period. The army, as you said, found it shocking and disgraceful, and there was a massive overhaul of their training methods; prior to that, the focus was almost exclusively on what we'd think of bread-and-butter soldiering (how to maintain and use your gear, how to follow orders, basic strategy and tactics, the proper way to entrench a position, etc etc) and almost nothing else.

After discovering lots of their soldiers were reluctant to kill, the armed forces decided that there needed to be a deliberate and concerted attempt to instill killer instinct into people. It's worked pretty well; the proportion of soldiers who will use their weapons with killing intent, unprompted, is MUCH higher than one-in-five today.

>In most
>places, for instance, the majority age for a human or near-humanoid
>(based on various abstruse biological metrics) is 16 Standard years.
>(Which means that, in the Republic of Zeta Cygni where her passport
>comes from, in any case, Kaname's not in fact underage. She can vote,
>undertake legal contracts, join the Defense Force if she wanted, etc.)

That seems rather early to me, as I'm still young enough (although that time is fast ending) to recall what it was like being 16, and entrusting me with a motor vehicle was a shockingly foolhardy decision on the part of the state, to say nothing of weapons or the power of contract. :)

On the other hand, it's been a shitty century and a half or so for the civilized galaxy, barring a handful of stable places (like Salusia). And I seem to recall reading somewhere that, while 25th century humans live longer than we do now in the real world, both average AND median age at death for humans peaked in 2200s and than CRASHED during the 2300s when everything went to shit. (That almost certainly comes from a very ancient Redneck story, though, one of his pieces dealing with the old Olympus megastate.) So I can see "childhood" ending up shortened.

>As for the WDF, they had no dog in the fight. Their contract is with
>the Federation, not the Earth Alliance, and they mainly guard against
>external threats anyway. The WDF's charter does have the deeply
>buried "good of the galaxy" clause - the one invoked to justify, for
>instance, the Force's interference in the matter of the Salusian
>succession in 2015 - but Daver is very cautious about when he pulls
>that trigger, and at the risk of seeming a bit Darwinian about it,
>Proxima just wasn't big enough.

Fair enough. I don't typically associate the WDF with realpolitik, but rather gung-ho idealism. :)

>In Captain Davidson's case, I suspect she'd have done considerably
>better if she'd been allowed to manage the affair the way she wanted,

Hmm! You know, after you put this down, I went back through both the Operation TRIDENT docs and the story itself.

I don't know what the culture of the EA Marines is like, but if it's anything like actual Marines Westford Drake likely inspired a fair amount of disbelief-slash-contempt from his men and fellow officers by choosing to remain in orbit, rather than going down with the rest of his men. (Try and imagine Alexander Vandegrift choosing to remain with the Navy rather than going ashore to Guadalcanal.)

Despite being in overall command, the battle for mastery of orbit was going to be largely out of his control (conducted as it was by the navy and being something he probably has limited expertise in) and staying up there has the very real possibility of leaving him cut off from the troops he is responsible for and unable to meaningfully contribute to the defense of the planet he has been charged to hold.

What remaining in orbit DOES do, though, is vastly increase the likelihood that if things go bad, Drake personally will be able to escape with his hide intact instead of being trapped in a bunker with the rest of the marines.

This makes me wonder if Drake was promoted more from politics than for his soldierly qualities. Or if he considered Davidson to be sufficiently unreliable he had to keep an eye on her, I suppose.

>>That actually sounds kind of silly. If a Blue Suns squad shows up B6
>>is going to let them just walk into the station in full kit so long as
>>their IDs check out?
>
>Sure, if they could demonstrate a genuine necessity for it.

Huh. Well, shows what I know, then.

>>I know that "Teletha" is her proper, canonical, creator-confirmed
>>actual name from Full Metal Panic. But lord, that is an UGLY
>>romanization. Would "Theresa" have been so hard for them? Really?
>
>How is this our problem? Besides, I kind of like it. It's, I'unno,
>exotic. And fun to say.

Oh, it's not your problem at all. I'm just saying, I love Tessa, but I hate what they did with her name. :)

>As an aside, you stopped short of what is my personal favorite phrase
>in Nanami's speech:
>
>"Think of that. A hatred so pure that the Enemy of All perceives it
>as beauty."
>
>They say even the Daleks (well, you know, the bad Daleks) have
>a concept of beauty. It's probably a bit like Surtur's.

I think that line stands well enough on it's own without any encouragement from me. As I said, Nanami's scene? Far and away the best one in the story.

Although, now that you've brought it up... Nanami's whole line about how Akio is now "more" than he used to be got me thinking.

Akio v1.0 was... well, he was fundamentally crippled by the whole "died and my body kept going without me" thing that happened to Dios. But part of being broken in that specific way meant that Akio was still nominally at least TRYING to be the Prince of Cephiro. He was doing a completely shit job of it, because he was a soulless monster, but he still fundamentally thought of himself as the hero and that everything he was doing was justified because of that. (You'll note that in the TV series itself, Akio more than once confronted what was left of Dios in vain attempts to convince Dios that Akio was right, dammit, he was just doing what he had to do, can't you SEE that, you stupid child?)

But anyway, my point is that Akio used to be... well, broken and insecure, really. There was always a sense (and I don't know if you meant to convey this deliberately or not, but it's what I got from the Symphony) that despite the whole puppet master thing he had going on, he wasn't QUITE sure about what he was doing, and the conflicting imperatives of trying to maintain at least the trappings of the Prince while simultaneously being incapable of actually BEING the Prince left him flailing around a bit.

He doesn't have that problem anymore, does he? Akio the Duke of Hell (Trigon) is completely at peace with himself, his nature, and his place in the universe. He's absolutely and completely sure of what he's doing and why he is doing it. Which, as Nanami says, kind of makes him far more terrifying, as Akio was dangerous enough when he was a lesser creature. His scenes in Oriphos have a much different vibe to them than, say, his scenes in Ohtori Academy back when he was trying to draw in Wakaba.

But as I often do, I could just be reading things in that aren't there.

>>It certainly doesn't have a
>>universal guarantee of sentient rights or to representative
>>government, for example.
>
>It's supposed to, but it rather lacks the teeth to enforce them.

I'm curious then; assuming it has a judicial branch, has the Federation made a ruling on the compatibility of the Psi Act with the Federation's ostensible commitment to sentient rights? The EA isn't going to give a shit, of course, they'd simply go all Andrew Jackson on it, but it would at least make it difficult for them to legally extend their insane slavery regime for psions to other sovereign states within the Federation.

>>Corwin, Utena, and Anthy aren't what you'd call vengeful people.
>
>Well, Anthy kind of is. She prefers it on a time scale that would
>make Klingon thought admirals start looking ostentatiously at their
>watches, is all.

Hm. I'm curious; did the "Anthy torments Nanami" episodes of SkU happen in the context of UF? You know, when Nanami had to trek all over the world (or Cephiro, I guess) to gather the ingredients to undo Anthy's little body-swap spell on Utena, or when Nanami was utterly and completely convinced she'd laid an egg in her sleep?

(Nanami was sort of Anthy's chew-toy throughout a lot of SkU, really; Anthy messed with her mind a LOT and I don't think it was because Akio was making her.)

Because if so, I bet Anthy kind of feels just AWFUL about those acts of petty vengeance now.

>>I think maybe Akio wants them to come for Nanami in some way. Which
>>probably means doing so is bad, bad news.
>
>Any comment I could make regarding this point would be giving
>something away one way or the other, so I believe I won't. :)

Well, naturally.

-Merc
Drove two hours today to see a movie about a magical pony princess who becomes a magical high school princess.
Has no regrets.
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