>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.

That part's not as important, as I've never really tried to work to a particular length; stuff is as long as it is. The part about indexing and integration, though, is cause for reflection.

>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)

No, I have one, I just haven't played it much. Partly because I know it will eventually fail me, mostly because I didn't get my principal ME2 game quite right and I haven't been arsed to replay it the right way up.

>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."

NOT FOR CLONE SOURCING

>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.

... because that could never go horribly wrong later.

>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

Heck, I was part of the last group of people to be licensed at 15 in Maine (the Legislature had changed the law while I was in driver's ed that spring, but it didn't take effect until summer). Never did me any harm. Ironically, I was involved in a crash on the first full day I had my driver's license, but it was actually, genuinely, the-cops-said-so not my fault. :)

>So I can see "childhood" ending up shortened.

Nah, it's not an austerity measure, just a combination of more advanced educational outcomes and trusting people to have their shit together. There are safety mechanisms built into the system, I'm just not arsed enough about the topic to design them. That aspect of worldbuilding doesn't interest me much (see below).

>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.)

Weren't you just saying a bit ago that a general who finds herself in actual combat has done something wrong? MUYFM. :)

>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.

I tend to suspect he was instructed not to put himself in a position from which he could not quickly and efficiently get back to base on short notice. You know... just in case anything else might happen to go wrong someplace.

>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.

Well, as you note, at that point - in the gap between the end of the Lost Tournament and his death in Knights 3 - he wasn't really operating to a plan; he was improvising frantically, trying to salvage whatever he could out of a situation he had failed (or refused) to recognize as essentially unsalvageable. This desperation did make him dangerous - what he was trying to accomplish by hijacking the replacement-Pillar process would have been seriously bad news, even if it would probably not have worked out the way he was expecting it to - but it meant that however urbane he tried to be, there was always that sense that he was juggling three or four of those old-timey cartoon-anarchist bombs with the gaily burning Mission Impossible fuses.

Now, on the other hand...

>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?

Sort of; that's what the 2407 Psi Corps/IPO détente was about.

This has been touched on a couple of times, but only gently, because - as noted above - I have limited interest in depicting legal wrangling. Early in Requiem for a Lensman, for instance, Gryphon and Utena have a short conversation in a turbolift in which Utena asks him, essentially, "Why are we letting them get away with this?", the answer to which boiled down to, "I'm not entirely convinced we actually have to burn the galaxy down to save it yet, but I think I can see the place where I will be from here."

>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?

Yes.

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

Yes. Well, some of it. She earned the egg thing fair and square. (And the curry thing really was kind of an accident. Or at least it went on a bit longer than was originally intended.)

--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.