LAST EDITED ON Apr-02-10 AT 01:24 PM (EDT)
23 This was left vague because I've long thought the early timeline of UF could stand some retroactive cleaning up. In Undocumented Features Book Two: The Long Road, the second destruction of Worcester happened in 1992, after two things happened, both of them in an absurdly short span of time: GENOM's rise to power (and accompanying rebuilding of Worcester); and the training and equipping of the Wedge Defense Force. Nowadays, with UF having grown far beyond its original joke-born origins, it seems like that should have at least taken a few years, and I'm inclined to place it more in the vicinity of 1994 or '95.47 An allusion to the opening narration of the 1984 motion picture version of Dune: "A beginning is a very delicate time. Know, then, that it is the year 10,191... "
60 As with many features of Dantrovian biology, this presumably has to do with the species having evolved under constant threat from predators.
88 I hadn't invented Rina Dragonaar yet.
96 Australia, to meet with the as-yet-unspecified rogue Psi Cop who trained him to avoid detection by the Psi Corps.
124 As seen in the "Kirk and company beam down to Regula I" scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The Starfleet field jacket is one of my favorites among many nice bits of costuming in that film.
133 I understand that Gompei's is gone altogether in the real world. A shame. The faux-bistro cafe version from my student days wasn't great, but it beat the regular food on campus, and the old pub room where the student activities committee would sometimes put on shows was a nice little function space.
135 Ping's Garden, as we'll see later. Ping's turns up again and again in EPU works - it's a staple in NXE as well - even though I'm pretty much the only member of the old gang who will still admit to liking the food there.
137 When I arrived in 1991 as a WPI freshman, Worcester had a number of things with initials that called to mind a radio station. In addition to the WRTA, there was WCIS (Worcester County Institution for Savings, a bank) and WDPW (the Worcester Department of Public Works). Within a few years, the old Worcester Galleria would be closed, renovated, and reopened as WCFO, the Worcester Common Fashion Outlets. In addition, some WRTA buses actually did carry ads for radio stations, most notably WXLO.
293 Dantrovian reaction time is about a quarter of the average human's.
330 A tachi is a cavalry sword similar to, but usually slightly larger than, a katana, and is customarily worn with the edge down rather than up. Many scholars now agree that it's an earlier type that evolved into the katana.
353 In a neat bit of symmetry, we'll see this kind of jumpsuit again in Page of Swords, when Saionji provides one to Anne Cross.
423 Not as pronounced as they'd be if she were attacking; Dantrovian canine teeth can extend and retract by as much as a quarter-inch.
442 Japanese - and Nihonian - tradition holds that creatures with gold eyes are magical, and to be approached warily.
460 Touga Kiryuu.
526 Shalhara, in western Cephiro. If he'd made it much further west, he might have encountered Azarath, though he'd only have seen it if the monks wanted him to.
658 As we will see later, "The End of the World" was not always a title to inspire fear and loathing, despite its rather doom-laden wording.
684 Since a Cephirean heartsword is the embodiment of its owner's spirit and Cephirean magic tends to be a rather literal art, not only does having one's heartsword broken hurt abominably, it will also tend to cripple one's emotions. Given that she spends the entirety of the first and most of the second symphony without most of hers, Utena has an incredibly strong soul just to function, let alone to grow and thrive, in that time.
685 And here is where Akio's little holoplay diverges from what really happened. He always starts with a core of truth and then varnishes it with lies until only that which he wants to present makes an impression on the viewer.
699 Two points for Akio for using "enormity" in the proper sense - "the quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness" - rather than the more common sense, in which it is confused with "enormousness".
777 The hell he doesn't.
830 There wasn't a way to show it that wouldn't have broken the flow of the scene, but Juri was very impressed with Miki's actions here - this moment can be considered one of the seeds of what would become her great love for him.
851 This barb would have stung Akio especially, since Juri's well-known disbelief in miracles was one of the levers he used to involve her in the Tournament in the first place.
891 Not the first time Saionji had expressed this opinion of Nanami; it mirrors something he said about her in Revolutionary Girl Utena.
923 "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1. In the original Shakespeare the line refers to Macbeth, a traitorous regicide.
973 Dvhanai sha'tiaia, makhanae aeanaia - Dantrovese does not translate well at all to English, especially when the spirit (dvha) is involved, but in essence, Azalynn is praying to the Spirit of the World to help her soothe this beloved stranger's torments. Makhana aeanaia, "the beloved stranger", is one of the central figures of Dantrovian animism, an archetype embodying concepts difficult to summarize in any other language. Very roughly, the idea is that one should be willing to love, care for, and grieve for even those one has never met.
1112 The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1. "O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't!" How Saionji can quote Shakespeare is unknown; perhaps you've not really experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the original Gaulish.
1163 Saionji was delirious, but he's right: he did, in fact, see a white-bearded man in red who appeared out of nowhere and gave him a new sword. Precisely why Odin did that has never really been explored... yet.
1190 Edward didn't steal it from a bank, she stole it from Earthforce's black operations slush fund.
1234 This whole story is another example of the way things didn't always, or even often, go to plan in the early days of the Symphonies. Saionji was originally intended to be a recurring comedic foil - the Sideshow Bob of the Symphony, always turning up at odd times to try and destroy Utena or Kate and always being smacked down by whichever Duelist happened to be passing by. However, as the middle of S1 began to come together (and I filled in the missing bits of Revolutionary Girl Utena I hadn't seen), I came to like the bastard and decided he deserved better, so I replanned his arc and wrote this piece to explain how he was salvaged. It worked out for the best - I got a solid supporting player who played key roles in several pivotal parts of later story arcs and some nice development screen time for Azalynn as well.