>I guess its just me, but somehow, every time I try and visualize
>UF-G’s maneuver in this scene my brain keeps insisting the impact
>would have happened on the Passenger’s side. Obviously I guess my
>brain is seeing this backwards from what the Muse showed G!

He was trying to do a Scandinavian flick (aka a pendulum turn) to the left, to go around Flandre and make the bend in the road that's beyond her, but he'd only gotten as far as the first phase (where you turn in the opposite direction to where you ultimately want to be going) before Flan blew up the Jeep.

>in a bed that is even better than the ones at St. Ulrich (the quality
>of which I place at the feet of Perrine. I don’t see her as
>allowing anyone around her to settle for less than the best rest she
>can aquire for them)

Heh, it's actually established back in the original TV series that the witches have startlingly luxurious accommodations for military personnel, including beds that are at least doubles, if not queen-size. Still, I like your thinking here, and I suspect you're right that, when the time came to set up shop in her own country, Perrine pulled all the strings she could get ahold of to make sure her outfit got the best accommodations available. By this point in her career, Major Clostermann has a level of pull with the Gallian government that is out of all proportion to her relatively modest actual rank.

>yeah, wiping out one’s vehicle in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid
>hitting a mysterious personage in the middle of a heavy rain totally
>qualifies as a hard night in my book!

To be fair, he DID successfully avoid hitting her. ... OK, she did most of that herself, but he totally would have missed her anyway if she hadn't blown up the Jeep! Probably.

>Ah, Poor Remilia. It’s easy to understand how you think he’s
>trying to yank your chain here. Its because unlike us faithful
>readers, you’ve yet to be introduced to folk like Saya or
>Marceline… and I think there is at least one other who’s name is
>escaping me at the moment.

Well, there's Mina Murray, but she's only sort of half-vampire, since Dracula got whacked before he could finish turning her.

>Somehow I don’t think that it will matter how often I read this
>passage, the thought that Remilia doesn’t seem to twig to the fact
>she’s just been out willed by Wolfgang (Hey, there is a REASON
>he’s the Lensbeagle!!) just makes it even funnier?

I confess an unseemly love for that joke, if I do say so myself. It's based on something Wolfgang really used to do IRL, and it has many levels.

>> "Sleep well, and tonight we'll discuss your fate."
>
>I dunno. I mean, sure, UF-G has had a less than optimal evening, but
>I’m not sure he wouldn’t twig to the similarities to “Good Night
>Wesley” that he used on Mio. Its not been THAT long since New
>Tricks, I think? Then again, maybe he did but declined to follow up
>in a way that was apparent to a 3rd person camera?

Yeah, he probably noticed, but he was too tired to think it all the way through.

(When writing that scene, I almost did have her say, "Good morning, my strange Liberion. I'll most likely kill you this evening," but decided that A, it was too on the nose, and B, Remilia doesn't really go in for direct death threats (particularly when she's already decided she'll do nothing of the kind). :)

>> "Are you always this formal with women you've spent the day in bed
>> with?" she wondered with a tilt of her head.
>
>Pretty sure it depends on the woman. Remilia is inherently formal due
>to her circumstances, so Uf-G kinda defaults to a matching level.

Indeed, the answer to her question is "No, but it seemed the best match for how you addressed me." :)

>> Probably not the time to say, "Actually, have I got news for you,"
>> Gryphon reflected internally.
>
>Nope. That will come in Chapter 7. :p

In his defense, he did try a couple of times before then, but the moment was never right.

>> she spun tales of the glory days of the ancien régime, and of wars
>> against monsters of old fought by companies of witches, vampires, and
>> other mysterious creatures working side-by-side.
>
>This makes it sound like the ‘Dark Ages’ really were quite dark,
>with only a thin line of friendly supernaturals holding the line and
>keeping the ‘mundanes’ alive and well.

Pretty much, yeah. (This is kind of borne out by what little backstory we get in the World Witches canon—there are a couple of mentions of witches in, e.g., classical antiquity, battling against non-Neuroi monsters and safeguarding humanity. I did add the human-aligned creatures, though.)

>> Gryphon met her smile and raised his teacup in return. "You haven't
>> even heard the half of it yet, Countess Scarlet."
>
>… Oh goodness. A totally shark jumping thought. I hope they
>don’t commission her as a Captain when she finally links up with the
>501st, however many stories down the line that winds up being.

Aw, dammit. I held off on making that joke in the commentary specifically so I could use it in-story when the time came. :)

>> To have yours wiped out like that, right in front of you... I can't
>> think of many things that are worse than that."
>
>But he’s lived through at least one… SonSet, though that in its
>own way was probably worse, since that was a calculated blow to
>SHATTER the WDF, in more ways than one, from the inside out.

I don't know if I'd call it worse, I mean, Remilia's actual parents were killed right in front of her. Operation Götterdämmerung was on a larger scale, to be sure, but the tragedy of the House of Scarlet was more intimate.

>> "Well, I don't want to carry a piano down there," he said wryly.
>
>He probably could find a way if he had to, but he’s not exactly a
>Hoffmanite either.

The really hard part would be getting it back upstairs.

>> His eyes snapped back into focus, a look of concentrated dismay
>> replacing the spacey fascination on his face.
>
>And here we see his realization that listening to his zanshin is the
>usually the right call. It is just times like an initial encounter
>with a supernatural that is not quite all there it gets confusing.

Well, that and he was momentarily stunned by the impact with the ground, but I could have spelled that out a little better.

>Also, while it works as a cold open, its really confusing as to how
>this scene fits in with what follows.

Hmm... yeah, I can see that. Making the omnibus edition did kind of break the flow in a few places, in much the same way that editing together episodes of a TV series into a "movie" doesn't always work. Maybe I should take that piece and move it into the jump that was left for it in the original version and see how that works.

>> "How is it," he inquired as Wolfgang led him across to the great
>> room, "that if it's for me, you can't be bothered, but you'll run
>> errands for her?"
>
>I think it might be part of the unwritten and secret laws of pets.
>Keep in mind a lot of them were initially written by Cats, of course.

Beagles are pretty well-known for being rather catlike dogs, so there's that. :)

>Right now your only ace is
>that he doesn’t have access to most of the gear he uses in a game
>like that.

True! And that made this scene such a pain in the butt to write, holy cow.

>> She opened her mouth, her fangs extending to twice their usual
>> length, and he had just enough time to think abstractly, Oh.
>> So that's what it means, before—
>
>Well, I think UF-G was concerned it might be like this all along,
>really, since he knew what Flandre was.

He thought it might be? But then again, she also showed signs of having read That Kind of Book (viz. her initial flash of weird coquettishness), and he was having a hard enough time getting a read on her at that early stage that he couldn't say with any certainty just what the hell she meant.

(And as it turned out, the Child at least did mean just kissing. Who knows what the Other would have made of it...)

>> When no answer was forthcoming, Mio turned on her props to see
>> Gryphon hovering nearby, his night-vision optics trained not on
>> the battle zone to the east, but off toward the western horizon.
>
>Not sure if he just twigged to the temporal connection side of this or
>not, but you can sure get the feeling he’s wishing he could swoop in
>and save himself even though he knows he cant because he didn’t.

It's not so much that as he's just noticed what time it is and realizes what's happening over there, just past the horizon. He doesn't have an impulse to get involved (because, as you say, he knows that would make a mess of things), but... he's kind of reflecting on the occasion (which from his "now" perspective happened weeks if not months ago) and wishing himself luck, and feeling anxious, even though he knows how it came out.

>> "I'd say 'I'm no ordinary man,' but it would be bragging," he
>> replied, shaking his head like a punch-drunk boxer. "Oh wow.
>> Oh wow."
>
>And now we see that at least alchemy has the same effect on the Detian
>physiology that Detian physiology has on these Vampires.

That, and the fact that she just whacked him up with a potion that's meant to supercharge witches, and he's not a witch, so that energy burst had to go somewhere. :)

>> No, I'm from Maine, I only work in outer space.
>
>Heh. Heh. Heh. I have to wonder if UF-Kirk ever had cause to use
>that line. Still, its always great to hear the classics from time to
>time.

I assume he first heard Kirk say the Iowa version to someone, ages ago, and thought Oh that's good, I'm havin' that. :)

>Oh, and how it comes to happen she vanishes from the house and
>eventually winds up as one of the Doctor’s companions is a story I
>hope the muse explains to you as well.

At first I thought she might have been inadvertently abducted by the Doctor, but upon reflection, I suspect it played out more like Ace's origin story—that she was displaced in time by some other phenomenon and then met the Doctor. If I get any more details on that, I'll see about writing them up.

>> With his stocky build, he felt certain he must come across like a
>> longshoreman cosplaying George Washington,
>
>Well, I suppose the joke here should be better a longshoreman than a
>LUMBERJACK… But you are from Maine. Then again, there are equal
>numbers of both there, I suppose.

Ah dammit, you're absolutely right, I should have said "lumberjack" there. I never even thought of it.

>> Ball's in your court, Van Helsing, he thought, just a tad smugly,
>> then dropped away into dreams of candlelight and contentment.
>
>Most questions I’ve had I’ve been able to suss out, either through
>the annotations or comments or just plain context. But this, I just
>don’t get…

He's just being silly. He's warm and comfortable, blissfully snuggled, and only about a quarter awake, so he facetiously flips off the entire concept of "vampire hunters" in the privacy of his own head before dropping the rest of the way off to sleep. No specific van Helsing is meant. :)

--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.