It was a dark and stormy night - This immortal phrase was first penned by English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), later 1st Baron Lytton, as the opening line of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. In his day, Bulwer-Lytton was one of the most popular authors in the history of the English language, but by the late 20th century, his standing had so eroded that he became the namesake of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest—a sarcastic "bad fiction writing" contest held annually since 1982 by the English department at San Jose State University.

It is, of course, also the first line of Snoopy's perpetually unfinished novel in the old Peanuts comic strips.

never a vehicle renowned for its stability - The original Willys MB/Ford GPW Truck, ¼ Ton, 4×4, Command Reconnaissance was a well-loved, durable, agile, versatile vehicle, but it had and continues to have an often-literally-fatal flaw: with its short wheelbase and relatively high center of gravity, it is very easy to overturn if driven imprudently.

"La Maison Écarlate" - Technically, maison just means "house", not "mansion" (that would be manoir), but I think it flows better, so after some consideration I decided to go with a slight mistranslation for reasons of poetic license.

If you like, imagine that when Count Victor originally moved to the area and built the house, it was considerably smaller than it is now, and though it grew into a proper mansion over the intervening centuries, he never changed its name.

late Louis XV chairs - The furniture of the latter reign of King Louis XV of France (1710-1774) was characterized by lightness, comfort, and neoclassical decorative touches, a reaction against both the heavy, blocky furniture of the Louis XIV style and the overdecorated rocaille fashions of Louis XV's earlier reign.

Enter freely and of your own will - Remilia is quoting Count Dracula's greeting to Jonathan Harker upon the latter's arrival at Castle Dracula, at the beginning of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel (can you guess?) Dracula. It's a traditional speech of welcome in certain vampire families, which is why it seems a bit rote coming from Remilia; it's part of the suite of manners she was raised with.

an Ottomane sofa - One of several styles of couch popular in Louis XV's day, the Ottomane was an oval sofa with a back that wrapped around to the sides instead of separate arms, and decorative themes derived from a Turkish aesthetic (hence the name). Not to be confused with the type of upholstered footstool popularly called an ottoman.

Château Mouton-d'Armailhacq - A winery in the Bourdeaux region of France. IRL, known since 1989 by the slightly simplified name Château d'Armailhac. Owned since 1934 by the same family, but is not the same winery, as the more famous Château Mouton Rothschild. The wine itself is made from a blend of all the various grape varieties that grow in the Paulliac area, mainly Cabernet Sauvignon.

D'Armailhac is in the "fifth growth" class of Bordeaux wineries, and as such its products are far less prestigious—and expensive—than those of "first growth" wineries like Latour or Mouton Rothschild. Remilia didn't break out the good stuff for this guest on the first night, partly because she assumed that as a Liberion, he wouldn't know enough about wine to notice, but mostly because she doesn't care much about those details herself. As mortal beverages go, she prefers tea to wine anyway, but an occasion is an occasion.

Surpayé, obsédé par le sexe, et par ici - "Overpaid, oversexed [literally, "obsessed with sex"], and over here," a translation of a slogan often employed by British people annoyed by the vast numbers of American soldiers quartered in their country during the run-up to the opening of the western front in World War II. One assumes some Gallians feel similarly about the large quantity of Liberion personnel currently stationed in Gallia to support anti-Neuroi operations in Karlsland and western Ostmark, although the expression itself may date from the First War in this timeline.

Half an hour later... - This is one of my favorite visual gags in the entire story. The sheer deadpan-ness of it tickles me every time.

It's an arcane artifact - "The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood." Agatha Christie, The Hound of Death (1933)

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law, Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination (1973 edition)

Mark I vortex manipulator - A time-and-space manipulation device developed on Earth in the 49th century. One may be familiar with a later wrist-worn digital model (vintage the 51st century) from certain episodes of Doctor Who and/or Rose Tyler's appearance in Project Phoenix 3: The Eye of Harmony.

Act II: "La Deuxième"

La Deuxième - French: "The Second" (feminine form).

Salusian hold 'em poker - It's like Texas hold 'em, except... actually, you know what, I don't know enough about poker to make this part up. It's just different somehow, make it up yourselves if you wanna. :)

a glass of Rousseau - Specifically, Domaine Armand Rousseau Pere et Fils Chambertin Grand Cru, a red wine made with Pinot Noir grapes. It's different from the d'Armailhacq blend they had the first night in ways that are presumably important to wine people, and seems to be what folks in the know have with coq au vin. I don't know much more about wine than I do about poker, so your mileage may vary. I'm doin' what I can here.

her rubber duck - His name is Ludovico.

her reflection in the surface of the water - Like most vampires, Remilia doesn't appear in old-fashioned mirrors or on most photographic film, but the phenomenon occurs because of her vampire type's incompatibility with silver, not because they are literally incapable of being reflected in anything. Traditional glass mirrors are usually silver-backed, and photographic film uses tiny particles of silver salts as the light-sensitive medium that makes it work. Other reflective surfaces (e.g., the surface tension of water, polished metals other than silver) and photographic media (such as CCDs) work normally for them.

(Interestingly, this means if you were using a digital reflex camera which provided the image to the viewfinder using a silvered mirror, you would be unable to see her in said viewfinder, but could take her picture just fine, apart from having no manual focusing reference—but the infrared autofocus would work, and she'd show up if you switched to the LCD view.)

La Bête humaine - Usually translated in English as either The Beast Within or The Beast in Man, La Bête humaine is a novel by Émile Zola, first published in 1890. Short version: it's a psychological thriller about terrible people who do terrible things, although one of them does have the excuse that he's actually insane.

a few dozen sangsues - Literally, "bloodsuckers", and expressing a similar sentiment when used as Gallian slang for vampires.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité - "Liberty, equality, brotherhood", the much-publicized central values of the French Revolution and subsequent French Republics (including the current one).

Comité de salut public - The anti-counterrevolutionary extremist group that seized control of France in the wake of the first wave of the Revolution. The leaders of the committee, who belonged to the Jacobin faction of the Revolution, instituted the use of terror as a political tactic, massacring those they perceived as opponents (after branding them "enemies of the people") in pseudo-judicial purges. Not for nothing is this period of French history known as the Reign of Terror, or simply The Terror. After a few years of this, the Jacobins lost their grip on power and were, in their turn, wiped out by the new bosses.

The French Revolution was incredibly messy.

Tuez-les tous; les dieux connaîtront les leurs. - "Kill them all; the gods will know their own." A pagan-ish paraphrased translation of the Latin Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius ("Kill them all. God will know those who are His"), a command supposedly given before the Massacre at Beziers in 1209. Arnaud Amalric, the leader of the Catholic crusade against the Cathars, is reputed to have made the remark in response to a query from one of his men, asking how the crusaders could tell the Catholic citizens of Beziers from the to-be-murdered heretics sheltering among them.

to go with their shields, or eventually... on them - An expression originally used in reference to men-at-arms going off to war; it was said that they would return with their shields (i.e., alive) or on them (as corpses being carried back home). She means some of the surviving servants left of their own will, while the rest chose to remain until their natural lifespans ran out.

Qui êtes vous? - "Who are you?"

Je suis un invité. Je m'appelle— - "I'm a guest. My name is—"

Flandre, que fais-tu ici? - "Flandre, what are you doing here?"

mostiquette - "Little mosquito". Flandre is mocking her sister's small appetite for blood, and by extension her stature in general—and doing it as cruelly as possible. It's a double whammy for Remilia, since it's a serious insult in its own right, and it's something Flan occasionally called her in fits of childish pique back when they were actually children.

How about Global Thermonuclear War? - Someone asking "Shall we play a game?" is never not going to make Gryphon think "How about Global Thermonuclear War?"

Act III: "Jus Sanguinis"

Jus Sanguinis - A Latin phrase meaning "law of blood" or "right of blood". The principle of law stating that a person's nationality is determined by that of one or both parents (as opposed to ius soli, "right of soil", which holds that one's nationality is determined by one's place of birth).

Count Victor Scarlet - As immigrants often do, the Count adapted his name when he moved to Alsace in the 1200s. It was originally Vazul Skarlátvörös.

Magyarovia, the eastern part of the Ostmark-Magyar Empire - Which is to say Hungary, the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

you figure it out - "Flandre" is the French name for what we in the English-speaking world call Flanders—i.e., the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, of which Remilia the Elder's hometown, Bruges (or as the Flemish call it, Brugge), is a major city.

It is as if her very blood is failing - Flandre was probably suffering from a form of leukemia, which was not understood by the medicine, magical or otherwise, of the time.

the blue of cornflowers - Not the blossoms of the maize plant (Zea mays), which is a New World plant and would still have been largely unknown in Europe in 1520; rather, Centaurea cyanus, an ancient European flower that got its name from its habit of growing as a weed in fields of grain. (Maize, being a grass, has flowers in the botanical sense, but not in a form that would be popularly recognized as such.)

she was so powerful, even then - Their mother's theory was that Flandre would have developed as a witch, like herself, if she had remained human, and that some echo of that trait affected her turning. She's abnormally strong, both physically and magically, even for a vampire.

or the scullery - The room off the kitchen where the dishes get washed. Not to be confused with the skullery, which is the room in a natural history museum where the skulls are kept.

(N.B. That second part isn't true, but totally should be.)

unhand me at once, you libertine - In the original cut of this scene, she was so flustered she called him a mammal, which was funny when I wrote it, but just led to an out-of-place sidetrack wherein both of them were derailed by puzzlement over why she even said that. It almost felt like fourth-walling, so I got rid of it. Libertinism, an extreme form of (mainly sexual) hedonism with an emphasis on debauchery, was very much in vogue (both as a practice, and a topic of discussion and literature) in 17th and 18th-century France, so it makes more sense as an over-the-top accusation Remilia would throw at someone she considered to be taking liberties (see what I did there) with her person.

a throw of the dice that's gone your way - Zoner said that to Utena Tenjou way back in S1M2 Christmas Rose.

the sign on Flandre's door - "Flandre's room. Keep out! This means you."

Qu'est-ce? - "Who is it?"

Here's a skull now... - Flandre is (mis)quoting two different characters from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1: the first couple of lines are from the First Clown (the gravedigger), the rest is based on Hamlet's famous soliloquy over Yorick's skull.

Act IV: "Chanson de la Nuit"

Chanson de la Nuit - "Song of the Night".

unless the aeolians have left - Magical spirits of air, commonly summoned in earler times to power pipe organs and other such unwieldy instruments. Largely supplanted in the twentieth century by electrically-powered blowers.

for all he knew, the modern accordion had been around basically unchanged since the Renaissance - It hasn't; although "squeeze box"-style free reed instruments in general are very old, the accordion as we know it today is a mid-19th-century development.

I'll dock her pay for the 27,215 days of work she's missed - As this scene takes place sometime in May 1946, this indicates that Sakuya disappeared in June 1870—further suggesting that she started work at Scarlet Mansion circa 1790, while Remilia's parents were still alive. They may have known who she was and where she came from... and then again, they may not.

out from under her wing - The other is folded up loosely against her back, not under him. One of the "wing complications" noted in the previous episode was figuring out what to do with them when she's facing away.

let's go find out if that "savage breast" thing is really true - "Musick has Charms to soothe a savage Breast, / To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak." First lines of William Congreve's tragedy The Mourning Bride (1697). Congreve's reference to a "savage Breast" uses "breast" in its older context of the chest in general, and metaphorically the heart contained within, i.e., the emotions. Not "savage beast" as it is often quoted.

I wonder if he's a sailor - I am not a sailor. I am not a sailor, I am the captain, I am the captain, I am the captain.

Sorry.

Not sorry.

strange lyrics about calling for medical help - This is Bill Bailey's "Ambulance Musette", the same comedy song Laura Kinney is busking in the climactic scene of Weapon of Choice.

pirouetted crazily... and flopped face-down - I bet Ric Flair never did this while giving a piggyback.

as a mentor of mine once said, it's not the years, it's the mileage - The quotation comes from Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Cisbelvia - A small (fictional) principality in the Carpathians, long since subsumed by Hungary. Cis is used here in its geographic sense: "on this side of". Cisbelvia is so called because it was to the west, i.e., closer to Rome, of the (equally fictional) River Belv, as opposed to Transbelvia, which lies on the east, or when viewed from Rome opposite, side of the river.

Everything I said is true - Including the part about being willing to play horsie! Equal opportunities for all.*

* subject to practical mass constraints

L'amour c'est être stupide ensemble. - "Love is being stupid together." Paul Valéry (1871-1945).

"It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" - A song written in 1936 by Billy Mayhew. The Ink Spots' inevitable cover is probably the best-known version today, having been used in several popular game and movie soundtracks, and is presented in their usual laid-back, romantic style. The first recording to gain popular success, though, was by Fats Waller, and his version is faster, jazzier, and mh far jocular in tone. The difference is best summed up by the way the two versions present the middle part. From the Ink Spots, it's this straightforward sentimental verse:

I love you, yes I do, I love you
If you break my heart I'll die
So be sure it's true
When you say "I love you"
It's a sin to tell a lie

Coming from Fats, the same chorus is:

You know the words that were spoken? Here it is
"I love ya, I love ya, I love ya, I love ya," hahaha!
Yes but if you break my heart I'll break your jaw and then I'll die
So be sure it's true
When you say "I love you," haha!
It's a sin to tell a lie

Both of these versions apply to this scene? But I feel the sentiments expressed by the Waller version more completely encapsulate a sense of the... potential risks involved in forming a relationship with a potentially-vengeful-hearted supernatural being. (And that's not even taking Flandre into account! :)

Act V: "Fièvre de la Pleine Lune"

"Bloody Tears" - You were probably expecting a different track here. Don't worry, it's coming. This one is here because I couldn't resist, and besides, in any fight with a vampire, it's going to be playing in Gryphon's head regardless of whether he wants it to. :)

Fièvre de la Pleine Lune - "Full Moon Fever".

Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown - Last line of the 1974 Roman Polanski film Chinatown, with which one character advises another how best to cope with all the craziness that just happened.

Heinz Mertens - Erica Hartmann's crew chief. Based on the real-life Erich Hartmann's crew chief, who was so loyal to Hartmann that, among other things, he once flew to an assignment with him by squeezing into the luggage compartment of his Bf 109, and on another occasion picked up a rifle and went looking for him behind enemy lines when he was missing over the Eastern Front. (Hartmann had in fact been captured by the Soviets, but escaped.)

Mako Iwamatsu - In the Strike Witches ending credits, there's a brief shot of Yoshika Miyafuji conferring with her ground crew.

The guy on the left looks like Mako from The Legend of Korra, at least to my eyes, so my own internal joke is that he's the same "actor" (in much the same way that, say, Ritsuko from Those Who Hunt Elves is clearly played by the same animation sprite as Asuka from Evangelion). Here in OWaW, he's Yoshika's crew chief, and he's named after the late Makoto "Mako" Iwamatsu, the Japanese-American actor after whom the TLOK character was named. And thus the circle is closed.

I've been wanting to get Erica and Yoshika's crew chiefs some screen time for ages. I' m glad I finally arranged it.

Ach, was bedeutet das? - "Eh, what does this say?"

Le Magasin - Fictional department store in Colmar. Magasin ("magazine", in the "things are stored there" sense) is a common French word for that type of store.

back in Akase - A rural area in Kumamoto, across the Ariake Sea from Nagasaki, Fusō. Presumably where Iwamatsu originally comes from.

This establishment is AMS, etc. - "This establishment is [classified] Above Most Secret on a strictly need-to-know basis, so mum's the word when you return to base, you follow? If anyone finds out what we're doing here, we'll be shit out of luck pretty damn quick."

Inspired by Robin Williams's "Shouldn't the visit from the VP be on the QT?" patter in Good Morning, Vietnam.

aye aye, Major - Such a good sailor is Mako that, even under these absurd conditions, he automatically applies the courtesy promotion to major that army captains receive aboard ship (because only the captain is called Captain).

merkwürdig - Strange, bizarre.

grueslige Waldvilla-Watche - "Spooky Woods Mansion Watch" (in the sense of a military post).

Timmy fell down the well - I'm not sure Timmy ever actually did fall down the well on Lassie, but it seemed like people were somehow able to interpret the dog's barking to mean all sorts of complicated situations had arisen.

an arrestingly different set of clothes - Remilia's more formal look in this scene was inspired by a PVC figure I found online, the design of which is markedly at odds with her usual look:

There's also a variant of this figure where her outfit is mostly black, which is quite a dramatic look.

Sadly, I don't actually own either one, as when I found these pics in Amazon listings, the white one was selling for $260 in the US, and the black one for $480, which, I mean, I know they're fancy, but surely you guys are having a laugh.

Merci, Mademoiselle la Comtesse. Je suis heureux d’être ici. - "Thank you, Countess. I'm happy to be here."

how much did one of those big wine bottles hold? - Gryphon's recollection is correct. A magnum holds 1.5L, or twice the capacity of a regular 750mL bottle.

Act VI: "Nuit aux Mille Poignards"

the cold open - This scene was a lot of fun. I have a strange fondness for writing faux comm chatter, and this bit's loaded with it, but it was also a hoot to play with the whole "parallel timeline" thing a little.

Informational tidbits: Riquewihr, Anould, and Fréland are all villages east or northeast of Colmar, and for our purposes here are the sites of monitoring posts, part of the network that alerts the Allied witches to Neuroi incursions. JG 11 is the Luftwaffe unit stationed at Juvincourt, we saw them in Season 1, and Deuxième Escadre (Second Squadron) is a Free Gallian Air Force unit covering the sector to Colmar's southwest.

Nuit aux Mille Poignards - "Night of a Thousand Daggers".

Spear the Gungnir - That's right. Spear the Gungnir. Not Gungnir the Spear. Spear the Gungnir.

If and when Remilia ever meets Corwin, they can compare notes about naming their signature weapons in a way that occasionally annoys their enemies.

his U.S. Army-issue wristwatch - The American A-11 "hack" wristwatch, sometimes nicknamed "the watch that won the war", was the most widely issued timepiece on the Allied side of World War II. The hacking function (meaning the second hand stops when you pull out the crown to set the hour and minute, and restarts instantly when you push it back in) made it possible for soldiers to do that "synchronize watches" thing you used to see in movies, which in turn enabled precise coordination of activities in the field. They were made by several contractors; Gryphon's is a Waltham.

all the colors of the rainbow, in order - If the little statue of her I have here is anything to go by, Flandre's wing crystals are canonically not colored in the spectrum order, but... well, I mean, why not?

the '89 Heidsieck - The champagnery of Heidsieck & Co. is better known today by the trade name "Monopole", but that wasn't established until 1860. Sakuya is referring here to the 1789 Heidsieck vintage.

huangjiu - Literally "yellow wine", a Chinese libation made from grains (usually rice), with an alcohol content similar to Western wine (ca. 15%).

a traditional Alsatian baekeoffe - Also spelled a bunch of other ways, baekeoffe is a stew/casserole dish made with white wine, sliced potatoes, onions, and assorted meats, sealed in a crockery dish with bread dough and cooked low and slow. As Sakuya notes, it's for special occasions. (Since it takes hours to cook and she didn't know it was a special occasion until about five minutes before she said that, we may assume that shenanigans were performed, as with the cake. :)

Mais bien sûr oui, ma chouchoutte - "But of course yes, my little cabbage." Believe it or not, that's a genuine French endearment. In fact it's an emphasized one, since chouchoutte is a doubled and diminutive form of chou ("cabbage").

with a finely telegraphed wink - Flandre recovering was, of course, part of the plan for this piece. Her evolving at that point from Gryphon's most dangerous playmate to his wingman was not, and it's an emergent detail I enjoy very much. After all, it's nice if your sister-in-law approves of you. Especially when she's a weapon of mass destruction.

Fun fact! In this story, Gryphon and Flandre are actually the same age—438! (Might be one off for part of the year, depending on when in the year Flan's birthday falls.)

Act VII: Nocturne Historique

what on Earth had possessed Remilia to put it with the B-positive blood preserves - Sakuya would like to think it was some kind of attempt at alphabetization, but it's more likely that was just the nearest shelf when Remilia got tired of holding the jar and put it down.

Meiling would end up hoisting her up to sit there - This is one of my favorite visuals in this story, and it didn't even actually happen. At least not before we left the room. :)

rummaging in the icebox - If you're wondering where the ice comes from / And other science facts / Then repeat to yourself, "It's just a show / I should really just relax."

Non, non, encore une fois non, mille fois non! - "No, no, once again no, a thousand times no!"

Mais je serais très honoré. - "But I would be so very honored."

you had a drinking problem - https://youtu.be/firBlh0OeT4

No, I'm from Maine, I only work in outer space - Gryphon is paraphrasing Jim Kirk, who occasionally says the same thing about Iowa (originally in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).

Algonquia - Massachusetts is so named after the Massachusett people, one of the Algonquin-speaking Native American nations that lived in the area before the European settlers came. It doesn't seem too improbable that, in a setting with different-but-related place names (Britannia, Gallia, etc.), that it would have been named for the overarching Algonquin culture instead.

(Similarly, the OWaW world's equivalent of Maine is called Dawnland because it's the easternmost part of the continental United States,* and thus the first part of the country where each new day arrives.)

Fun fact! Nobody really knows why Maine is called Maine. There used to be a French province by that name (it was abolished in 1791, during the French Revolution), but there is no documented reason why the English settlers of this part of North America would have named the place after it. It was so named by royal charter in 1665, without explanation.

* Alaska is cheating with its chain of islands and the International Date Line, and this will not be tolerated.

paragenesis - I don't entirely understand the Wikipedia definition of this concept, but it seems to have to do with working out the sequence in which mineral layers were formed. Meanwhile, paragenetics, at least in a UF context, is a catchall term for the non-innately-hereditary factors that account for supernatural traits in paranormal lifeforms that have a basis in mundane ecology, such as magically altered humans. Technically it should be paraepigenetics, short for "paranormal epigenetics", but that's cumbersome, so the "epi" is usually dropped for convenience's sake.

When we are young, wandering the face of the Earth - Lyrics from the Rush song "Dreamline", which has been something of an anthem for the cohort of first-generation WDF members since the very beginning of the UF project.

one of the great poets of rock 'n roll - The late Neil Peart (1952–2020), Rush's drummer, who wrote most if not all of their lyrics.

we got into our twenties - Yes, Gryphon is massively downplaying the maturation forced on both of them by the rigors of the Exile. That's mainly because he views the whole thing as a process, one which didn't really reach its culmination until the Ragnarök, and he can't organize his thoughts to explain that part without getting even more tangential than he's already being. Anyway, he reckons the important thing is where it led to, not how long it took.

a favor to her old boss - Wilton Goulet, long-standing (and long-suffering) Director of the Worlds Welfare Work Association.

he manifested his Lens - Not all Lensmen can hide their Lenses this way; in Gryphon's case the ability is an artifact of the weird stuff that happened to him during the Ragnarök, right after he got it.

Morden says we're just a few minutes out - That's John Morden, the 3WA operative, not Mordin Solus, the salarian scientist. Just thought I ought to remind everyone.

you've hit the jackpot here, tiger - Kei is not consciously paraphrasing Mary Jane Watson from the '60s Spider-Man comics, but given how tangled the metafictional continuum of the UF universe is, who knows?

an old friend of ours had come to help me look - In fact several did, but the one he's specifically talking about is Tali'Shukra.

"Good day, sir! I said good day!" - After Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971).

booped her nose - This is different from beeping a nose. Beeping a nose involves gently pinching it and making a "beep" noise. Booping is just tapping or poking the tip of the nose, and in some regions no sound effect is required.

crêpes, rolled up around what looked to be chocolate crème - Those of you who have played Helltaker and/or seen the digital artbook may recognize these as the pancakes from the last scene in that game.

Act VIII: Être Stupide Ensemble

Être Stupide Ensemble - "Being Stupid Together", a callback to the Paul Valéry quote in Act IV.

beurre à la bourguignonne - A compound butter made up of butter and pounded garlic paste, used as the principal flavorant in escargots à la bourguignonne. Known in the rest of the world as, well, garlic butter.

tucked the free end of his tie into the front of his shirt - My grandfather, who served in the Army Reserve from 1952 to sometime in the '60s, always wore his ties like this, back when he wore ties.

she's so easy to wind up - It appears that, even having recovered her sanity, Flandre still can't resist trolling Remilia occasionally. (I mentioned this to Jaymie when I wrote this scene, and she replied, "That's just how being sisters works." :)

Fusōnese red rice - AKA sekihan, rice colored red by the addition of red mung beans (adzuki). Traditionally served on special occasions such as weddings, birthdays, and coming-of-age celebrations. (Sometimes very specific coming-of-age celebrations, but, we needn't get into that here.) Where Remilia even heard of this, I have no idea.

her long-ago harpsichord lessons - I had to hunt a little to find an instrument that actually existed in the 1510s, when pre-vampire Flandre would have been studying music. The piano and violin, the obvious choices for a high-born young woman, hadn't been invented yet. Fortunately, the harpsichord is quite ancient, and as a keyboard instrument, provides a useful foundation for her to go on to learn more modern members of the family, such as the piano, the harmonium, and, eventually, the Korg Wavestation.

Oh no. A vampire. - This kind of sarcastic monotone is tricky to express in prose.

That's me! - This is pretty much the view I had in mind. :)

wherever [Meiling] comes from - Hint: It's not China, but the cuisine (like the aesthetic) is very similar.

would not a Baron Münchhausen - Remilia is conflating a historical figure with the satirical fictional character modeled on him here. Baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720-1797) was a Hanoverian nobleman who participated in military campaigns in Russia and told tall tales about his wartime experiences thereafter. Baron Munchausen, the fictional character, was created by the Hanoverian author Rudolf Erich Raspe (1736-1794), as a spoof both of the real von Münchhausen's penchant for exaggeration and 18th-century German society in general, in the 1785 novel Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. While the real person was indisputably a bullshit artist, the fictional one claims to have done things that are patently impossible in the most over-the-top manner conceivable. (Fun fact: Lord Fahrvergnügen is loosely based on Baron Munchausen, with the conceit being that his ridiculous adventures really happened.)

Rudolf Erich Raspe was almost as interesting a character in his own right. He was a chemist in addition to his literary exploits, and evidently something of an authority on tungsten, but he was also a liar, a cheat, and a rascal, who had to flee Germany for Britain in 1775 after swindling a German count he was supposed to be buying art for, was thrown out of the Royal Society for unspecified but tantalizing "breaches of Trust" the same year, and later had to flee Britain for Ireland because he got caught faking valuable mining claims on some property in Scotland.

None of this is super-important to this scene, of course, but it's amusing, and it shows how well-read Remilia is. For that matter, she may have known von Münchhausen. I rather like the idea that he was an old family friend. Maybe he and Count Victor hunted monsters together in the Baron's youth.

Also, notice how much more formal Remilia's speech becomes in this scene. This is more like the way she talked when her parents were alive.

and there's an end on 't - A figure of speech favored by the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), who used it in the same sense that a modern speaker would emphasize a sentence by appending ", period."

an old-fashioned maiden - "Maiden" in the traditional sense of an unmarried virgin of relatively high social standing, not in the "weirdly, aggressively coquettish girl" anime stereotype sense.

I love it when you speak Gallic - When it began to become clear to me that Gryphon and Remilia were going to be a couple, I joked in the studio that it was likely the longer they were together, the more his attitude toward her would come to resemble Gomez Addams's toward Morticia.

Dans ce cas, quelle chance pour vous que ce soit ma langue maternelle - "In that case, how lucky for you that it's my mother tongue."

Sir Percy Blakeney - Protagonist of Baroness Orczy's 1903 stage play and 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel. Blakeney, an English baronet, cultivates the image of an ineffectual fop, but is in fact an expert swordsman and general mastermind who leads (under the titular alias) a covert organization dedicated to rescuing French aristocrats from the guillotine during the most violent phase of the French Revolution. As such, he was a sort of literary precursor to the modern superhero, one of the first (if not the first) "secret identity" action characters in English-language literature.

vampire engagements can be rather long - As in decades long, although by those standards, Remilia's own parents had a whirlwind courtship; their engagement lasted all of a year, most of it spent fulfilling the various legal and ritual requirements (publication of banns, etc.) then prevailing in greater Bruges.

everynight wear, like jalabiyah - One of the many, many names for the robelike garment favored by the desert peoples of the Middle East and its environs.

Amour, c'est un champ de bataille - "Love, it is a battlefield."

the rules of fair play do not apply in certain matters - A paraphrase of the proverb "The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war," coined by the English poet John Lyly (1553 or 4–1606) in his 1578 book Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, and commonly misquoted as "all's fair in love and war."

Bien. Alors soyons estupides ensemble - "Good. Then let us be stupid together."

Ball's in your court, Van Helsing - This is the surviving vestige of a silly note I jotted down when this scene first occurred to me:

Discussing it in online DMs, Jaymie suggested that the phrase "captain's log, stardate" should trigger an automatic offsite backup function in the omni-tool note software, so that this musing would, unbeknownst to its author, be forwarded to someplace where Skuld would see it. Unfortunately that probably wouldn't work across the time/dimension gap—omni-tools are sophisticated, but not that sophisticated—and anyway, he's not awake enough to even have the complete thought, much less record it. But the last line remains, reflecting the overall sentiment, which is that vampire hunters can take the asshole train to the end as far as he's concerned right now. :)

(She also suggested that that sounds more like something from Zoner's life goals list than Gryphon's, which is true, although I submit that, under most circumstances, Zoner would care less about the S-rank distinction and not at all about the gold bonus achievement.)

For the record, he's not literally calling out the late Abraham van Helsing, who did good work against a vampire who Needed Killing in the 1890s. He has in mind the real Van Helsing's latter-day successors back in the 25th century, who are a lot less judicious about their target selection. Think of them as the Jokerz of vampire hunters—the brand name and the flash, but none of the substance.

--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 don't know who told you that, but they were gravely misinformed. The sound is what separates a nose touch from a nose boop.

Though if course when it was first settled it would have been part of the same Britannian Empire as Nova Albia, or whatever that peninsula to its east is called. Perhaps it got that name when it separated from Algonquia?

>Ball's in your court, Van Helsing - This is the surviving
>vestige of a silly note I jotted down when this scene first occurred
>to me:
>

Oh, I think this is perfectly possible--not in real time, but in a buffer state, like a print job patiently waiting for the laptop to be reconnected to the LAN with the printer on it. Soon as he gets back Skuld gets something that makes her laugh out loud and REALLY want to find out what in Midgard happened.

>For the record, he's not literally calling out the late Abraham van
>Helsing, who did good work against a vampire who Needed Killing in the
>1890s. He has in mind the real Van Helsing's latter-day successors
>back in the 25th century, who are a lot less judicious about their
>target selection. Think of them as the Jokerz of vampire
>hunters—the brand name and the flash, but none of the substance.

The clowns we saw in both Marcy's intro story and Saya's date with Etrigan.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

If you like, imagine that when Victor originally moved to the area and built it, it was considerably smaller than it is now, and though it grew into a proper mansion over the intervening centuries, he never changed its name.

--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.

--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 missed this note originally, or perhaps its later addition, until just now, but it amuses me to believe this is the result of a bit of joking between Count Victor and Remilia the Elder about the building barely qualifying as a guest house as far as her family was concerned, and him naming it accordingly.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Flandre's impish streak is said to come from her father after all."

It occurs to me, as I work on something only coincidentally pertaining to Alsace for class, that this statement, appropriate as it is to the conversation, is not in fact true. Not only is it literally untrue (Remilia the Elder would have been a native speaker of the Flemish dialect of Dutch), it's also figuratively false. Since she was born in Colmar in 1503, Remilia's first language would have been a dialect of New High German. Alsace didn't become French*-speaking until the 1670s, when Louis XIV completed the annexation of the region begun by his father during the Thirty Years' War and, as conquerors of borderlands often do, set out to stamp out the old language and enforce ubiquity of the new.

The distinction is a bit academic--being a vampire with a lot of free time, Remilia was probably fluent in many European languages by 1789, and the Scarlets would have spoken French at home since becoming part (however peripheral) of the Court of Versailles, but even so.

The real anomaly here is Flandre, who was born in 1508 and went mad in 1520. Why she even understands a word of French, let alone speaks it as a natural matter of course in Book 1, is a complete mystery.

--G.
* or in this case Gallic, but you know
-><-
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.