77 Chenann has every episode of The New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abram on datacrystal.

85 Utena's habit of collecting teacups comes from the original source material.

173 Utena knows better by this point than to wear an apron that says "KISS THE COOK". With a karma score as high as hers, that's just asking for trouble.

231 The No Bull is an Explorer-class scoutship, as seen in one of the sourcebooks for the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. In the UF universe, this is an outstandingly elderly starship class, dating back to the early days of the Corellian Expansion (ca. Standard Year 400). Seeing one in action in the year 2405 would be like watching a Roman galley pull up to the pier in New York.

281 "The bus" is the DSM campus nickname for the orbital shuttle service to Babylon 5 and Bajor, which naturally makes the shuttle terminal at Port Jeradar spaceport "the bus stop". This nickname isn't peculiar to Duelists; everybody at DSM, and many people in Port Jeradar, call it that.

323 And now that we've recapped Liza's entire First Symphony arc for the two or three people incautious enough to start reading the Second Symphony without it...

341 Spirit of the River is a Standard translation of the ship's proper t'skrangish name, da'Shivoam.

355 Shazrad jakhaii: Loosely, "Fuck a duck."

438 At least she didn't use her claws. PJM

515 The whole thing with Mia and the stuffed gorgon is straight out of Lunar: Silver Star Story. (In Lunar, a gorgon is a sorta-beholder-ish monster, as described, not a woman with serpents for hair.)

575 More than just a few, but at this point, the call hasn't yet gone out for them to gather into an organized Order again, and so most are keeping very low profiles.

609 The lightsaber preserved in the Great Library of Yedor belonged to Jedi Master Rathenn, a contemporary - and, according to some accounts, friend and companion - of the prophet Valen.

626 Crystals are very important in Minbari society. Not only is much of Minbar's technology based on their properties, they are used as spiritual anchors, for which role they are suited by their orderly molecular structures. The principle is similar to the one at work in Cephirean mage gems.

639 "Don't take any wooden nickels."

664 Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS is a 1974 motion picture directed by Don Edmonds and starring Dyanne Thorne as the eponymous Ilsa. It's every bit as, er, edifying as the title suggests.

729 Beld Marmo is named for Emperor Beld of Marmo, one of the bad guys in the anime series Record of Lodoss War. More on this later.

745 Like Beld, Strom was mentioned in the First Symphony, but never seen. He's another of the denizens of Galaxy House who left Earth after the 2404 Christmas break.

774 Takhai malath'thani: Roughly, "I should have loved you."

889 Comins Observatory is named for University of Maine astronomy professor Dr. Neil F. Comins, who, among other things, suggested many years ago that the location of the WDF headquarters complex in the original UF Core (and thus the location of New Avalon and all that that entails) be changed from Beta Cygni, a binary star system, to Zeta Cygni, a G-class Main Sequence star similar to our own Sun.

1008 Professor Jehanna Ford is based on a real-life friend of mine. Only mentioned here, she'll actually be appearing in the Fifth Symphony.

1071 The Grey Council imagery in this scene is adapted from the way that august body was customarily presented on Babylon 5.

1087 Neroon was an antagonistic figure, if not an actual villain, for most of his run of guest appearances on B5.

1093 Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, the sequel to Lunar: Silver Star Story, is set many generations after the first game. One of its signature characters is a young sorceress named Lemia Ausa, who, it is implied, is a descendent of Mia Ausa (a revered historical figure in Eternal Blue's era). Naming Mia's late mother after her is a little bit backward, but what the hell. She's not actually supposed to be the same character.

1114 Humans and Minbari are not genetically compatible. No one understands how John Trussell - demonstrably as Earthly an Earthman as you could hope to find, born on Earth long before First Contact - could possibly have fathered a child with a Minbari woman. A very few Minbari - Davonn and Delenn among them - view it as a kind of miracle, and perhaps a portent advising the Minbari people to be prepared to cooperate with humans in the future. Most of the rest see Mia as a dangerous aberration, and quite possibly a warning that the Minbari genome itself is in danger of "degenerating" into something more human-like.

1139 Indeed, it would have been child's play for Mia, by that point an accomplished sorceress, to humiliate or even assassinate Neroon. Getting off Minbar afterward, on the other hand, might have been tricky.

1151 Delenn, of course. Neroon remains illuminated not because he wishes Mia to enter the religious caste, but because he is well aware that his "no" vote will not be needed.

1189 Mia's residual bitterness over the fact that the three worker-caste members of the Council voted against her admission into the religious caste may have had something to do with her implied dismissal of them in her awkward conversation with Chenann back in This Old Dorm.

1221 Satai: member of the Grey Council.

1251 I've always been pleased with this little exchange. Delenn's first line is just such a Delenn thing for her to say.

1350 Ah, Lennier. As portrayed by the inimitable Bill Mumy.

1369 As seen on Babylon 5, in a couple of scenes involving Ambassador Mollari dueling, but most memorably in a moment when his assistant Vir borrowed one of his dueling swords for another purpose entirely.

1373 Hannibal Hamlin Hall is named for a building at the University of Maine, which is in turn named after Hannibal Hamlin, Abraham Lincoln's first vice-president and the Mainer who has gotten closest to the presidency. Today, UMaine's Hannibal Hamlin Hall is home to the university's Herbarium and the Intensive English Institute. When my father was a student there in the early 1970s, it was not only a residence hall, but reputedly Party Central, with the on-campus nickname "Animal Hamlin Hall".

1402 I've always enjoyed newspapers with peculiar names, like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, from which the Institute Intelligencer gets its name. This fondness is also reflected in the title of New Avalon's best-selling paper, the New Avalon Cornet-Scientifer (scientifer literally means "bearer of knowledge").

1419 And doing much better with the team than Liza ever did. PJM

1452 Utena's probably overreacting. Probably.

1477 Not that you have to press Amanda very hard to be blunt.

1493 Named for Albert Kesselring, one of the most respected and admired German generals of World War II. He commanded the German defense of Italy and avoided or prevented the destruction of many important Italian cities, a feat for which he is fondly remembered (and for which he is most likely, like his colleague Erwin Rommel, in UF-Valhalla).

1562 Tiny Robo has many features, but he apparently lacks a floating-point processor.

1622 And true to its word, it stayed like that all rehearsal. PJM

1636 The name of Bell's guitar is a reference both to ZZ Top and to King of Braves Gaogaigar, the later parts of which feature a giant rock-'n-roll robot with a huge guitar named Double V. No, honest.

1647 Bell's evolution as the Ah! My Goddess manga progresses is very entertaining. As she works to integrate herself into Keiichi's life, her interaction with the Motor Club changes from the traditional "girlfriend who tries to stay out of the way" role into being basically One Of The Guys. In fact, there are several instances in which she's the only one of them with steady enough nerves (or low enough body weight) to operate whatever their latest contraption is in competition. We touch on this again in Year's End Confrontation Blues and in a conversation she has with Anthy in the Third Symphony.

1672 Just put me in a wheelchair and get me to the plane
Hurry, hurry, hurry, before I go insane
I can't control my fingers, I can't control my brain, oh no

1682 The idea of Bell being a guitarist is taken from an illustration in an Ah! My Goddess artbook depicting the main cast - Keiichi and the three Norns - as a band. This is a fairly common whimsy in anime artbooks.

It also probably has something to do with a coloring I did of a Fujishima line art illo in the scriptbook for AMG OAV 3, back in 1998: http://www.eyrie.org/~aerianne/pics/Misc/bell.guit.cc.jpg?x One scarlet Fender Stratocaster, to go! PJM

1783 One of many Freespacer legends regarding pirates, ghosts, and/or ghost pirates.

1893 Opinions are divided throughout the galaxy as to whether Tiki's Little Neighborhood or Brave Little Zolie is the children's program least tolerable by adults.

1927 This touches again on the Dantrovian concept of the "beloved stranger", and once again illustrates how difficult it is to put some Dantrovian concepts into Standard.

1973 From Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. Moltar does actually exist in the UF universe. Technically, his title is Warmaster of the Lava Men, not king.

2003 Based on a costume Minnie-May Hopkins is shown in on the cover of an issue of Gunsmith Cats.

2006 Peril's tuxedo vest is straight from Perrault's appearance in Big O.

2016 And all she had to do was borrow some stuff from a couple of Motor Club members.

2056 The joke here is that Lord F's visual design has always been based on that of, well, Emperor Beld of Marmo.

2088 I'm still fuzzy on whether this was actual transfiguration or an illusion. Either way, it's a nice piece of spellcraft.

2106 Another in a long line of images that I wish I could do justice to. PJM

2117 KaitlynOS - Pagefault. System Restart (y/n)? PJM

2134 Yes, "alterations": that's an authentic Hammer costume, not a copy.

2155 Skuld borrowed the turnout jacket for her costume from Kei, who developed the habit of wearing one as a street coat at some point between Twilight and the First Symphony.

2208 It's a magic helmet ( 1 deflection bonus to AC). The spear is one of Brunnhilde Silverspear's, though not her eponymous silver spear.

2251 Another GweepCo injoke; inspired by the various cinematic efforts immortalized on Mystery Science Theater 3000, a group of us toyed with the idea of making a barbarian movie with Jer Johnson - approximately the scrawniest guy any of us knew - as the barbarian. We would make him seem more imposing than he was by always filming him from about a knee-height camera angle and using the catchphrase "I'm huge!" to exploit the power of suggestion.

2273 Mister Garibaldi!

2295 Cybermen willing to go trick-or-treating are probably from Telos rather than Mondas. Mondasians wouldn't be rude about it, they just wouldn't get it.

2315 I'm almost sure the HeavyHeavy's name is a reference to something, but I can't think what. Or maybe I just picked it because it has that sorta near-future-cyberpunk Engrish vibe to it.

2328 The Superconducting Supercollider was going to be a massive particle accelerator (54 miles in circumference) built underground in Texas. The project was canceled in 1993 after two billion dollars were spent digging 14 miles of tunnels.

But they did have a neat t-shirt. I still have mine. PJM

2373 Named for WDF fighter pilot Fritz Koopman, who died in one of the WDF's earliest engagements with GENOM (and appeared as an Einherjar wing commander in Twilight). The real Fritz Koopman is alive and well; I got email from him just the other month.

2387 "Ziggurat" is another word for a step pyramid, though it normally refers to the step pyramids of ancient Babylonia, not the Aztec civilization.

2452 Ricky Fermi, the Supercolliders' keyboard player, is a descendent of 20th-century physicist Enrico Fermi, one of the inventors of the atomic bomb.

2455 The Colliders, like many 25th-century science/music geeks, are big Hong Kong Cavaliers fans. "Because you're perfect" is Cavaliers lead singer (and famed scientist/inventor) Buckaroo Banzai's stock answer when band member Perfect Tommy asks "Why me?" (In the UF universe, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension is a documentary.)

2584 Zach was originally created as an In Nomine character, but the campaign he was to appear in never got going. His game version was an Ofanite, one of the angels devoted to movement and speed. Celestial Pizza, likewise, was created for the game setting.

2592 Like "gargoyle" in its wearable-computer sense, "deliverator" is a term originating in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

2641 Why that would particularly bother Corwin I'm not sure; must be the Midgardian in him.

2781 One of the most common complaints - and I freely admit there's some basis for it - about the Symphonies is that the characters act too mature for their ages. Well, as we see here, Vigdis doesn't suffer from that particular problem. At least not yet.

2789 Thirteen valleys lying silent in the haze
Filled with promises and spirits that we raised
But the spirits all are ghosts
Of the ones we hurt the most
Now we wander thirteen valleys crying out
And they wander thirteen valleys crying out
"It could've been me
I said it could've been me"
A broken heart needs someone new to blame it on

2865 For all that she considers herself tough and worldly because of her Valkyrie training, the very fact that she's spent her formative years so far in such rarefied company - first as a nobleman's daughter in Vanaheim, and then as a Valkyrie in training - makes her quite naïve... and the same passion that serves her well as a warrior makes her bullheaded and impulsive.

2881 This is another one of those 20th-century American traditions that was adopted wholesale into the Salusian Standard Calendar after First Contact without any real consideration of what the hell it meant.

2976 Liza's costume, as many of our costumes are, was designed by Anne Cross, based on a sketchy design brief (very sketchy, like, "she's a Swordmaster Adept now, and trained among t'skrang") from me.

3016 Now 'round the town I use a rattlesnake whip
Take it easy, baby, don't you gimme no lip
Who do you love?

3031 After Australian actor Errol Flynn (1909-1959), famous for playing flamboyant swashbucklers in his movies.

3066 First-Circle Swordmasters are not all that impressive in Earthdawn terms, but given how far superior to ordinary citizens any player character in that game system is, it makes the new Liza pretty decent starting-Duelist material.

3140 Yatai kyaapas: literally, "I found my balance!" But since her word choice here is kyaapas, which is also one of the four t'skrangish principles by which they generally try to live their lives, she may also be considered as having said that she has found a balanced fashion to live her life. ALC

3221 In the course of his long relationship with Bell and her sisters, Keiichi Morisato can be presumed to have had the mother of all surreal days and many of its lesser cousins.

3293 Devlin supplemented his income by working as a streetcorner magician the summer before we met him.

3320 Not Ben Browder's character from Farscape.

3325 Skuld has been working on the Banpei series of service droids since she was a little girl. By now she's got one for just about every purpose imaginable.

3341 No, I'm not going to tell you. Girl's got to have some secrets.

3374 F'thaka is Eric Reuss's character from a long-running Earthdawn campaign, and I am indebted to him for letting me make her a key part of Liza's rebirth as a Duelist.

3410 Liza will later learn that her grandmother's name was really "Elisabeth".

3421 Malons are humanoid malcontents from the Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force first-person shooter.

3431 Class M, or Minshara-class, is the Star Trek designation for an Earthlike planet with abundant surface water, an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, and surface conditions (gravity, atmospheric pressure, climate) suitable for human life.

3457 The Obsidian Order is the KGB-like combination secret police force and foreign intelligence service of the Cardassian Union.

3471 Shivoam is one of the four t'skrangish Dragon-gods, the one who gave his name to the Great Serpent River, and as such he can be considered "The Spirit of the River". da'Shivoam literally translates to "Of Shivoam", but since Shivoam is also the spirit of the river, the Standard translation the t'skrang gave to folks who aren't familiar with their culture is "The Spirit of the River". T'skrangish pirates would often demand a tithe of ten percent of a ship's cargo to allow it to pass unmolested through their territory with the ritual phrase, "The spirit of the river demands a gift!" (However, if that tithe was given, they generally would let the ship by - ships burned to the waterline don't come back with more cargo.) Hence, the pun. ALC

3510 Liza is the only one who ever called Clarissa "Claire".

3542 Gryphon's house; Zoner's house; GENOM CEO Larry Mann's place downtown; Marty and Eiko Rose's house; Rob and Aeka Shannon's place; Tom and Dani M'krelth'nyr'knet's house; and Hank Utonium's pad. Except for the Larry Lair, all of these domiciles are in Crescent Heights.

3660 Colossal, overpowering lust, in case that wasn't obvious.

I think you decided that later, in S3M2, unless there was a different reason for Mia to transmogrify B'Elanna.

Now, I know that Wakaba is already, by 2406, a first-class comic-book freak, but how would she have gotten ahold of an obscure 20th-century sexploitation movie?

>>1682 The idea of Bell being a guitarist is taken from an illustration in an Ah! My Goddess artbook depicting the main cast - Keiichi and the three Norns - as a band. This is a fairly common whimsy in anime artbooks.

It also probably has something to do with a coloring I did of a Fujishima line art illo in the scriptbook for AMG OAV 3, back in 1998: http://www.eyrie.org/~aerianne/pics/Misc/bell.guit.cc.jpg?x One scarlet Fender Stratocaster, to go! PJM<<

In several of the "Adventures of Mini-Goddess" strips that appear in several volumes of the original manga, Bell and her sisters (less Keiichi) do, in fact, form a band. I think it's intended as a takeoff/tribute to the "Goddess Family Club" singing group which comprised the voice actresses who have, since the original OAV, done most of the work for the voices of the three goddesses.

-Joe-

I think you've just hit on one of the (many, varied) reasons I like SoS (and UF in general) so damn much: the inherent premise that this sort of show could, in fact, have actually happened.

If ever there is discovered a way to cross whatever boundaries exist between our reality and the UF-verse, I'll happily donate organs to afford a ticket.

--sofaspud
--

This fact makes the later operatic interlude that much more amusing.

Polychrome

In point of fact, later on in the manga (I think the relevant chapters were published after this story came out) it was established that Belldandy is a champion racer herself - in fact, she won the heavenly broom-racing series six times. Nobody need wonder any longer as to how she adapted so quickly to racing earthly vehicles, or to winning so often while doing so. I don't think, in the light of this revelation, that there is, in retrospect, any episode in which she's shown racing in which she doesn't handle her vehicle with the confidence and style of a veteran driver. In fact, after the first time she's shown helping Keiichi out with a race (that one on the beach against the team from Los Angeles Institute of Technology (Caltech??) ) she reacts with perfect aplomb to any racing situation.

I don't know how this information will affect UF, if in fact it does at all, but I thought you might like to have it. (Then again, I'm probably telling you something you already know!)

-Joe-

As good a place to ask as any; what has become of Lord F? He's basically been invisible since he presided over the wedding of Gryphon and Kei in New Beginnings, and these days he seems to be regarded as a grand-scale lunatic. Stipulated that he's a considerable number of sandwiches short of a picnic, still and all, it seems a bit unkind to consign the patron lord of the WDF to the background for eternity. So what is he doing? Is he raving in a rubber room somewhere, ensconced in his laboratory dreaming up new ship designs, or what?

-Joe-

I dunno G. I cant see him being built without one. Of course, having one, and knowing both A) how to apply it to Utena's math problem and b) being able to explain it when most of your dialog is, well,, Grrr.... are two separate problems.

In hindsight, this is rather prophetic, though doubtless Azalynn didn't intend it in exactly that sense

>1452 Utena's probably overreacting. Probably.

As stated earlier, with her karmic score, she's probably just taking adequate preparations to stand off the ever so slightly chaotic bemusement the universe tends to turn towards her.

>1783 One of many Freespacer legends regarding pirates, ghosts,
>and/or ghost pirates.

But are there any regarding phantom and/or living pirate-ninja?

>1973 From Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. Moltar does
>actually exist in the UF universe. Technically, his title is
>Warmaster of the Lava Men, not king.

Given Janice's earlier T-shirt with Zorak, how many of the Space Ghost cast are out and about in one way or another in UF?

>2117 KaitlynOS - Pagefault. System Restart (y/n)?
>PJM

*snickers* This is possibly the most amusing definition of a dumbfounded reaction EVER.

>2295 Cybermen willing to go trick-or-treating are probably from
>Telos rather than Mondas. Mondasians wouldn't be rude about it, they
>just wouldn't get it.

Speaking of their added entourage, who besides Delenn of the diplomatic staff joined in? I'm unable to decide which hysterical image in my mind is more amusing: the Duelists and Company trying to trick or treat at Kosh's place, or Kosh taking a turn as the representative of the group. After his intro in Reflections in Transition, I get the sense he's rather...whimsical for a Vorlon

>2315 I'm almost sure the HeavyHeavy's name is a reference to
>something, but I can't think what. Or maybe I just picked it
>because it has that sorta near-future-cyberpunk Engrish vibe to it.

The closest I've seen is a sorta-kinda jazz band called "HeavyHeavy LowLow", but I doubt that's it.

>2373 Named for WDF fighter pilot Fritz Koopman, who died in one
>of the WDF's earliest engagements with GENOM (and appeared as an
>Einherjar wing commander in Twilight). The real Fritz
>Koopman is alive and well; I got email from him just the other month.

*chuckles* Every time you make a memorial to someone in story, people wonder if they actually DIED.

>2641 Why that would particularly bother Corwin I'm not sure;
>must be the Midgardian in him.

It may be closer to the concept of seeing himself in Touga's role(hey, it creeped out Miki) than anything else.

>2881 This is another one of those 20th-century American
>traditions that was adopted wholesale into the Salusian Standard
>Calendar after First Contact without any real consideration of what
>the hell it meant.

I half suspect the Salusians just went "Hey, holiday! Where they eat! Let's keep it!"

>3221 In the course of his long relationship with Bell and her
>sisters, Keiichi Morisato can be presumed to have had the mother of
>all surreal days and many of its lesser cousins.

Well, there was that one weekend that Skuld turned him into a chick....

>3341 No, I'm not going to tell you. Girl's got to have some
>secrets.

Other than a good deadpan delivery, was there any real meaning behind the choice of mercury specifically? Perhaps, its old use in the aformentioned alchemical processes for refining gold and other precious metals?

>3542 Gryphon's house; Zoner's house; GENOM CEO Larry Mann's
>place downtown; Marty and Eiko Rose's house; Rob and Aeka Shannon's
>place; Tom and Dani M'krelth'nyr'knet's house; and Hank Utonium's pad.
> Except for the Larry Lair, all of these domiciles are in Crescent
>Heights.

Well, we can see where "Apostrophe House" got its name. Where exactly did that name have its origins? It nearly sounds t'skrangish, except I think it's longer than Sky's whole name....

>3660 Colossal, overpowering lust, in case that wasn't
>obvious.

Liza's 'refreshingly honest approach' is possibly my favorite part of this relationship for the simple reason that it fits Liza's new swashbuckling modus operandi so well.

-OM

Given the choice between an Atomic Buster Cannon and a floating-point processor, I'll buy a calculator and let the robot keep his guns.