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Subject: "(S36) S3M3 Valiant Rose"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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"(S36) S3M3 Valiant Rose"
 
   LAST EDITED ON Apr-02-10 AT 01:50 PM (EDT)
 
17 The framing for this scene was taken from a number of sources, primarily the dramatization of these events presented in the 1983 motion picture version of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.

45 This little innovation - actually a piece of a broom handle - was necessary in the actual event because the pilot in question, Chuck Yeager, had broken several ribs in a fall from a horse shortly before the flight and couldn't use his right arm to lock the door. Kozue didn't feel it was necessary for the simulation to be that accurate.

64 "Put the spurs to 'er, Chuck!"

74 True; the four chambers of the XLR11 rocket motor in the X-1 could only be turned on. Once fired, they couldn't be shut off, much less throttled back.

114 Negative, negative, Whiskey Kilo Two Eight is not declaring an emergency...

131 I don't know who all four are, but one of the living ones is almost certainly Hikaru Sulu.

146 I picked this up in the studio from Marty Rose. I think it's from a game or cartoon, but I couldn't tell you what. Slarti tells me it's from Monty Python & the Holy Grail, so, there you are, I guess.

226 The Bodacious Vee system has two inhabited planets (Funkotron and Funkorama), as well as several orbital habitats, moonbases, and the like.

258 JC Denton is the main character from the video game Deus Ex. And, apparently, numerous UF-universe sequels.

378 The doubletake I did when reading the draft of this scene is still vividly imprinted on my mind:

(*read* *page* *read* *page* *read* *page* "...." *back up a sentence* "BWA?!")

So, of course, that just made me beholden to actually draw that comic book cover.

As an aside, I have no real idea what the UF version of myself is like. Some imp of the peverse seems to insist that he doesn't have any special powers or connections - he's just a Really Damn Good Comic Writer/Artist, who happens to hang out with 'very interesting' comic book associates and has a high tolerence for the weirdness factor (a requirement when hanging out with the likes of Pete Rasputin, Kurt Wagner, and Hellboy). If he does have anything 'special' about him, it's really well hidden. PJM

411 The Scarlet Sentinel's oath, which is of course an homage to Green Lantern's, was written by Kris Overstreet.

436 G-stone is the mineral the powers the Gao Machines, Galeon, and Guy's cyborg body in King of Braves Gaogaigar. The convergence with Photon technology from Phantasy Star Online and Getter rays from Getter Robo is all on account of the color. That shade of green seems to be popular for Weird Science and/or Magic applications in anime. The Cephiran name gaolith is original to UF, and is intended to tie in with the repeated appearance of the syllable gao in the names of things from Gaogaigar.

499 Later I standardized on calling sectors named for constellations by the constellation's name in the nominative case, e.g. "Cygnus sector", "Centaurus sector".

573 We've seen Gryphon employ similar techniques from time to time.

578 "Who Do You Love", which isn't actually a George Thorogood song; Kate means she's playing around with the Thorogood arrangement of "Who Do You Love", but isn't pedantic enough to sweat the details. But that's what this kind of annotation is for, so I will be.

653 Irony level -- ONE MILLION!!! PJM

736 The picture of Imra and Kozue at the Toronto Marché Movenpick was a combined effort of behind-the-lines Photoshop coloring and photomanipulation - yes, the image in the back is of a Marché, cadged from their website. Coloring behind the lines is challenging in certain ways, but I've gotten better at it over the years. The Subpro Astronautics logo was whipped together by Gryphon. I have no idea what the two ladies are drinking.

(Kozue not having her Duelist's ring is totally Phil Moy's fault, not mine.) PJM

849 Jung exaggerates Truss's navigational incompetence somewhat, given that the Romulan Neutral Zone is not only very much further from B5 than Earth is, but in almost entirely the other direction.

867 Emperor Carlos II was created by Kris, who wrote this sequence explaining why all hell happens to break loose on Earth just when the Duelists are there... if you don't believe in karma.

966 And here's Nanami Jinnai from El-Hazard (not to be confused with the presently-late Nanami Kiryuu). I've always liked Nanami, and when I needed a reporter for this sequence I thought of her. She first appears in the OVAs, after all, doing a report for the school TV station. Later, she seems to abandon her journalistic tendencies altogether in favor of being an arch-capitalist. I just flopped her back the other way.

1108 President William Morgan Clark, as portrayed by Gary McGurk on Babylon 5, did not become president of the Earth Alliance by assassinating his predecessor as he did on the show. ... No, in UF, that's the way he eventually becomes president of the United Federation of Planets. He is not to be confused with William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, nor with Texas Declaration of Independence signatory William Clark, Jr., nor even with 19th-century Canadian politician Sir William Mortimer Clark.

1277 Edison, of course, is Matt Frewer's character from Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future. At this point in UF history, he is one of the grand figures of galactic television news, respected and admired by all but the relatively few who despise him utterly - the Edward R. Murrow of his era.

1329 A little nudge to the alteration we made to Nanami in adapting her to UF in the first place.

1346 Thus, a relatively rare glimpse into just how AEGIS operatives are prepared to serve as anti-Psi Cops. The Psi Cop back at Sneaky Dee's didn't notice what Imra and Devlin were doing because the technique relies on empathic manipulation, not outright telepathy, and Psi Cops are trained in the use of their strongest talents to the detriment of what the Corps deems "secondary" abilities, like the empathy that almost always accompanies telepathy. Indeed, Psi Corps instructors view empathy as a weakness, not an asset.

1370 Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base, aka Area 51, was abandoned in the 2200s; the IPO refurbished the facility to serve as one of its secure bases on Earth during the early stages of the agency's creation, when relations with Earthdome were still good.

1383 GTG, the Global Transporter Grid, is a network of interlinked transporter ground stations and relay satellites enabling government, military, and security personnel to be beamed quickly to and from points of interest all over the world. Earthforce personnel often joke that the initials actually stand for "Good To Go" or "Got To Go".

1410 All of the main-force Defiant-class destroyers (that is, those not assigned to Special Operations) have names ending in -ant.

1422 Lu Durgo, aka Triplicate Girl or Triad (depending on the era; ours is based on Triad), is another refugee from Legion of Super-Heroes. She's from the planet Cargg, where everyone can split into three independent copies of themselves. Unlike most Carggites, Lu's three selves have slightly different personalities.

1458 There is a subtle running joke in Lu's early appearances: it takes the Chief, who only skimmed her personnel file because of Ruri's glowing recommendation, some time to realize that she's a Carggite. Hence his occasional remarks to her seeming like a different person, and his reaction to her comment here that she can only be in three places at once.

1498 R5-T1, Truss's R5 unit, is that rare member of that ill-starred model group to perform well and have a full, satisfying career. Most R5s either blow up because of manufacturing defects or are scrapped by disgruntled owners.

Indeed -- I think the only other one known in the entirety of UF would be Kris Overstreet's R5-unit Sparky in The Quagmire Project, who eventually got Turing Certified. I forget if Rianna Santova's astromech droid Subtracto is an R2 or R5, or something completely different... PJM

I'm pretty sure Subtracto is either an R2 or one of those R2s with the transparent heads (R3?).

1516 The idea of this line being delivered in a Phantom Menace battle droid's voice was just too funny to leave out, no matter how cheesy it is.

1549 In In Nomine terms, Caddiel the Judgment-Mobile here is a Reliever, a minor angel assigned to assist Zach.

1588 Alpha Collider is an oblique reference to the goa trance band Juno Reactor (by way of the Roland Alpha Juno synthesizer).

1632 EAS Hieronymus is named for the third-century-BC Greek general and historian Hieronymus of Cardia, not the 15th-century Dutch surrealist painter Hieronymus Bosch.

1704 The Valiant could almost certainly take the Hieronymus, but not the entire Earth defense grid.

1848 Lucas is totally bluffing. Those are all ones.

1900 A direct-beam laser link, unlike radio or subether broadcast transmissions, can't be listened in on - indeed, in most cases, won't even be detected - by enemy forces.

1916 A phrase commonly used by Network 23 reporters and other special operatives who have similar fixed-base operational backup. Also a Matrix reference.

1958 Yes, there really is a place in Paris called "Dominican Republic Plaza".

2001 "How the heck are we going to get Edison and Nanami out of this? ... Blank Reg!"

2056 Not Kira Nerys; she was just a little girl at the time.

2069 The Morning Sun is named for a line in the chorus of the New Order song "True Faith":

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see my life in the shade of the morning sun
My morning sun is a drug that brings me near
To the child I lost replaced by fear
I used to think that that the day would never come
That my life would depend on the morning sun

2261 I was born in Bangor, and the route from there to Millinocket, which I've driven thousands of times, passes through the Alton Bog, a desolate swampy area which struck me, as I was working on this piece, as the perfect place for a nice low-casualty glassing.

2340 Indeed, the first stargate discovered was in Skuld's garage for a while.

2344 Jazmin Cullen (codename Kid Quantum) is another Peyer/Moy-era Legionnaire.

2420 I think the whole Trade Federation/ZikZak thing came together when Truss and I realized that "Ped Xing", which in Max Headroom really is the name of the chairman of ZikZak Corporation, is a perfect Neimoidian name (compare "Nute Gunray").

2526 The legendary Corellian spacer Han Solo is something of a personal hero of Kozue's. In UF, Never Tell Me the Odds is the title of the first volume of his memoirs.

2536 "Fred Bloggs" is a common placeholder name in some circles, the equivalent of "Joe Blow" or "John Smith".

2562 Weapon-fire keys labeled MODE SELECT are a commonplace injoke in UF. They refer to a scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in which Mr. Chekov fires the Enterprise's photon torpedoes, but the second-unit shot clearly shows someone pressing the button so marked, which is not something you'd really expect a "fire" button to say.

2710 On Max Headroom, the headquarters of Big Time TV was a Volkswagen minibus with a satellite dish on the roof. The good ship Big Time is just an extrapolation of that idea.

2725 Reg was orphaned in a border conflict and raised by Australian drifters - "blanks", in galactic parlance, are people with no fixed abode or government-issued identification.

2769 Nanami's capitalist instincts aren't totally subsumed by her passion for the news.

2801 General Parker says "the Experts of Justice" when he means the IPO; there are no members of Special Assignment 1 on Titan at this time.

2831 Officers with swagger sticks are almost always trouble.

2852 The canned voice of the standard non-AI-equipped IPO base computer - known with varying degrees of affection as "the bitch in the box" - is based on that of IPO Medical Services Director Christine Chapel, MD. (Why? Because Majel Barrett is always the talking computer.)

2886 We can thank Anne Cross for this rejoinder.

2917 I was rather proud of myself for coming up with this excuse for someone to have developed a high-power, short-lifespan energy shielding technology. The idea was inspired by the Soviet Venera series, heavily armored planetary probes which sent back the first glimpses of the hellish surface of Venus before being crushed and melted by the incredible pressure and heat to be found there.

2936 I had meant to revisit Captain Montano once more, either in this piece or the next, to show her leading a survey team into the glass crater. At the center of the crater, where the baseplate of the reactor would've been, they would have found an inertron plaque with the word CROATOAN engraved on it.

3051 "Studio 7-G" is an oblique reference to Megazone 23, in which Shogo is referred to by the EVE AI as "Garland operator 7-G". In the notes for an undeveloped series that would have featured a fictional analog to the real-world Eyrie Productions, that organization's name would've been "Studio 7-G" and the fanfic series that made it famous would've been based on Megazone 23 rather than a combination of Dirty Pair and Macross.

3059 Adapted from a favorite tactic of the Freespacers, as Kris Overstreet introduced back in The Quagmire Project.

3061 Of the many versions of "Rockin' in the Free World" I've tracked down since writing this piece, I'd have to say that in retrospect that the original Neil Young version (from 1989's Freedom) would be best for this sequence, not the Alarm cover.

3099 At the time this story is set, the T-65F is two marks behind the current front-line model. It's slightly slower, its sensors and weapons slightly less effective, but still a quite capable starfighter - and in the right hands, more than a match for an SA-23 Aurora Starfury.

3261 The Psi Corps E(CA) troopers are visually based on the Enforcers seen in the movie TRON, save they're pretty much varying shades of black, and don't have any real glowy bits. PJM

(... They are?)

3282 Anthy's Draconic warstaff, Rosenjaeger, was a gift from Corwin when she reached the point in her training where she chose the weapon over the very similar Minbari fighting pile she'd started learning with. Corwin acquired it from a connection of his in the court of the Dragon King, Bahamut VII. It is, indeed, made from rosewood.

3316 At last Roger reveals himself as a Sith Lord (though we won't learn his Sith name until The Revolution Will Be Televised).

3330 Green is a peculiar color for a Sith's lightsaber, but not unheard-of; unlike in Star Wars, neither Jedi nor Sith are restricted to specific colors (though tradition dictates that most Sith sabers one encounters will be red and most Jedi sabers will not, neither order has a rule about it). At any rate, as we will see, it's not precisely Roger's anyway.

3352 Disturbance in the Force, perhaps?

3377 The destruction of this Atlas by Big O is one of my favorite unrealized animation sequences.

3432 For the dark things cannot stand the light... the light of the Green Lensman!

3441 The up-and-down interplay with the elevator here gives me a chuckle every time.

3479 The Gladiator is the latest version of the standard battle Cyclone, a type first fielded in the form of the VR-052 Battler back during the WDF's Golden Age. The original Cyclone types were from Genesis Climber Mospeada; the "modern" UF ones are original extrapolations.

3495 Actually, the arm-mounted point shield on a Ragolian Frame is called a Barrier. Blame my incomplete knowledge of Phantasy Star Online terminology at the time.

3520 A little nod to our old friend E.E. Smith, Ph.D., in whose works energy weapons always rave destruction of some color or another.

3574 Gudrun's favorite mace, Bonecrusher Smith, was made from an adamantine/darksteel alloy by Dannen Ironbridge. He considers it faintly embarrassing - a terribly unsophisticated and unadorned piece of work - but the customer is always right. It's named after Colonel Michael "Bonecrusher" Smith, a 22nd-century MechWarrior in Valhalla who was something of a Dutch uncle to Gudrun when she was young. (Bonecrusher was one of my friend Mike Shaw's favorite characters in the Battletech campaign we played in high school.)

3591 Gudrun is half-Jotun. She easily possesses the strength of ten normal women her size.

3695 In King of Braves Gaogaigar, astronaut Gai Shishio (on whom Guy is based) suffers the injuries that cause him to be turned into a full-body cyborg when the space shuttle he's piloting is wrecked by a meteor. I decided to give him a somewhat more heroic origin.

3719 Not the last time we'll see dog-mounted weaponry.

3737 Some readers took this line, which was intended to inject a bit of levity into an otherwise-pretty-heavy sequence, in entirely the wrong light. It's not meant to imply that that's why Dorothy killed the guy; obviously, she killed the guy because he was about to spray the room with plasma cannon fire and probably maim or kill a number of her best friends, a rather more justifiable cause, I should think.

3758 Anthy is effectively immune to mind control; this is probably either related to Rayearth's gift or simply because she has so very much experence with it.

3838 Intended to evoke the bit in Neon Genesis Evangelion wherein EVA-01 goes completely batshit, beats the almighty hell out of its opponent-of-the-week, then eats part of it, except without the eating. Corwin isn't quite berserk, but he's definitely not interested in wasting any more time, and Orihalcon, for all that he manifests very little personality compared to Rayearth, Windam, or Celes, is never one to dick around when one close to his master's heart is in danger. Mind you, at this point Corwin is probably not consciously aware of just how much he's come to love Anthy on her own merits, but that hardly matters to Big O.

3863 Roger does not, at this point, know that Utena and Anthy are extradimensional, but since he thinks they're from the Outer Rim, he assumes Anthy, at least, is part alien.

3883 "He can't be reasoned with. He can't be bargained with. He doesn't feel pity, remorse, or fear. And he will absolutely will not stop - ever! - until those who threaten Anthy are dead!" PJM

3888 Never trust a junkie.

3906 This was another one of those moments that just came together. Corwin's out in the back of beyond; Utena's in orbit; who's going to rescue Anthy? Duh, Saionji, of course, and in the grip of such towering, monomaniacal fury that Roger being a Psi Cop isn't going to do the bastard any damn good at all.

3952 Congratulations, Roger: Just like Akio, you fell for it.

3974 It seems to be Saionji's dharma to get seriously racked up whenever he does something really epic.

3999 My second-favorite Klaang line after "Coffee break, my lord."

4011 The Ikazuchi-class ships (originally from Genesis Climber Mospeada) are on the verge of obsolescence nowadays, having been superseded by GENOM's Star Destroyer line, but they're still potent, fold-capable cruiser/carrier hybrids, and unlike Star Destroyers, they mount Omega-class weaponry.

4064 Captain Picard to the rescue! I always love it when I get a chance to have Jean-Luc act all stern and stuff.

4148 emtai- is the Klingon prefix for the honored spouse of a clanhead, the converse to vestai-. Men and women can both be emtai-, just as they can both be vestai-.

4289 A lot of people have assumed that he's talking to Zoner. He's not; the person on the other end of the line is James Burke.


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(S36) S3M3 Valiant Rose [View All] Gryphonadmin Dec-18-06 TOP
   RE: Annotations: S3M3 BZArchermoderator Dec-19-06 1
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   RE: (S36) S3M3 Valiant Rose JustTheBast Apr-03-10 5
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      RE: (S36) S3M3 Valiant Rose Gryphonadmin Jun-16-11 7


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