Keep in mind that it is purely decorative and cannot be untied.

--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.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

No matter what the answer is, jsyk, I am choosing to believe you said yes. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

That reminds me of an episode of M*A*S*H where Col. Potter was singing in the shower when Fr. Mulcahy walked in and he had to stop:

"I love to go swimmin' with bow-legged women
And swim between their legs.
Swim between their legs...."

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

Technically, that isn't a C96 proper, it's a Model 712 Schnellfeuer machine pistol; but either way, I don't think her sidearm's ever been described "on camera" in OWaW, so you'd have had no way of knowing other than to guess based on most comic artists depicting Enemy Ace with one.

--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'll always wish I knew what that would've looked like now.

--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.

She's enough of a recurring character by now that I'd expect decent odds of there being other commissions.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Well, then she'd be in a biplane striker from WWI.

--- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions

I'm OK with this.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious. Even after she shot me."

I'd go for a monarch's-eye view of her receiving the Blue Max.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Strike Witches is a hell of a drug.

-IA.

(don't ask what i thought i was looking at when i first saw the black and white version of this picture... or ask but don't expect me to know the answer)

Heh.

It's always been a consistency issue for the series, how they justify this bit of fanservice. Supposedly the strikers require skin contact, so they can't wear anything below mid-thigh while using them, and they have to be ready to deploy on a moment's notice so even pants they could just drop are a problem.

Except that we've seen some get away with tights (Eila) or long stockings (Lynne), so that's not necessarily true.

My No-Prize Headcanon: It was true of the pre-Miyafuji-engine strikers used in WW1. The new designs are more efficient and don't require quite as much contact, and are faster to start and launch so the short reaction times aren't quite as much of an issue. By this point it's just a Thing that witches Do, in order to differentiate themselves from normies. With all the recent proclamations on the Role of Witches in Society, I think we may see some changes in fashion soon... whether towards regular pants, or towards more general adoption of 'witch-style', who knows?

Briefly.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

You get no apology. You deserve none. Wanna fight me about it? Go ahead. I'm a boxer. =]

I think I could buy that there would be mechanical issues with looser pants that aren't present with tights or stockings.

But why are there no skirts? I'd take a particularly ambitious belt if that was all that was available... Well, perhaps something that would flap around would be an impediment to aerial operations.

Shorts! Some people say they are comfy and easy to wear! I guess they never got invented in the Strike Witches timeline, because I can't come up with even a bullshit explanation for why they wouldn't work.

The oddest thing about the whole business, and I don't know if I've mentioned it here but I've definitely mentioned it elsewhere, is that it felt like half the time (at least in season 1 of the anime), they were trying to downplay the fanservice as much as possible... and then the other half of the time it was the opposite.

>By this
>point it's just a Thing that witches Do, in order to differentiate
>themselves from normies.

There might be some of this already even without the rest of it... at least I coulda sworn there was a scene with a non-combatant witch who still dressed the same way. (In OWaW I mean... I think.)

Of course, there's also the question of whether Flandre or Remilia will ever adopt the style. They're probably already listed as witches on at least one bit of military paperwork as it is, and when in Romagna...

-IA.

(my prediction: Remilia won't, Flandre will... once)

L.

Or bike shorts like Misaka Mikoto wears under her school uniform skirts.

I’ve realized since posting the previous that there may well be another cause: patriarchal revenge. “You want priviledges like that? Ok, fine. But we’re making your official uniform expose your underwear. Live with it, or give up the other priviledges.” So they did, and by now it’s ingrained tradition.

And then there's Adolfine Galland, who wears Molly Millions-style tight leather jeans, but only when not operating her Striker. If part of the rationale behind witches not normally wearing pants is that they have to be able to get them off in a hurry, Adolfine's magical gift must be taking off hard-to-take-off pants really fast. (Canonically it's witch eye, the same as Mio.)

>>By this
>>point it's just a Thing that witches Do, in order to differentiate
>>themselves from normies.
>
>There might be some of this already even without the rest of it... at
>least I coulda sworn there was a scene with a non-combatant witch who
>still dressed the same way. (In OWaW I mean... I think.)

If it was in OWaW, that was an error, given how many other places the narration specifically notes someone identifying a stranger as a witch based on her mode of dress.

It does turn up in a couple of places in the first Strike Witches TV series, although in at least one case it seems more like a production error and in another it's kind of ambiguous. In the first episode, Yoshika's schoolmates are all dressed like she always is, in a school swimsuit under a sailor blouse, as if it's their school's uniform--including her cousin Michiko, who is explicitly described as a non-witch--but then Yoshika goes on to wear the same outfit throughout her career with the 501st, suggesting that it is in fact the uniform of an enlisted naval witch aviator. ... Until Shizuka shows up in the movie wearing a different enlisted witch uniform, which looks like Mio's except with a different-color jacket.

(Also, Micchan is a huge witch fangirl, so she might be dressing like one just because of that. Although that doesn't explain the rest of their class, so I'm still going with "they just didn't think that hard about it." :)

Meanwhile, other Fusō witches you see along the way are either dressed like Mio (e.g., Junko Takei), or similarly to Yoshika but in different colors (such as the protag of Brave Witches, Hikari Karibuchi). So I dunno what's going on there, and I'm not 100% sure the production staff really thought it through.

On the other other hand, the nurses at the hospital where the still-comatose Chris Barkhorn was being looked after in season one were also rocking it witch-style, and there was never any indication either way as to whether they were witches. Again, I think that's probably a matter of the production staff not really having bothered to think it through.

Anyway, inconsistencies in the source material (and possible errors on my own part) aside, my thought process in OWaW has always been that the no-pants thing is a Witch Thing and has been since before the advent of aviation, its origins lost to history--but that times are slowly changing, which is the main reason why witches from some countries sport different gear in this war. For instance, they say that Suomi and Orussian witches wear tights because it's cold in their countries, but witches' powers make them largely indifferent to that sort of thing, and does that apply to Gallia too? Meanwhile, Imperial Fusonese Navy witches are well-known for their swimsuits, not underpants. Likewise, Captain von Preußen has the excuse that she doesn't operate a Striker, and her skirt is very short by the standards of the 1940s, but she does wear one as part of her Reichsmarine uniform.

As Striker performance advances, we may see further changes out of necessity as much as style (witness the pressure suit built into the NF-104A Starfighter supersonic time-to-climb interceptor Striker Shirley destroyed in Higher, Faster, Farther).

>Of course, there's also the question of whether Flandre or Remilia
>will ever adopt the style. They're probably already listed as witches
>on at least one bit of military paperwork as it is, and when in
>Romagna...
>
>(my prediction: Remilia won't, Flandre will... once)

Remilia absolutely will not; she's still getting used to how short the skirt Sakuya designed for their FAAL uniforms is. No petticoats! It's too short to even wear bloomers under! The twentieth century is terrifying.

Flan already doesn't mind showing her knees, but whether she'll be of a mind to take it beyond that stage is unclear.

--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.

Ah, perhaps I misspoke? I meant that I thought I remembered seeing a place where a witch was dressed that way, despite not being a combat witch or anything adjacent to such, and thus not really needing to worry about whether their clothes would work with a striker unit.

However, it's entirely possible that I have a reference crossed over in my head; unsurprisingly given the focus of the story, most of the witches involved do seem to be members of the military, so at this point I'm not sure just who I could have been thinking of.

(Or, given the paragraph quoted below, I could have it right after all, but I'm still not sure *where*, since the only example I could think of made no mention of the outfit worn by the witch in question.))

>Anyway, inconsistencies in the source material (and possible errors on
>my own part) aside, my thought process in OWaW has always been that
>the no-pants thing is a Witch Thing and has been since before the
>advent of aviation, its origins lost to history--but that times are
>slowly changing, which is the main reason why witches from some
>countries sport different gear in this war. For instance, they say
>that Suomi and Orussian witches wear tights because it's cold in their
>countries, but witches' powers make them largely indifferent to that
>sort of thing, and does that apply to Gallia too? Meanwhile, Imperial
>Fusonese Navy witches are well-known for their swimsuits, not
>underpants. Likewise, Captain von Preußen has the excuse that
>she doesn't operate a Striker, and her skirt is very short by the
>standards of the 1940s, but she does wear one as part of her
>Reichsmarine uniform.

Huh, interesting. I hadn't thought about the "tights because it's cold" thing being silly (in part because I can't keep track of real world geography let alone Strike Witches geography), but that does feel like it makes things sort of more plausible. ('Sort of' being the upper limit of plausibility allowed for something that still looks like Strike Witches.)

>Flan already doesn't mind showing her knees, but whether she'll be of
>a mind to take it beyond that stage is unclear.

I'm mostly imagining her doing it once to tease her sister, but deciding to skip out on it henceforth for comfort reasons.

-IA.

(received information not interpretable)