Fun fact: I've had that conversation lying around for a while now, waiting for a place to happen. When I prototyped it in the studio channel, Remilia's line about how her using Flan as a weapon would have made them both monsters really jumped out.

>I can't help but wonder what Meiling would make of the state of modern
>comics as they exist IRL. Probably a much less upbeat assessment.

Well, they're not really the same thing. Tintin was a newspaper-supplement comic--granted, one that ran for two pages an issue, not three panels, but still, until after World War II it worked on a different sort of creative cycle than the kind of comics that have the whole magazine to themselves. But yeah, I can't really see her being into the whole holographic foil and annual megacrossover business. (Then again, that may be at least partly because canonically she's a manga collector, since she's a character inhabiting a Japanese milieu, and that's a whole different vibe.)

>I always end up halfway re-reading these when I dive back in for
>quotes and in light of what gets revealed later this bit just hits in
>a whole new way the second time around.

I like it when I have an opportunity to put something like that together.

>Two thoughts that occur here are, in no particular order, that a few
>centuries of habit must be hard to fully break, and that I am feel
>compelled to fanboy just a bit here at the weaving of some humor into
>even the heavy moments of this piece overall. The literary
>craftsmanship is noticed and appreciated Gryphon.

Why, thank you. To be fair, that sort of thing is hard to avoid with Flan anyway. :)

>Back on the topic of the feels of this piece, I'm not sure a sequence
>in simple text has made me wish I could hug fictional characters quite
>so much. Flandre possibly just a touch more, but they're both small,
>pretty sure they'd fit easily into a group hug if it were possible.

Eminently so.

>On a less visceral (not sure if that's the best word, but it's all my
>mental thesaurus is providing at the moment) level, it's good to see
>the sisters taking some of this time to talk through their lingering
>issues a bit. I expect they'll be better off for it in the long run.

For the most part, they're both willing to regard the "lost decades" as so much water under the bridge, in the name of moving on with their lives, but on the other hand, you can't just walk away from that kind of thing altogether--and it also provides an opportunity to address the other problem Flandre brought up when talking with G a few episodes ago, namely that they were estranged by circumstances for so long that, on some levels, they're still getting to know each other again.

>>Her eyes steady on her younger sister's, Remilia paused for just a moment,
>>then said with a very slight smile, "And so Prince Vazul Skarlátvörös became
>>Count Victor Scarlet."
>>
>I didn't see this coming during Remilia's story until the paragraph
>immediately preceding this line. I feel a bit dense for not picking up
>that scent sooner.

The original draft of the scene named Victor as Victor right from the start, which made it pretty obvious, but I'd always had it in mind that he had changed his name from something more Eastern when he moved to Alsace, so I changed it around during editing in hopes of this exact thing.

>>Next to her, her younger sister Flandre looked a bit more contemporary, but
>>also slightly funereal, in her black skirt-and-vest set over a white blouse
>>and petticoat.
>
>Bit of a chuckle, for me, here since there's a decent chance that
>Flandre chose that outfit to be cheerful, given vampiric
>fashion sensibilities.

If not cheerful, at least hopeful. It's sort of the same effect as in the first couple of episodes of Strike Witches 2, when Mio's drawn wearing a white swimsuit instead of the usual blue to symbolize that her life is at a turning point.

>I'm not sure if the forum side conversation on vampires and
>photographic technology bore some useful fruit here, or if it was just
>an amusing coincidence that it came up just before this piece.

More the latter--it occurred to me independently that the authorities were going to have a tough time with this part, once I researched it and found that French identity cards did have photos back in those days.

(It wouldn't be that unusual if they didnt; I distinctly remember that Maine driver's licenses didn't when I was little. Although presumably their passports would still have needed pictures, even if the ID cards hadn't.)

>In any case, I am guessing it is one of those "magic is just like
>that" things that somehow whatever prevents vampires from being
>photographed also somehow prevents their clothes from showing up,
>rather than an Invisible Man style presentation.

Yes--the same magical phenomenon as failing to appear in silver-backed mirrors.

>Somehow I feel like most professions have some variation of this,
>though that might be a bad turn of phrase for those pursuits that
>could result in actual bodies.

Yeah, you don't really want, say, ambulance drivers to have techniques for hiding the bodies, for instance.

>Not a bat in a mob cap, but just as adorable.

I suspect the bat will still happen, sometime. :)

Also considered for this sequence: panda Meiling; Inusakuya.

>>When this business with the government is finished, perhaps I should drop in
>>and see him in Folkestone, Remilia mused, setting aside her teaspoon and taking
>>a sip of red tea. Must pick up a tide chart for the Pas de Calais.
>>
>
>It would be interesting to see if that would go down all that well. I
>don't imagine all military installations, even with witches about, are
>as flexible in the face of the should-be-impossible as witches of St.
>Ulrich.

They wouldn't much care for it at HMS Barbican, but since Project Mogami has been banished to Crone Rock (which is otherwise abandoned at this point), she'd probably get away with it there.

>This sequence does show nicely that both sisters can
>be just as wise as one another, and as their 4+ centuries of life
>would generally have led them to be.

Less obviously so in Flan's case, since she spent most of that time with the alternating sensibilities of a six-year-old and a mean tweenager, but yes. (Her wisdom is more innate than learned, which is also why it's more uneven.)

--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.