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Conferences Mini-Stories Topic #191
Reading Topic #191, reply 5
Gryphonadmin
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Jul-28-20, 03:42 PM (EDT)
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5. "annotations"
In response to message #0
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jul-29-20 AT 01:17 AM (EDT)
 
notes from Gryphon
notes from Philip

This story started as one of several vignettes we had planned for a sequel to The Vocaloid Variations that would have spanned the entire Golden Age and Exile, and up nearly to the Future Imperfect "present day". That would have been... pretty ambitious, and when the first planned "vignette" in the piece developed into The Mother of Invention all on its own, the rest of it got put on a shelf for later reconsideration.

I believe it is the first time Philip Moyer has appeared as a character, although he's been mentioned several times in Symphony of the Sword stories set some time after this one.

compsci major with a minor in theater design - This was my major at the University of Maryland, College Park, from 1992 to 1996. The various science majors encouraged something non-science related to fill in requirements, and for me, that was engaging in Theater and Stagecraft. In the end, I had to throw all my focus into the computer science portion, because higher-level Compsci and Theater projects had a heavy late-night component, and I couldn't be both in the computer labs and backstage at the same time.

It would appear that my UF version has taken a slightly different path, or at least been able to balance his schoolwork requirements better.

It was her profile in that moment... - This whole piece sort of springs from this paragraph and the next one; I found myself envisioning how a slow day in the NOC at Hatsune Heavy Industries might go, and then Miku crashed the scene herself, because that's what she does. :)

Rabbit Yukine slippers, ratty sweatpants, an a worn T-shirt - In-setting (not IRL, as far as I know), this is actually a concert module, although by 2390 Miku uses it far more often in everyday life than on stage. It's called Sleepover Party. There are several variants, which change up the color of the pants and what band/tour the shirt is from.

Rabbit Yukine, by the way, is a mascot character who appears alongside Snow Miku in the illustrations for each year's Sapporo Snow Festival tie-in (see below).

mutual devotions to the Muppets - I distinctly remember watching the Muppet Show on broadcast TV growing up in Woodbridge, VA during preschool and elementary school. I still have a Grover puppet that I got as a present for Christmas when I was 2-3 years old.

ancient and occult corners of classic rock - The oeuvre of RUSH, circa 1975-1977, including such classics as "By-tor and the Snow Dog", "Rivendell", "The Necromancer", "Xanadu", and of course, the entirety of 2112.

In reality, I started being really aware of other bands in late high school, but didn't cotton to RUSH until I started college, where my Roommate had a copy of RUSH Chronicles on cassette and had attended a performance during the Presto tour. Roll the Bones was released the year before I started college, and Counterparts and Test for Echo were released while I was attending, and the Test for Echo tour was the first serious rock concert I attended.

this year's Magical Mirai - As noted in the annotations for Variations, Magical Mirai is a short concert series that runs annually in Japan. (It is not to be confused with Miku Expo, which is an international concert tour that also happens each year.) It's something of the centerpiece of the Vocaloid year. Here we see that in 2390, they're still going strong.

One of the customary things Crypton does for Magical Mirai is develop a signature costume for Miku, which appears on the promotional materials and ultimately the home video and soundtrack CD releases. Like Snow Miku (the variant for the aforementioned Sapporo Snow Festival), Racing Miku (mascot of the Good Smile Racing motorsports team), and various other seasonal specialty outfits, her Magical Mirai costume changes every year.

As an example, here she is in the signature costume from Magical Mirai 2017 (my favorite), performing that year's theme song (albeit in a later year's show).

(Ironically, that song—"Suna no Wakusei" by Hachi—is a meditation on how, in the producer's opinion at the time the song was written, Vocaloid was over and the scene had become a wasteland. It even came with a fully animated music video in which an older, jaded Miku wanders a literal desert with an ever-dwindling band of followers, searching in vain for something unspecified—meaning, perhaps, or possibly literally her past self. Crypton turned around and made it the theme song of that year's centerpiece concert. That is a thing that happened.)

NatsuFest - A huge outdoor rock festival held each summer in the mountains of central Japan. The main cast of K-On!! attend NatsuFest in the episode "Summer Festival!"

Gigatron - A very large display panel. Not one thousand Megatrons. That would probably cause a panic.

an intellect vast and cool and unsympathetic - Actually, all of these adjectives are debatable at best, but one has to stick with the quotation, after all. (It's from H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, of course.)

her ConcertLink unit - The 24th-century evolution of the bioroid system Gumi and Rin are using in The Mother of Invention.

hard-light holomatter projection - Licensed from the Cybetronian government, Holomatter Projection has several advantages over other commercial "hard light" systems available. It serves as a remote sensing terminal over considerable range (eliminating the need for dedicated sensor and projector units in the areas you want to manifest), can be solid or intangible, and allows for a wide range of expression and clothing variety if the source user understands the nature of what they're simulating. While the technology is not widely used by Cybertronians, due to the need for total focus on the projection while their main bodies are "parked", and the risks of feedback if the projection is damaged, the Vocaloids have much less to worry about due to their positronic cores being heavily ruggedized and in a safe location.

(One exception to the Transformers' infrequent use of their own invention is undercover Autobots, who routinely use holomatter systems to fake having drivers.)

Brick Wonderland - Part theme park, part museum, Brick Wonderland is a sprawling (fictional) attraction dedicated to the magic and wonder of interchangeable-brick building toys—not strictly limited to a single brand, as are the real-world Legoland, LEGO House, et al. Sapporo's is one of 23 scattered around the Centaurus, Rigel, Vega, and Cygnus sectors.

While I myself am a hardcore LEGO enthusiast, Gryphon has gotten into the various (reasonably priced) COBI military sets. The naming of Brick Wonderland was a compromise, Gryphon originally used "Brickmania" which is an actual company that repackages used LEGO for much more expensive military sets. (I do admit a fondness for the Destiny-themed MegaConstrux sets when they were released.)

"It's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with." -

"Well, I have a dream too, but it's about singing and dancing and making people happy. It's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And I found a whole group of friends who have the same dream, and that makes us sort of like a family."
-- Kermit the Frog, The Muppet Movie (1979)


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
 HHI mini: Employee Relations [View All] Gryphonadmin Jul-27-20 TOP
   RE: HHI mini: Employee Relations Proginoskes Jul-28-20 1
   RE: HHI mini: Employee Relations Sofaspud Jul-28-20 2
   RE: HHI mini: Employee Relations Droken Jul-28-20 3
   RE: HHI mini: Employee Relations Star Ranger4 Jul-28-20 4
  annotations Gryphonadmin Jul-28-20 5
      RE: annotations mdg1 Jul-30-20 6
   RE: HHI mini: Employee Relations BlackAeronaut Aug-11-20 7


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