That's fair. Strike Witches has a pretty steep what-the-hell-is-this curb to get over.

>This, on the other hand, is *charming*.

Well, that's always nice to hear. When the time came to admit to myself that it needed a proper series title, I ended up picking the one I did as kind of a joke—because even though it has vampires, madness, a life-or-death battle, and some pretty dark background, the story isn't really all that... y'know, gothic. :)

>I picked it up because, hey,
>new EPU stuff, I'll always at least give that a look-see even if it's
>in a sub-fora I don't particularly care for. And now...
>
>... well, I'm re-considering OWaW. Maybe there's something there for
>me after all. I dunno.

If nothing else, the format inevitably tones back some of what makes the source hard for a lot of people to get into. I mean, they're still not wearing pants, but most of the time it's not as obvious. :)

>But this is just delightful, and I love how it ties into the overall
>arc with Kei.

Heh, given the way it developed on me, it pretty much had to. Believe it or not, I didn't go into this thinking that Remilia Scarlet, of all people, was going to turn out to be the One to bring balance to the Force Gryphon's preposterous life, but... it's looking like she is. At that point, well... "dude, aren't you still already married, hopefully?" becomes the elephant in the room that has to be addressed sooner rather than later.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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I don't wanna make your life even harder, but I am wondering how you're planning to square this development with Holiday in the Sun, which takes place a year later on the main UF timeline and notably features Gryphon hoping that Tali'Shukra will fill this role...

Mm, I've thought about that. It's one of two bits of existing story I can think of offhand that get broken by this development (the other being the conversation at the end of Freiburg where Hannelore asks G whether he's a married man). Continuity problems are one of the primary pitfalls of working out of sequence like I often do.

Unfortunately, while the latter is relatively easy to square with some minor editing to the dialogue, the former is... probably not reconcilable without a heavy rewrite.

Mind you, Holiday could probably use one anyway, because with the best will in the world to my past self, that whole scene is on pretty shaky ground. I mean, for one thing, that was never going to work, and for another, the people who said at the time that it was out of character for him to ask were pretty much right.

Ultimately, I think we may need to chalk this one up to time travel, where by "time travel" I mean "I wrote that scene years ago and had no idea that this was going to happen in the dark and brutal year of our Lord two thousand and twenty."

--G.
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How does he know? Intelligence reports, a few centuries of well-trained intuition, possibly a Danger, Will Robinson! message so clear that regardless of where his strengths in the Force lie, he's still getting something of it.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Yeah, that's true. It's only the coda scene that has to go, but that does in itself constitute a pretty significant edit.

Funnily enough, though, one of the jokes from the original discussion thread still works just fine! Remilia would be no more interested than Marceline in visiting a planet where the solar activity is so insane it crashes deflector shields. (She's even a daywalker, for normal values of "day", but seriously, screw that. :)

--G.
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--G.
-><-
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Upon further reflection, I think it was the visual element more than anything else that was throwing me so, so far off kilter. That, and the anime fascination with portraying kids in goddamn war. Which in the case of Strike Witches is a particularly un-subtle one-two punch, because the art is... look, I'm sure it was done to deliberately strike dissonance, at least I hope it was, because the alternative is that it's someone's actual fetish and gah.

Let's just not go there.

Anyway! Point is, when I first tried reading OWaW, I had just been introduced to the source anime and so the images (ye gods!) were still fresh in my mind. And this was before I came up with my new mental rule for attempting to enjoy anime, which is that I smile and nod at what the creators say the characters age is and mentally add at least four years.

But without the canon material being so fresh in my mind, I actually found myself enjoying OWaW -- at least until I started looking at the character pages which features some screencaps from the source and decided to nope on out of there :)

But as of now, I'm all caught up and find myself hoping for more, and considering the low esteem I held the source in, I think you did a damn fine job of running this Home for Wayward Characters.

I guess what I'm saying is, whether or not we agree on the source, if I treat this as, y'know, just a story rather than being inextricably linked to its source material, the EPU magic comes through and I really enjoyed it.

I hope that makes sense?

--sofaspud
--i don't word so good sometimes

Not sure what it says about my brain that this made me think of "Trogdor", which in turn leads to the mental image of a kaiju sized G burninating the countryside. But now that image is in the brains of anyone who read this, so enjoy that.

>
>I know a lot of the readership is older than one might think, but I
>have to wonder just how many are old enough (Bob is one, I know) to
>know where this comes from. Then again, a lot of us have been around
>the sun more than a few times.
>

Unless there's an older reference underneath, this pings as a Gomez Addams paraphrase to me, and I'm pretty sure most of the folks who frequent this corner of the Internet will at least be familiar with the movies if not the old TV shows.

The question in my mind is if G was trying to make a reference only he could possibly understand in that situation, or if he really does enjoy ladies speaking French (well, Gallian in this case, but functionally equivalent.)

>Most questions I’ve had I’ve been able to suss out, either through
>the annotations or comments or just plain context. But this, I just
>don’t get… and now wonder if what happens in the next chapter
>involves one or more of said person’s spiritual decendants.
>Either way, time will tell. I can only hope the Muse also explains to
>you exactly what happens during Sea Trials along the way.

Annotations and follow up conversations seem to indicate this is a half conscious cheeky reference to vampire hunters in general, not a direct challenge to any individual, though I still see it as dangerously tempting fate (granted, I almost pity any hunter foolish enough to visit that house with intent to harm the residents, but inviting trouble in is just never the best play.)

	-={(Astynax)}=- "You must be the Belmont."

in their thatched-roof cottages!!!

>Unless there's an older reference underneath, this pings as a Gomez
>Addams paraphrase to me, and I'm pretty sure most of the folks who
>frequent this corner of the Internet will at least be familiar with
>the movies if not the old TV shows.
>
>The question in my mind is if G was trying to make a reference only he
>could possibly understand in that situation, or if he really does
>enjoy ladies speaking French (well, Gallian in this case, but
>functionally equivalent.)

Well, he is partially making the Addams Family reference, I mean, he doesn't literally get uncontrollable shivers from Remi speaking Gallic, but he does enjoy it. He finds her voice very attractive, and everything sounds sexier in Gallic.

>(granted, I almost pity any hunter foolish
>enough to visit that house with intent to harm the residents, but
>inviting trouble in is just never the best play.)

"I feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul who comes to my school looking for trouble."
- Prof. Charles Xavier, similarly tempting fate, but doing it out loud

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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Do you have specific inspiration for Remilia's voice (or any of the other members of House Scarlet for that matter?) My understanding is that the source material doesn't exist in dubbed form and I confess I've been having a bear of a time assigning appropriate mental VAs to them.

>
>"I feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul who comes to my school
>looking for trouble."
> - Prof. Charles Xavier, similarly tempting fate, but doing it out
>loud
>

And we all know how well that worked out for him (well, barring comic/movie resurrection shenanigans.)

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Plus dying still probably hurts like Hell, just ask Captain Jack Harkness."

Hmm. Not as in specific actresses by name, but I do have reasonably solid impressions of how they sound.

Remilia's voice is lower-pitched than you would expect, looking at her, and she usually speaks a bit formally (but naturally so, not in a stilted or affected way). She doesn't sound sultry unless she's trying to, but there's always a bit of warmth in it (even when she's trying to sound cold). Maybe sorta Dana Delaney-ish? Seldom laughs except in a low, mellow chuckle, but on the rare occasions when she really lets go, it's high and musical. When she sings in Gallic she sounds like Édith Piaf, albeit usually less operatic, since she rarely sings except in the kitchen.

Flandre sounds more like you'd expect from her appearance, at least now that she speaks in her normal voice—higher-pitched and more casual than her sister, the voice of a cheerful girl in her early adolescence. She can speak formally if the situation requires it, but prefers not to. She has a slightly shrieky laugh, especially when taken off-guard by something that delights her. Her singing voice is very rusty, since she hasn't really used it for 400 years, but it has potential.

Both Remilia and Flandre speak English with a slight Shakespearean accent, since their childhood tutor in that language was from England (albeit about 50 years before Shakespeare's own birth). Something in my head keeps wanting Flan's English-language accent to be vaguely Scottish instead, possibly to facilitate her being voiced by Karen Gillan. ... Actually, I may run with that. They're five years apart, they may have had different tutors. (And, it's just occurred to me, it's not completely out of the question that Flan's was Amy Pond. :)

Sakuya speaks every language she speaks, and there are a lot of them, with no discernible regional accent, which means if the maid thing doesn't work out, she could get a job as a news anchor virtually anywhere. Her diction is precise without being cold (unless she wants it to be), and the timbre of her voice is moderate; she very seldom raises her voice, but when angered, she has the kind of "angry voice" that really doesn't need to be raised. Laughs easily and fluidly, but not energetically. So far we've only heard her humming along with an Ink Spots record, but I assume she sings as well as she does everything else.

Meiling is perhaps not as loud as she looks like she might be, but otherwise pretty much has the central-casting "Clydesdale gal" voice, big and round (but not as deep as you might expect). Has a very slight accent that could be Chinese, which goes along with her aesthetic, but her English diction is mostly neutral. Speaks casually, but not carelessly. Unsurprisingly, she has one of those big ol' HAW HAW HAW kind of laughs, like Mio Sakamoto. Can actually sing quite well, but only seems to know Chinese songs in a very old-fashioned style.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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	-={(Astynax)}=- "Flex tape can't fix that damage."

Yeah, you know how Cary Elwes still sounds very slightly English when he's doing an American accent? (For example, in his appearance as Mike Collins in From the Earth to the Moon.) Like that, only a woman's voice. Actually, now that I think about it, there's one of the space traffic controllers in Elite Dangerous who sounds a lot like that, now that I think about it, but that's not exactly a helpful pointer, given how many different NPC voices there are in the game.

>The nearest my brain wants to
>get is something like Y'shtola from FFXIV

Hmm, that's not bad either. Accent's a little more pronounced than I picture Remi's, but the timbre of her voice is close enough for government work.

Also, hello 911, I'd like to report a murder? Yes, uh, one big hairy dude man-ness. No, don't bother sending paramedics, just somebody with a bag.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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Haven't seen that one. I think the only attempt at American sounding I've heard from him was in Liar Liar. And I have no contact with Elite Dangerous. Thus my lack of viable voice samples to construct with. Ah well, it's a small thing.

>>The nearest my brain wants to
>>get is something like Y'shtola from FFXIV
>
>Hmm, that's not bad either. Accent's a little more pronounced than I
>picture Remi's, but the timbre of her voice is close enough for
>government work.
>

I had figured, the FFXIV voice cast doesn't seem to play theirs up as such, but they make no effort to hide them either. I mostly picked Y'shtola for the 'lower than you might expect' and 'cultured but not cold' descriptors.

>Also, hello 911, I'd like to report a murder? Yes, uh, one big hairy
>dude man-ness. No, don't bother sending paramedics, just somebody
>with a bag.
>

He deserved it. The background is that the player has, by the time of that scene, interacted quite a lot with both big axe guy (whose tribe is big, full of themselves, and associate themselves with the Sun) and the laughing mage girl (whose tribe are basically fantasy world Klingons always butting heads with the Sun tribe) and would be well and truly done with his posing and preening about strength, so watching her receive such an inexhaustible well of ridicule fuel to keep him in check is a beautiful thing.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "If the game devs ever let Little Sun live that down without a hell of a redemption arc, I'll be disappointed."

Though to be fair, I didn't think so until the voice work really kicked in after A Realm Reborn. The new VA injects just the perfect amount of cultured sass.

I'll admit, upon hearing Gryph's description, my head went to a slightly different FFXIV place: Gaia.

https://youtu.be/x2KZAH_BRSM?t=609 <-- at about 10:07-ish, if the link doesn't work right

--sofaspud
--despite her voice I just mostly wanna slap Gaia though, so, y'know. Y'shtola FTW rawr

There is... debate within the fandom about that, which would be even more wildly off topic around here. Though your position is supported by the fact that Y'shtola is something of the poster girl for the game in Japan.

The cultured sass, and general caring but reserved tone, is why Y'shtola pinged as a partial match in my head. Also the somewhat casual air of 'you wouldn't like me when I'm angry, though onlookers might be amused'.

The quality of the voice work for FFXIV went up nearly across the board when they switched studios, with the noteworthy exceptions of Urianger's VA, who does a fine job but the original was a seasoned hand (mouth? set of vocal cords?,) and Merlwyb's VA, where the original was simply superior and one of the few truly good performances from the original cast.

I haven't done the Eden raids (the only large group content I do regularly are Alliance raids, owing to not having a regular group to run with and my PuG experiences of any even remotely difficult content being... unpleasant.) I didn't expect any voice work in there, though Gaia's voice 1. comes off somewhat less cultured than I picture Remilia ever sounding and 2. sounds a bit like Alisaie with a cold.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "I'm reasonably sure Minfilia's original voice drove people away from the game."

And since they instituted cross-realm parties, it shouldn't even matter if you're not on our server, as long as you're on the NA datacenter.

--sofaspud
--and I'd suppressed the memory of Minfilia's original voice, so thanks for that

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

No, she has one other advantage.

Gryphon is actively interested in not killing her.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

He was trying to do a Scandinavian flick (aka a pendulum turn) to the left, to go around Flandre and make the bend in the road that's beyond her, but he'd only gotten as far as the first phase (where you turn in the opposite direction to where you ultimately want to be going) before Flan blew up the Jeep.

>in a bed that is even better than the ones at St. Ulrich (the quality
>of which I place at the feet of Perrine. I don’t see her as
>allowing anyone around her to settle for less than the best rest she
>can aquire for them)

Heh, it's actually established back in the original TV series that the witches have startlingly luxurious accommodations for military personnel, including beds that are at least doubles, if not queen-size. Still, I like your thinking here, and I suspect you're right that, when the time came to set up shop in her own country, Perrine pulled all the strings she could get ahold of to make sure her outfit got the best accommodations available. By this point in her career, Major Clostermann has a level of pull with the Gallian government that is out of all proportion to her relatively modest actual rank.

>yeah, wiping out one’s vehicle in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid
>hitting a mysterious personage in the middle of a heavy rain totally
>qualifies as a hard night in my book!

To be fair, he DID successfully avoid hitting her. ... OK, she did most of that herself, but he totally would have missed her anyway if she hadn't blown up the Jeep! Probably.

>Ah, Poor Remilia. It’s easy to understand how you think he’s
>trying to yank your chain here. Its because unlike us faithful
>readers, you’ve yet to be introduced to folk like Saya or
>Marceline… and I think there is at least one other who’s name is
>escaping me at the moment.

Well, there's Mina Murray, but she's only sort of half-vampire, since Dracula got whacked before he could finish turning her.

>Somehow I don’t think that it will matter how often I read this
>passage, the thought that Remilia doesn’t seem to twig to the fact
>she’s just been out willed by Wolfgang (Hey, there is a REASON
>he’s the Lensbeagle!!) just makes it even funnier?

I confess an unseemly love for that joke, if I do say so myself. It's based on something Wolfgang really used to do IRL, and it has many levels.

>> "Sleep well, and tonight we'll discuss your fate."
>
>I dunno. I mean, sure, UF-G has had a less than optimal evening, but
>I’m not sure he wouldn’t twig to the similarities to “Good Night
>Wesley” that he used on Mio. Its not been THAT long since New
>Tricks, I think? Then again, maybe he did but declined to follow up
>in a way that was apparent to a 3rd person camera?

Yeah, he probably noticed, but he was too tired to think it all the way through.

(When writing that scene, I almost did have her say, "Good morning, my strange Liberion. I'll most likely kill you this evening," but decided that A, it was too on the nose, and B, Remilia doesn't really go in for direct death threats (particularly when she's already decided she'll do nothing of the kind). :)

>> "Are you always this formal with women you've spent the day in bed
>> with?" she wondered with a tilt of her head.
>
>Pretty sure it depends on the woman. Remilia is inherently formal due
>to her circumstances, so Uf-G kinda defaults to a matching level.

Indeed, the answer to her question is "No, but it seemed the best match for how you addressed me." :)

>> Probably not the time to say, "Actually, have I got news for you,"
>> Gryphon reflected internally.
>
>Nope. That will come in Chapter 7. :p

In his defense, he did try a couple of times before then, but the moment was never right.

>> she spun tales of the glory days of the ancien régime, and of wars
>> against monsters of old fought by companies of witches, vampires, and
>> other mysterious creatures working side-by-side.
>
>This makes it sound like the ‘Dark Ages’ really were quite dark,
>with only a thin line of friendly supernaturals holding the line and
>keeping the ‘mundanes’ alive and well.

Pretty much, yeah. (This is kind of borne out by what little backstory we get in the World Witches canon—there are a couple of mentions of witches in, e.g., classical antiquity, battling against non-Neuroi monsters and safeguarding humanity. I did add the human-aligned creatures, though.)

>> Gryphon met her smile and raised his teacup in return. "You haven't
>> even heard the half of it yet, Countess Scarlet."
>
>… Oh goodness. A totally shark jumping thought. I hope they
>don’t commission her as a Captain when she finally links up with the
>501st, however many stories down the line that winds up being.

Aw, dammit. I held off on making that joke in the commentary specifically so I could use it in-story when the time came. :)

>> To have yours wiped out like that, right in front of you... I can't
>> think of many things that are worse than that."
>
>But he’s lived through at least one… SonSet, though that in its
>own way was probably worse, since that was a calculated blow to
>SHATTER the WDF, in more ways than one, from the inside out.

I don't know if I'd call it worse, I mean, Remilia's actual parents were killed right in front of her. Operation Götterdämmerung was on a larger scale, to be sure, but the tragedy of the House of Scarlet was more intimate.

>> "Well, I don't want to carry a piano down there," he said wryly.
>
>He probably could find a way if he had to, but he’s not exactly a
>Hoffmanite either.

The really hard part would be getting it back upstairs.

>> His eyes snapped back into focus, a look of concentrated dismay
>> replacing the spacey fascination on his face.
>
>And here we see his realization that listening to his zanshin is the
>usually the right call. It is just times like an initial encounter
>with a supernatural that is not quite all there it gets confusing.

Well, that and he was momentarily stunned by the impact with the ground, but I could have spelled that out a little better.

>Also, while it works as a cold open, its really confusing as to how
>this scene fits in with what follows.

Hmm... yeah, I can see that. Making the omnibus edition did kind of break the flow in a few places, in much the same way that editing together episodes of a TV series into a "movie" doesn't always work. Maybe I should take that piece and move it into the jump that was left for it in the original version and see how that works.

>> "How is it," he inquired as Wolfgang led him across to the great
>> room, "that if it's for me, you can't be bothered, but you'll run
>> errands for her?"
>
>I think it might be part of the unwritten and secret laws of pets.
>Keep in mind a lot of them were initially written by Cats, of course.

Beagles are pretty well-known for being rather catlike dogs, so there's that. :)

>Right now your only ace is
>that he doesn’t have access to most of the gear he uses in a game
>like that.

True! And that made this scene such a pain in the butt to write, holy cow.

>> She opened her mouth, her fangs extending to twice their usual
>> length, and he had just enough time to think abstractly, Oh.
>> So that's what it means, before—
>
>Well, I think UF-G was concerned it might be like this all along,
>really, since he knew what Flandre was.

He thought it might be? But then again, she also showed signs of having read That Kind of Book (viz. her initial flash of weird coquettishness), and he was having a hard enough time getting a read on her at that early stage that he couldn't say with any certainty just what the hell she meant.

(And as it turned out, the Child at least did mean just kissing. Who knows what the Other would have made of it...)

>> When no answer was forthcoming, Mio turned on her props to see
>> Gryphon hovering nearby, his night-vision optics trained not on
>> the battle zone to the east, but off toward the western horizon.
>
>Not sure if he just twigged to the temporal connection side of this or
>not, but you can sure get the feeling he’s wishing he could swoop in
>and save himself even though he knows he cant because he didn’t.

It's not so much that as he's just noticed what time it is and realizes what's happening over there, just past the horizon. He doesn't have an impulse to get involved (because, as you say, he knows that would make a mess of things), but... he's kind of reflecting on the occasion (which from his "now" perspective happened weeks if not months ago) and wishing himself luck, and feeling anxious, even though he knows how it came out.

>> "I'd say 'I'm no ordinary man,' but it would be bragging," he
>> replied, shaking his head like a punch-drunk boxer. "Oh wow.
>> Oh wow."
>
>And now we see that at least alchemy has the same effect on the Detian
>physiology that Detian physiology has on these Vampires.

That, and the fact that she just whacked him up with a potion that's meant to supercharge witches, and he's not a witch, so that energy burst had to go somewhere. :)

>> No, I'm from Maine, I only work in outer space.
>
>Heh. Heh. Heh. I have to wonder if UF-Kirk ever had cause to use
>that line. Still, its always great to hear the classics from time to
>time.

I assume he first heard Kirk say the Iowa version to someone, ages ago, and thought Oh that's good, I'm havin' that. :)

>Oh, and how it comes to happen she vanishes from the house and
>eventually winds up as one of the Doctor’s companions is a story I
>hope the muse explains to you as well.

At first I thought she might have been inadvertently abducted by the Doctor, but upon reflection, I suspect it played out more like Ace's origin story—that she was displaced in time by some other phenomenon and then met the Doctor. If I get any more details on that, I'll see about writing them up.

>> With his stocky build, he felt certain he must come across like a
>> longshoreman cosplaying George Washington,
>
>Well, I suppose the joke here should be better a longshoreman than a
>LUMBERJACK… But you are from Maine. Then again, there are equal
>numbers of both there, I suppose.

Ah dammit, you're absolutely right, I should have said "lumberjack" there. I never even thought of it.

>> Ball's in your court, Van Helsing, he thought, just a tad smugly,
>> then dropped away into dreams of candlelight and contentment.
>
>Most questions I’ve had I’ve been able to suss out, either through
>the annotations or comments or just plain context. But this, I just
>don’t get…

He's just being silly. He's warm and comfortable, blissfully snuggled, and only about a quarter awake, so he facetiously flips off the entire concept of "vampire hunters" in the privacy of his own head before dropping the rest of the way off to sleep. No specific van Helsing is meant. :)

--G.
-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

So, I had a go at that, rearranging that bit of the omnibus so that the scenes go in order instead of having a misplaced IMR-flash-forward cold open in the middle of everything. I had to write a couple of transition paragraphs to make it flow properly, but I think it works reasonably well. See what y'all think.

--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.

Well, I can't speak for the others, but it does flow much better to myself; especially since it makes it a lot clearer that the reason UF-G is kinda examining the stars so... umm... wheezely is cause Flandre just rang his bell. Too bad for Flandre that that just kind of gets UF-G, like Utena, to level up!

I can believe that. In fact, after having gotten some sleep I think part of it is because in the stories I write, about half the time I've written an arrival scene he's wound up in a crash. So, yeah. Kind of projecting myself into something that wasn't actually in evidence; but also really understanding how he felt when he woke up in Remilia's bedroom.

"Welcome to Touhou bullet hell. Here is your Accordion"????

Really random thought: UF-Gryphon probably thinks of it as a Kumbari slide or something like that, given that he learned the art of combat driving at the Royal Salusian Security Service Academy.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.