It's superb. From much trial and error, the trick seems to be: once you take it out of the oven, leave it in the pan until the cheese stops bubbling.

>Since she was asleep when they returned, I am left to wonder if
>Remilia told Flandre about her excursion off screen, or if there will
>be at least a bit of good natured "oh, you didn't want me to go, but
>you can? I am definitely going with next time."

She only told Sakuya where she was going, although presumably Sakuya informed Meiling and Flandre when they noticed Remilia wasn't there for lunch. And I'm sure Flandre had a bit of a huff about it, if only to amuse Meiling. :)

We will soon see the Scarlets revisiting the whole matter of who leaves the grounds and when, which is another scene I'm looking forward to a lot.

>If Minna's awareness ping hard on Remilia, she might actually be a bit
>afraid of Flandre (at least internally.)

It could go either way. Her signature could show up as an extreme potential threat, or so unlike anything Minna's ever seen before that it's just the witch sensing equivalent of a blank spot on the screen and a little graphic that says [NO DATA].

>>(Also, that Erica line is one of my favorites. :)
>
>I hadn't really even thought about the 501st crew in ages, but that
>one line does an excellent job of reintroducing a character and
>setting 'this is who this is' expectations.

When I dropped it in a Twitter DM to BZA without attribution, her immediate response was, "Hahaha! Is that Erica or Lucchini?" And to be fair, it could also be Lucchini, but she was in sickbay at the time. :)

>Also helped potentially by being told, if only moments before, that
>G's intended was in fact a vampire, then watching her fly into the
>room.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Trude thought he was being sarcastic until she noticed the person standing outside the window. (Outside which there is a sheer drop not just from the second floor of the castle, but down the cliff on which the castle is built. And while you're picturing that, think about this. Shortly before her appearance in OWaW episode 10, Wilma climbed up that wall. :)

>I wonder, does she have some 6th sense for finding him now, or did she
>just circle the building stealthily until she spotted him?

She would wish the former to be believed, but no, it was in fact simply good old-fashioned looking in windows. :)

(The former could actually be arranged, but there's a thing they'd have to do that they haven't done. At least not yet.)

>Yeah, I goofed, and was set straight on this. In my defense, time
>travel. Especially time travel involving loops. Austin Powers said it
>best, "oh no, I've gone cross-eyed."

Oh, no worries. I've confused myself repeatedly while writing the dang thing. In fact, it's just occurred to me that there's at least one small continuity blunder in this very episode: Erica put up that signup sheet on the door some time before the narration in this ep says she did. (I suppose we could apply the Marvel No-Prize rubric and say that the narration only means she put up a fresh copy. After all, it's not a whiteboard, when it fills up it has to be replaced. :)

>>TLDR: If anybody in that room was going to spot an actual vampire
>>without being told, it was going to be Heidemarie W. "The Vampire"
>>Schnaufer. :)
>
>Fair enough. Interesting that enough evidence remained after whatever
>purges took place to prove, or at least strongly indicate, that
>vampires had been real. The revolution, it seems, was not as thorough
>as they were bloodthirsty.

In Gallia, the purge was pretty thorough, but not complete, because the Committee for Public Safety was itself purged before they could get absolutely every record. It was still broadly effective in terms of what the general public in modern Gallia believes, but there are bits and pieces here and there still. In Karlsland, the similar efforts undertaken in 1870, during the Second Reich's unification under Wilhelm I and Bismarck, were... uneven, but more successful in the west, farther away from European vampires' ancestral heartland. If Heidemarie were Prussian, she'd have had an easier time finding the sources she consulted, but even in Württemberg, where she comes from, there was enough around for her to put together a pretty complete picture. But it's the kind of thing a person would have to have a bit of an obsession with and do a lot of digging to find out about.

It just occurred to me, as I was typing that, that she and Flandre have unusual grounds for bonding. Heidemarie spent her childhood stuck in a basement too, not because she was a Danger to Herself and Others, but because her magical night vision made her so light-sensitive that if she'd gone outside during the day, or even looked out windows on a regular basis, before she learned to control it, she'd have gone blind. (That's canonically why she wears glasses: because her eyesight was damaged by daylight exposure in childhood, when her parents didn't realize what the problem was soon enough.) And, like Flandre, while she was down there she had plenty of time for reading.

(She probably remembers more of the books she read than Flan does, admittedly.)

>It might have just been the contrast to the first introduction, group
>3 definitely felt much more Zen. It wasn't meant as criticism as much
>as musing, though I guess it is a question of whether or not the
>intent was to portray the witches as a whole as a group who have
>reached the level of 'well, now that's a thing that happened/exists'
>before carrying on mostly unperturbed when the improbable shows up.

Pretty much this—and the fact that the last group we saw were the most relaxed anyway, because they were on downtime and not involved in the prep for Operation Hammer. And one of them was Eila, who plays her cards close to the vest, while another was Shizuka, who isn't as forceful as Mio but is similarly as pragmatic as a bag of nails. :)

Speaking of cards, I suspect immediately after that scene, Eila retired to her room and ran off a whole bunch of Tarot readings. And got The High Priestess and The World a lot. :)

>>Well, yes, I mean, if she were trying to climb through a small window
>>and they got hung up on the jamb, that would be funny, but only a fool
>>would say so.
>
>Might not have to be a fool, might just have to be willing (and able)
>to absorb the logical consequences. If one were very lucky, I'd think
>Remilia might actually find it funny as well, but only if no one else
>could see, and getting through the window was not urgent.

True, it depends on the circumstances. She still wouldn't see the funny side while she was actually in the window, but possibly immediately thereafter. :)

>>(Also also, he's Gallian in 1946 and he was at an office party that
>>afternoon, so he's probably a bit drunk.)
>
>That might also feed into the suspicion of hallucination, especially
>if he had any absinthe.

The Green Fairy, she is a harsh mistress.

>The reactions all around if Flandre herself were to ever comment
>something like "I couldn't just let you wander off, you're my favorite
>flavor" would be something.

She spends a good bit of her time revolving the "just my type" joke in her head, but she can't... quite... get it to a punch line yet. :)

>Hmm, this reveal gets a bit more buildup again. Looking forward to
>more of the Maid of Blades.

Heh, that's like the kind of nickname she would have had in the '60s and '70s if she were an American comics character. Especially DC, all their guys had like five names back then. :)

Someone in the original "so I ran across this interesting character" thread about Touhou over on Source Material described her as Remilia's "vorpal maid," which is a phrase that takes some beating. (Apologies if that was you, I can't be arsed to go look it up at 2:30 in the morning. :)

>>(My meta-problem now is that I've "caught up" to the main OWaW
>>timeline, so his SDM time is no longer in the "past".)
>
>I don't envy you that particular headache.

Oh, I have a plan (for once), but I also have a bunch of things to establish first.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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