I think it's the replication of experiences that gives off that vibe. Might be I'm not pulling the right word for it from my mental thesaurus though, since it seems less about who 'wins' and more about a certain sense of fairness through the lens of someone who isn't quite past the 'fair means precisely equal, right' stage, for the rather obvious reason you've noted.

>(As you can probably tell from her internal monologue in this scene,
>Remilia is aware that they're probably going to have to have A
>Conversation about this at some point, but, well, one bridge at a
>time.)
>

I look forward to seeing who will be more embarrassed by those proceedings.

>I have only a limited understanding of the term, in my old age, but I
>think as long as you don't go around hijacking completely unrelated
>Twitter threads with demands that everyone buy her album, you'll be
>OK?
>

This being UF, while she doesn't have one yet, she might end up with an album one day.

>In those days, it wouldn't have been "the government" as we understand
>it today so much as the local gentry—for instance, if Victor and
>his team went and dealt with, say, a boggart infestation of the
>vineyards in Champagne, Remilia would have expected them to be paid by
>the King of Navarre (whose title, oddly, was coterminous with the
>county of Champagne in the 13th century, despite the fact that
>Champagne province was nowhere near Navarre, which is in Basque
>country), not directly by the vintners themselves. The fact that it
>generally was the latter and not the former gives the arrangement an
>unpleasant whiff of extortion to Remilia's (relatively) more modern
>sensibilities.
>

Something of a Witcher vibe there, though Count Victor seemed notably more genial than Geralt ever has been.

>Flandre is much more cheerful than Wednesday, but I could see them
>having some common interests. :)
>
>While I've never been consciously trying to build exact parallels, the
>ménage at Scarlet Devil Mansion does give me a little
>bit of an Addams Family vibe in general—not that they're
>anything like as bizarre, when you get right down to it, or as
>interested in matters overtly macabre, but there is that same sense of
>"these folks would be considered monstrously peculiar by whitebread
>suburbanites, but are in fact the strongest family."
>

I am, as the hip saying goes, here for that.
Though I'm also the sort of person who keeps Halloween decoration up around the house more or less permanently, so there's that bias to account for when it comes to a fondness for lovable 'monster' people.

>(I have always loved that little detail about both The Addams
>Family and The Munsters—the fact that the "monsters"
>on both shows are the best people in their settings.
>

Indeed. Gomez and Morticia are pretty much aspirational figures for how to live life (in spirit if not specifics,) and I don't recall as much of the Munsters but I do recall Herman being basically the equivalent of a huge, friendly dog in sentient person form.

>Well, with luck, you should have a better sense of that soon. A mini
>covering the gap in her story this act (i.e., most of what she talked
>with Gryphon about) is in the works, to be put up as a sort of bookend
>to A Name to Call Her Own, and it should answer most of the
>remaining questions about her background.
>

Looking forward to that. I mean, some of it will being putting Meiling through a bit of a wringer I gather, so not so much that aspect, but the more general 'getting to know the cast' portion.

>Yeah, I like Meiling a lot. Well, I like all these characters a lot,
>or I wouldn't be working with them, but Meiling's special because
>she's just so not complicated. Not everybody has to be
>complicated! Sometimes it's OK to have a character like Meiling, or
>Nyima, whose Hidden Depths mostly have to do with her stomach. :)
>
>(I will now invite you to picture Nyima and Meiling fighting crime.
>Or bankrupting a dim sum place. Whichever you prefer. Or, you know,
>¿por qué no los dos? :)
>

heh, to quote the lady herself, 'I heard that.'
Though I am getting a mental 404 on Nyima, and Google is not furnishing ready results without more details. Not sure if I'm simply spacing on a character, or if I missed something.

>To give its full title, le Septième Bureau du
>Ministère de l'Intérieur ("the Seventh Bureau of the
>Ministry of the Interior") is the Gallian civilian government's
>principal agency for managing, coordinating, and recording
>non-military matters to do with magic and the
>supernatural—compared to, for instance, the Liberion federal
>government's Department of Paranormal Affairs. (Matters of military
>magic are handled by the appropriate department within the Ministry of
>the Armed Forces.)
>

Ah, so not explicitly shadowy and nefarious, well no more so than a government agency with such a remit would have to be. At least so long as they are more MIB than SCP.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we're aware of."