Epsilon and I saw Maquia - When the Promised Flower Blooms yesterday.

It has a 100% "fresh" rating with 20 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes the last time I looked, a few days ago. It deserves that rating.

The movie isn't an action flick or a traditional rom-com - a nice change from the usual crop of summer releases. It's small-scale fantasy-style SF that explores the question "what happens when a small group of people have vastly longer lifespans than everyone else?" It's very much character driven, and the major characters - especially Maquia herself - get believable character development over the course of the movie.

Highly recommended, assuming you don't mind subtitled releases.

There are some Big Names in Anime involved in this movie: It was written and directed by Mari Okada, and the music is by by Kenji Kawai. Miyu Irino is the voice actor of the lead male character (whose name is spelled "Ariel" in the subtitles and "Erial" in Anime News Network's review); he previously played Syaoran in Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and Sena in Eyeshield 21. I had not previously heard of Manaka Iwami, Maquia's voice actress, but I'll be watching for her name in the credits from now on.

It's still playing today and Monday in Ontario, CA; Santa Clara CA; Baltimore, MA; Raleigh, NC; and most large Canadian cities. It'll also be playing September 5 and September 9 in Lowell, MA; Revere, MA; Edgewater, NJ; Farmingdale, NY; and Providence, RI.


(Dartz, you don't need to feel left out; Anime Limited has the license for Ireland and the UK, so you should get to see this movie eventually.)

(07-27-2018, 05:43 PM)Labster Wrote: Does the 300 post rule apply here?

(07-27-2018, 05:43 PM)Labster Wrote: I'm also a little lost, but the madhouse is fun. If you to be even more lost, I'm thinking about throwing in the plot of Highway Blossoms somewhere in the background, because hey, why not have a minor gold rush in the American Southwest? It's a yuri visual novel, and I happen to have a spare Steam key, if anyone's interested. The adult patch is easy to find, too. The plot seems like... what if Carl Barks could actually write female characters? Since the entirety of the story takes place between Roswell and Palm Springs, BA would probably have priority.

Defining Enjo Kosai:
1: dating with compensation (payments, financial support, etc.);
2: schoolgirl prostitution

Well that clears it up.

(07-27-2018, 04:58 PM)Dartz Wrote: I've completely lost track of what's going on and who everyone is so Imma just gonna go over here.

• Black Aeronaut and Labster are still introducing their characters.
  
• I've advanced my part of the story a couple of months further than anyone else, have almost all my characters introduced, have started to get some action scenes in, and a few of my characters have started to get power-ups and/or get into non-canon relationships.
  
• Some of us want to have an all-writers Halloween party, to be held at San Antonio - working notes here EDIT: Newer and more stable here, but you have to have an account to read it.
  

• More conflict scenes (man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. himself, etc.) - change up the protagonists/antagonists to show this is all happening in the same shared world
  
• Share resources and build non-canon relationships within groups (e.g. however the friendship goes between Tessa and Fate Testraossa)
  
• Share resources and build relationships between groups (e.g. Washuu-chan's "Good Neighbor System", Rin Tohsaka and Kazari Uriharu's acquaintance)
  
• Come up with a plausible reason and mechanism to get some groups into orbit/space, so the spacefaring cultures can be introduced
  

• Come to grips with the idea that nobody's going "home"
  

Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, that is.

When it comes to Armed Forces cloud computing, there can only be one. (Sorry, wrong movie.)

It's almost that time again, where I get my employer to pay to send me to a programming conference in a distant land, and thus pay for my vacation travel.  This year, The Perl Conference in Europe will be in Glasgow, which is technically still part of Europe (for now).  So I'm leaving tomorrow, and then I have two weeks before the conference to explore Scotland, on my own.

Anyone have any suggestions for where I should go?  I'm planning to go to the big tourist sites: Edinburgh Castle, Loch Ness, and Hogwarts.  I'm interested in seeing Skye and Iona, too.  But if anyone else has a suggestion, I'd love to hear it.

Donald Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star vandalized

It's also extremely rude – whoever did this is attempting to silence somebody else's freedom of speech.

And it isn't as if Trump has to pay to replace it.

So a bit of backstory: I'm the proud owner of a 1980s vintage Oster Regency Kitchen Center; y'know, the one that starts as a standing mixer, but you can swap the mixer head for all sorts of other bits like a blender, ice cream maker, and in our particular case, a food shredder. I bought it and the attachments second hand, knowing that it's effectively a tank I'd have to work at deliberately to kill, and it's a pretty good jack of all trades.

A couple of months back, the pin in the food shredder that pushes the center of the blade hub down into the motor gear hub - basically the SAFETY to keep one from operating it with the lid off -  snapped off. I finally repaired it last week by running basically a metal pin through the broken area to rejoin the plastic pin with the upper housing it snapped off of.

I could buy another food processor/shredder attachment for the setup, but I'm also acknowledging this: the replacement would likely also be in the range of 35 years old, with the usual problem that comes with the plastics attending in terms of the pin may be weakened with age and use. But we also do shred a fair amount of cheese in this house (I don't care for the things the added cellulose does to pre-shredded cheese). And I like my automated methods a little too much.

So, I suppose the recommendations I'm looking for is something (and it can be a dedicated unit, rather than the jack of all trades master of a few, since it is a regular use item) to replace the shredder/processor that's a dedicated unit, brand new, and built like a tank so that I don't have to worry about purchasing a replacement for 30+ years.

Had a power failure and have been finishing a lot of old Fenspace Ideas I've had floating around.


----
The MD Program

It’s been no secret that the old Hornblowers have been getting on in years for a long time, but any replacement was mired in the Quagmire that is the Politics of the Crystal Millenium, torn between a mix of pacifism, protectionism and parochialism.

It took 5 years for Atropos and Hotspur to even be completed, by which time the spaceframe had already begun to show its age. The enforced retirement of HMS Lydia only increased the strain on the remaining ships.

Two simple rules held up replacing them.

• The SAM is required by law to purchase all ships it flies from Takeuchi yards.

• Takeuchi Yards is forbidden by law from manufacturing ‘new’ combat vessels.

Thus far, this deadlock has forced the SAM to rely on increasingly aging equipment, or on increasingly clever loopholes for lighter vessels.

== Spasatel, The Rescuers ==

The second Lun-class Ekranoplan, Spasatel had remained in a hanger, incomplete, for nearly thirty years. Compared to the original Lun, she had been constructed as a dedicated search and rescue craft in an attempt to gain foreign sales.

The Crystal Millennium completed the purchase of the hull and lifted her to Takeuchi Yards, where she was patterned, then reconstructed. Some of the experience gained from the initial reconstruction of the original Lun was applied to accelerate the process.

The completed Spasatel was launched in February 2025, commencing detailed space trials after being fitted out for the search, rescue and research role.

[]Spasatel[/i] differs from her more combat-orientated sister in that she lacks the primary armament – her upper deck being given over to additional crew spaces, along with dedicated reconfigurable equipment spaces.

5 additional hulls were laid down – known by their Hull numbers. MD-162, 163, 164, 165 and 166. The process of actually naming the ships with proper themed name is on hold while the appropriate Parliamentary working group drafts recommendations on appropriate themes and their memetic consequences.

Competing submissions have been requested from a number of specialised consulting firms which are due to be placed before a neutral board of represenativies.

Currently, the leading proposals include naming them after famous lifeboats (Helen Blake, Mona…), yet another Age of Sail epic series, something more fitting their Soviet design heritage, or whatever the internet can agree on as a good idea. (Spacey McSpaceface)

For the time being the Rescuers remain unnamed.



== Excelion. The Boomer ==

The seventh Rescuer is anything but.

She was built on the special orders of Queen Serenity II herself, to the original Lun class designs, including all six “Drone Shuttlecraft launch tubes”.

To evade the restrictions on Takeuchi Yards building combat capable spaceraft, she was completed elsewhere at an undisclosed location and entered service with little to no public fanfare. Her exact capabilities, armaments and purpose are considered Crown secrets but it is thought that she is equipped with some form of guided interplanetary missile system.

Excelion’s existence and true nature as a combat vessel was made public following a heated questions session in the Tokyo Diet. The resulting controversy led to her being pulled from deep space patrol, and ordered to remain in Venus orbit while what to do with her was figured out.

There have been calls for her decommissioning, dismantlement, reconstruction and for more of her class to be built quick before the Boskone come back goddammit.

Whatever the answer will be, Excelion remains parked in orbit, fully crewed and technically still in active service.

A persistent rumour suggests that she doesn’t need to leave Venus space to be fully combat effective.

----

Previous thread is here.

Quote:Just edited Feghoot: s/{{trope}}/{{trope|wppage=Feghoot}}/ The Wikipedia tab did not appear. Is this a bug or a feature?

OOC: A short-short, just because.

Quote:Welcome to Master PC
Welcome to the Master Command Center...
where the Master allows you to become a virtual god to the people around you...
Now, you possess the power to bend their reality to your specifications.
You are the Master's representative

The Fleet Museum at Port Phobos was opened in December 2023, after years of interfactional negotiations. The Museum had been on the agenda for the Convention's business meeting since the very first Convention after the end of the Boskone War.

However, for years, funding of the museum took a back foot to more pressing necessities.

Until HMS Athena was retired from SAM service and slatted for scrapping. On checking her serial number, it was found that she had originally been a ship of the Osaka City Guard.

A concerted crowdfunding effort to save the last surviving ship from Crystal Osaka eventually led to the funding of the museum - based in hanger 17 - the original staging point for the Boskone 4 assault.

6 Vessels formed the core exhibits when the museum was opened. More have since been added.

Vessels added to the collection at the museum have been preserved either because of their uniqueness, their importance in Convention history, or the events which the vessel took part in.

----

HMS Athena:
Bolitho Class. Restored to her original markings of the Osaka City guard. She is one of the few remaining artifacts from the city, having been delivered to the city guard 2 weeks before the collapse of the city. She survived the collapse of the city and served alongside the Toikyo guard for years before coming up for retirement.

A concerted effort among multiple factions led to her being preserved as the signature exhibit for the museum, along with structural elements from the city itself to place her in her context.


USS Phoenix:
Federation research vessel. First Fenship to go FTL. Not flightworthy. She is suspended from the roof of the main atrium. She is currently on permanent loan from the Starfleet museum.

A simulator enables her historic flight to be re-enacted by visitors.

HMS Lydia:
Hornblower class cruiser of the Sailors Armed Militia. Retired from service due to structural damage caused during the rescue of a VTP research vessel that had become trapped at low altitude. Her Captain took her below the ship's calculated collapse depth to affect a rescue. The ship survived, and the rescue was succesful.

She is open to the public. Her propulsion systems have been permanently disabled.

SS Ciara:
Great Justice Star Destroyer - restored to her wartime configuration. She is permanently moored as an exhibit. Her propulsion systems are supposedly functional. Ciara occasionally hosts fenkinder overnight in her crew bunkrooms, and runs an amateur radio station. She's suspected to be haunted.

SS Destiny Nova:
One of two surviving Boskone vessels (White Stallion is the other). Restored to her wartime configuration, with a second exhibit of her time in Panzer Kunst Grupper service. She is widley believed by the museum's curators to be haunted.

SS Yeager
Blackbird Class Vessel. One of the original production run. Retired from military service shortly after the Boskone War - she served as a training and research vessel for the next 6 years before being flown to the museum and permanently moored.

She is the only exhibit that is still regularly flying on the Warbird circuit at air and space shows, drumming up support for the museum.