[IC][Arc 1] Halloween in Another World

[robkelk]

Concordance


1. The Invitation


"I've sweet-talked Washuu-chan into setting up some portals."
"Like she did yesterday? In that case, call me Chell."

By "yesterday", Rob means the events of It's All Relative. Chell is the protagonist of the game Portal.


"Yeah, it's supposed to 'ride like this'. Don't be a wuss. Live with it."

Had Mr. Humphries been at Gulfside Rest, he would have advised Kensuke not to worry — it rides up with wear.


Makoto held up a card. "This says it's a dance gown worn by somebody named Sarah in a movie that I haven't seen."

Sarah being the protacgonist of the movie Labyrinth. There's a photo of the scene [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369/med...1810138368 here].


"Just call me Gloria."

Gloria Steinem, who worked as a Playboy Bunny in 1963 for long enough to write an exposé of the working conditions at the Playboy Club in New York.


"Ten Thousand Stars"

One of Hatsune Miko's songs, from one of the "live" concerts that the Vocaloid programmers and illustrators give on occasion. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzve2hpLeqc Watch a performance of it here.]


Also, can you make me a daimyou? A duchess would be fine, too.

Daimyou were the top tier feudal lords, under only the shogun or emperor. Each one controlled a clan and a roughly a prefecture's worth of land. Actually, I think the Silver Millenium government was a little more similar to the Holy Roman Empire, with each of them having a literal sphere of influence. Patrons of planets, such as Princess Venus, would be akin to prince-electors, where other senshi of minor planets like Vesta are the other princes, grand dukes, and counts.


Tomo withdrew an elaborate pink pen with wings from her pocket and raised it above her her head.

Buying a prop in advance for a joke I might be able to use in a month or two is a thing I've done in real life. Unlike Tomo, I spend my own money.


2. Trick-or-Treating


Kagura started thinking about oni holidays. "Not if they throw beans at you!"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setsubun Setsubun] is a annual Japanese holiday where oni are cast out with soy beans. A culturally inaccurate depiction of this holiday can be found in the pages of Urusei Yatsura.


"You took us to the Yamaguchi-gumi when we were ten!"

The Yamaguchi-gumi in real life are well known for their Halloween giveaways to the community. Yakuza can simultaneously run criminal enterprises and be pillars of the community, protectors of the downtrodden.


"Pinky swear!" Tomo held out her smallest finger, offering it in the ancient Japanese custom of yubikiri.

The term "pinky swear" originally comes from Japanese language as "yubikiri" 「指切り」, literally "finger cutting". But the implication Tomo makes is of yubitsume 「指詰め」. In the yakuza, one of the main punishments for failing to live up to one's obligations is cutting off of fingers in ritual penance. As expected, there's a social stigma against having missing fingers in Japan, to the extent that ex-yakuza – or even normal people who had accidents – often need prosthetic fingers to get hired to jobs.


"I guess she's not a carnivore, then." Sakaki reached down to pet the cabbit.

Cats are obligate carnivores; the majority of their diet must be meat to survive. Ryo-Ohki survives just fine on carrots.


Well, he's actually holding a whole spaceship wrapped in an 8th dimensional quantum loop.

8th dimensional vehicles are more common than one would expect.


But none of them could match the speed of Tomo charging into the middle of the fray at full tilt, her wooden sword lunging forward.

Canon: Tomo's sprint speed is the fastest of the Azumanga cast, so long as it's for a very short distance.


He stopped crying and looked up to Tomo. He said weakly, "Right."

Ugh pronouns. Imma keep it cis for now. All letters of complaint can be addressed to my prereader Rob Kelk, Ottawa, Canuckistan."


"That's a hard question," Fujitaka began patiently. "I've studied all kinds of cultures from around the world."

Fujitaka is an archaeologist, but anthropology is a pretty closely related field. He has almost certainly given lectures on gender roles in ancient societies, since it shows up in all sorts of artifacts.



3. The Party


A cloud of ruby rose petals burst through the arch.

Definitely not foreshadowing or anything.


She was expecting it, of course, and posed with fake modesty, hands holding her dress down over her important parts.

Minako's important parts include, of course, the mound of Venus.


"He's using terms from Dumas." Urd turned from Skuld to Rob. "Aren't you?"

Specifically, The Three Musketeers – the English noblewoman DeWinter is referred to as "Milady" by the French musketeers.


Ben raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me that you want me to be your own personal Cyrano de Bergerac."

If Brent was there, he'd have said, "No of course not! Jareth wants Sarah for a knob goblin."


"Oooooh claaaaw!" Tomo nasalized.

About the Golden Claw: Farce is the best form of comedy. Tomo's quote is from the three-eyed alien toys inside a crane game in Toy Story, who actually did have a religious worship of The Claw. The underlying concept is also religious; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guf Guf] in Jewish mysticism.


Brent began educating the youngsters, "You know, crane games were actually invented in ancient Babylon."

This next part is Brent imitating Takashi Yamazaki from Cardcaptor Sakura, as it turns out that Sakura and Shaoran are just as gullible as Osaka is. Yomi is imitating Chiharu Mihara, Takashi's tsundere sweetheart and protector of the truth. She's actually doing him a favor as he was just about out of bullshit at this point.



4. The After-Party


'Oh Kei, now aren't you a big strong man, Sweetling'

If you haven't read "Bubblegum Pink: Raging Fires" yet, please wait until you are at least age 18.


"We goddesses are a lot more like humans than you think. We make mistakes."

Of course, some of us don't try to kill the gods when they find this out. Looking at you, Salem.


"Come on, you gotta have something better than that!"

Brent: Almost every inebriated person, after I've told them that I don't drink, has then proceeded to try to convince me that I should try some alcohol.



5. Samhain


Even tonight, she eschewed makeup to rely on her plentiful natural beauty.

Akari is a little unfair on things like this, which is to say she is quite fair. Like maybe so fair you'd call her a fair person, or call a collection of people like her fair folk.


It didn't seem like much of a party to Akari, as she could only make out a couple of people in the area:

So with the curse, she can really only see the most powerful spirits present: in this case, Coyote, Cat Sìth, Kokopelli, and Grandmother Spider.


"Just ask Pan about the smell of beet blossoms!"

This is a reference to Jitterbug Perfume, which is impossible to really explain without reading the whole book. Otherwise, I'm sure I'd lose you somewhere between the Bandaloop doctors and Mardi Gras.


A tall, rail-thin woman sitting by the fire set down a scarf she was knitting, and scurried over to investigate the pink-haired girl. The woman was dressed in the finest black embroidered dress Akari had ever seen.

Spider Grandmother's appearance here is inspired by Atoko from Haiyore! Nyaruko-san (a fujoshi from planet Atlach-Nacha) and also a cellar spider I saw trying to capture a crane fly while I was writing the passage. (Both animals are nicknamed daddy longlegs, despite their closest relationship being at the phylum level.)


"He patted her head with his left paw."

Cat Sìth is a southpaw. Didn't want to ruin the mood with puns though.

I'm not sure how much peyote there was in there, but it was certainly enough to make Akari throw up. Perhaps fairy realm peyote works a little differently, but it's still Medicine. Willow bark is just aspirin. And I didn't know this until after I wrote, but according to some book Commanche used Osage orange root as eye medicine. But I think I liked the concept of medicine from the roots, trunk, and branches too much to switch the recipe. The wood from the Osage orange tree is among the world's strongest, which is why I picked it.


He asked the woman in black, "Grandmother Spider, do you happen to have some fairy ointment on you?"

Fairy ointment, and the process to make it with magic, is described in great detail in The Ancient Magus' Bride (Mahou Tsukai no Yome) volume 5. Applied to the eyelid, it can make a mundane see fey. Fairies also anoint their children with it.


"Akari decided to return to the dance floor, before the conversation turned to freezing people to death."

Have you ever been to a party where you meet someone, and then after talking a bit you realize they are totes cray cray and you need to get away?


"I bet you could play the flute pretty well, if it was the right kind."

He means the skin flute. Pretty much all of the pre-contact depictions of Kokopelli include the penis pretty obviously. In my version, he's a master of the tango both vertically and horizontally.


"Thank you so much! I didn't know he was like that, and I don't know what I'd do without you."

"There is no honest woman with an uncorrupted heart whom a man is not sure of conquering by dint of gratitude. It is one of the surest and shortest means." – Giacomo Casanova

"A cat is fine, too" – 4chan


"No, don't give away the ending! It must be told properly."

Coyote hates spoilers. His personality is at least somewhat inspired by [Gunnerkrigg Court](https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=485) but he doesn't look like all black and colored like that like a totem animal. Coyote here just looks like a big, occasionally bipedal coyote.

Coyote's tale here is not traditional, and incorporates a lot of different traditions. There are some echoes of [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fairy_tal...Snow_Queen The Snow Queen], Hopi, Shasta, Mojave, and Mexica stories and culture. [http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2...ought.html Aztec political thought] is pretty alien to modern folk.


There was a cacophony of buzzing, and the yellow jackets said, "How can we help?'

Yellow jackets really freaking like salmon, even when you're trying to eat it *grumble*. The particular backstory the yellow jackets are referring to [http://ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore75.html Mount Shasta's Eruption].


There was so much water that once there was a flat mesa, the water kept cutting and cutting through the rock, until there was a Grand Canyon.

Incidentally the Grand Canyon was not caused by a massive glacial lake outburst flood, but uplift of the Colorado plateau and long term erosion. On the other hand, the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands Channeled Scablands] of the Columbia basin were most definitely caused by an ice dam failure. But the primordial flood stories have a tendency to blend together.


"And that's the story of how I beat Gato, and got his 15 Silver Points!"

If you're clueless here, it's a reference to Chrono Trigger. Gato is a cat robot you can fight for Millennium Fair merch points... and he has a song. Gato, of course, is Spanish for "cat". And if you don't think armadillos can roll, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x71UlnYVEU check this youtube out].


"But I was a girl who was never happy."

I must have written these words almost in a dream, because I woke up the next day and thought, "Really? For Akari?" But there's a difference between a cheery demeanor and self-actualized happiness.


"How long have you known this Tomoyo?"

Tomoyo seems to be very good with cloth and Akari had a sewing-related curse. Statistics show that 95% of curses are inflicted by people that are known to the victim. But Tomoyo has an excellent alibi.



6. The Next Day


"And that given a choice between a decadent space empire and a few pretty guardians, you chose us."

"Decadent" is a great word to describe any regime you don't like, as opposed to an elegant government.


She thought she could probably take Doorknobder to the mat, and that was about it.

Doorknobder was a SM canon daimon spirit possessing – get this – a doorknob, the result of which was a monster of the week with no fighting ability nor desire to fight. She did like to open and close doors though. We can only hope that in the next life, she replaces Durandal aboard the UESC Marathon and lives happily ever after.


"I, Minako of Venus, Grand Princess of the Golden Second World, Duchess of Ishtar and Lakshmi, recognize the free woman standing before me, Tomo Takino.

Grand Prince is a real title used in eastern Europe, though it hasn't been held by anyone as their highest title since 1547 when Ivan IV of Moscow became Tsar of All the Russias. It's functionally equivalent to Grand Duke, but you know, for principalities instead of duchies. I think it describes the hierarchy of the Silver Millennium well, where the planets are royal entities in and of themselves, but also are subject to the empress, or in this case Queen Serenity. This is more or less how the Holy Roman Empire worked for centuries. Presumably the sailors for minor planets (like 1 Ceres) would be styled simply as princess.


:Land features on Venus are named for various goddesses. There is a tholus named for Otafuku, which is an aspect of Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto, but honestly I didn't think Otafuku's look was quite right for Tomo, so I went for the original. I felt like the hyphens looked odd in the noble title, so I agglutinated the 'no' particle to the previous word – Japanese doesn't use whitespace, so there are a few different ways to transliterate.


I'm an environmentalist, so maybe I'll petition the Princess to do something about the acid rain problem.

She's alluding to the excess of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere of Venus, one of a long list of tragic results wrought by the Youma War, which brought an end to the Silver Millennium. Anyway, Tomo: Dumb, but not ignorant.


"But their names are of the pagan Norsemen."

The invaders of Sub-Roman Britain were the pagans with their Norse gods. Artoria would be understandably totally freaked out by Verðandi. Even more than Brent was.


He gave to me to be an evangelist, he gave to you to be a king. Remember the parable of the talents?"

Ephesians 4:12, then Matthew 25:14. For people of Saber's era, the Bible was a main source of literature common to her people, like Star Wars is today, but somehow even more so. Our modern meaning of "talent" comes directly from this parable – the original meaning was the value of a coin. The serfs who invested their coins on behalf of the master were praised, but the one who hid the coin in fear of his master was punished.


"Therefore put on the full armor of God ..."

Ephesians 6:13 – an extended metaphor for how an evangelist is a warrior, protected and armed by the Word, shooting at the walls of heartache: bang, bang!


"Well, there's a long story about something else that happened on October 31, but suffice to say that most of us now believe in forgiveness by God's grace alone, through our faith alone."

To Lutherans and other mainline protestants, October 31 is also known as Reformation Day, the anniversary of when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door. But explaining the Reformation to a sixth century Christian is a little beyond the scope of what she needed. This a pretty standard formation of sola fide, sola gratia, which along with sola scriptura is a standard formation in the Lutheran and Calvinist lines. So Book would probably be from one of those traditions. But hey, at the rate things are going, by the 25th century Catholics will have accepted the remainder of the 95 theses.


The dance made everyone laugh so hard that Amaterasu went to investigate...

Chiyo's explanation of Uzume's dance left out the part that it was a strip dance. Tomo has a sufficient lack of shame that she would strip for laughs, if in fact she got laughs. She's prideful about the actually being funny part though.


Brent snapped his fingers. "Oh damn it! I forgot the Alamo!"

Mainly a note for non-Americans, but "Remember the Alamo", in reference to the disastrous siege in San Antonio, was a rallying cry for Texas independence.