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One for the Sakura Wars Step
12-30-2008, 07:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-17-2019, 06:28 PM by robkelk.
Edit Reason: fixed formatting that was glitched in the port from Tapatalk
)
Seen on The Economist (via the SJGames forums): British Steam Car Challenge hope to beat the land-speed record for steam cars.
There's just enough layman's-tech description in the article to make it possible to describe in-story how Doug and Kohran might build one, if the need arises during DW XII...
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Niice. And Doug's a long-time turbine man, too -- that's right up his alley. Thanks, Rob!
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Why do I see a vision of the contraption blowing up just after crossing the finish line?
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Because you're visualizing a vehicle built only by Kohran, that's why.
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One of the things I love about Kohran is that, at least in the manga, she takes responsibility for her errors and the resulting explosions. Her first scene in
the manga has a test tube blow up in her face: "Aw, man ... must've goofed again." That's so unlike your classic
madboy or madgirl -- what are Igors for, if not to fetch the chemicals and take the blame for the scientist's mistakes?
Edit: Oh, hell, I just got the image of Doug working with her and doing a classic Igor imitation....
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Doug: "Yeth, mithtreth..."
Kohran:
-- Bob
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Thank Skuld I didnt have that sip of soda before reading that!
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
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And I've got the image of Doug doing Shatner's Mad Scientist routine as part of a Red Lad show...
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Actually, I was thinking about this a couple days ago... unless I'm mistaken, the lisping Igor is an anachronism here, born from the Universal (and imitator) horror films of the 1930s on -- a decade-plus in the future for this setting, minimum. Kohran wouldn't have the faintest idea what Doug was doing (not that that would stop him, of course).
And oddly, that led me to further thoughts about just how freakishly divergent this timeline really is, even compared to Warriors' World. Can you imagine what 2009 in the Sakura Taisen world would look like? Would there be a "steamtronics" equivalent to the Internet, for instance?
-- Bob
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Quote:Would there be a "steamtronics" equivalent to the Internet, for instance?
As soon as I read this, I thought of the pneumatic message pipes that were in offices and large department stores in the mid-20th century, writ large.
Talk about a "network of tubes"...
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For what it's worth, there's a line in the manga where the audience at one of the Flower Troupe performances is instructed to "please turn off
your steam mobile phones." (I found myself thinking about throwing "steamarangs" at villains and climbing the "steamrope.")
Another thing to consider is that the manga revealed Iris' childhood trauma by having her freak out when a mad-scientist-&-monster movie reminded her
of being locked in her room ... so while they maybe/probably wouldn't have developed the concept of Igor as we know him, Kohran would most likely grasp
what Doug was referencing without much explanation.
Quote: Can you imagine what 2009 in the Sakura Taisen world would look like?
Too many facts about their past remain unspecified to make any reasonable try. The World War didn't happen as we
know it; but in what ways was it changed (aside from the fact that Japan was busy fighting a demonic invasion at the time)? Maria was part of a revolution in
Russia. Are the Soviets in charge there now? Another manga reference states that the metal used in koubu, "shirusu-usu," highly resistant to hostile
magic, was discovered during the American Civil War, a phrasing which implies that magic may have been used in that conflict. Doesn't that thought just
boggle the mind?
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Hrm... I'm wondering if it's even possible to use steam as some sort of digital signal medium. We've been able to pull it off quite effectively
with powerline broadband.
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Quote: Hrm... I'm wondering if it's even possible to use steam as some sort of digital signal medium.
Smoke signals.
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Rob Kelk
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Screw it. I say fiberoptics. Because that way you can simple have the fiberoptic switches all steam-powered.
As for the cell phone analogues, that's easy too. Chem-pack generates heat to make steam to power the phone - probably lasts longer than batteries since
there's so much potential power in steam. You can even use a set of cooling channels in the phone to help cool the circuitry and preheat the water before
it hits the micro-boiler. Otherwise it's like a regular cellphone.
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