I'm sure this topic has come up before, but how do various factions celebrate Yuri's Night? I'm sure the Space History Reenactment Group stages a Vostok launch every year, possibly with the assistance of the Russian Federal Space Agency (we don't have a lot of material on Russian attitudes towards the Fen, so it's possible). The Man Conquers Space fen might do something similar: tooling around the solar system in your 'wave-free spacecraft is nice and all, but the real test is launching from Earth.How do other factions celebrate Gagarin's Flight? The traditional fireworks are a Bad Idea in traditional warren-like space stations, and could be uncomfortable even in exceedingly large domes like Grovers' Corners.

Because it's never too early to start anticipating shenanigans.
Coming fresh off of their amazing run on Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, David Productions is bringing us the animated adaptation of what may be the single most bizarre video game ever created.
Hyperdimension Neptunia
Remember Captain N?  It's kind of like that.  Except both a satire AND a celebration.  And the Gamemasters are all native.  And Nanoha-style magical girls.
Our heroine is Neptune, symbolic of Sega's never-launched Neptune console, the goddess (Console Patron Unit) of Planeptune. She's a self-aware JRPG protagonist who would much rather chill out and relax. She is also the slightly daft, pudding obsessed, glue that keeps the goddesses of Lowee (Nintendo), Leanbox (Microsoft) and Lastation (Sony) from murdering each other. We're never entirely sure if her being stupid is all an act to cover for her not wanting to actually get involved in serious fights outside of saving the world or not.
(No word if Keiji Inafune and his friends will be making an appearance, yet...)
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

I got to thinking about something just a few minutes ago. We all know from reading the first chapter of Glory Hound how much stuff Doug has stored in his bike's panniers, right? We also know the kinda guy he is and that he isn't just scraping by and trying to survive in all the worlds he visits. My question is: How much of that stuff in the panniers is souvenirs, what is it, and who is it for?
I, for one, foresee him picking up a few things for Dwimanor in Harry Potter and Rune Soldier...
Doug: "Oh, come on - if I didn't bring him back some spell books and trinkets from those places he'd change all my Coke into moose piss!"
Edit: I'd say a bigger-on-the-inside trunk with spell books, magical history and theory books, and a few books on magical animals and plants with maybe a few long-term preserved apothecary purchases to go with them from HPland. From Forceria... maybe some religious texts for Research Theology purposes?

Jonathan Winters has died.  Goodbye, Maude Frickert.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

While I wait for some feedback, I plan to create a couple of wiki entries for things and persons from "The Gas Station" story... here is the first one.

##########

Aurora Station

{{shipbox
|shipname=Aurora Station
|shipimage=
|caption=
|hull=
|length=
|width=
|height=
|mass=
|drivetype=none
|driverating=
|weapons=none
|manufacturer=ESA/JAXA, some help by Catgirl Industries
|owner=ESA/JAXA
|flag=European Union/Japan
|faction=Daneverse
|registry=Aurora-01-Pan
|datelaunched=Autumn 2018
|purpose=Helium-3 mining on Saturn
|crew=24
|supcrew=
|auxvehicles=Saturn Skipper
|status='''Active'''
}}

Built into the icy depths of the Saturn moon Pan, the Aurora station is the farthest known outpost completely owned by a Daneverse faction. The European Union and Japan started building the station in December 2017, making multiple supply runs with their fleet of ISVs to bring hundreds of tons of cargo to Pan. ESA and Jaxa had decided to hire a the Catgirl Industries space station Jenga to support the astronauts, but the station itself was designed as a pure hardtech construction which could be used as a forward base around Saturn later without Fen involvement. But someone else had different plans.

On April 19th 2018 an unknown faction attacked the construction site with a powerful kinetic weapon system. While the attack was partly deflected by a shot from Jenga, it still injured many astronauts and damaged a lot of equipment. One astronaut, Ms. Sarah Meier, had to get an emergency biomod to be rescued. Still, with the help of the catgirls and a lot of improvisation, the station was finished in late 2018.

Helium-3 mining

Aurora is part of the European Union’s and Japan’s plan to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels and nuclear fission. It is the job of Aurora’s crew to gather Helium-3 in the atmosphere of Saturn and deliver it back home with the help of the ISVs.

The station is home of an aerodynamic spaceship that use a fusion powered ramjet to dive through the atmosphere of the gas giant and gather the precious gas in its tanks. The vehicle was assembled on the station during its construction time and gathered the first Helium-3 in late 2018, which was instantly transported back on the Ferdinand Magellan to Earth.

There is enough space for a second Saturn skimmer on Aurora and the station crew is already thinking about adding a second hangar to house two more of them.

The station

Aurora is a series of tubes deep under the ice of Pan. While the original plans had called a placement of the station at a depth of thirty to fifty meters, the attack on the station forced a modification of the original layout.

The main entrance tunnel is a steel clad cylinder that leads to the hangar for the Skimmers 60 meters below the ice. Another tunnel, not parallel to the first one to mitigate any potential accident, connects the hangar to the rest of the station another 60 meters deeper below the surface. All of Aurora’s infrastructure and living space is down there, fueled by its own fusion reactor. Together with the nearly infinite amount of ice to melt and process the station can hold out on its own for a long time on its stocks.

Aurora was designed to house 32 people permanently with up to 12 additional temporary guest. Because of the damage the equipment took during the attack on Pan, ESA and JAXA officially limited it to 30 people at the moment.

The station is equipped with the latest 3D rapid prototyping hardware Europe and Japan could built in 2017. With the large storage of raw metals they bought from the Fen, the station is able to repair and duplicate most of the technology on board. One part of the local science program is about finding ways to produce replacements for everything on board, including the 3D prototyping machine itself.

The only part of the station that is on the surface of Pan is a set of large communication antennas, which allow the astronauts to get a direct connection back to Earth via radio. A smaller second tunnel connects the communication and sensor array on the surface through a curved tube with the station below the ice.

Aurora 2

While the Aurora station does not contain any Handwavium, except for the biomodded Sarah Meier, the statement is a misdirection at best. Faced with a lot of damaged or even destroyed equipment during the construction of the station, its first leader Eric Hunt decided to choose a more drastic way than he could ask Earth for.

Aurora 2 is is single Module of the space station Jenga that has been buried alongside the Aurora station to be used as an independent second living space for the crew of Aurora. While most esoteric Fen-technology has been removed from the module, it is still capable of providing artificial gravity and life support for the whole crew. In addition to this it contains a small communication room that can be used by the crew to access the Interwave and get readouts from a series of sensor satellites in above and below the rings of Saturn near Pan.

Trivia

• Both tunnels from the surface to the station are normally closed by two large doors, one at the surface and one at the bottom. They also both point towards Saturn to make it impossible for long range bombardment to fire down the tunnel.
  
• The tunnels and the hangar space are not filled with an atmosphere, but the crew is discussing to add this feature to the hangar.
  
• Captain Eric Hunt is thinking about monetizing their access to their 3D printer by accepting orders from the Fen.
  
• The sensor satellites are on loan from Galactic Republic on Coruscant. As part of the agreement, they receive copies of all sensor data.
  

Twenty-four hours from now as I type this, Peggy and I will be on a flight to California.  Her brother Dave is getting married on Saturday in Mendota, and after we attend the wedding, we'll be spending most of a week in Monterey.  Because the overall wiredness of the world is so much greater than it was just a few years ago, I don't expect to really be off the grid for any significant amount of time, and I suspect that had I not said anything none of you would even have noticed.  But I figured I should let everyone know anyway.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I started thinking about Gatesongs, and realized two distressing things, based on the fact that according to remarks in the Arsenal list, each Gatesong will take him from one specific universe to another specific universe, and no others -- for instance, the song that brings him from the Sailor Moon step to DW8 will not connect anywhere else. 
1.  Every song identified as a possible Gatesong but not confirmed to open a Gate in some world must be checked again in every subsequent world.  This will probably get cumbersome.
2.  Unless he finds a few songs that take him to worlds he's already been ("This was the fourth song that'd dropped me in on Sana!  At least I never showed up before my previous time there."), he'll never be able to return to any of them unless he first finds a song that opens a Gate to Valdemar -- and then he'll have to retrace however many steps of the Walk if he wants, say, to visit the Potterverse once more.  Or can a song that created a Gate from World A to World B work in reverse?  In that case, he could backtrack the Walk ... but it'd be a long, drawn-out process getting from Warriors' World to, for instance, MegaTokyo.  
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

Hey, just thought I'd let you know that the next several chapters on Pottermore just went live.  There isn't a ton of new info, but there is some.  The most substantially new information is on magical portraits (for instance, the interactivity of the portrait depends on the power of the wizard or witch painted, not the painter's skill.  Also, the Hogwarts Headmasters trained their portraits before their deaths.), and there are also some previously unknown tidbits about the Maurader's Map and the Firebolt (such as the name of the tracking spell involved in the Map, the Homonculous Charm, and that parts of a Firebolt are made by Goblins, respectively). 
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

http://www.youtube.com/user/bliix/videos?view=0

Some of these are really good - Lady Gaga, Infernal, and surprisingly enough Brittney Spears sound amazing with metal instead of pop backup music. Others, not even bliix can save, but even the least of them I gave at least a minute or two, far more than the originals rate.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Hermione looked out to the west across the Lake.  The crescentmoon hung low in the sky, a red Cheshire Cat's smile hoveringover the hills that surrounded Loch Nevis.  She wrapped her cloak
around herself more tightly and turned away from the cold wind
that whipped across the top of the Astronomy Tower.  How anyone
could snog out here for more than thirty seconds without becoming
an icicle completely escaped her.
Then again, wasn't that what warming charms were for?  Among
other things, that is.
She stood looking out over the waters of the Lake, as black as
the night sky above, for almost a minute more before nodding
briskly to herself and pushing forward with her purpose here
tonight.  Stepping up to the battlement which ringed the top of
the tower, Hermione firmly grasped two of the merlons and pulled
herself up into the crenel between them.  She glanced down and a
moment of vertigo seized her.
Tearing her eyes away from the distant ground, she looked up tothe sky once more.  "Too late for second-guessing," she
whispered, and the words were torn away by the wind, never to beheard.  "Too late to go back to sleep.  It's time to trust my
instincts, close my eyes, and leap..."  Murmuring a single word,she tapped her breastbone with her wand.
And then Hermione Granger stepped off the top of the AstronomyTower.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.