Surprised we didn't have a thread for this already, considering it's the first time I can remember that there was a leak from the US Supreme Court.

Anyway.

American women can obtain abortions in Canada if Roe v. Wade falls, minister says

A little something inspired by fan art, set some time down the road, once people are making their ways in the world.

I believe it formally starts tomorrow, here's a video summary about what the parties are promising as starting positions

"If you're just joining us now, this is All Things Considered with Alisa Chang.  We are interviewing Benjamin Rhodes about his recent science fiction novel, Negative Return.  Benjamin, some people have compared you favorably against George R. R. Martin, someone who is known for writing incredibly detailed and likeable characters, and then suddenly killing them off with little to no warning.  Your stories, however, seem to be the very antithesis to this.  Would you care to comment on that?"

"Well... it's like this.  I'm the sort of person who is very much in touch with their emotions.  And throughout my life, I've had terrible things happen to me.  Things that have nearly destroyed me on the inside.  And unlike with what Mr. Martin does, death had very little to do with my hurt.  So when I write these stories, my desire is to make other people understand this feeling.  The sorrow, the betrayal, the sheer unmitigated emotional hurt that makes you wish for death.

"When I write, I want to make you suffer.  I want you to feel the pain that I have felt all throughout my life.  And I do that by making these characters that, despite being unlike anyone you've ever met, you find yourself relating so closely to them that when they're hurt, you're hurt as well."

"That seems awfully grim.  Is there a particular reason for that?"

"Two, actually.  For one thing, I want people to understand what it is to be me.  Even after my second childhood, I'm not fully recovered from my past traumas because the experiences of what I went through are still there.  There's also Spider Robinson's rule that you should write what you know, and this is the kind of stuff that I'm intimately familiar with.  Secondly, it's my hope that if more people understand what this feels like, then the more people will act when they see something wrong.  When they get that sense that all is not right.  Or even that they will reconsider their actions before they choose to inflict suffering."

Despite what ATT said until a few minutes ago, Sister Princess: RePure is not a sequel to Sister Princess... but the characters have the same personalities and names (save for Wataru, who doesn't have a name in RePure, and Mami, who only appears in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo and is also unnamed). RePure is a reimagining where the girls and their big brother have known each other for years and the town they live in is old enough to have started suffering from urban decay in some places. And the siblings don't live together.

So... Bob, use things from RePure in DW XI at your own risk.

Previous thread is here.

Tonight is the expiration for all the pages in the Workshop that I put on notice last week.  At least one was rescued and launched since then, but we need to take a look at the rest before midnight UDT and decide what else has been sufficiently rescued or not:

• The Bully is a Nerd
  
• Faction Mechanics
  
• Fantastic Tribulation
  
• Shield Slinger
  
• Words act more than Actions

Reuters: Donald Trump found in contempt of court in New York civil case

Quote:A New York judge on Monday held former U.S. president Donald Trump in contempt of court for not producing documents subpoenaed in the state attorney general's civil probe of his business practices and ordered Trump to be fined $10,000 US per day until he complies.

Trump lost a bid to quash a subpoena from state Attorney General Letitia James, then failed to produce all of the documents by a court-ordered March 3 deadline, later extended to March 31 at his lawyers' request.

Justice Arthur Engoron ruled that a contempt finding was appropriate because of what the judge called "repeated failures" to hand over materials and that it was not clear Trump had conducted a complete search for the responsive documents.

"Mr. Trump, I know you take your business seriously, and I take mine seriously. I hereby hold you in civil contempt," the judge said, although Trump himself was not in the courtroom.

Or, how do the various magic systems in the Metacontinuity interact?


Some characters have magic powers or spells that are defined in terms of their own works of fiction, rather than being defined in real-world terms.

How do they interact with each other, and with the systems with capabilities and limitations defined in real-world units?


Here are a few suggestions to start the discussion; feel free to tear these apart and use them to build a more robust system.

First: Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make Lyrical Nanoha's magic systems not only self-consistent, but also consistent across the Belkan and Midchildan systems. And it appears that TYPE-MOON used the same system for Fate/stay night.

Which means that Yuuno cannot force Saber to teleport, since his rank in the spell is B+ and she can ignore all magic that's less than rank A. He can, however, catch her in a Struggle Bind.

Since two works in the Metacontinuity appear to use the same system already, shall we use it as well for our baseline?


Second: The Sailor Senshi are shown to be among the most powerful spellcasters in their world, and most of them have four attacks. I propose, if we're going with the Midchildan/Belkan/Fate system, setting their first-season attacks at rank A, their "Ail and En" arc attacks at rank A+, their later-second-season attacks at rank AA, their "Infinity"/S attacks at rank AAA, and their SuperS attacks at rank S. As a counterpoint to starting with powerful magic, they do start with the "stand, pose, and call the attack" limitation on these attacks.


Third: There's a second, more powerful type of magic that Caster calls "True Magic", that always defeats normal magic. No matter which story a mage is from, spells cast from the heart are intrinsically more powerful than spells cast from the mind (as far as I can remember), so that's a decent starting point for a definition of True Magic. Magical formulae are (usually) easier than raw Will and Word, so there isn't a lot of True Magic out there.

Particular cases: The Clow Cards weren't True Magic, but the Sakura Cards are. True Sight is not, but Glam Sight is. Moon Spiral Heart Attack isn't, but a Ginzuishou effect is. Starlight Breaker usually isn't, unless Nanoha is pouring her heart into the spell (as she did at the end of StrikerS).


And that's as far as I've gotten, so far. If this is the approach that we want to take, then seelie, Crowleyan (both Rental Magica and Academy City versions), Cephiran, Yggdrasilian, and Remnantian magic needs to be integrated with what's given above. (And when Arc 2 comes around, Forcelian, Orarian, and Claire Bible magic will also need to be incorporated.)


Thoughts? Additions? Bouquets? Brickbats?

We've had some thoughts about putting the original Sakura Wars characters into the Metacontinuity, and we've even figured out where they are. What we haven't figured out is who they're fighting. They can't fight their canon foes:

Quote:As to why they need a spur line to the subway lines... well, everybody knows why the Kobu need ready access to any point in Atlanta.*

* Everybody but the writers, that is... It can't be to fight demons - Hild won't let them wreak havoc on Earth during the duration of the emergency.

Apparently, opera villainesses are usually altos. Can anybody provide some examples of this, preferably in a format similar to "Alice in Alice and Bob is written for an alto", please?

I'll take examples from musicals (stage or film), too...