The one thing that sold me on this more than anything else?

COMPETENT. VILLAINS.

Most of the antagonists in this story spend -very- little time holding the idiot ball, and Catra - oh, Catra! - shows sparks of genuine strategic competence bordering on genius, and is only really defeated by reginulae-ex-machina.

Sounds sort of like how Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova feels like they got to episode 11 of a nice, deliberately-plotted 26-episode series, and the executive producer walked in and said, "Bad news, lads. I've just had a look at the contract, and it looks like I may have misread a couple of things. We've got twelve episodes."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And boy howdy is this Crypto-Lesbian Subtext: The Show. Main character Adora is very obviously gay and characterised as such throughout the show's story, and she is far from the only explicitly queer woman in the cast. There's muscle gays, butch gays, femme gays, adorkable gays, smol angry gays; SPOP's got a flavour of lesbicissitude for every taste! To say more would be spoilers, but yeah, this is a gay-ass show and I Love It, and I think you'd enjoy it very much.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

The final season makes it a piece of cake to slot into UF as well. As, if I'm honest, does Scorpia. Scorpia is Best Girl forever and has the kind of precious moe smile not seen since K-On.

I'd argue there is nothing crypto or sub going on here, it's pretty much out and proud. And done -well-. It doesn't feel preachy or tacked on, it is organic to the characters and universe in a way I haven't seen much, if at all, in a show before but hope to see again. Though it also isn't limited to just girl love, seems like most couple combinations are at least hinted at if not outright shown.

Hard to discuss deeply without getting into spoilers, and maybe some of this is just the lens of my perspective, but Adora's preferences weren't that obvious immediately to me, she honestly seemed both understandably ill-equipped to even contemplate romance given her upbringing, and far too busy learning how to be the Big Damn Hero to spare the processor cycles until the feelings snuck up and mugged her later on. So I'm curious if it is just my perspective or if I missed something somewhere.

>
>The final season makes it a piece of cake to slot into UF as
>well. As, if I'm honest, does Scorpia. Scorpia is Best Girl forever
>and has the kind of precious moe smile not seen since K-On.

Scorpia makes just about everything she is involved with better. Which can be really confusing the times you probably shouldn't be rooting for her, but still kinda want to.

Though I was pleasantly surprised with the many contenders for the Best Girl sweepstakes among the cast, and at this point I'm something of an Entrapta partisan if pressed to make a choice.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Tiny Food!"

That's the joke! If I remember right, we have this running gag because 'way back in the days of Symphony 1 someone decided to come around and complain about the "crypto-lesbian subtext" in the relationship between Juri and Kaitlyn. You know, the overtly romantic pairing of two women? Neither of them even slightly closeted? Treated seriously and given more on-page development than several of the heterosexual couples?

That person had a whole bunch of other complaints as well, but there's a reason this is the one we remember.

I recall this as a running joke, but time managed to muddle things and I had thought there was some more subtle pairing that triggered it. Though to be fair I don't recall if I actually read the complaining posts in their original form in their entirety anyway. That or I evicted those memories in favor of using the neurons for more productive purposes, like recalling how many badgers there are to the mushroom.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "6 badgers to the mushroom, 36 to the snake."

It was toward the end of Symphony 2, and he was applying that rubric to the series as a whole. The scene with Juri and Kate at the end of Ceremony and Celebration was just the Last Straw.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

You know with a lead up like that I can't help but be curious, especially since I've seen people poke and prod every relationship and most of the major events of the show so something no one discusses has me scratching my head, particularly if it is so radioactive.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "It's not that kind of light."

Over the course of the first four seasons, he's made war on Etheria, including a lot of things that are implied to be...well, evil. He's just going to walk, because...well, because fifth season? I'm pretty sure he didn't earn that happy ending. Yes, he helped, but that's hardly enough from where I sit.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Hordaks future is a topic of MUCH discussion in some corners of the fandom.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Now what about Wrong Hordak?"

the character Kyle is a nightmare for the story thats meant to be so progressive. from the start he is the whipping boy and that was made clear from the very first moments of the show. he was 'taken out' during a training session and his 'friends' gathered around to complain about it to his face, when their inaction got them all 'under fire' they blamed that on him as well. they literally blamed someone out of the session for their standing around being targets. any time Kyle is shown, with a single exception after this point that i recall, he is being abused by his 'friends' and everyone thinks that abuse is fine, including the audience. clearly.

a couple of examples of that regular abuse include theft of his rations to give to others, it was indicated to be a regular thing for the crew, they need food for something they take his and only his. he is starved for days to make a 'cake' for someone else when everyone could have donated and had only slightly less rations across the board. to be fair that was all a fiction but later it was the 'fond memory' he drew on to represent their friendship. the conditioning is so pervasive he thinks being abused and starved, because the others insist and do not give him a say, so that others can have fun is friendship.

also they are soldiers in an 'evil horde' known for meting out harsh punishments unilaterally. well his friends blamed a failed mission on him and if it were actually serious about the whole military aspect and Hordak being a real threat, Kyle would have likely been shot. a single person cost them a victory they needed and was regularly blamed for trouble after all. the minute they needed someone to take the blame for failing the mission, he took the fall in spite of not actually being at fault.

yes he got a moment of badass saving his 'friends' later in the show. he was given a dash of apparent character development which ended with him thinking a fictional event was a great day with his friends. how sad is that, the memory he turned to was abusive to a sickening degree and he thought fondly of it. i have to be honest i never understood how anyone could actually consider what they did to him as 'friendship' and to this day i dont see anyone else pointing it out which i figure means they dont recognize it for what it is or are so in denial because it is that horrific to think about.

i have suspicions as to why nobody talks about this rather twisted aspect of the show but it runs afoul of 'not going to start down that path unless specifically asked' conditions, nobody asked.

i dont like a number of other things in the show but this was particularly appalling because it is largely considered perfectly acceptable as far as i can tell and made it impossible for me to look at it in a positive light in general. i love the art, the animation was better than it had a right to be imo and the story on whole was good even the aspect i take issue with, it is all to believable for the situation. with the exception of Kyle surviving 'who messed this up' it just had a lot of elements scattered about that i cant ignore when its presented as such a great 'nearly perfect' show. nobody wants to pick at the seams because itll unravel pretty quick if they do

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

What I will say is this: First, fortunately, this is not the kind of forum where I would expect to see a cancellation.

Do people disagree? Sure.

Have I seen things that made me mad? Yep.

I'm still here, though, because my right to have a different opinion than some has been generally respected. I don't bring up this kind of topic much, I admit, just because I'm here to celebrate and discuss all things Eyrie, not to discuss a TV show with a political agenda. Lots of TV shows have political agendas, and while left-leaning is a lot easier to find due to how the TV industry operates, right-leaning still exists and both have a right to exist. Politics can make me angry pretty quickly, though, and here I just try to relax and wind down.

To be blunt, I have been cancelled elsewhere before, and over what I still consider to be mainstream, relatively centrist opinions. I had to leave that venue just because I could feel my IQ starting to drop every time I talked to them. But I'm still here, and I plan to be for a long time to come.

So my advice is this: if you have a point to make, by all means make it. Particularly when you're not the one who opened the topic, no one is going to say you don't have a right to speak. Come with well-reasoned opinions in hand and be ready to debate people who will disagree with you.

Debate is how we prove to ourselves and others that our opinions are the right ones. We must be able to defend our beliefs, or how would we know they're defensible? If a person wants to silence someone, they don't prove the silenced victim wrong--they prove they were afraid of what that person had to say. That is cancel culture in a nutshell.

I consider myself fortunate to be able to say I haven't run into that here. Understand, of course, that I'm no moderator, but I am a forum member and have been for a very long time. So have most people here.

I won't say that you should or should not speak up. Political debate is time-consuming and emotionally draining. That's why I get angry so quickly. But please never feel as though you -can't- speak up. If you feel repressed, then those who would silence you simply for disagreeing with them have already won.

Don't let them win.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Damn.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Anyone who uses "I'll be cancelled" 'round these parts automatically triggers my troll alarm, so my instinct is to not feed it. But mouse_rr has been around long enough that they should *know* that. So I, at least, was... let's say confused and waiting for clarification.

In other words, I'm leaning not towards you killing the convo but the convo, such as it was, being begun in bad faith by someone else. Not sure yet.

--sofaspud
--

You borrowed trouble, expected the characters to behave like they didn't have a clue, assumed that people who got a hold of the out-of-place tech (Mio's goggles, as I recall) would be sufficient geniuses to reverse-engineer something that was four centuries ahead of them, and got a negative response for it.

>i expect to be mocked and insulted for not sharing the glowing review

You didn't like Gryphon's response, and assumed that everybody on this thread would do the same to you because reasons.

Peter Eng
--
You aren't here for friends, but why do you assume everybody's your enemy?

Mouserr, I want to point out here that I put a lot of effort into a post designed to encourage you to speak your mind. And here you are six months later, with a random post out of nowhere accusing all of us. Peter Eng is exactly right here, we're not your enemy. We never were. Some people here disagree with you, so what?

If you intend to debate any heavy topic with anyone, you need to learn to differentiate between people who disagree with you and people who hate you. They are not the same thing, and one of the reasons I love this place is even when we disagree here we all generally respect other people's right to have an opinion. That respect is hard to come by nowadays, and it should be treasured.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

So... this puzzled me. From context, I assume this is about the New Tricks thread. I couldn't remember burning anyone for fun over there, but I know that there have been times when I've gotten frustrated and dropped quite a lot of sarcasm on some folks (particularly in the early days of the Symphony, which was--ye gods--nearly 20 years ago now, so I'd like to think I've mellowed a little since then).

Anyway, I was curious enough to go and re-read the thread, and... yeah, I'm still not sure where this is coming from. I certainly can't find any mockery in my initial response to the post that raised the issue, nor indeed the second, which was meant as a friendly invocation of an old sci-fi saying that has historical currency around here (Bellisario's Principle, by which TV producer Donald Bellisario used to deflect overly strict critiques of the "science" behind Quantum Leap).

In this post, where I did finally show some exasperation, I don't think I got particularly mocking or insulting; just frustrated that my earlier attempts to be collegial about the whole thing were falling on deaf ears, so that I felt I had to make an unequivocal ruling about the matter, Dungeon Master-style, in hopes of moving on. No personal aspersions were intended nor, I think, verbalized therein.

That leaves this one, the last post in the exchange, and even here I don't see anything that's intended to be mean. I'm just explaining my position, both in re the matter at hand and the way it was brought up. If anything, I think I was quite diplomatic. There's nothing ad hominem in there that I can see; just a still-fairly-patient attempt at addressing what seemed to be a mismatch of expectations.

Some of the other posters in that thread got a bit personally impatient, albeit mostly in the later stages of the discussion, when attempts at being less blunt had failed. If you want to characterize leaving those posts alone as a failure of moderation, that's... arguable, although this is not a strictly moderated board (I've been very lucky in that it has seldom needed to be moderated at all!), and being told "bless your heart" is a long way from a death threat. But I'm not inclined to sit here, 5+ years after the fact, and be accused of burning someone for fun when, so far as I can remember from the time or see upon re-reading my posts, I did no such damn thing.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Jesus Christ... I remember those days. The long ago days where I had a ton of floppy discs from the library because that was the only place I could get internet...

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I was in a similar situation when S2 was wrapping up, and I distinctly recall *printing* the last 30 pages or so of S2M6 ("Endgame") because the library was closing and I couldn't possibly finish it in time.

--
-Pasha ("The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there")
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Not the only time I saw that, too. I remember seeing one of the other Anime Club members at Prince George's Community College, many years ago, had a printout of an Eyrie story. I don't know which one, alas.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

(Okay, *I* would have got myself fired, but it's more exciting phrased that way :D )

It's because I, like others mentioned here, printed stuff out. :)

So in those days I was working as a consultant, and when I wasn't out in the field putting out client fires I was twiddling my thumbs at the office waiting for client fires to spring up that I could go put out. I remember it being a very slow day, and I had the pleasure of seeing _Christmas Rose_ waiting for me. So of course I dived right in.

And then the phone rang. One of our clients, payroll, yadda yadda yadda, arrgh. Because I was familiar with said client I knew that once I got on-site I wasn't going to be back in the office that day, but I also knew I'd have literally hours of waiting for Technical Bullcrap (restores of backups, frantic searching by the local admins for said backups, so on and so forth) with nothing to actually do except look professional.

So I printed it out... except in my haste I sent it to the wrong printer. Which I didn't realize until after I'd printed it *again* to the correct printer this time.

Then I gathered up my things, stuffed the printout into my briefcase, and spent the rest of the day alternately walking the client through the process they'd documented a dozen times before and reading Symphony.

Next morning, walk in and my boss is waiting for me with a certain familiar printout. I should note my boss was an accountant-turned-IT-manager and was... let's call him 'intense'. Also he had very little sense of humor to begin with and considered any time not spent billing clients to be wasted and therefore a direct attack on him, his business, his family, and his ancestors.

(It was not a happyfun place to work, but I had a family to support and no degree to get anything better with, so I felt kind of stuck)

So yeah. I got reamed for wasting company time and resources (guilty on the last, I suppose, paper and toner is a resource...) and the only reason I wasn't fired was because I was able to tell him "Dave, I was able to bill for the entire time I spent reading that yesterday."

--sofaspud
--see why I say "gryph almost got me fired"? sounds better, I'm tellin ya

At WPI in the Elder Days, if you printed something to the band printer that the CCC operator considered overly long, you would get however much of it had printed before he noticed it, with DON'T BE DOING THIS written on the cover page in black marker.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.