LAST EDITED ON Jul-22-01 AT 05:41 AM (EDT)

>Loved the sparring sequence -- I'm still snickering at the image of
>Gryphon-sensei lying flat on his back, an expression of amazement on
>his face, underwater while koi swim lazily around him.

Gracious me. I think I like this girl, indeed I do.

Hey, he's a 430-year-old sword master, but part of him is still, and always will be, 18. :)

(She makes him feel so old. One of these days I'll have to have him moan about it to Kei. :)

>I'm really, really enjoying watching Corwin and Utena's relationship
>blossom --

Thanks - so am I, although it's throwing off some of my timing calculation for the rest of the Symphony how fast it's developed. I'd figured them for more or less still strangers at the end of Christmas break, but they thwarted me by bonding almost instantly over the need to help Kate, and going on to be quite good friends by the end of the hols. But then, that's how I know when things are really working, when the characters start messing me about that way. :)

If you're curious for an insight into part of my creative process, here's one on this subject: the moment when that really crystallized for me, and made me realize that (a) they were going to ruin my timetable and (b) it was going to be worth it, was in the mall scene in Christmas Rose, when, in the face of Kate's sudden breakdown, the two instantly become a team. Corwin calls Utena's name, she turns around, and just like that, they're on the same waveband, and stay there, more or less, for the rest of the day. When that happened, I knew there was no going back.

>and I'm wondering what you're foreshadowing about how Anthy
>might affect things by reminding us about the Kei/Gryphon/Skuld
>triangle (although I gather that the Gryphon/Skuld thing is sporadic
>at best)

Not really sporadic at all; they were only lovers that once. The circumstances were somewhat unique. They love each other, and the dynamic between Kei and Skuld is such that the three of them raising Corwin together doesn't cause problems, but it's not really a triad in the - this is an odd choice of words for such a subject, but - conventional sense.

>and the MegaZone/Yuri/R-Type triangle. (Well, okay, not
>what, but if.) But then, I tend to think like that.

Well, keep watching; the subject's importance is certainly not going to fade as the Symphony progresses. And rest assured that it's a thing I've invested a great deal of thought and effort into developing, skewed timetable and all. Hopefully you'll like the way it comes out (and it does come out - I hate the way so many shows nowadays leave things like that unresolved forever).

>Watching Corwin react to flirting and, even better, innuendoes,
>reminds me of myself in similar situations in the past. Very, very
>amusing.

A lot of Corwin's reactions mirror my own in a similar situation. In this, at least, he is his father's son. :)

>Kind of a nice breather to have a slice of life here... this and
>"Azalynn's Winter Holiday" are much quieter than the prior two
>stories, and "Holiday" answers a lot of questions about what's really
>going on (although it'd probably make more sense if I'd seen
>Revolutionary Girl Utena).

Yeah - Holiday is the first piece of the Symphony that has an outright connection to the part of RGU that isn't available in English. I'm attempting to structure it so that one doesn't need to know what goes on in the last two-thirds of the series in order to understand what's happening in the Symphony, but foreknowledge will definitely make the experience richer, since the entire original series did happen as backstory before Wounded Rose.

>Is having Christmas on Cephiro something from the series? Either way,
>is there an explanation for how they came to have it (in particular,
>that name for it)? I don't see a world like that having a Christian
>Church... but then, I haven't seen RGU or MKR, so I don't know what's
>from what here.

No... MKR (the series Cephiro is from; in the canon RGU it's happening here on Earth, in the present day), they're not in Cephiro long enough to know if the place has any holidays. The cultural parallels between Cephiro and Earth in UF (kendo, the presence of a holiday called Christmas in the winter, etc.) have to do with the UF origins of Cephiro itself, which will be explored in a future piece, so I won't get into them here.

>Well done, chaps, well done. (And I'll be waiting for Ms. St. Clair
>to continue Saionji's adventures.)

St.Clair is actually a mister (reportedly; I confess I haven't met him face to face, but I take his word for it :), and that credit means literally what it says; Kelly wrote the fortune Saionji got in his cookie. I was hanging around on the creative-lab channel one night in June and got stuck for a fortune, and Kelly whipped out that one for me. The rest of the story's me. :)

(We never see Azalynn's fortune; perhaps someday it'll be important. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/