>Well, it was unexpected to them, too, but there is actually a
>semi-canonical basis for it. There are several illustrations in the
>official RGU artworks showing Juri being uncharacteristically
>affectionate with Miki, including at least one where she's outright
>vamping him and he's sort of going "... help? I think?" It was that
>one that more or less inspired the schnapps scene. :)

Back when I lived, ate, and slept Utena fandom, the standing joke there was that Miki was ALMOST a girl anyway, so that made it okay for Juri. :)

... in hindsight, that's rather demeaning to both of them, but it was considered a funny thing to say at the time. And Miki's voice actress is just that... a voice actress.

>>In real life I suspect the prevalence of long chains is tied to the
>>lack of general social acceptance for polyfidelity, which pushes the
>>people who are into that sort of thing into a subculture.
>
>True, and... well, I'm not sure if it's not something people in UF's
>25th century have to deal with as much, or if it's just not something
>the central Symphony characters give much of a damn about.

They have to deal with it in at least some places on Earth. I think? I seem to recall Kaitlyn telling someone else at one point that while same-sex marriages were allowed in Zeta Cygni, they weren't allowed in the United States part of the EA at least. If the state isn't even okay with your parts not matching up, there probably isn't widespread societal acceptance of polyfidelity either.

The Doylist explanation, of course, is that twelve years ago the production team had no clue about how the Culture Wars were going to play out in the near future, let alone after four hundred years. The Watsonian explanation probably involves one of the numerous times that UF-America had an ugly, repressive authoritarian episode, resulting in rollbacks of rights.

(Sometimes when I go back through the parts of UF and the Featured Documents that deal explicitly with history and politics, mostly Redneck's stuff, I am left with the distinct impression that everyone SANE bailed out of Earth and headed for the colonies the second it was viable, leaving the homeworld to stew in it's own crazy juice and periodically immolate itself.)

-Merc
Keep Rat

"Step 1: Write down the names of everyone you know. Step 2: Rearrange the letters. Step 3: This will reveal a great secret of time."