>A quick poke at the archives doesn't turn up the thread with my old
>comments, but I don't think much of value was lost there.

The one I was specifically thinking of turned up in the comments on the annotations to Knights III, not discussion having to do with Vortigern's 2 itself, but yes, it was mainly you (and LostFactor, IIRC) I was thinking of when I mentioned that some people actually /ragequit the Symphony over it. :)

>That's not to say I don't have issues with how stuff went down around
>there -- I didn't like the Corwin/Utena/Anthy triad then, and I don't
>now.

Well, if it ... helps?... it's very likely the reasons I was thinking better of the development during my bout of flu last week were not the same as yours for objecting to it in the first place anyway, so we probably wouldn't have a consensus anyway.

>Back then, I couldn't articulate why it bothered me very well,
>which is why what came out was (I'm guessing, based on past
>experience) a bunch of elliptical rhetoric and exceedingly caustic
>word salad.

Actually, if memory serves, some of it was... not very elliptical at all. You're right about the second part, though.

>I suppose I could explain, in non-hostile terms, why I think it was a
>bad idea, drawing on what I've learned about criticism and critical
>theory, literary structure, gender theory, and queer theory

It's just as well you've opted not to, mainly because I didn't design it - or indeed anything - with reference to any of those five things. I don't approach the writing of fiction as an exercise in social science, and people who approach the reading of my work expecting that I did are basically always going to be disappointed...

>I'm not sure I'll be partaking of that particular
>corner of the EPU output in any event.

... thus. (sigh)

>Considering that
>some of my criticisms would include words like "heteronormative," I
>can't imagine that they'd be terribly well-received no matter how
>courteously I phrased them.

Mm. You would, at the very least, be suspected of overthinking the matter. (And possibly also overphrasing it. Surely there's a word of fewer than six syllables that would do there.)

Still, it sounds like you've had your own adventures lately, which might have tended to be of the kind that would lead a person into the habit of doing so. And if that's helped you get a handle on what must've been a pretty dismaying experience, well, it's hardly down to me to say you're doing it wrong.

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