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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Symphony of the Sword/The Order of the Rose
Topic ID: 495
Message ID: 6
#6, RE: TFLF 9
Posted by Gryphon on Jun-19-15 at 11:49 PM
In response to message #5
>And now I feel like it's circling back around into the fold. The
>interesting piece of that though, is that, to me at least, it feels
>like it's doing so -without- compromising the fact that these are just
>a bunch of happy-go-lucky highschool girls.

That's been the hardest part of returning TFLF from hiatus, actually - keeping that balance. When we realized that shit was going to get really real for a lot of the "main cast" just before the girls' summer vacation began, and thus before they would have a chance to do most of the cool stuff that their association with members of that cast implies, it became obvious that we couldn't just ignore what was going on outside Sakuragaoka - it would be too obviously weird, and it would be ducking a challenge just for fear of tackling it, in a way.

On the other hand, there was justifiable concern when Corwin's letter to Mio came out that the Real World was about to drop some pretty serious brutality on these poor kids, which had the potential to be both a massive buzzkill and take them into territory that it wouldn't be any good to watch them try to navigate. Splitting that difference has taken a lot of careful thought.

We can't really avoid it becoming a maturing experience (of a kind that they never really had in the canon, as it happens), but what we're hoping is that we can make it one that keeps them who they are. The alternative is to do like Rex Stout did in the Nero Wolfe novels, wherein Archie, Wolfe, and the rest of the core cast never age or change even as the setting they inhabits advances from the early 1930s to the early 1970s.

As it happens, Kakifly more or less did that in the K-On! manga - even in the extension where the Original Four go off to college, they're pretty much exactly the same as they were as freshmen in high school, apart from being better at music. I've been accused of a similar thing in my own time (I'd say it's number three on the common accusations list, after "your future is the 1950s with better production values" and "your villains are all Snidley Whiplash"), and not always without justification, but here, we're trying for something more complex. Time will tell if we succeed.

>So yea, really looking forward to the next piece; can't wait to see
>the girls of HTT work their magic with a purpose.

So are we! If I say myself, I'm pretty sure it's going to be awesome. :)

--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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