So I just went back to re-read it, because I was in the mood. It's...I dunno, the 5th time? 6th time I have, but it's been a while...

gods, Gryph...godsdamn. I just... I don't have the _words_. Better Epic Fantasy than most *printed books* I've read.

and I am not at all ashamed to admit to bursting into tears at "For Love's sake...TAKE HER"

The...the FEELS there, just...Corwin *knows* what he's doing, what he's giving up...what he, personally is sacrificing... and he doesn't even *think twice* about it, he just DOES IT, because he just witnessed something perfect and nothing is more important than protecting it.

I realize this is rambling, I blame still-misty eyes, just...thank you, Gryph...just, thank you. That is all.

The part that makes me laugh is always Corwin's frost-drunk rant at the heavens at the end of Knights 1. "I have to go play impartial observer on the most fucked-up plane in the whole of Creation while it's in the middle of a total cataclysm cycle!"

The part that gives me the good shivers, on the other hand, is his investiture as the Rune Knight of Iron. I feel that poem does the whole parallelism thing the best out of all of them. And then that's followed up by the embodiment of Orihalcon, for a nice one-two punch. Another thing that was good was the Beowulf poem, illustrating how frightened Akio was.

>The part that makes me laugh is always Corwin's frost-drunk rant at
>the heavens at the end of Knights 1. "I have to go play
>impartial observer on the most fucked-up plane in the whole
>of Creation while it's in the middle of a total cataclysm
>cycle!"

yeah, that always makes me chuckle. Like, most of us have bad days at work where a bunch of factors come together ot make some task utter crap... but this just turns it up to 11.

>The part that gives me the good shivers, on the other hand, is his
>investiture as the Rune Knight of Iron. I feel that poem does the
>whole parallelism thing the best out of all of them. And then that's
>followed up by the embodiment of Orihalcon, for a nice one-two punch.
>Another thing that was good was the Beowulf poem, illustrating how
>frightened Akio was.

mmm...not as emotional as the pillar investiture scene, but definitely a powerful scene, yes.

Honestly, I like the whole thing start to tend, I really do...it's just that the line I quoted always just *flattens* me (in the best way possible) every time I read through it.

True story: _Knights_ was my introduction to Rayearth, just as the Symphony was my introduction to Utena.

Some time after the Symphony slowed down and after Knights concluded, I finally got around to watching both shows. Or... starting to.

They're just *not as good* as the stories here, and turned out to not be my cup of tea in general, even though in UF they are my *favorite* stories of all.

--sofaspud
--thanks Gryph, you've ruined me for other writers :P

Well, Rayearth was ok to the fresh young me, but on rewatch I can see that it needs to shred about third of runtime - it's a bit dry and padded. Great story.

This is to note that I haven't ignored this thread, I just don't really know what to say. I have... very mixed feelings about this story arc nowadays, but I appreciate all your kind remarks.

--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.

Can you tell us what you would have wrote differently now?

And to be honest, on my recent reread of SoTS I skipped whole Knights of the Tenth World.

>Can you tell us what you would have wrote differently now?

To be honest, I'm not sure I would have, bar certain stylistic evolutions that have happened in the last 20 years(!!!). It's what it sets up that's the problem. I got a pretty substantial raking over the coals in the Knights 3 discussion thread, but it was retroactive, taking place after Symphony No. 4. The burns still sting a bit.

--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.

I know as someone who never thought the Corwin/Utena arc was over any of the other times it was over, I'm not really sure what could have happened differently here. (I was a bit iffier on some of the later events, but it was a "What the hell, Anthy" iffy rather than a "What the hell, Gryphon" sort of iffy, if you follow the distinction.)

-IA.

(No one ever mentions *my* favorite parts of Knights in threads like these...)

>(No one ever mentions *my* favorite parts of Knights in threads
>like these...)

Well, I mean, feel free. Posts don't cost anything...

--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.

Sure, why not?

-Corwin's conversation with Hikaru after she realizes he killed Alcyone. (Which has resulted in various mutations of "That's what these things do" being added to my personal Stock Phrases List.)

-Saionji's spar with Touga. (Touga getting played is always fun, but it's also a moment that stands out for me in his development as a character... and like Utena, I had to get used to actually liking him.)

-The conversation with Emeraude at the beginning of 3. ("But - you have not yet saved Cephiro." is one of those lines that just... I don't even know how to describe it.)

-IA.

(received information not interpretable)

- I just kind of liked how Corwin uses Ragna Blade as a can opener. I read this before watching Slayers the first time, and it still gave the impression of how overpowered it was.
- Umi's curse words are so j'tatten cute.
- Corwin's attempt to just fucking shoot Akio was great, but he should have known that wouldn't work in dueling arena.
- There's a great sense throughout that the danger is building higher and higher, as is Corwin's palpable frustration that no one will tell them what the hell is going on.
- Hikaru being protrayed as Salusian was a nice use of her canon chibi form's ears
- Juniper's descriptive writing is great, as always
- The banter between Frey and Balder was fun. "omg you almost got killed!1" "meh. nbd, Frey"

I think there's a legitimate feminist criticism to be made here about combining two stories with female protagonists, and making the endings come out happy because you added a strong man to come save them. That said, Corwin can't succeed without the women either, so it's not like you're marginalizing them. It's just odd how Utena doesn't get to be the primary protagonist in the story of Anthy's return. But in your defense, life kind of works this way sometimes. And having all outsiders be protagonists really helps the sense of revelation build.

None of that spoils the good time, anyway. And Symphony 4 effectively solves this critique by showing Utena at the peak of her power, but that's all later.

>And having all outsiders be protagonists really helps the sense of revelation build.
>

It's very in keeping with the isekai trope that drives Rayearth - not that I would have recognized that at the time, since I didn't even know that isekai was a concept until about six months ago.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>- I just kind of liked how Corwin uses Ragna Blade as a can opener. I
>read this before watching Slayers the first time, and it still gave
>the impression of how overpowered it was.

True fact: I really enjoy the incantation for that spell, and that's really the main reason I used it there. (I also enjoy the translations that insist on rendering it "Laguna Blade", as if it somehow makes more sense for the spell to be named after a beach in California, and the spell itself didn't have obvious connotations of Ragnarök about it. These are probably the same translators who insist that the deuteragonist of Revolutionary Girl Utena is named "Anshii", because That's How It's Spelled In Kana, in spite of the fact that "Anthy" is an actual Greek name and her whole plot is taken straight out of Greek tragedy. Some people, I tell ya.)

>- Umi's curse words are so j'tatten cute.

Marty Rose did all the Hyelian dialogue, and I seem to recall him being somewhat bemused when asked to render "What the hell do you think you're doing?! Get off me, you pervy asshole." :)

>- Corwin's attempt to just fucking shoot Akio was great, but he should
>have known that wouldn't work in dueling arena.

Hey, you never know until you try.

>I think there's a legitimate feminist criticism to be made here about
>combining two stories with female protagonists, and making the endings
>come out happy because you added a strong man to come save them.

Sure there is, and it's been made. Forcefully. At some length. I'm not sure if it's a defense or a self-indictment, at this point, to note that I wasn't thinking in anything like those terms 20(!!!) years ago, nor attempting to construct or further any sort of meta-narrative or agenda in writing it the way I did, but that's how it was.

(Anyway, it seems to me his presence didn't make much difference to the outcome of the Rayearth part of the equation. Emeraude still ended up dead at the unwitting hands of the Rune Knights. Even on the RGU side he's more of a facilitator or catalyst. He comes right out and acknowledges that he had no chance of defeating Akio himself, which is surely how it would've come out if I had been out to grind that axe.)

Regardless, thinking about this just now did make me stop to consider: if I were writing the early Symphonies today, would Corwin be a girl? I think he might be, and the really entertaining thing to me is that if I follow that line of reasoning for a while and envision what S1 and S2 would have been like in that instance... they're still pretty much the same. Except Gudrun wouldn't have been as much of a disinterested party in the Corwyn Bowl. :)

--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.

LAST EDITED ON May-30-21 AT 05:07 AM (EDT)
 
Hey, it's not too late to have Corwyn discover that she was a girl all along and go trans. Everyone's doing it these days.

Not that I think a female Corwin would have actually improved the plot. There needed to be some yang in there to improve the fung shui of the story. Literary criticism doesn't mean I'm criticizing the author, unless they keep making the same mistake over and over.

You really did get there in The Revolution Will Be Televised, where Utena is the natural temporary military leader of the Klingon Empire. She beats the Covenant Elite in combat not by being tough and masculine, but through her bond with Anthy. And then she sees another girl pierced by the thousand swords of sentients' hatred, decides she's going to save her, and undoes thousands of years of tradition with but a word. That's the character development, where only ten years prior she was a girl in a coffin.

> True fact: I really enjoy the incantation for that spell, and that's really
> the main reason I used it there. (I also enjoy the translations that insist
> on rendering it "Laguna Blade", as if it somehow makes more sense for the
> spell to be named after a beach in California

I know you're thinking of Laguna Beach, but it's actually a Venetian word for the lagoon around Venice. Which gave me the wonderful image of Akari Mizunashi atop her gondola chanting "... and let us walk the path of destruction together! Laguna Blade!" I should probably definitely not do this in my own fic. Maybe in an omake.

And yeah, I actually like the dub of Slayers, but when Megumi Hayashibara chants the ragna blade, it sends shivers down my spine.

>Hey, it's not too late to have Corwyn discover that she was a girl all
>along and go trans. Everyone's doing it these days.

Not so much. Besides, I don't think that's a voyage I'm qualified to take any character on.

(That said, it is at least mechanically a much simpler journey to go on in the 25th century; even if you're not someone who knows high-level alchemists, the physical part is an overnight stay at any reasonably-well-equipped biosculpt clinic. The neuro-kinesthetic retraining takes longer than the actual procedure. It's not even that expensive, relatively speaking.)

>Not that I think a female Corwin would have actually improved the
>plot.

Well, no, that's the punch line--that the plot would end up being pretty much the same.

>I know you're thinking of Laguna Beach, but it's actually a Venetian
>word for the lagoon around Venice.

It's just the Spanish and Italian word for "lagoon" or "lake" generally, is it not? (See also Laguna Seca Raceway, which is so called because it was built in the basin of a dry lake bed.)

--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.

>Besides, I don't think that's a voyage I'm qualified to
>take any character on.

Well, you're not a lesbian, but you write lesbians really well in my opinion. So you may be more qualified than you think.

>You really did get there in The Revolution Will Be Televised,
>where Utena is the natural temporary military leader of the Klingon
>Empire. She beats the Covenant Elite in combat not by being tough and
>masculine, but through her bond with Anthy. And then she sees another
>girl pierced by the thousand swords of sentients' hatred, decides
>she's going to save her, and undoes thousands of years of tradition
>with but a word. That's the character development, where only ten
>years prior she was a girl in a coffin.

I was re-reading that story a couple of weeks back, and I'm still quite proud of one of my small contributions to it:

"All I did was tell 'em what I thought."
"'All I did was stand up for this one girl...'"

(as Kate puts it later, "Just say 'then I did that thing I do,' Dad'll know exactly what you mean.")

>Regardless, thinking about this just now did make me stop to consider:
>if I were writing the early Symphonies today, would Corwin be a girl?
>I think he might be, and the really entertaining thing to me is that
>if I follow that line of reasoning for a while and envision what S1
>and S2 would have been like in that instance... they're still pretty
>much the same. Except Gudrun wouldn't have been as much of a
>disinterested party in the Corwyn Bowl. :)
>
I think Corwin's struggles with the dichotomy between the societal expectations of masculinity and his own, mostly ungendered, knowledge of what makes a person good are an important counterpoint to Utena's gender-nonconformity.

L.

>>Regardless, thinking about this just now did make me stop to consider:
>>if I were writing the early Symphonies today, would Corwin be a girl?
>>I think he might be, and the really entertaining thing to me is that
>>if I follow that line of reasoning for a while and envision what S1
>>and S2 would have been like in that instance... they're still pretty
>>much the same. Except Gudrun wouldn't have been as much of a
>>disinterested party in the Corwyn Bowl. :)
>>
> I think Corwin's struggles with the dichotomy between the societal
>expectations of masculinity and his own, mostly ungendered, knowledge
>of what makes a person good are an important counterpoint to
>Utena's gender-nonconformity.

I think the critical part here, and why the story works well regardless of the modern hypersensitivity to such matters, is the fact that very little happens because of, or in spite of, anyone's sexuality or identity. In other words, Utena is a hero, a prince, an amazing soul, and a great character. And with a single exception that I can think of, the fact that she's normally straight, but going to be married to a girl, doesn't matter one bit. And it shouldn't. Writing any character as a sexual or gender identity first, and a well-written character second, is a good way to lose sight of the real goal. (Obviously, that changes if the subject of the piece -is- the sexuality/identity. Of course that's not the case here.)

The one scene I'm thinking of is the proposal scene, where Utena has to address her sexuality. The beauty of the scene is it precisely reflects the source material. Utena was struggling between her feelings for Anthy and her usual preference for almost the entire series, and clearly that part had been imported to UF verbatim. Tackling it head on and -resolving- it in such a simple yet heartwarming manner was a thousand times more satisfying to read than if her character had been changed on the way in.

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

"It confused the hell out of me for the better part of a year. But what I finally realized was that when you’re involved, Anthy Himemiya,” she added with a stronger, more characteristic grin, “all things aren’t equal."

Which is a fairly profound statement about love, IMHO.