>if you have
>an audience where 100% like it okay and will watch it if it's on,
>it'll probably fail, but if it happens that 90% of your test audience
>hates it with a passion and the other 10% love it to the ends of the
>earth, you have a success.

Yeah, gosh, just look at Firefly.

... oh, wait.

> (Hell, the above is extremely mild compared with some of the
>discussions I've had with other friends about this, who are equally
>dissatisfied with the latter Symphony and with certain other Eyrie
>works.)

Ah, the mysterious, unseen Dissatisfied Friends. Always they lurk at the back of threads like this one, sitting in silent judgment, waiting for some sign. They, and the equally elusive Satisfied Friends, are like the dark matter of the creative universe, exerting their invisible gravity.

>Anyway, you at least get the gist of my complaint, so... let's discuss
>like adults. I contend that some bad mistakes were made in the
>culmination of the arc, as stated above, mistakes that were, for me,
>fatal.

Well, I'm sorry it didn't meet with your satisfaction, but not to put too fine a point on it, what do you want me to do about it now?

You contend I screwed it up. Fine, that's your prerogative. A lot of things are screwed up in this world, and I'm willing to believe that this is one of them. But bear in mind the following:

You didn't spend three years hip-deep in this arc. You didn't watch it divert the course of mighty rivers, or at least plotlines you'd had in mind for years. You didn't live through the real-life experiences that, for good or ill, shaped the way it turned out. You didn't have it constantly banging around inside your head, especially in the middle stages, like some kind of lab rat in a maze, looking for the way out.

I did.

At any rate, I think you rather missed the point of For Today, based on your (rather Carlinesque) commentary above. The point, as far as Anthy was concerned, was not that Akio's maneuver in Sympathy for the Devil might have succeeded; that is clearly nonsense. The point - the matter that she's really addressing when she takes action in For Today - is that he apparently felt it was even worth attempting.

Because, see, here's the thing. Anthy and Akio have known each other for a very long time, and what we're seeing at the end of the Fourth Symphony isn't merely a couple of characters bumping bits in the dark. For them it's a hell of a lot more than that, despite what you seem to think; and for Anthy, who set them on that path at the beginning of the final S4 story, it's even more significant. Step back and look; on a level above the text itself, what happens in the last two bits of S4 is really all about two characters, and those two characters aren't Corwin and Utena at all: they're Anthy and Akio.

The whole Sympathy incident was intended as a message, not for Corwin, not for Utena, but for Anthy herself, and the message is, roughly, "I'll bet you're afraid to let this circle close. But feel free to prove me wrong, sister dear."

It's a dare. He's taunting Anthy for what he perceives as either timidity or selfishness. He's calling her out, and he's using her loved ones to do it... and she throws it in his face, boldly making the one move he doesn't expect her to make.

So there, you bastard; we win.

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