>Yeah, gosh, just look at Firefly.
>
>... oh, wait.

To be fair, it was an enormous success in DVD sales, enough that it got Universal to fund a motion picture, which is a much more expensive undertaking than a TV series. (That the movie tanked at the box office isn't something I can hold against anyone involved -- something about the marketing just made me say, "This is going to tank.) And it was a success in a creative sense -- Whedon got to tell the story he started, even if the series was cut short.

>Ah, the mysterious, unseen Dissatisfied Friends.

Not entirely. They no longer post here, but one, in particular, was a much bigger fan than I ever was (he even owns an NXE-themed baseball cap had he had custom made), and my own dissatisfaction pales in comparison to his.

>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.

I know I didn't. My perspective on it is entirely different from yours. (And it's a somewhat different perspective now than I had... what, three and a half years ago, when it was originally posted?) I and the deliberately-unnamed others that I've discussed it with have many theories about what changed after the first Symphony, but I'm not going to raise them here, because that would be disrespectful and highly inappropriate. I'll talk about the story all I want, but that's as far as I'll go in a public venue.

>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.

I wish I could say this makes it better, but, really, to me, it just cheapens it even more. Now it feels like Corwin and Utena are just pawns in the game -- I know they're not, really, not in Anthy's heart or mind, but this explanation still leaves me feeling like that.

Another thing that bugs me about it is that, underneath it all, is the assumption/implication that Corwin and Utena would never do anything about this without outside intervention. Corwin, yes, I can buy that -- I can relate to it, having been of that kind of foolishly noble bent myself once upon a time (before my wife came along, essentially), but Utena? No. I think she's too much in touch with what she really feels, and while she loves Anthy and wouldn't wish to hurt her, I think Utena knows far too well the value of telling people how you really feel before it's too late.

As for what you can do about it? Why do you think I haven't said much outside of this, really, at least in a forum like this? I know you're not going to go take this stuff down and rewrite it in light of my complaint, so, really, if you think you honestly did do the right thing by them, then about all we can do is agre to disagree.

- Sean
"All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true.'"
-- Terry Pratchett, from _The Last Continent_