LAST EDITED ON Dec-17-06 AT 10:41 AM (EST)
 
>>94 At pretty much this point in the original Magic Knight Rayearth series, the Knights abruptly find themselves back in Tokyo, bawling their eyes out, and... curtain. End of series. What the fuck. (There was a second one made later, but at the time, that was The End.)<<

This may be why I've never watched the original MKR nor RGU. I just cannot abide endings like that.

>>2204 If I regret anything about the way the Fourth Symphony came out - and that's debatable in the extreme - it's that the final outcome of this arc does tend to retroactively blunt this scene somewhat. When I wrote it, I fully believed, along with Corwin and more than a few readers, that it was all over here. I thought he had sacrificed - for good - any chance of he and Utena ever being together. The phrase I used when outlining the Pillar Circle scene to the others in the studio was, "He loves her so much, he'd give her up forever."

I agonized about all this for an unseemly length of time, unwilling to believe that fate could be so cruel to one of my protagonists (and one of my favorite characters) after I'd put so much time and sweat and blood into making him a right and proper hero. I even (very, very briefly) considered killing him off to save him the trouble of spending the rest of his life alone. That notion didn't last long - I'm not that kind of writer - but still, I felt terrible for the poor guy. I mean, here he's just affirmed the one great love of his life with an act of staggering heroism, and it costs him the only prize he really wants? That's like a Hideaki Anno plot. It's not the way I want my worlds to work.

Fortunately, Anthy is wiser than I am, and it wasn't long before I began to realize that this wasn't the end at all. Indeed, with her finally back on the stage and able to contribute, it was, in a way, only the beginning.

And I'm happy about that, because the ultimate outcome is much more in line with what I want out of my world here... but I have to admit to at least a mild pang of wistfulness at the fact that it does rather take the teeth out of "He loves her so much, he'd give her up forever."

On the other hand, as Phil points out, Corwin had no way of knowing that the situation would eventually resolve itself as it did. He genuinely believed, as I did, that he was closing that door forever - and he was still willing to do it. That should be kept in mind when weighing this piece in retrospect... and, as Phil further notes, the first-time reader is just as much in the dark as Corwin about what his future holds. So perhaps it's not so bad after all.<<

I, for one, think that even though we ("we" meaning those who have kept up with the Symphony from that day to this) know that things came out right in the end for the Trinity, it doesn't diminish the power of this scene in the least. It establishes, once and for all, a critical fact about Corwin; that he's the kind of man who'd give up the prospect of his greatest joy for the sake of somebody else's joy, and do it without hesitation or looking back over his shoulder.

With that in mind, this scene is still one of the most difficult in the Symphony for me to read...but in a good way.

-Joe-