>If you're not prepared to name people with a beef and/or what their
>beef is, why mention them at all? Just to twist the knife? "Ha, ha,
>I know some people who don't like what you do, but I'm not going to
>tell you who they are or what their problem is." How very
>constructive.

I'm not naming them or describing their own problems with the work because I'm here speaking for myself, not them; if they wish to come forward and make their own opinion known, then I'll leave it to them. I only mention it to demonstrate that this is not new, that it's been a problem I've had with it for years, and that I've put some thought into it. (The meat of it didn't crystallize -- to mix metaphors in a rather disturbing way -- until the above annotation, though.)

>(shrug) It's not all there is in the picture, to be sure, but since
>you seem bent on ignoring the fact that all of this comes about as a
>result of a confluence of many factors, and instead delight in
>pointing out how each individual factor is inadequate in its
>own right (which is as inarguable as it is irrelevant), we're not
>going to get anywhere pursuing that line of inquiry. It's like you're
>looking at Rasputin's corpse and saying, "Well, the fall
>couldn't have killed him," while ignoring the fact that he's been
>poisoned, beaten, stabbed, shot, and drowned. Then, when someone
>points one of those factors out, you stubbornly insist, "That stab
>wound can't have been lethal." There's no coping with a viewpoint
>like that.

That's how it works from your viewpoint. Okay. But the way it came together for me felt completely the opposite, a house of cards that looked unstable from the outside and crumbled when I poked at it.

I dunno. Maybe this whole thing was like when I lost my virginity -- a whole bunch of hullaballoo and buildup over something that was inevitably going to leave me feeling like, "... That was it?" I guess it's how some (the majority, if you pay attention to the Internet raging, but the box office take would argue otherwise) people reacted to The Phantom Menace.

>Look, I don't deny that there are other valid ways the story arc
>could've turned out. What I do deny - what I take considerable
>exception to - is your apparent contention that the way it did
>turn out is invalid. I worked hard on that. I sweated blood
>over it. And for you to come along three years after the fact and
>announce that it's cheap and a betrayal of the characters is low.

Perhaps. One thing I will acknowledge is that to someone reading these stories fresh, now, reading through what is posted of the Third Symphony and the completed Fourth Symphony, might have a rather different appreciation of the whole thing. But the two key stories we're discussing here were posted well in advance of much of the rest of S4, as I recall (I'm fairly sure I read "For Today" well before I originally gave up on the Symphony, which was with "Hunter Rose," which I dislike for largely different reasons), and at the time it meant I missed out on the character and relationship development in the latter part of the Fourth Symphony which may make "For Today" work.

>"Behind your back, shit, yeah, we've covered that already -
>I'll tar you with the widest brush I can find and you'll be none the
>wiser. But in your own house? Nah. Veiled snideness is clearly the
>way to go there."

On the contrary, we've never spoken ill of you personally. I still think that, on the whole, you're an excellent writer, and when things went south, in our shared opinions, we were more regretful that it happened and wondered what had changed, especially on the meta level.

>Then, essentially, you've wandered in and filled the last 12 hours of
>my life with retarded Internet drama for no reason at all.
>
>Thanks for that.

No, I must amend that. I do hope that you at least take some of what I've said under consideration, for future purposes. I could work up a list of other things I've felt didn't work in the Symphony or in UF as a whole, but I don't think it would be a fruitful exercise right now, and I'd have to be careful to strip out the acid that I might unintentionally add.

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