I have complicated feelings about the post I'm replying to, and most of them have to do with its author being mostly right. :/

>On a more serious note, this is the first time in as far as I can
>remember when I've been disappointed after reading a new release from
>you.

I suspected this might happen. Not specifically to you, but to someone, or possibly everyone. I don't usually post when I have misgivings about what I'm posting, but I did it this time, for one very simple but, you may conclude, questionably valid reason, to wit:

Remember back when I used to do this series to a deadline, and the rule was, whatever state I got a given episode to by the end of the week, that's what went out? Well, this damn episode has been sitting in my line of sight for five years, and I'm tired of looking at it. I need it out of my way so I can move on to the things I have a more solid line on. And it was already running to a length where I had to break it off and move what was supposed to be the climax to a third episode.

With that in mind:

>The best parts of the story (the apology and the reunion) were things
>you'd already previewed, and they set a high bar that the rest of the
>story didn't really clear.

(I also knew my habit of dropping those things was going to get me into trouble one day, but I kept doing it anyway. :/ )

>Finding out the reason for Reimu's visit
>was interesting, though the repetition (finding out first at
>Saint-Ulrich) hurt the pacing a little.

Hmm, yeah... this one is a genuine oversight and not, as we will see examples of below, something I was trying to do that may not have worked. Maybe she should've just asked to see Colonel Sakamoto (or General Wilcke, but I think she'd be more likely to go to the ranking Fusōnese officer on the scene by default), rather than discussing her business with someone who isn't even usually part of 1 JSAF.

>Reimu would definitely be
>"shoot first, ask questions later" about this, as she tends to be in
>canon, and her prejudice against youkai fits as well.

You reckon I should've just Chandler's Lawed the hangar scene? G's standing there discussing naval armaments and—whoa! Hey, what the hell? What's your problem, Red? Do I owe you money?!

(That wasn't sarcasm, btw, I'm kinda seriously wondering if I should've done that now. For the moment, let's continue.)

>I think the worst part for me was that (a) she lost to Gryphon, (b) we
>don't get to see it happen, and (c) she needed to have lost to change
>her mind. I really like your fight scenes. You tie together
>choreography and character building in ways evem few published authors
>do. So I got super hype for the fight that was doubtless about to
>happen and then nothing.

I get A and B (although I'll come back to them in a moment), but C seems perfectly in keeping with what I've read of the way things usually work in Touhou stuff. It seems like it's fairly traditional there that whoever loses the duel usually not only concedes the point, but adopts the winner's stance thereon. I gathered it was a deliberate part of the world design, some kind of faux-bushido thing (hence Shizuka's ruminations about same).

>I'm not directly opposed to the idea that Gryphon could beat Reimu,
>but I feel it requires proof, it requires showing your work.
>Canonically, she has beaten immortals, she has beaten swordmasters,
>she has beaten wielders of strange magic. So his victory feels like a
>"dude, just trust me".

I'm not trying to tell you how to feel here, or anything like that, but can I just point out that canonically, she's beaten all of those people because she's rigged the functioning of the world they inhabit so that she can't lose? Seriously. She imposed the combat rules they all have to operate under, and they are in many cases the only reason she defeats entities she has no business even surviving a confrontation with. That is... obviously not the case here. She's not wearing her player character Underoos.

(That feels hella fourth-wally on the part of the Touhou lore, btw, especially in the later games where the player characters having won the previous games is part of the backstory. It's like the game setting is looking directly at the normally unspoken law that the player characters have to win because they're the player characters. I can only think of one video game offhand that has deliberately subverted that rule--XCOM 2--but rarely do they openly acknowledge it as part of the in-game storyline.)

Anyway, grumbling about source lore design aside, and apart from the issue of who wins, I stared at the blank space after "I don't have all week" for... well, about a week, before finally deciding, "You know what, it would be perfectly in keeping with both earlier precedents in-house and a lot of the Touhou fan works I've seen to play the Unseen Awesomeness card here and move the frickin' story along." So, with some misgivings, I did, and here we see that those misgivings were justified.

>aside from everything else, I don't think
>Reimu has the authority to kill him without risking a war between Fuso
>and Karlsland

This is probably true, although I suspect it's also possible that she'd only think of that after she did it. She's not the most cerebral monster hunter. :)

>I feel like it'd be more interesting for Reimu to change her mind
>despite winning her battle with him. For instance, she might not find
>any evidence of him using so-called "dark magic" when he's fighting,
>even when he's faced with potential death. Or her mind might open to
>the Force as they fight and she sees what he's actually teaching. Or
>Marisa actually reads the books while Gryph and Reimu are fighting and
>tells her she's fretting over nothing. Or several other possibilities
>I haven't thought of.

Well, I hadn't even thought of those (and I quite like a couple of them), so... there's that. :/

>Plus it's more Touhou, especially in the later mainline games, that
>Reimu wins the spellcard battle against even the final and extra
>bosses and thwarts their immediate schemes, yet doesn't or can't stop
>the social change they're bringing to Gensokyo.

I don't know much about the later games, which may stand as at least a partial defense of this particular detail.

>Also, here the fact that he drank more than anyone else and still
>didn't wake up with a hangover feels kind of like an unnecessary
>victory lap.

In fairness to me, it's not like I could really avoid that part. That's just how his biology works. He had to drink the most or he would have had to spend the whole evening being the only sober person in the group, which wouldn't have been very entertaining, and it's not as though he could help not having a hangover. What was he supposed to do, feign one?

The rest of your criticisms are completely valid--in most cases uncomfortably so--and I will accept them, but this one feels like a rummage around the back of the drawer in search of an And Another Thing. :)

>Probably that part has colored my perception of the remainder of the
>story. I note that the part of the Paris trip we haven't seen yet has
>gone without major incident, and that Sakuya apparently doesn't feel
>the need to Lens him status reports.

(This one, too. He'd buy the newspaper either way, c'mon.)

>I had kind of expected some sort
>of shit to hit the fan in Paris on the Friday night of the new moon,
>but it really would be far more inconvenient for him (and thus
>convenient for drama) for it to happen while he's off saving the
>Hyperion.

Aha, well, here is a point on which, at last, I have the high ground. The new moon is SATURDAY night. :)

>TL;DR: No fight and no explanation make Zemyla a sad enby.

TL;DR: Yeah, you're mostly right, I kinda fucked this up. :(

--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.