"You had a barbecue? I'm up the freaking belltower getting my mind turned inside-out and you bastards are having KABOBS?"

My favorite thing so far, though, is running across places where, in hindsight, I seem to have been foreshadowing things I didn't even know I was going to do yet. Now, I'm sure that in a lot of cases this is actually just because I adjusted what came later so that the parallels appeared, but still, it surprises me how often I seem to have been building hooks I didn't consciously know I would later need into the early material.

A particular case in point for this comes in Christmas Rose, in the scene at the Avalon Centre Galleria. Kaitlyn spots Mike Carpenter, freezes, and starts freaking out; neither Corwin nor Utena has any idea what's happening to her or why, and they're virtually strangers to each other, having met less than 24 hours before, but just there, in that one instant, click! - they're a team. They agree immediately on what has to get done and, without needing to think about it at all, each trusts the other to get his or her half of it accomplished. And that's... well, you know, towering romance aside, that's really the essence of those two, right there.

(I feel like I've made this observation before, but it's not in the annotations for S1M2, so if it came up anywhere, it must've cropped up at some point in the original release discussions. Apologies for the redundancy, but either way, it's been a long time since I thought about it, and as I try to gear myself up for the S5 home stretch - which we're really into, once we get past Tau Ceti Again - this kind of thing is important for me to keep close to the top of the stack.)

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

I don't think this has ever shown up on the Forums. Maybe it was an in-studio observation?

Peter Eng
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Insert humorous comment here.

I vaguely remember you saying this before, and I couldn't agree more. It's the way they're both, well, *heroes*. I think that's what makes me really believe in them as a couple, more than any musing about how much they care for each other. (Not that the emotional support and healing stuff in SoS wasn't great! Just, y'know, showing is always superior to telling...)

Meagen

I recall that we had a few exchanges in email about midway through the creation of the extant material where I queried you about your long-term planning; perhaps it was there. To be honest, though, the only context I can remember for such a statement was a discussion of Juri and Kaitlyn's relationship where you admitted that those two came together organically and of their own accord, without regard for your intentions for the story line.

Regardless, I think it's one of the hallmarks of a proper writer that more is going on below the surface of his mind than he is aware of when it comes to his story, and it leaks out through the pen/keyboard to surprise him later when it all falls together perfectly.

-- Bob
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My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.