Never clicked the "HTML Reference" link next to the post entry box, have you? :-)

Slarti

Yes, sure I can. I have to wait a whole year for sequels to come out in print - waiting a week for us to finish cleaning up? Not nearly so hard.

Yes; yes, I can. I know what I'm paying for this material, and I don't think impatience is allowed at this price point. For what I'm paying to read UF, I can also get a twenty-ounce cup of STFU. (I try to have one handy, these days.)

Peter Eng
--
I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."

Hey, I still have (and wear!) one of the original-run CafePress EPU Rabid Crack Weasel caps - the gray one, if anyone recalls the design.

The looks I get are amusing -- as are the looks following my attempt to explain what my hat is referring to. I do hope I haven't scared too many people off...

>>2286: At least the weasel on the T-shirt's an
>>anime weasel. As I recall, the original one was a really badly done
>>photo of one. But yes, the patience level of the Forum around the time
>>this was released was awful. ALC
>
>Be honest: can you *blame* them?

Blame them for being impatient? Fuck no! I'm impatient; I'd be a hypocrite at best if I castigated someone else for being impatient about EPU works!

Blame them for whining, bitching, moaning, and pestering? Fuck yeah! Mebbe if they'd knock that crap off*, the authors would feel more like working on the stuff in the first place. I know that I, at work, tend to really really want to put the whiners at the bottom of my to-do pile... and I can only imagine how much easier that impulse would be to give in to if I wasn't being paid for the work.

(* to be fair, 'that crap' mostly appears to have been knocked off; I was referring to my viewpoint at the time, mostly)

--sofaspud
--

That Corwin is willing to make such a sacrifice, at that moment and without knowledge of the future, is a measure of his character.
That he ends up not needing to is a measure of the character of Anthy and Utena, and of the universe.

In a way, it's yet another one of those counterpoints that characterize Corwin's relationship with them. If he hadn't been willing to make that sacrifice, he wouldn't have deserved to have what he wanted.

And if Anthy hadn't been willing to make sure it _wasn't_ a sacrifice, she wouldn't have deserved to have him make it.

It dovetails rather nicely, I think.

Actually, I think you're kind of missing the point?

But it's clear from your vehemence that I'm not going to be able to explain it to you, so fuck it.

Also, please feel free to choke on my cock for that snide little aside about the quality of my villains. Not so much because it questions the quality of my villains as because it's so fucking snide. I try not to take it personally when I get panned for legitimate, or at least subjectively legitimate, dramatic or technical reasons, and in a forthright, non-rancorous manner, but you wrecked any progress you might've made in that regard by adding that little dab of vitriol out of the side of your mouth, as it were.

All right, now that I've had a chance to calm down a little...

I regret this very much. See - you might have a point. It might even be worth discussing. Except that the way you present yourself makes it plain that you're just trying to start a fight, and, it being after 3 AM on a cold December night in darkest Maine, I find myself responding accordingly. The topic at hand is, if you couldn't guess, one of intense personal significance to me, and to have it used as a hook for some pretentious clown to hang flamebait on just riles me up and makes me uncivil. And yet, there might be a good conversation to be had in there someplace... pity we'll probably never know.

And that's the regrettable part. I can tell by the way you approached your opening that, if I were to try and actually conduct a dialogue on this subject, you'd just keep on in the same vein, and all I would end up doing is shouting at the wall. You raise a potentially interesting point, yet do it in such a way that there's clearly no percentage in trying to explore it.

Either way, you've given me something to think about. It's a shame you did so in such a way that I won't be able to think about it without feeling like someone shit in my hat.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. No doubt I'll spent some time reflecting on these matters that I was originally going to spend asleep. And trying not to give too much weight to the idea that that's what you were after in the first place.

If you want to try discussing it like an adult sometime, I'm always around, but you'll forgive me if, based on prior performance, I'm not overly sanguine about the prospects right now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

More later, but just to point out something: inspiring passion in your audience is a good thing, and one of the key things successful creative types do. If and when you turn to saleable fiction, if you can keep that going, you'll probably do well enough to earn a living at it. (I think this is something I sort of knew about already, but it was crystallized when Scott Adams wrote about it, in an anecdote about the test screening of the Dilbert animated series -- if you have an audience where 100% like it okay and will watch it if it's on, it'll probably fail, but if it happens that 90% of your test audience hates it with a passion and the other 10% love it to the ends of the earth, you have a success. Because, love it or hate it, they'll talk about it, think about it, tell other people about it.

>If you want to try discussing it like an adult sometime, I'm always
>around, but you'll forgive me if, based on prior performance, I'm not
>overly sanguine about the prospects right now.

I apologize -- I was actually trying to not be confrontational, but it doesn't help that ... well, as you can tell, I'm quite passionate about the topic, for a lot of reasons, and it's already over and done with, so it often feels like the only thing I can do about it is rant. (Hell, the above is extremely mild compared with some of the discussions I've had with other friends about this, who are equally dissatisfied with the latter Symphony and with certain other Eyrie works.)

Anyway, you at least get the gist of my complaint, so... let's discuss like adults. I contend that some bad mistakes were made in the culmination of the arc, as stated above, mistakes that were, for me, fatal.

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

Yeah, gosh, just look at Firefly.

... oh, wait.

> (Hell, the above is extremely mild compared with some of the
>discussions I've had with other friends about this, who are equally
>dissatisfied with the latter Symphony and with certain other Eyrie
>works.)

Ah, the mysterious, unseen Dissatisfied Friends. Always they lurk at the back of threads like this one, sitting in silent judgment, waiting for some sign. They, and the equally elusive Satisfied Friends, are like the dark matter of the creative universe, exerting their invisible gravity.

>Anyway, you at least get the gist of my complaint, so... let's discuss
>like adults. I contend that some bad mistakes were made in the
>culmination of the arc, as stated above, mistakes that were, for me,
>fatal.

Well, I'm sorry it didn't meet with your satisfaction, but not to put too fine a point on it, what do you want me to do about it now?

You contend I screwed it up. Fine, that's your prerogative. A lot of things are screwed up in this world, and I'm willing to believe that this is one of them. But bear in mind the following:

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.

At any rate, I think you rather missed the point of For Today, based on your (rather Carlinesque) commentary above. The point, as far as Anthy was concerned, was not that Akio's maneuver in Sympathy for the Devil might have succeeded; that is clearly nonsense. The point - the matter that she's really addressing when she takes action in For Today - is that he apparently felt it was even worth attempting.

Because, see, here's the thing. Anthy and Akio have known each other for a very long time, and what we're seeing at the end of the Fourth Symphony isn't merely a couple of characters bumping bits in the dark. For them it's a hell of a lot more than that, despite what you seem to think; and for Anthy, who set them on that path at the beginning of the final S4 story, it's even more significant. Step back and look; on a level above the text itself, what happens in the last two bits of S4 is really all about two characters, and those two characters aren't Corwin and Utena at all: they're Anthy and Akio.

The whole Sympathy incident was intended as a message, not for Corwin, not for Utena, but for Anthy herself, and the message is, roughly, "I'll bet you're afraid to let this circle close. But feel free to prove me wrong, sister dear."

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.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

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_

"Naturally, if you were a U.S. Senator, I wouldn't expect you to name your witness, but since you're not, go climb a tree."

(Paraphrased from memory: Archie Goodwin, The Golden Spiders)

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. Grow the hell up.

>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.

Not just pawns, no, hardly; but in a certain sense they are pieces in a game. That comes with the territory when you find yourself involved in a struggle between two powerful sorcerers.

(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.

>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.

Oh, I expect she'd have got round to it eventually, sure. But in how many years? After how much more suffering? Anthy's patience, appearances to the contrary, isn't infinite. All Akio did was push the cart; it would have rolled on its own eventually.

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.

>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?

"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."

>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.

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.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

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_

- which I in no way needed to hear about.

>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)

For Tomorrow came out in its assigned place, right between A Night to Remember and On the Road Again. As for For Today, it was released only in advance of In for a Penny... and The Revolution Will Be Televised, during both of which (with the exception of one brief scene in which he isn't identified) Corwin is, er, out of town anyway.

(How can I be so sure? Simple chronology. Coming out as it did on Dec. 29, For Today was the last release of 2003, and only the aforementioned two pieces of S4 have 2004 date stamps.)

Yeah, I probably should've waited until Televised was finished before releasing it anyway, but hey... it was done, it was December 29, it seemed like the fitting thing to do at the time.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

I stand corrected, on that count (and I suspected I wasn't entirely correct, but it was what I remembered). I may be misremembering it because "For Tomorrow" was the one that brought into focus a bunch of the things I thought were bad ideas, or good ideas being executed poorly, and so it and "Hunter Rose" triggered my abandonment of the Symphony, and another of these unnamed friends who did like the resolution of the CUA arc recommended I read "For Today," at least, even if I didn't read the rest of the Fourth.

(What I've read on the boards about "Ash Knight" has had me off and on considering giving it a shot, but I can't get over the bad taste the Fourth left in my mouth.)

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

When I started doing these annotations, I thought, OK, I'm not gonna hold stuff back. If I run across something I think, in retrospect, was a bit crap, I'm going to tell it like it is. That's a kind of honesty one doesn't see from writers much these days. Hell, some of them can't be arsed to admit that what they're writing is fiction, let alone that it might've gone a little wrong on them from place to place. Maybe people will find it refreshing.

It never occurred to me that it'd also be a little bit like showing a sign of infirmity at the back of a wildebeest herd.

--G.
"Say, you know what else was wrong with this?" "No, what?" "THE ENTIRE FOURTH PART"
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

I was, at one time, Gryph's staunchest, most supportive fan. I was bugnuts for NXE, and am the aforementioned owner of the custom NXE ballcap. I had it made to wear to Eva panels at cons, hoping to stir some Shinji fanboys up. Unfortunately the lovingly reproduced Jet Alone Project pilot cap was a bit too obscure, apparently, even with the DJC initals on the back. I was also, once, a huge fan of UF, having read the entire thing through via the chronological listing more than once, and I was enraptured by Symphony.

I openly admit that I'm not as analytical or articulate as Laudre, and I can't explain what changed that made me stop reading Eyrie altogether until The Iron Age brought some of the old magic back. But... like that last sentence would imply, the magic was gone.

This wasn't solely the fault of Interlude on Titan, though that was pretty much where I said, "This is it until Apotheosis Now" and then after Apotheosis Now I said, "I'm done." Which was built up to by things in Symphony that it's been too long to recall exact details of, but mostly a slide in tone and literary quality that coincided, suspiciously, with Gryph's return to Maine. (The "meta-reason" Laudre alluded to.) We might be completely wrong about that, but people theorize, and it's what we had to work with.

All I can say about Interlude is that, throughout Symphony, I had identified strongly with Corwin, and I'd been losing that until this series of events cut the cord completely. I'm skimming it now to try to help myself make my point, but... the best I can come up with is that the first part where they're asking and agreeing has a forced awkwardness to it that bothers me, and then, during the doing, there's an idyllic lack of awkwardness that is equally disturbing. A far cry from the very natural tone that had been the Symphony's greatest attribute. Even in 2nd Symphony when things started blowing up, there was a natural smoothness to the characters that made it feel so believable, and that waned. I didn't even know Gryph'd ever gotten around to having Utena and Corwin get together. Something I wanted to see from the time I read the first words of Symphony 1, and I'm afraid of it now.

A quick word on villains: It's not that Gryph's villains are all that bad, it's just that they can seem that way when there's such an overwhelming array of ultra-powerful heroes.

Day of Infamy, WotOR, the disappointments piled up until I stopped. Something had changed, and if Gryph is happy with the change, then that's fine. It's his writing and I've long held that one should write only to please oneself, at least outside of doing it for a living. Two things that are noteworthy before I STFU, though: 1: I was -the- guy who stood up for Eyrie whenever the work was criticized in my presence, and I got alienated. I'm admittedly a singular sample, but that's indicative a major change. 2: Stuff that Gryph wrote outside the Eyrie unmbrella, such as his non-fiction anecdotes and stories he published in his blog, I still enjoyed greatly. This indicated to me that whatever the change was, it was limited to EPU storytelling, and not his writing in general. Like he was looking for something.

Points of order:

1. A Day of Infamy is not entirely - or even mostly - my work; I would guess that I contributed no more than 20 percent of the finished product, and much of that was flavor and texture rather than structure. The original draft was presented to me effectively as a fait accompli, following which I had a few weeks to massage things as best I could and work in what scenes I thought of. Some of those scenes I'm rather fond of; others didn't work out so well.

If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't release Infamy when I did; it's too far out of sequence, has already caused me endless wait-I-can't-do-that-it's-not-that-way-in-Infamy headaches, and could stand a lot more buffing and screwing around with. If I thought the Plotstapo would let me get away with it, I'd withdraw it and come back to the War of 2412 in its own time. At any rate, I admit it's not my favorite piece in the canon either (though it's far from the worst), but if it represents a failure on my part, specifically, it's an editorial one, not an authorial one. The distinction may be academic, but I think it's important.

As for the editorial failure, well, all I can say is, a guy made it for me with the thought that he was saving me a lot of work - we had plotted the basic outline of What Goes On in the Galaxy at that spot in the timeline long before, but I figured I was years away from writing it - and I was touched by that, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. If I have a paramount flaw as an editor, it's that I don't like being the bad guy.

2. Road Movie to Naboo, the first Warriors of the Outer Rim serial - which I presume you're talking about here, since The Fulcrum of Fate is new this year and I'm guessing you haven't read it - came out at the same time as the First Symphony, so your inclusion of it in a list of Things That Disappointed You Following Symphonies One and Two is a mite disingenuous. (For that matter, a good bit of the text in Road Movie is quite a lot older, so that doesn't do much for your "he's just lost his shit" theory either.)

>I was -the- guy
>who stood up for Eyrie whenever the work was criticized in my
>presence, and I got alienated. I'm admittedly a singular sample, but
>that's indicative a major change.

So it is. But on which side of the screen? Can you say for certain? Can I?

Yeah, things have changed, at least on my side of the screen. My life now is a fucking joke compared to what it was when the Symphony train was really rolling. Maybe that's the effect you're perceiving, maybe it's not, but I'll say this: There are things I've released since then that I'm just as proud of as I remain of the First and Second Symphonies, which this discussion seems to be holding up as the benchmark of what life was like in the Good Old Days. And there are parts of all four Symphonies I would probably do differently if I was doing it all again, but For Tomorrow and For Today aren't among them.

Anyway, thanks for having the balls to stand up and be counted, and for speaking for yourself rather than making a bunch of vague allusions to mysterious friends of yours who carry pitchforks in the night toward my tower on the edge of town.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

If you're burned out on Utena much in the Symphony, I heartily urge you to read 'Ash Knight'. Juniper/Anne is an awesome charachter, and I'm hoping we get to see more of her. :D

Just my call, for what it's worth.

I'm curious - was it the Getter Robo scene? 'Cause that is rather silly. It's almost like the network told me to promote the new toy coming out next month.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

I don't recall exactly, anymore, what made me throw my hands up in disgust and quit, but I do remember that the general vibe I got from "Hunter Rose" (and I don't know if that was your intent or not) was "HAY GUYZ LOOK HOW KEWL MY CHARACTERZ R"

... Which, if you've spent, uh, any time at all on the Internet gets old very, very quickly. (Hell, it's not even restricted to definite fanfic -- the Underworld movies gave me the same vibe, and they're ostensibly original fic. Resemblance to the OWOD notwithstanding.)

To elaborate a bit (before I go downstairs and finish making my breakfast), I didn't feel the same kind of desperation and riding the absolute edge of their skills that makes "Hunted Rose" work so, so well. It just felt like people getting a chance to show off.

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

I figure this is as good an opportunity as any to plug my What Previously Was New at Eyrie Productions page, which is a collection of old copies of the What's New page scraped off the Wayback Machine.

>But how it was done -- I still can't quite figure out what it
>is about "Interlude on Titan," specifically, that sets my teeth on
>edge and makes the little author-voice in the back of my head scream
>things like "CONTRIVED!" and "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!", but that's
>exactly how it feels to me. (And I find the story the exact opposite
>of enjoyable, so I'm not planning on rereading it to figure it out.)
>"Interlude at Vortigern's Lake No. 2" is only moreso -- I mean, Jesus,
>Corwin and Utena have to fuck to prevent Akio from driving a
>wedge between them? Akio? Christ, could this be any
>more of a betrayal to the characters, and the emotional arc that's
>been developing up until then?

Sure it was contrived. But I think that it was contrived wrt Anthy needing to break the ice as it were.

Here's my problem with your problem. You seem to take issue with the way that the relationship wound up, and I can see that. Personally, I can agree with you that it's not very realistic that they would do so. However, considering that the characters involved are: a) A fully fledged God, b) a trans-dimensional Paladin who beats up Sithlings as a quick pre-breakfast warmup, and c)...well, whatever the hell Anthy is exactly, I'm gonna take realism, and toss it in the trash-heap with all my other suspended disbelief, and smile and go 'Awwwww'.

>Akio is the last person in the Ten Worlds to be credible as a threat
>to Utena and Corwin's relationship (I won't simply call it a
>friendship, because after "Interlude at Bancroft Tower" the word
>"friendship" became too simple, even if they weren't technically
>romantically involved). That this becomes the... the
>justification for this makes them taking the next step feel
>rushed, cheap, contrived, and a betrayal of the natural, organic way
>their relationship had developed until then. To even imply
>that because they don't call each other by a particular label
>(boyfriend and girlfriend, or lover, or whatever), and because they're
>not having sex, that they could therefore be driven apart by someone
>like Akio

Again, my feeling behind this was that Anthy more used this as an excuse to mend what she felt was a wrong. I mean, it's obvious to everyone involved that C and U are in love, soulmates, whatever you wanna call 'em. And yet, because of their preconceived notions of loyalty and fidelity, they are going to be unwilling to go the extra step, not just of fucking, but of getting rid of the 'but' part of 'everything but' in their relationship. I'd say that G couldn't have handled it much better, considering the Space Opera feeling of UF. It's SUPPOSED to be over the top.

>-- who is, I suppose, a reasonably complex and competent
>villain by UF standards, but that's not saying much at all --

Yeah, I'm gonna agree with G here. You're reading UF and expecting Jane Eyre. It's not. It's a Space Opera. The characters are exaggerated, not realistic, by design. They hit harder, run faster, cook better, love deeper, and hate hotter then real people. If you don't understand that about certian styles of fiction then you really need to take a good look at why you enjoy reading.

>is insulting to the readers,

Don't fucking lump my happy read ass in with yours, hunh?

> to the characters, and, I'm sorry to say, is rather a disappointment in the >Symphony and in Gryph's writing skills, because I know it can be better than >this, because it has. As I said above, that relationship stands at

When? Name a point in the Symphonies when their emotions were more 'real', when the characters were less contrived then IaVL2? Hell, of all the relationships that I thought was handled the worst, I'd aim more for KJM then CUA. And only certain lines ('This is gonna be good'? Comeon, just a bit out of character?)

>the emotional core of the Symphony, and for it to reach its consummation at any
>point other than marking the end of the Symphony cycle/subseries... it
>feels dramatically very, very wrong.

Sure. He could just hack S5 off of the list, and toss the stories into UF/FI on their own, no subset. would that make you feel better?

--
-Pasha
"I invented Warp Drive, whatta ya got?"
"I'm the Norse God of Mecha."
"Well, I guess you win then."

>But how it was done -- I still can't quite figure out what it
>is about "Interlude on Titan," specifically, that sets my teeth on
>edge and makes the little author-voice in the back of my head scream
>things like "CONTRIVED!" and "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!", but that's
>exactly how it feels to me. (And I find the story the exact opposite
>of enjoyable, so I'm not planning on rereading it to figure it out.)
>"Interlude at Vortigern's Lake No. 2" is only moreso -- I mean, Jesus,
>Corwin and Utena have to fuck to prevent Akio from driving a
>wedge between them? Akio? Christ, could this be any
>more of a betrayal to the characters, and the emotional arc that's
>been developing up until then?

If Utena were still fourteen or something, I might agree with you. One of the things it's hard to forget, despite Gryphon's best efforts, is that everyone's grown and changed a lot in the past several IC years. It'd actually be a lot easier if I hadn't seen RGU, because every time I see her name I envision her as she is in the show, and then have to consciously back up and reenvision her as a young adult.

But as for having sex to overshadow memories of previous sexual encounters...well, I've seen that RL before. It's quite real. And I will say no more on that subject. (No, it did not involve me, thank the gods.)

>
>Akio is the last person in the Ten Worlds to be credible as a threat
>to Utena and Corwin's relationship (I won't simply call it a
>friendship, because after "Interlude at Bancroft Tower" the word
>"friendship" became too simple, even if they weren't technically
>romantically involved). That this becomes the... the
>justification for this makes them taking the next step feel
>rushed, cheap, contrived, and a betrayal of the natural, organic way
>their relationship had developed until then. To even imply
>that because they don't call each other by a particular label
>(boyfriend and girlfriend, or lover, or whatever), and because they're
>not having sex, that they could therefore be driven apart by someone
>like Akio -- who is, I suppose, a reasonably complex and competent
>villain by UF standards, but that's not saying much at all -- is
>insulting to the readers, to the characters, and, I'm sorry to say, is
>rather a disappointment in the Symphony and in Gryph's writing skills,
>because I know it can be better than this, because it
>has. As I said above, that relationship stands at the emotional
>core of the Symphony, and for it to reach its consummation at any
>point other than marking the end of the Symphony cycle/subseries... it
>feels dramatically very, very wrong.

This is part of why I felt voting in a poll wasn't quite complex enough for what I needed to express. The fact is, it did feel contrived, just a little. Not as much as you're making it out to be, though, and for a different reason entirely. Much like the incest thing, which I commented on in another Annotations thread, it feels out there not because it exists but because it happened more than once. I think the Kate/Juri/Miki grouping felt more realistic of the two, but like Juri pointed out at some point (and Kate later echoed, if only in jest), relationships like that don't really happen RL because finding three people capable of handling it -and- compatible with each other is nigh impossible. Sure, they had their parents' web of such people around to draw inspiration from, but that made a lot more sense given the centuries they've had to settle into that situation. But all of that pales before one simple fact.

None of this affected my enjoyment of the story.

As Pasha pointed out, this is NOT fucking War and Peace. You can't go into it expecting RL relationships, any more than you can expect RL mech battles or RL spellcasting. (Boy, wouldn't THAT be nice. But I digress.) This is prose told specifically in anime style, a manga with just text. Anime, by its very nature, requires a measure of suspension of disbelief, and I went in knowing full well what I expected out of such a story and what I didn't. Did I think the threesomes were a bit silly? Well, yes. But not very much so, truth be told--I was more bothered by the notion that humanlike people spontaneously existed on many planets at the same time rather than being spread intentionally, because only the latter challenged my suspension of disbelief.

As for the villain bit, what the hell are you smoking? Competent villains are next to IMPOSSIBLE to get correctly, and yet Gryphon has managed to do so several times. The key is to create a tense situation, where the heroes can win despite a great plan almost knocking them for a loop...instead of winning because their opponent is a dork. The Amar battle was moderately successful, the Night to Remember and the Qo'Nos (sp?) exceedingly so. Not every battle was perfect, true, but when a villain has a good plan, it's too easy to either let the heroes win too easily (or not interestingly enough; Excessive Force was a once-read for me not because I hated it but because the villain was uninteresting; I prefer intelligence and machination) or even worse, let the villains win. I was disappointed when the Valiant was hijacked, because I thought they'd won, and I should have had more faith, you know? I knew Gryphon hates movies where the bad guys win as much as I do.

I admit, some stories were not as successful in this regard. Akio, in particular, has been considerably less successful than I would have expected, though he's characterized perfectly...and I strongly suspect the Order of the Black Rose will fix that opinion most thoroughly. We've been seeing his secret hand in things for some time, after all, with villains disappearing after defeats.

My high point for great villains (outside UF) could have been Magneto, if I didn't get so irritated at people who insist on wearing underwear outside their pants. (I forever love Wolverine for switching to jeans, like, y'know, a normal person.) Instead, it's Grand Admiral Thrawn. Someone tell George Lucas to make the next three movies off Zahn's books and leave screenwriting to someone else, please.

"They say one should not speak unkindly of the dead, so I say, 'nice try'." --Lezard

Now, it didn't take me long to figure out Utena/Corwin relationship. What annoyed me was it took them long enough to figure it out for themselves. Both have strong codes of honor they live by, and neither one wanted to hurt Anthy. Of course, Anthy, instead of giving each one of them a desperatrely needed slap alongside the head, chose her own method of resolving the situation.....

IaVL is not, as Laudre implied, a simple result of Akio's attempt to drive a wedge into the relationship. Anthy knew that sooner or later, something was going to have to be done about this 'all but in name' romance. Neither Corwin nor Utena were going to take that last step without a big push from somebody. Anthy, by herself, couldn't have moved them, so she need to appeal to something else -- their honor. Akio's bluster, no matter how weak, was the thing she needed.

By appealing to their honor, she bypassed the walls they put up around their hearts, counting on them to take down the walls themselves. Utena and Corwin were already in love, and had already be willing to sacrifice for the sake of the other. All they neded was an excuse....

(I can't believe I just wrote that....)

Craig

Neither can I. Not becaue they only needed an excuse, but because this was about Corwin and Utena in full out noble mode. You need more than an excuse to budge either of them... I'd argue something more along the lines of a Tac Nuc.... Or a witch named Anthy.

It's not that hard. It's damned rare, but I wouldn't call it nigh-impossible. Relationships like that _do_ happen; my wife and I were _in_ two of them (neither worked out, but that wasn't a surprise; it's not like the first person you date is generally the love of your life, either, and neither is something I particularly regret).

Hell, it's more realistic than Corwin falling in love at first sight! I'd like it believe it happens, but I've never seen any basis to do so; even when Vel and I write something like that, there's a magical reason for it.

For the record, I was betting that it would turn out that way (though I hadn't expected to take that long; Anthy (and Gryphon) have more patience than I do) from the moment Anthy told Corwin she didn't want him to desert Utena.

Anthy learned patience and endurance during the Lost Tournament. She doesn't have those qualities in spades; she has the whole deck, plus a tarot deck's worth.

I'd even go so far as to say she had taken it to a flaw by the time she met Utena.

Judging by Gryphon's comments here, I'd say he was following Anthy's lead.

Peter Eng
--
The best stories seem to be the ones where the characters make a plan, and the author is left saying, "Wait, what?" before realizing they're right.

Back in the 1990's, I was good friends with a gentleman who was in just such a relationship with two fine ladies. I don't know if they're still together, but they had been for many years when I first met them.

-Joe-

And you'll note that some of these are truly exceptional people, with a habit and history of doing the nigh-impossible.

Heck, if you just can't suspend belief (and I find it a bit boggling that one could swallow all of UF yet strain at this gnat), imagine that one of the subtler changes made when the universe was rewritten in 1991 was to make polygamous relationships, along with various subatomic particles, more stable. ;)

And I think that Gryphon is building up to revealing a villain, or set of villains, that will make those we've seen before look like kindergarten bullies, which we'll only see the full enormity of in the post-FI era.

-Joe-

Might I suggest then that you stick to pointing out things that you yourself think or feel or have observed, and leave your 'friends' out of it?

Might I further suggest that you leave the snide comments out, or, failing that, show some balls and defend your stance rather than simply throwing the comment out as an irritant? (See, right here, I initially had the phrase 'which no doubt was your intent' included, but that would be being snide, and so I felt it was better to leave it out, in the interest of being adult.)

(Oh, wait.)

Fuck it. Y'know, my initial reaction to this was, Wow, Gryph's flying off the handle awfully quick here. And I even started typing a post to that effect -- something like "Hey, Gryph, yeah, I can see how you'd take this wrong and all, but cut the guy some slack, he's just calling it as he sees it." And then I went back and re-read your post.

And again, just to make sure.

And y'know what? You may have a point about the Symphony, but if so, I fail to see it. It's superseded by the fact that you're trying to push a button. Maybe you don't know any better, maybe that's just your way of communicating, but if so, you need to fix it.

--sofaspud
--

No.

More detail? I would argue that Corwin and Utena fucking is both a consequence of their accepting that they can have the romantic relationship they've both wanted and a mechanism where Anthy can push that acceptance onto them. It's hard to lie to yourself that you are "everything but" when you are in the process of executing on the "but". And saying to a loved one that you want them to go out and have a good time and make love to another is a very strong statement, strong enough that Corwin and Utena have to pay attention.

Sex is emotionally a very strong action for most humans, and Corwin, Anthy and Utena are no exceptions.

This may have nothing to do with Gryph's perspective on it. But that's usually a sign of good writing if others can see depths that the author didn't consciously put there. This is because of baggage the reader brings with him...and I wonder what your baggage is.

Yes.

You get it.

It's not that Tab A->Slot B is so important in and of itself; it's that, more than almost any other action in the human playbook, it removes ambiguity.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

1) When Corwin and Utena promised each other to be "everything but", they set up that ambiguity at the core of their relationship. That, in the long run, is fundamentally unworkable for just about any relationship as emotionally intense and romantic as theirs. (Didn't I say this somewhere else already? It's hard to keep track of one's previous posts in one's mind at 5 am.) Even more importantly, if that ambiguity is allowed to continue, it could start to come between them and not merely cause friction between them, but interfere with their duties as Prince and Pillar - which is the very last thing Cephiro needs, so soon after the end of the Lost Tournament. Anthy groks this.

2) Corwin's problem is that he, in fact, is too close to the problem. Because, I think, he's gotten so used to the idea that he and Utena can never really be together because of the way the rules governing relationships among the Trinity are traditionally set up, he hasn't really grasped that the fact that he changed all the rules about how the Pillar interacts with Cephiro and forever removed the need for the Pillar to be locked into praying for the Tenth World every minute of every day for the rest of his life carries the corollary that the rules governing the relationships between himself and the other two members of the Trinity have also changed as a consequence of his actions.

-Joe-

Anthy doesn't even need to grok it. We have an example of what happens when members of the trinity stand around with unresolved sexual tension between them. Zagato and Emeraude's shades were probably breathing sighs of relief after this was settled so convincingly.

Peter Eng
--
I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."

I'll agree with this, but not for the reason you cite.

Corwin loves Utena, and he knows that she's going to be happy with Anthy. In his mind, there's no way he could interfere with that relationship. If he did, he would destroy one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen, and possibly ever will see. More than that, he'd be hurting Utena and Anthy by separating them.

Sure, his father can juggle Grand-Dad knows how many women and not drop them, but Corwin doesn't think that he's up to that challenge. (I'm pretty sure he says exactly that somewhere in the first two Symphonies.) And until he met Anthy, and spent however a few years of Saturdays not-really-dating her, I don't think he could have done that.

Actually, Corwin's position is similar to Honor Harrington's, if you're up to date on that series. Honor's problem is more connected with exterior influence, but she has that same sense of not wanting to be the interloper, no matter what it costs her personally.

Peter Eng
--
I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."

To chime in with my 2p on the general issue, I have some problems with Symphony 4, mainly the way certain characters are handled - but these characters are not Utena, Corwin and Anthy (I didn't have any particular problems with that plotline at all). Indeed, I think a lot of my issues with the later Symphony works stem from the fact that the cast had got very large and therefore there just wasn't the same depth of detail on any one particular character most of the time. Also, the shift forward in time meant the atmosphere and the world the characters inhabited were not the same as the earlier Symphonies.

Gryphon has a bad habit of letting his characters get away from him. It happened in NXE and SoS, and probably some other places too - he may have had a rough idea of where things were going, but the characters had other plans, and the story wound up someplace unexpected. Most of the time it works out pretty well anyway. Occasionally they manage to paint themselves into a corner.

That's what Utena, Anthy and Corwin did here. Their relationship was a complicated snarl that needed sorting out somehow. Sure, it was a bit of a contrived solution to the problem, but so what? I don't think there was going to be a "good" solution here, because a romance-type plot line of some kind was called for, SoS isn't really into the whole romance theme, and I don't think Gryphon's really had much practice at writing that type of story anyway.

It doesn't matter that it's not the best part of the series, or the most inspiring thing that Gryphon's ever written. It got the job done, and let him get back to the sort of stuff he does best. It might not be amazing, but I'd call it, at the very least, "adequate". I'm no literary critic, but my reaction to it as the end of SoS4 was basically: "yeah, that'll do... now what next?".

In a way, Anthy's attitude in 'For Today' reflects this, being basically: "get this crap out of the way so we can get on with our lives". Despite all its immediate significance to the characters, the act wasn't the important part. The important bit was the "get on with our lives" part.

Do I have a point here? If anything, it's this: this may not be one of the Symphony's high points, but it's not really a low point either (except possibly by comparison to the rest of it, because I'm having a hard time thinking of a low point right now). And ultimately, it just isn't worth fretting over. This plot line was *necessary*, but the important thing is not the manner in which it happened, just that it *did* happen.

For my money, characters good enough to be worth writing about almost demand at least some control over their destinies. Denying them that only makes whatever the planned plotline is feel forced, to the writer if not the readers.

Also, I honestly didn't have a problem with the resolution to the Trinity love triangle. I admit one of my reactions on reading For Today was "It took you long enough!" but beyond that no. Honestly, saying that Anthy's motivation was simply 'let's get this crap over with' oversimplifies, if not cheapens it as well. It had to be downright painful to see the two most important people in her world hurting themselves and each other over her feelings. She said as much. Given some of the other working though unconventional couples around and Anthy's growing attachment to Corwin in her own right, the solution was pretty obvious.

So in short, in my opinion it did indeed work, because it fit the characters and was the logical culmination of that particular plot arc.

--------
We pray for mercy because we would be fools to pray for justice.

You say that as if there's some other way to do these things, which, frankly, I don't buy.

>That's what Utena, Anthy and Corwin did here. Their relationship was a
>complicated snarl that needed sorting out somehow. Sure, it was a bit
>of a contrived solution to the problem, but so what? I don't think
>there was going to be a "good" solution here

Ironically, if you were right and this was essentially just me flailing spasmodically to get out of a hole? It probably would've ended up being more elegant.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

I have that track on my current driving playlist. Which is, like, ten songs, so it's in high rotation. =)

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu