What I ended up doing (in lieu of going back to sleep) was going back and reacquainting myself with the bits immediately before the point that made half a dozen people /ragequit, to refresh my memory of why the dénouement of Symphony No. 4 played out that way. It wasn't as straightforward as those people thought it was. It's been long enough now that I sometimes drift toward losing sight of that fact myself, at which point their arguments start looking like they had more weight.

In daylight, I find that I'm still a bit intrigued by the notion of how it would have played out if I'd done things differently, but not to the point where I want to revise the main continuity accordingly. Actually, that's not well-phrased. I didn't want to anyway. But there are times when I feel like I probably should, and that's kind of scary given what a giant (and probably unpopular) job it would be.

Also, and related only tangentially, in rereading Vortigern's 2 I ran across a passage that I have to try and keep in mind, in a slightly different context, as I work on S5DS05:

        It was the kind of stuff they used to do before, and it came
as something of a relief that they could still do it, still enjoy it,
just as much now as before the universe changed.  It reassured them
that they were still who they were, that they were still important to
each other in the same ways as before.
        They'd awakened with an odd, unspoken concern that the new
dimension to their relationship would eclipse the rest of it, and were
greatly relieved to learn that it hadn't.  Everything balanced.  They
were who they'd always been, just now without the occasional awkward
moments, withdrawn hands, and quiet pains.
        They were, in short, -more-, not less, than they'd been
before.

I probably wouldn't have refreshed that neural trace today if I hadn't had my black dog last night, so hey, every cloud and all that.

--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.