Revision Dilemma

So, just got the outside reader's report back from a journal in which I really want to publish. Their verdict? The first three sections -- brilliant!  The final section -- well, let's just say it ranged from "meh" to outright dislike. So they strongly recommended I cut it.

Thing is, I'm really attached to that final section, and I think it truly adds something substantive to my main argument. So now I"m pondering what to do. 

Options:
  1.  Say "Hell no!" and take my article elsewhere.
    1. This, of course, isn't  that viable an option. The article has been in circulation for almost four years due to various mishaps (none of them mine), and it's time to get things over with. Plus, I really do like the journal, Tolkien Studies, that's interested in it. After all, where else should a Tolkienist publish? And also! You can't discount the opinion of all four of their scholarly readers, including the editors, who were resolutely "meh" about the section on the chopping block.
  2. Say, grudgingly, "Yeah, I'll cut it, but maybe it can be reframed as an appendix to the main article?"
    1. This one, admittedly, seems a little desperate. . . . although I did use an appendix to good effect in my Mythlore article about Tolkien and his nomination of EM Forster for the 1954 Nobel prize. However, it's hard to describe my moment of eureka when I discovered the political / economic situation that surrounded the making of Peter Jackson's An Unexpected Journey, which directly concerns globalization, in an article about globalization. Frankly, I'm still a little surprised that so many different readers over the years have been unanimous about disliking that final section.
  3. Or, finally, just cut the damn thing, referring to that relevant political / economic situation only in a few lines (possibly the conclusion), and maybe publishing the excised section as a "note" somewhere else . . . Mythlore does those, I think, or maybe Journal of Tolkien Research or even Fafnir.
What to do, what to do. Of course, laying out my options like this kinda makes the decision obvious, but I'll have to do some more serious hand-wringing, methinks, before finally pulling the trigger.

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