As several people wrote several of the same questions, I'll write
some general answers here, before thanking people and answering
individual comments by private mail.
The title "To Tell a Hawk From a Handsaw" was a reference to
Hamlet's one speech with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where Hamlet
hints that his madness is not real, or at least is not quite as people
think it is.
Hamlet: ... But my uncle-father
and aunt-mother are deceiv'd.
Guildenstern: In what, my dear lord?
Hamlet: I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly
I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2. (Project Gutenberg)
The biggest problem from this story is that it is going in too many
directions at once, or rather that I didn't/don't know which direction
I wanted to take it. The prologue or apology piece at the start was
written first, the dialogue later in pieces.
The prologue is where I intended the story to go. The dialogue wrote
itself while I was having fun. While I expect that what Ranma does and
what he intended to do are two different things, they shouldn't be
THIS different.
On re-reading my story it becomes obvious that I should have put more
time between writing, and re-reading Hamlet. The first part reads too
much like a soliloquy.
I intended Ranma's denial and search for parents to be seen as
madness, and for the cast to assume he snapped over his
mother. Similarly to the way that Polonius assumes that Hamlet is
distraught over Ophelia. The madness I'm hoping for is one where the
listener can see the logical progression afterwards, but the
conversation veers off in directions it would never go in a sane
individual.
The language Ranma uses is too different from cannon. I'm going to try
to coarsen it up, while still leaving what I hope is wit. I'm not
trying to drop Hamlet into Ranma's head. I haven't decided if Ranma
has read Hamlet, and whether he will draw from it intentionally and
unintentionally.
I fully intend for Ranma to try to out-Kuno Tatewaki, with Kuno's
megalomania as real, and Ranma's an act. There are too many
possibilities on how to play the other Kunos, I'll have to pick one.
I expect Kasumi and Nabiki to be the most affected from Ranma's
barbs. They're the characters that hopefully will grow from this. I
can't decide if the fathers are the Poloniae or the Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. In either case, they're comic-relief.
I have never gotten this much commentary on anything I've ever posted
before. I really appreciate it. I'm definitely going to continue this,
and hammer out a better story. I really appreciate your insights into
where the flaws of the story are. I couldn't see some of them from
standing too close to it.
Neil Reynolds