Hello again!

Well, we're halfway there - here's hoping that I can get through all of 
these sometime this week. ^_^

mail coat from an injury he had recieved eons ago.

And from the get-go we have: recieved --> received

Grammar Rule #24: Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

Grammar Rule #63: I before E except after C or sounding like 'a' as in
'neighbor' and 'weigh'. Unless it's weird.

Wow. Two grammar rules with one word. Why do I suspect that this is not 
going to be one of my better recEIved chapters? ^_^

travelled to the town of Naniwa, called 'Osaka' by its more recent
inhabitants,

Incidentally, Mr. Hudson, can you clue me in on some of your research 
materials?

Well, I mostly use the Internet. There are a lot of very good sites out 
there with tourism and historical information, and a lot of them are even in 
English. I also keep my eyes open whenever I am in the library or bookstores 
for things about mythology or travel books. Probably the easiest place to go 
for information on Japanese city names is to go to individual sites for the 
cities in question. Even Wikipedia often has a historical section for each 
city where you can sometimes find its original name.

I also sometimes end up in "research chains" - looking into Osaka, for 
example, led me to researching into okonomiyaki, and that then led me into 
researching individual toppings. If you're writing a historical story set in 
Japan, I would also recommend visiting the SCA web sites - they may 
specialise in European armour, but there are a number of sites there that go 
into extreme detail about period Japanese clothing and armour as well, 
including proper sword ettiquette and extensive information about some of 
the board games, card games, and sports that were popular in that time 
period, too.

archer could be if properly enraged. The Prince of the Heavens had a very 
volatile temper, far worse than that of his earthly brother Endymion.

That's not really saying anything, since Endymion, AFAIK, doesn't even have 
a short and/or volatile temper.

Well, Endymion is a very steady fellow, but the real point here was to drop 
the clue about the Prince of the Heavens being his brother, not so much to 
focus on the fact he had a bad temper.

He had no choice but to hang on to the cursed
thing. It was all that could protect him.

But they might get out...

Hehehe. Nice catch-22.

Fei Lian's problem is that he has been so driven in his pursuit of The 
Archer that part of him refuses to accept that he might actually have won. 
It's a classic case of getting what he wished for and then realising that 
it's more than he had bargained.

"Okay." Ryo took a deep breath. "World. Danger. Big time. You.
Come. Bring sword. That simple enough for you?"

Hehehe.

Ryo is sometimes very direct in his dealings with people. I still remember 
the time he decided the fastest way to deal with Jun Yamano's crying was to 
slap him. Fans of the show had been itching to do that themselves for almost 
the whole season. ^_^

Sitting quietly between Usagi and Shuu sat Rei Hino, a young
Shinto priestess who would be very attractive if she didn't always look 
like she had just bitten into a lemon.

On the contrary, that makes her all the more attractive.

It's a matter of personal opinion, really. Ryo just doesn't find girls 
attractive when they look like they're already planning to kick his ass. ^_^

A squat, toad-like demon almost twice his size stared into his
face from a few inches away, and Touma's heart sank.

Touma: (thinking) So I'm fighting Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2? I guess 
it's okay. Just remember to _feed_ the thing vegetables just before it 
spews out its deadly, er, bubbles.

I'd make some crack about how Touma wouldn't be thinking about Mario Bros. 
right now, but considering he goes on to call this beast "Princess 
Toadstool" in a few paragraphs.... ^_^

Touma scowled at the ideas worming their way into his head again
and slowly began to pry his captured foot out of its sneaker. The shoe 
came off with a barely audible pop,

Not so sure, but I still suggest: barely-audible (compound descriptors must 
be
hyphenated, though I'm not so sure about hyphenating an adverb and an 
adjective together...)

I'm almost certain that adverbs and adjectives don't need to get hyphenated 
when you combine them. Considering that adverbs basically exist for the sole 
purpose of qualifying a descriptor, it doesn't seem right.

I mean, you can have a "slightly messy" room without needing to say it was a 
"slightly-messy" room, right?

"To charge ahead without acknowledging mistakes is rash. To dwell
on them when nothing can be done is madness.

Touma: Then what the hell did you tell me my mistakes for in the first 
place?!

Well, like Toshi said, charging ahead without realising he had made any 
mistakes was only going to mess him up. If he had been thinking more 
clearly, he could have already found an easier way of solving his problem. 
By pointing out that he had already managed to screw up one thing, he's 
hoping that it will get Touma to slow down and start thinking twice before 
he jumps headfirst into trouble.

"The future is unavoidable, and the past... cannot be changed. Regret is 
the constant companion of all men, Touma.

The Shutendoji in your fic reminds me of...

The Sphinx (Mystery Men): We are number one. All others are number two or 
lower.

Toshitada's mentor Kaos had a habit of talking in very vague and enigmatic 
terms. Toshi does the same, but he is more likely to be insulting or mean 
while doing it. The funny thing about him is that even though he has 
reformed from being evil, he still doesn't particularly like the Samurai 
Troopers very much. :p

of her hopes had gushed through the

realm of Elysion like a tide of raw sewage.

Ew. Talk about your mixed metaphors!

Yeah, but Xiang Yao's hopes and dreams are a bit on the distasteful side.

She had said that they were best friends. If he let one of the

She says that to most everyone she meets! She's worse than her mother!

And yet it almost always works. Between the two of them, those girls have 
managed to befriend a dizzying array of very dangerous people. ^_^

Hotaru: D-Demo...!

Case in point. :p

With a sick ratcheting noise, two massive curved blades spang shut on

spang --> sprang

....But I still don't think 'sprang' is an apt verb to coincide with 
'shut'.

Actually, traps spring shut all the time. According to the dictionary I 
checked, they actually used "the door sprang shut" as their example of the 
word in use. It just means to move suddenly, as if on a spring.

either side of his neck, clasping around his throat like a crab's
pincers. The fair-haired priest of Elysion choked as his captor tightened
the mancatcher's

Suggest: men-catcher's

"mancatcher" is the legitimate name for this type of weapon, and so it 
should probably not be hyphenated. It works sort of like a bear trap on the 
end of a stick - you poke the guy, and the jaws snap shut on him. Shin's 
trident also functions as a mancatcher: the center tine can retract into the 
pole and cause the outer blades to close around his victim like a pair of 
pincers.

>from head to toe in a suit of crimson and ebony armour. The chitinous

Hmmm. And what does 'chitinous' mean, dear author?

Chitin is a naturally tough substance that is found in human fingernails, 
beetle carapaces, and the shells of creatures like lobsters and crabs. 
Something that is "chitinous" is hard and resistant to damage, but also 
tends to be porous and organic-looking - it looks like a polished shell, not 
like a plate of metal.

perfectly normal human staring back at him. That was when he noticed the 
eyes. They were the dead, unfeeling eyes of a oncoming shark.

Like a doll's eyes, they were?

Quint: "Thirty supporting characters went into the water, five supporting 
characters came out of the water, and Nise Suiko got the rest.... You won't 
catch me wearing no red shirts, no sir."

The
name's Nise Suiko, by the way. Just in case you wanted to know who's 
putting you in the cage."

Nise Suiko's becoming the resident badass of the whole regiment.

He really is. Nise Suiko is probably one of the most powerful minions 
working for Radanthus... in as much as anyone can really pretend that he 
works for anybody. Nise Suiko is about on par with Jadeite, which does place 
him head and shoulders above pretty much any common youma he crosses paths 
with.

"Uh-oh," Nise Suiko said, and fourteen hundred pounds of angry
winged horse slammed into him horn-first.

Wow. Nice one. Very good, that idea from Elios.

He's not an especially good warrior, but the ability to turn into a very 
large and very heavy horse does give him a bit of a tactical edge.

If you had a brain in your
head, you'd call it a day and get out of here while I'm still feeling
generous. Keep this crap up, and somebody's going to mistake you for an 
actual hero and turn you into pulp. Probably me. Get it?"

Hmmm. I like this mini-plot point. I like it a lot. It fleshes out quite a 
bit of both Nise Suiko's and Elios's respective character quirks.

Thanks! A lot of people were assuming that Elios was pretty much done for 
the second these two started fighting, but Nise Suiko is a bit more 
complicated than he sometimes appears. ^_^

"I think I vaguely recall feeling that," the monk admitted after
a brief pause, "but only once. And it was a very long time ago."

Huh. Your Full Metal ANGST! in last chapter leads me to believe otherwise.

Inside his head, he can bitch all he wants. He'll never admit to it out 
loud, though. ^_^

"The Sailor Senshi are in danger, Petz.

(applauds) Yes. Finally. _Someone_ who knows the unsaid 'Japanese words 
should not be pluralized American-style because they're Japanese words' 
rule!

*nods sagely* Remember kids: the plural of "ninja" is "ninja", and the 
plural of "samurai" is "samurai". Let's not go sticking an extra "s" where 
it doesn't belong.... :p

"It certainly is nice to be back in Tokyo again," the only other
male in the group said with a debonair smile. "Don't you think so, Ann?"

HA! Of course. 'Bout time those filler episode characters served a higher
purpose than being footnote mentions on the characters page of a 
long-forgotten Geocities Sailor Moon fan site.

I always liked Ail and Ann, myself. The poor dears do suffer terribly for 
not being seen as "real" villains, though. I guess they weren't quite angsty 
enough to spark most people's imaginations. Then again, they also suffer 
from being wedged between the Dark Kingdom and the Black Moon Family - if 
anyone was going to get overlooked, it was going to be them.

She had a suspicious feeling that whoever they
were up against, she was going to be very happy that she was on this team 
and not theirs.

As J.R. would say, "Business has just picked up."

^_^

To think, your fic was already doing quite well without so many 
characters...
Then again, you do have a penchant in making optimum use of your fic's 
resources. If more characters would lead to a better story, then I'll keep 
my eyes peeled.

Thanks - I really do need all of these characters in order to get everything 
done, but it will take me a little while to get there. I appreciate the 
benefit of the doubt: hopefully I haven't let you down yet.

Like

why I'm the headmaster of a crater, for one thing. That always seemed odd,
because I don't remember BUYING a crater..."

LOL. Long live Mugen Academy.

Well, it seems like it's a little too late for Mugen Academy to have much 
hope of living long. You know, what with the smoking crater and all. ^_^

The baby he was holding gurgled, and Professor Tomoe bounced her
gently on his knee as he smiled over at his red-headed scretary.

I'm not sure exactly what good a
geneticist will be to your cause, but..."

A good geneticist can help in a lot of ways, but most of his help may 
unfortunately come from him sinning against nature, though.

Well... maybe a little. Mostly Elios wants the Doc on his side because he 
knows that Tomoe is a super-genius, and he is a little worried about how 
exactly they are going to get that puzzle box OPEN once they have it in 
their hot little hands. ^_^

He just hoped that his enemies hadn't come up with the same plan.

See: Jadeite.

A very good example, that. In the next chapter the Doom and Gloom Girls and 
Oniwabandanna pop up again, too. If fighting over the fate of the world 
doesn't work out, at least they can all get together and have one heck of a 
retro dance party. ^_^

The spells were almost childishly simple for him to undo, now that

Beryl: (raises an eyebrow)

Badamon does not lack self-confidence - he is firmly convinced that he is 
the greatest wizard who has ever... well, *lived* isn't really a good word 
for what he's doing....

The
youma stiffened, coruscating black energy swirling in and out of his body 
like a snake chasing through the warrens of a timid little mouse.

Just another victim.

Jadeite: "Beat me if you can... survive if I let you!" ^_^

There sure are a lot of mournful wails in this fic.

Yeah. What's up with that?

Regardless of how his meeting with this Radanthus fool turned
out, Jadeite already knew exactly what he was going to do. He wouldn't 
rush, oh no:

(palms face with free hand) Jeez, he _never_ really changed after all that 
time in suspended animation, yes?

He was in suspended animation, after all. Not exactly like he had much of a 
chance to learn and grow as a person while he was in stasis. ^_^

Plenty of time to get bitter and angry, though.

He had no intention of just killing the Sailor Senshi. That would
only leave him unfulfilled and depressed. No, he was going to do something 
far better.

He was going to HURT them.

Iiiiiinteresting. ^_^

Glad you had fun going through this one. I see my batting average decreased 
again - maybe it's just the even numbered chapters I have trouble with. :p

Anyway, thanks again for writing! As always I appreciate it. I'll be using 
most of the suggestions you made, except for the few places where our 
differences in vocabulary caused some confusion. I'll keep chugging away at 
these, and hopefully we'll both be done our backlogs soon! ^_^

Later!

-Morgan Hudson

_________________________________________________________________
Try the next generation of search with Windows Live Search today!  
http://imagine-windowslive.com/minisites/searchlaunch/?locale=en-us&source=hmtagline


             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'