Subject: [FFML] Re: [Ranma 1/2] [angst/dark/squicky] Descent Chapter 4 + Epilogue
From: Angus MacSpon
Date: 1/21/2007, 4:24 PM
To: "Brian Randall" <durandall@gmail.com>
CC: Innocent Bystanders <ffml@anifics.com>

I have slightly mixed feelings about this story.

On the whole, I liked it a lot.  (I am pre-disposed to like Ranma/ 
Ukyou match-ups, especially when they're credible ones, as opposed to  
the ever-popular FanFiction.net favourite Akane-is-a-psycho-bitch- 
killer storylines.  And hey, I even hope to see more of "The Unbroken  
Circle" someday ... though I kind of doubt that's gonna happen.   
Heh.  But anyway.)

But there were elements of "Descent" that didn't work for me.  Two  
that didn't work at all, and one that just felt too easy.

The first of these was chapter 1.  Pretty much the whole chapter.

Not because of the content, per se, but because of the way it de- 
focuses the story.  You are telling a short story here -- only 26500  
words total -- and one of the cardinal rules in a short story is that  
you need to concentrate on the main story; you simply cannot afford  
to spend a lot of time on side plots.

In this case, the question of Shampoo may be of interest -- but once  
it's dealt with, it vanishes from the story and becomes irrelevant.   
"Show, don't tell" is an important principle of story-telling, but  
there are times when it works against you.  Can you really afford to  
spend 5000 words -- a fifth of the total! -- on a sub-plot that  
doesn't actually have any bearing on your main story?  Instead you  
could spend a few hundred words on telling us how the problem was  
dealt with -- perhaps having the topic emerge in discussions between  
Ranma and Nabiki -- and then move on, without having basically  
distracted the reader for a whole chapter.

The second point that didn't work for me was when Ranma follows Genma  
"home" to find he has a second family -- or, at least, a daughter  
than Ranma didn't know about.  It's harder for me to analyse what it  
was that I didn't like about this -- perhaps it's that I've come to  
dislike the blatant Genma-bashing stories that I tend to overreact  
when I see anything that even looks like that.  But this story isn't  
blatant Genma-bashing; it's a good deal more subtle than that  
(unsurprisingly, coming from you).  In the end, all I can really say  
is that when I first read that scene, it left me feeling, "Where the  
hell did *that* come from?"  On re-reading it, it still comes across  
that way.  So it could be just me, rather than a story flaw.  I don't  
know.

The third point, the one that felt a little too easy, was the  
revelation that Genma was eta.  During the revelation scene, when  
Nodoka bursts out, "You swore a contract on your life that no one  
would find out!" I thought, "Oh, wow.  So *Nodoka* is the burakumin!   
That's different.  And I can *totally* see that."  Only it turned out  
that she wasn't, and Genma was after all, and I felt a little  
disappointed.  That's all.  :)

Incidentally, I note the following from Wikipedia (not necessarily  
the most reliable of sources):
-- Anti-burakumin prejudice, while perhaps persisting in older  
generations, is nowadays virtually a thing of the past.
-- In any case, in modern times it tended to be centred in the Kansai  
region, being virtually unknown in other areas of Japan (including,  
by implication, Tokyo).  Ironically this suggests that Ukyou might be  
more likely to be prejudiced than the Tendos.
-- The background investigation that Kasumi and Soun had done, to  
check for burakumin ancestry, is explicitly illegal.

Um.  Anyway.  I seem to be mouthing off a lot, and you might be  
getting the impression that I hated the story.  I didn't.  I enjoyed  
it quite a bit.  Your writing is as strong as ever, and I'm  
definitely always glad to see more of it.  But ... well, for better  
or for worse, this is what I thought.

Cheers,
Angus

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Angus MacSpon                                  Email: macspon@ihug.co.nz
ICQ: 65719513                          http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/




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