I have finally finished my rewrite of the entire Thy Inward Love
series. I listened to everyone's excellent comments, changed a few
bits, and added others. The biggest changes were: more tea ceremony,
more "Akane is as much to blame as Ranma for all their problems", more
of Ranma's thoughts on getting married, and a small change in the plot
of Parts V-VII (the Shampoo trilogy) to make the attack on Akane seem
slightly more logical.
Rather than repost the entire series here, I have put it on my web
page. It can be accessed through:
http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/sterman/fanfic.htm
I'm still interested in any errors you find. If I don't hear from
anyone in a week, I'm going to send the whole bit to the remailer. I
hope to eventually post it to raac, if it ever gets back on its feet.
I also have a page of credits, people I wanted to single out for their
help with Thy Inward Love. It's available through the above web page,
but I wanted to post it here, too, to publicly thank all the individuals
who helped me so much with this series.
Many many people helped with the creation of this series. All of this
help came from people on the Fanfic Mailing List. They offered me many
fine comments, which I leaned heavily on in doing a rewrite of the whole
series.
My first thanks go to White Wolf, the creator of the FFML, for creating
such a wonderful forum for aspiring fanfic authors such as me. To prove
he's more than a systems administrator, he also helped me with the
ending to Part VII when I drew a complete blank on what the very last
line should be.
The rest of the credits are given in no particular order. I do single
out a few people, but everyone who responded gave me valuable feedback.
Kun-chan (Caroline Ann Seawright) offered many suggestions on my use of
Japanese, as well as comments on the plot and characterization. She also
provided me with very detailed instructions on how a tea ceremony is
conducted. I took some liberties with the tea ceremony described in Part
VIII, so blame me and not her for any errors. She also pointed out some
logical problems with the plot of Parts V-VII, which I addressed in the
rewrite.
Zen (James Bateman) pointed out my Akane bias; that is, I blamed Ranma
for all the problems he and Akane were having. I went back and added
many parts that showed Akane's culpability, thanks to Zen. He also
exlained to me the difference between "affect" and "effect" and pointed
out other grammatical errors. He was among those who pointed out the
problems with the plot in the Shampoo trilogy.
Don Wang provided detail analyses of each part. Among the things he
pointed out was that Shampoo was stronger than Akane (other people
commented on this as well). He has excellent knowledge of the fighting
abilities of all of the Ranma characters.
Sean Gaffney holds a special place in my heart as the best ego-booster
an author could hope for. After each episode, he would send me an
enthusiastic email saying how much he liked each bit, and highlighting
those scenes that he thought worked well.
Windlily (Shannon Richmeyer) also gave me good feedback, and pointed out
grammatical errors.
Other people who provided useful comments (in no particular order) are:
Ben L. Harrison, jeromef, JJchan (Julia Pfaffenberger), Julian Fong,
Misa-chan (Marisa Price), Mike of No Particular Handle or Title (Sorry,
couldn't resist, Mike W. Loader), PhoneyNT, Reid Carson, Ross McKenzie,
and Skywise.
Many other people wrote to simply say, "I liked it, good job." To all of
you, and to all those listed above, I say, thank you very much.
:)