On Mon, 2 Sep 1996, Ken Arromdee wrote:

Okay, someone critique this.  I worked up this rough draft in a couple of
hours after saying forever that I was _going_ to write a Ranma/Futaba cross-
over.  I know that it needs a lot of polishing.  (Particularly in the
mechanics.  For instance, _how_ should I handle thoughts?  Putting them in
quotes all the time doesn't always work, as readers read the whole sentence
before realizing it wasn't said aloud, but _not_ putting them in quotes has
other problems.)  The story is also a little too short for my taste, but I'm
a bit at a loss as to how to lengthen it and still end it where I did.

I'd recommend using maybe ' or <> or {} if you want to deliberately 
distinguish thoughts.

 

That Ranma and Futaba aren't really used is deliberate.  I couldn't think of
much to have them do together--sure, they could talk about gender changing,
but what _else_?

Get engeged of course :)
 

Ranma fanfic gets several times as much critiquing as anything else--the only
person who critiqued Sailor Moon Future most of the time was Bailesu--and I'm
sort of wondering whether the presence of Ranma characters will get lots of
critiques, or the presence of non-Ranma characters will scare them all away.

Hehe :)

    "Ah, just seeing how you'd respond."  Yeah, right.  She let herself be
convinced to sit down, and they finished the dinner--no use leaving someone
with the bill if they're paying anyway--but Nabiki wasn't very interested in
having him walk her home, though she did allow a goodnight kiss.

I think Nabiki might go at that point to full exploitation mode and see 
how much she could gouge out of this jerk without getting in too much 
trouble.

    "Hey, I heard that!"  Ranma's loud voice could be heard from inside the
dojo.  Ryouga, taking advantage of the sudden distraction, punched him through
the entrance and nearly in front of Nabiki.  She stepped over him and went to

I assume you mean he landed nearly in front of Nabiki?  The sentence is 
currently somewhat unclear.

    She nodded.  "Sure."  Whether or not she really wanted to give him another
chance, having people buy the soda was good for business.  She absent-mindedly
sipped the soda that Futana gave her.  Odd taste for Pepsi, thought Nabiki.
She squinted at the cup, doing a double take...  this wasn't one of hers.

She only sells Pepsi? :)  Getting kickbacks, eh? :)

"Have you got a license?"  The girl turned.  A license for the company
associated with one Shuusendou Negiri was glued to the front of her hot dog
box.  Nabiki next looked among Negiri's girls to see if any of them owed her
money...  nope, they were all from Komatane.  Negiri suddenly began trying
to cry.  "Stop bullying me, sempai!  Here you are, an older student who should
be helping people like me and all you do is complain about my business!"  As
if by magic, several members of the Komatane women's volleyball team appeared
and glared at Nabiki.  Nabiki gave up and returned to her seat, but decided to
have a talk with Negiri later.

Heh :)
 

engaged."  She got a sudden instinctive flash of something _very_ wrong about
Futana.

Why?  Lots of guys ogle girls.

    Ranma and Ryouga were squaring off below, just outside the bleachers,
ready to fight over for one of the reasons they usually did.  Nabiki pointed

ready to fight for one of the usual reasons.

    "Yes, Nabiki-sempai."
    They bowed, exchanged business cards, and went to the new restaurant,
"Iowa New Style Pizza".

Iowa?
 

    "That's the least of the problems that my family has.  My sister who can't
cook is engaged at the age of 16 to a hotshot martial artist who changes into
a girl half the time, and is chased by three other girls, one of whom he's
already engaged to."

Would Nabiki really tell someone about Ranma's curse right off the bat?  
That's potentially valuable information...outside his school.

The sex-changing characters in the series, when changed, give off (at least
some of the time) pheromones which attract the opposite sex.  For Futaba, it
happens once every 28 days (when he also has other problems); it's not clear
exactly when this happens for the females-turned-male, and I've just assumed
it's a constant low level.

Eep.
 
Looks pretty good to me.  A low-key start, but then Nabiki and Negiri 
aren't wacked out like much of the cast of their respective series :)


John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu      bailesu@komodo.hacks.arizona.edu  
http://www.hacks.arizona.edu/~bailesu/falcon.html 
http://www.dhp.com/~wraven/john/index.html
"It's good to kill the King."  "I still think the Saxons should have 
put a higher price on our heads.  I'm more valuable than 25 librum."
--Frequent quotes from our PENDRAGON sessions.