On Fri, 24 Jan 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:
: Let me know what ya think, especially about the Nouma/Khu Lon scenes,
: and the whole kryptonite discussion.
<piku, piku> What kryptonite discussion?
: Magic
:
: Part 3 - Arrivals and Departures
: Khu Lon looked at him darkly. "I would not try it, Tendo Nouma. I am the
: finest of the Amazon warriors. I can defeat you easily."
:
: Nouma thought about how to respond. Her mother, too, had been among the
: best of the Amazons, yet Father had beaten her easily. Nouma wasn't as
: good as his father, but the difference between them wasn't *that* great.
: Nouma had fought in several tournaments at his father's urging, and had
: beaten all of the combatants easily - indeed, Nouma had rather felt like
: an adult beating up on a room full of children. Nouma had gained enough
: confidence from those experiences and from his father's appraisals of his
: martial arts ability to believe that he could defeat Khu Lon just as
: easily as Father had defeated Shampoo.
As I thought, this scene has changed significantly through the
elimination of Nouma's olympic success. Before, both of them had
at least a small factual basis for their assumptions. Khu Lon had
seen Nouma fight, and Nouma knew that she had never seen him use
his full potential. As it stands now, both characters come over
as arrogant, overconfident and conceited.
I still think that instead of eradicating the olympics completely
you should have replaced them with a tournament that is
world-class but mostly unknown among non-martial-artists. It
would have accomplished necessary plot development without grating
on the readers' nerves as *yet another* accolade for Nouma.
: Nouma grimaced; he was losing ground here. She was becoming angrier, now
: that all of her suspicions had been confirmed. Nevertheless, he tried to
: see it through. "To paraphrase the esteemed Mr. Holmes, when you eliminate
: the highly probable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the
: truth.
I *still* don't get this. Why would you want to discard the
highly probable in favour of the improbable? What is the
relevance of this paraphrase to Nouma's argument for considering
magic?
Sebastian