On Mon, 11 Aug 1997 13:31:21 -0500, Richard Lawson
<RLawson@ci.plymouth.mn.us> wrote:

On Monday, August 11, 1997 9:08 AM, KLEPPE@execpc.com wrote:

Please C&C! At least let me know that you've read this, and what
your reaction was. 

Ah, the usual begging for C&C.  I, too, haven't gotten tons of C&C on my
stuff, so I know what it's like.

Yeah, it's a drug to which many of us are addicted, I suppose.

 Still, shouldn't complain if I don't
do it myself.  Besides, as immersed as I am in Kodachi right now, it
might be fun to read other views.

As you can see, we took very different approaches. Though I enjoyed
reading your stories of Kodachi being reformed, I don't think I'd want
to do something like that myself. To me she's cool as is. :)

My C&C style is to read the story and provide comments as they occur.

Cool.

	"What of father?"

"Father"

Will correct.

	Some instinct took control of Tatewaki. He charged with his
bokken, swinging it at his sister.

Instinct?  Instinct drives him to attack his sister?  I think a better
word would be "impulse".

Yeah, that does sound closer to what I meant here.

instantly behind her brother. She gave an insane laugh as she paused to

"gave an insane laugh" sounds awkward.  I'd suggest something along the
lines of, "Her insane laugh echoed through the yard as she paused..."

I'll think about this.

	Kodachi smiled as her brother led the way off the estate. 

This shift in perspective is a little jarring.  My advice would be to
try and keep the perspective within one person during each scene.

I'll see what I can do.

	But it was not merely a matter of physical travel. Some called
Kuno Kodachi insane, but the truth was that she simply thought in
different ways than the Flatlanders, whose thinking was confined to
narrow, predicatble paths.

Nice.  Kodachi certainly *would* think like this.

Thanks.

Oh, and it's "predictable"

D'Oh! Must remember to spell-check before posting.

	"Excuse me?!?"

I don't like multiple punctuation marks.  It's fine for informal
communication, but grammatically it's indefensible.  Even "?!" is
technically incorrect.  I tend to use "?!" a lot because it's a very
effective way of denoting the speaker's tone of voice, but "?!?" is
overdoing it, I think.

I didn't know this bothered people; if it does I can change it.

A wonderful parody of such resolution fics is Sebastian Weinberg's "The
Fanfic for YOU!".  If I were the ruler of the universe, I would require
that everyone read that story before attempting to write a Ranma fanfic.

I've read it. (Sebastian oughtta submit the thing to RAAC. I only found
it when I came to his page via Alta Vista.)

I have nothing against resolution per se; in fact, that's why I wrote
"Thy Inward Love".  But resolution without reason... that annoys me.

Of course, that's just my opinion.  I could be wrong.

In the abstract, I'd say you're right. In this case, besides Kodachi
having always been a bit... impulsive..., she had definite reasons to
force a confrontation at that point. Ranma had already come very close
to marrying Akane, and was likely to do so for real soon. She was also
in a newly-advantageous position, Shamps and Ukyo having been suppressed
as rivals.

"Like the one who just happens to be your father? How stupid do
you think I am?

Hey, Akane?  Who's P-chan?  :)

Wonder if I can work a P-Chan reference in here for irony...

Extreme tiredness was evident in Akane's voice. "... *if* I
lose, I'm going to look Kodachi right in the eye and tell her
 that I'm marrying you anyway. I'm marrying you even 
 though I lost the bet, because that's exactly what she would've
 done. That is... if you'll still... if you'll still have me."

	"Are you kidding? I'm proud of you."

Hmm.  Again, I have a problem.  This seems rather... sudden.  I'd expect
both of them to be a lot more awkward about this kind of conversation.

I'll tinker with this scene to see if I can increase the awkwardness
factor.

	He noticed Akane, leaning against the wall behind her sister,

Again with the perspective shift, from Nodoka to Ranma.  I think you
could put a scene break in rather painlessly up above.

Can do.

	He had thought of this earlier in the afternoon, and come up
with a plan to provoke Kodachi. 

Dang, I don't like this.  It's very... dishonorable.  And didn't he just
say that no one could interfere with the contest?

For the record, what he said was that no one could "interfere with the
other's food, ingredients, or person".

He's cheating, pure and simple, and in an extremely underhanded way.
Never mind that Kodachi would do the same thing; he's supposed to be
better than that.  Instead, he's stooping to her level.

I don't quite see it that way. He's not sabotaging Kodachi's food or
assaulting her. To me this is more like an attempt (albeit a rather poor
one) to "psych out the opposition". Taunt your opponent in hopes that
he/she will get pissed off and make a mistake. Poor sportsmanship, okay,
but not what *I* would call cheating.

Now I have no doubt Ranma wouldn't have done such a thing if HE had been
the one competing. But that's as much due to overconfidence as it is to
honor, IMO. OTOH, Akane in a cooking contest is like Ryoga in a
cross-country race. Ranma justifiably didn't have much confidence in his
fiancee's likelihood of winning this.

Actually there aren't many examples in the original series that I can
think of of fights or competitions where Ranma was on the sidelines. He
was generally right in the middle of everything whether he wanted to be
or not. So I can't see that either of us is supported by canon on this.

Well, I was going to say that this was the best of your prelude stories
so far.  And it was working so well... until Ranma did the "pig-tailed
girl" routine.  I really, really didn't like that.  Since it's not
necessary to the plot, I would highly recommend getting rid of it
altogether.

I'll need to hear some more opinions on this, since at least one other
reader said they liked this bit. What do the rest of you think?

Other than that, this was very good.  It'll be interesting to see what
kind of revenge Kodachi has in mind.  For once, she has good reason to
be angry.

Many thanks for your comments!!

Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics