On Sun, 3 May 1998, Bob Schroeck wrote:

Benjamin Franz wrote:

(deleted stuff)

It might help you to know that Universe #1 is the setting of Richard's
"Thy Inward Love", and Universe #2 is that of Zen's "The Bitter End", and
that this story is set some time after the end of both.  If you are not
familiar with either story, you are going to be missing a *lot*.   

Ok.

But I wish something at the _top_ of the story had mentioned the need to
read them before this story or that the story included enough information
about TIL to stand on its own. The TBE stuff is enough that you can
understand it from the story alone I think, the TIL parts assumes you
know the background material. This may be because Richard naturally knows
TIL intimately and so did the necessary exposition on TBE as another
author's work, but not for TIL.

As it is, I was quite far into the story before I _guessed_ that TBE was
the basis for universe #2, and TIL never connected for me since I don't
really follow that series. 

OTOH - I am sleep deprived at the moment. I may just not be catching
things I should have.

Did you mean 'Tendo' here? Or are you implying that in universe #1, Ranma
took the Tendo name?

He did.  Plot point in "TIL".

Ok. But would it have hurt the story to make that explicit here?

Ummm...Did I miss something? A sane and (up till now happy) Akane has been
'thrown to the wolves' for something she never did, while an insane Akane
is now living with the sane Akane's husband? IED doesn't just _go away_.

Um, you missed the fact that the Akanes swapped back.  The whole point of
"TBE"'s Akane getting sent to "TIL"'s universe is so that she can receive
the reassurance and forgiveness that she thinks she needs before she can
let herself get better.  Once that is achieved, both are returned to their
proper universes.

Doh! My bad. Ok. Makes sense now. I retract that criticism. Sleep
deprivation strikes again.

-- 
Benjamin Franz