Just throwing my two cents in about the criticism...

This strikes me as extremely out-of-character.  Soun cooking?  If this
were accurate characterization, he would have started back when his kids
were still kids, just after his wife died.

Um... I doubt it, given his likely mental state at the time. Personally,
I think just going near the kitchen that his dear, departed wife used to
cook in would be enough to send him into a hysterical sobbing fit. By
the time he learned to deal with it, Kasumi would've already settled in
as the new cook of the house.

 Moreover, he has, for the most
part, avoided any such duties like the plague.

Huh? When was this shown? As I understand it, Soun didn't do any cooking
in the canon for the simple reason that Kasumi was there to do it for
him. Living with Akane, it would be a different story.

 Thirdly, if you look at
the attitudes in Japan, cooking is still considered, for the most part,
women's work.

I was wondering why this didn't strike me as odd in the same way that
it did Nick.  Upon reflection, I realized that it was because every chef
or cook I've met in a Japanese restaurant has been a man.  Now, I know
this might not be the same sort of thing, socially, as cooking at home,
but perhaps the stigma isn't as fierce as all that?  

I think the more unusal thing here may be that Akane actually backed 
down and let her father do the cooking.  In the past, the more people have
slammed her domestic skills, the more determined she's been to continue
to try to perfect them.  Perhaps we might get some more insight into why
Akane was willing to step aside in the kitchen... or perhaps it's just an
understated indicator that she's mellowing out as she grows older.

Good description of it, BTW, though I never liked the 'mind-altering
substance' trick.  Always struck me as being too contrived, and too easy.

Well, some of us feel it's the *only* believable way that Ranma would
ever... oops, I wasn't going to get into that. :-)

More subtext that I read into the whole thing with Kuno and the pill.  I
thought at first that Ranma's reaction to "her" love for Kuno on the second
go round (i.e., "I'm not worthy of you because I'm cursed, find a real woman
to love") was awfully mature and balanced for the Ranma-verse, where 
folks generally express their true love with a full-body glomp.  But then I
decided it was reasonable to assume that this was Ranma's way of 
fighting the effects of the pill at some level.  It isn't true love, after all,
or a genuine emotion of any sort.  I rather liked this explanation, though
it was never spelled out in the story, of course.

Personally, I think it would have been better if you'd just hinted at it, 
keeping the 'I just stopped for awhile' comments, and adding perhaps some 
dialogue between them on the topic of your choice.  Meanwhile, you have
the idea for another fanfic, one which shows little Akane growing up and
dealing with the loss of her mother.  Keep it separate from this, please.

OK, good point... I'll consider making this a seperate side story.

I disagree.  I liked this scene, and I thought it was relavent.  For Akane
to get her head straight about marrying Ranma, she's got to go through
her own anxiety closet a bit and do some cleaning up.  I thought that this
was an old issue that related very directly to her attachment to Ranma.
After all, if there's one sort of common ground they should be able to
find (but haven't), it's Martial Arts.  For Akane to get her feelings sorted
out about her own devotion to Martial Arts seemed very appropriate.

Why would she give up?  She chased Onna-Ranma across China and into Japan!
This strikes me as very un-Shampoo of her, even with everyone staring down
at her.  She's never been that conscious of others showing hatred at
her before...

What can she do? She's not capable of forcing Ranma to come with her,
under current circumstances. If she tries, it'll only piss Ranma off,
which will probably make him continue to resist going to the Nekohanten
until it's too late. Waiting will give her a chance that he'll come with
her after the ceremony.

Persistent she is, but I don't see her as stupid.

I felt the same way as Nick about all this until we got to the part where we
learned that Shampoo really DID have an emergency.  Then, it all made sense
to me.  If her grandmother is dying and there's a major shakeup somewhere
on the horizon for her people, her priorities change.  It shows a more mature
Shampoo than some might depict, but I don't think that's a bad thing.  It seems
very proper to me for a Chinese warrior to forget about her own personal issues
when a more important matter of clan and family arises.  

This, to me, explained why she didn't disrupt the wedding - she couldn't afford
to antagonize Ranma since she believes she needs his help (in what way, we do
not yet know).  To paraphrase Spock, the needs of the clan outweigh the needs
of the Shampoo.  And she might even still think she has a chance, at this point,
to pry Ranma away from Akane some time down the road.  After all, the Amazons
seem to be perfectly willing to impose their laws upon others - who's to say they
have to acknowledge the marriage as valid?  From what we've seen in the future
of Gary's story, Shampoo eventually does give up, but I didn't think that it she'd
necessarily lost all hope at the wedding.  Her priorities, though, were different.

This strikes me as contrived.  Mousse runs in, using water to try to
change her, apologizes so profusely it's ridiculous without even stating

Is there really any level of personal debasement that could be considered 
"ridiculous" for Mousse?

his reasons for the act (even though they are obvious), and just happens

I thought he explained that - "I can't let you interrupt this wedding" or some such.

This is a story of Ranma and Akane's wedding.  However, you glossed over
the more romantic parts.  Moreover, you dwelt on things that should have
been either mentioned in passing or ignored entirely.  You tried to
spoon-feed the work to your audience; there was no subtlety to the work,
nothing that I could really see beneath the surface.  Essentially, you
tried to be subtle with things that should have been shown, and showed
things that you should have been subtle with.  

Will think about this.

Ergh.  I think that's a bit too harsh.  I thought the portrait was painted with
a pretty deft brush on this one.  The Ranma/Akane wedding is a hard story
to write, simply because it's been done so often (and, on several occasions,
quite well - that makes it even harder to come up with an original verison).
Gary's take seemed to be to write it as if Ranma and Akane edged sideways
into the whole thing - they're awkward, they're uncertain, and they're disaster-
prone.  But it didn't go over the top, and they actually managed to get through
the ceremony.  I thought it fit in with the kind of flavor he's been trying to 
achieve in "Hearts and Minds" - things gradually shift from the wackiness of
the original series to something a little more mature, where the stakes start
to get a bit higher.

 Both of these things
are so ingrained into the character that SERIOUS exposition as to why they
would go against it would have to be given.

Please explain why Soun's supposed inability to cook is "ingrained into
his character." This I don't get at all.

Again, I'd say that the more mystifying question is why Akane allowed him
to step into the role.  

Just my thoughts on the matter...

Grayson Towler
grayson@rigroup.net

http://www.rigroup.com/~grayson/relentless