"Alan Harnum" <harnums@hotmail.com> wrote:

All C&C welcomed and appreciated, public response is preferred.

Ahh!  He asked nicely again.  I really ought to write that essay on
Great Expectations instead, but...

How about writing it on Grate Expectations, by Edmund Wells?

You know, I've never thought about it, but the fact that I'm actually
able to write serious scenes in fanfic with characters named Mousse,
Shampoo and Cologne probably says something about my mental health.

Something, yeah, but I'm not sure what. :)

Now... I'm unsure as to why you have Mousse using the pidgin speech in
his act.  He's always struck me as fairly proud (aside from when
dealing with Shampoo) and I don't know if he'd stoop to something like
that.  Is there a specific reason you had in mind for having him do
it?

Not really... just kind of a showmanship thing. Any opinions on whether
I should keep it or not?

"Oh my.  Could you please stop eating that man's soul and go back to 
the lowest depths of Hell, Mr. Demon?"

Hey. that kind of approach might work!

       Shampoo was leaving. Mousse knew that she would be going back 

to

China, leaving him behind, unless he could somehow persuade her not to.
Maybe it was insane of him to keep trying after all this time; but to
marry Shampoo was the dream of a lifetime. If there was any chance at
all of it happening, then he had to try. After all, hadn't people
throughout history triumphed against impossible odds to realize their
dreams?

Only occasionally.  You just don't hear about the ones who get crushed
by the impossible odds, because they don't make for very inspiring
stories.

That's very true. Just like you hear stories about a few people who win
the lottery, but not about the millions of them who throw their money
away on it day after day without ever... *ahem* but I digress.

Hasn't everyone had one of those conversations where both of you
aren't talking about the same thing?

Only all the time.

       The rain stopped. The last dim vestiges of evening light 

emerged

around the clouds. Soon it would be dark again.

Hmm... somewhat confusing.  By evening light, what do you mean?  The
moon, the stars?  

I mean the last rays of the sun as it's setting. Maybe I should say
that.

       Once there was a girl named Azusa. Azusa had long, wavy hair 

and

big blue eyes. She lived with her Daddy and her friends, in a big house
with a wall around the yard.

The whole Azusa sequence was very effectively written.  As you say in
the endnotes, a children's book style narration.  For her, it works.

I actually came up with the idea for it for a different story that
features Azusa... now, if only I can get my collaborator back to working
on it. :)

       "I take it your daughter is... special? What they call
autistic?"

Awright.  From what little I know of autism, Azusa doesn't quite fit
the profile.  Autism creates a lack of response to outside stimuli,
whereas she's very outgoing and responsive to what goes on around her.
The obsession with cute and the childlike behaviour _could_ be
indicative of some sort of developmental disability, but autism 
doesn't seem to fit as well as it might.  

Then again, I could be completely wrong.  It's been known to happen
before.  This is always the problem with trying to apply real-world
standards to a character played for laughs in the original material.

As Thomas Schmidt has pointed out, there are a lot of different
varieties and degrees of autism. As I understand it, the common factors
tend to be impairment in social relationships and a limited range of
interest -- which both seem believable for Azusa as far as I can tell.

I could be wrong about this, of course, which is why I left myself an
out in this story. It's Ryoko who calls Azusa autistic, and she has no
training in that area, so it might just be her mistake.

I'm not sure if Gods should be capitalized in this sentence.  If 
Mousse is thinking of a specific group of gods (e.g. the Amazon Gods,
the Olympian Gods, etc...), then yes.  If he's just thinking of the
gods in general, e.g. "Like flies to wanton boys are we to the 
gods...", then I think you should lose the capital.

You're probably right.

       Ryoko stepped into the darkened corridor, quietly shutting the
door behind her. Now that everyone had gone to bed, she could search 

the

house. She walked silently down the corridor, keeping one hand on the
wall, flashlight at the ready.

Now... I'm not sure of how realistic a depiction this is of the
activities of the average Japanese tax inspector.  It seems awfully
cloak-and-daggerish, and even possibly illegal.  Than again, I know
two things about the Japanese legal system, and one of them is jack.

I'm no expert either... I'm using the movie as a basis, and who knows
how accurate it is. But with all the other cultural alterations in the
Ranmaverse, I'm not sure if it matters anyway. Maybe the tax people have
had to get more agressive in order to deal with super-martial artists.
:-)

       He drifted off to sleep. The pain in his arm prodded him awake.
He rolled over as much as he could, hoping a change in position would
help.

Pain in his wing, perhaps?

I'll think about changing this.

       Azusa stared with big eyes at the long-haired man covering
himself with a hastily-grabbed towel. "Oh, Claudette!"

Goodness, Claudette.  What's that?  Azusa doesn't have one of 
those... <slap>  Sorry.  

"Oh, that <censored> is sooooo CUTE!" <double-slap>

Another good chapter, Gary.  It didn't have the emotional impact of
the previous one, but with what you had to work with in this chapter
as compared to that one, I don't think it could have.

Actually, opinions seem to vary pretty wildly as far as which of the ten
preludes are the best. I've been running a poll on my website for quite
a while. The only conclusive result is that the people tend to like the
last one (Ranma's) the best.

I'm not precisely sure what role Azusa is supposed to play in this,
though.  Is she a substitute for Shampoo (a romantic one) or simply
someone who becomes the focus of Mousse's life with Shampoo gone?
>From the way you've written it, I'm inclined to think the latter,
which I think is much more appropriate.  

You're correct. Mu is basically serving as a subsitute father figure for
Azusa. While she's not really a romantic interest, she is someone who
cares about him and shows him some affection. Will this be enough for
Mu? Only time (and maybe HaM) will tell.

Anyway, that's my two cents about the chapter.  Hope it was in some
way helpful.

Sure was, and I very much appreciate it!


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics