Gary Kleppe <kleppe@execpc.com>

I'm still not back on te list, so please CC any followups on this to
me.

Technically, this was pretty good. I have one minor grammatical
quibble -- Tendo's should be Tendos', as there's more than one of
them.

Much more than one... they breed like rabbits :)

Mr. Davidson suffers from an ailment common among new characters
(particularly ones that resemble self-inserts, as this one does).

In retrospect it was a big mistake on my part naming him James. He really
only has a few passing similarities to me (which could almost be said of
any character a author writes, I guess).

He doesn't show much personality. If you want to use this character, we
need to know something about who he is, what kinds of things he feels
strongly about.

This is really problematic for this story. I didn't really feel any
emotional connection to the story, because Davidson was connected to
things on an intellectual/factual level only. He recounts the events
of the series, but doesn't seem to feel anything about them as far as
we can tell, and if he doesn't feel anything, why should we as the
readers? And if we don't, why are we being shown this story?

Good point, although I should mention that the bulk of the events
discussed are before he was born, so he would have a slightly
dispassionate view of it. I don't really have passionate feelings about
WW1, WW2 or the Korean war for the same reason. I know of them, but can't
get as emotional about them as someone who lived during them would.

He's also a newsmagazine reporter, so tries to be impartial and not get
involved with his subjects (this is explored more in the CMD series).
Since he's engaged to Hanaki Ono (as mentioned at the end), he kind of
gave up (he did resist for awhile before Hanaki's charms overcame his
resistance) on staying completely impartial in the writing of the book.
:)

Maybe I can tweak his reactions to show more emotions about the recent
attacks, which he would have more connection to.



-=-
Jim Lazar

E-Mail - mailto:jimlazar@earthlink.net
Home - http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlazar
FanFiction - http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlazar/anime
-=-
     Kasumi found her father cradling her mother in his arms. He
had run out of tears to shed long ago, but the expression on his face
told the story. Kasumi calmly slid the door closed and knelt down
facing her father and mother, tears started flowing from her eyes.

     After several minutes of silence, Soun asked with a scratchy
voice, "Kasumi dear. Will you please say goodbye to your mother and
then go get Mr. Saotome?" He didn't look up at his daughter once.

     "Of course, Father," Kasumi said. She stood up, took one of her
mother's hands in hers, and said a soft, "Goodbye, Mother. I'll keep
my promise."

Ranma-ototo: Please Save My Family - Part 2
3rd place, Aug 1998 Mini-Series, Best of Ranma Fanfiction Awards