HEARTS AND MINDS PRELUDE TEN
                      SAOTOME RANMA: LILI'S CHILD

                      Ranma 1/2 manga fanfiction
                            by Gary Kleppe

So, after God only knows how long, we come to the final prelude.  
What a long, strange trip it's been.  :)

       "Huh? You mean I don't get to sleep in the tent?"

Yeah, that was my reaction.  Ranma gives in way too easily to this
situation, without any sort of argument.  

       Finally, he found Akane. That was the most intense part of the
dream. She dragged him down into the grass, and they fucked. He felt a

'fucked' is not the word I would have Ranma use here.  'made love'
would sound a lot better in the context. 

huge wet sticky stain in his boxers; it told him just how intense that
part of the dream had been. He needed a change of underwear soon.

Eww.  So this is what the warning was about.

       "Being dead's really inconsiderate, Ranma." Akane, already 

clean

and dressed, tugged at his arm. "Come on, get up!"

       "Cut it out!" His eyelids, his body, felt as if they weighed a
ton. He tried to think of something to say, anything for a few extra
minutes of blissful sleep. "I mean it! I'm a ghost!"

Ahh... HaM - 2096? <g,d,r>

       Ranma emerged from the bathroom, freshly dressed, and sat at 

the

kitchen table next to his son. Hikaru leaned over from his high chair
and grabbed him by the chest. "Chichi!" he shouted.

       "Hey! He knows I'm his Daddy! He called me 'Chichi' for 

Father!"

Ranma exclaimed proudly as he tweaked Hikaru under the chin. "You're a
smart li'l kid, ain'tcha!"

Heh.  Even with my limited knowledge of Japanese, I got this joke.

       Hakano continued, as if ignoring them. "Your best friend, who
was always there for you to confide your innermost dreams and feelings;
who always listened to you without judgement or thought of self."

       Ranma stared, dumbfounded. "I have innermost dreams?!"

       Akane bent over to whisper in his ear. "They're talking about
Ukyo."

Subtle, Gary.  Subtle like a hammer.

       Walking away, Akane tossed a glance back to the men lying on 

the

sidewalk.
"Thanks for the workout, boys." They groaned in response.

Funny formatting.  There's a few others like this throughout the
chapter - don't know if it's you or me.

       Kasumi closed her eyes and just sat there, not moving. Minutes
passed. Ranma fidgeted. What was he supposed to do now? He looked at
Akane, whose eyes were fixed back on Kasumi.

I'm not sure having the 'back' is entirely necessary here.  The
sentence would probably sound better without.

       "I HEARD YOU!" Her mallet crashed down, making a large bruise 

on

Ranma's skull.

"Actually, mallets are used throughout the manga by all the 
characters, and not just Akane..."

       "Who was it, Ranma? Hiroshi? Daisuke? Maybe some handsome guy
you met for a one-night stand? Ranma, you.. you SLUT!"

Akane goes from rage in this sequence to calm sitting and waiting in
the next without a transitional phase.  I'd put one in (an admonishment
from Kaede or Kasumi after her outburst), because otherwise there's
an obvious continuity gap.

       He looked back at his sister-in-law, in hopes that she could
offer him some way out of this mess. "Kasumi, what... what can we do?"

       Kasumi answered dryly, "You can have a baby."

Has Kasumi acquired the ability to speak dryly during her studies with
Kaede?  ;)  

       "If you say so." The doctor smiled in a way that to Ranma 

seemed

patronizing. "Personally, I can't really accept that sort of thing as
true until I see some scientific evidence for it. Besides, it's not
really consistent with my beliefs as a Christian. But that's just me.
Let's get back to you and your baby-to-be." He showed Ranma the paper 

on

his clipboard. "You've listed the father as 'Saotome Ranma.' Isn't that
your own name?"

Quite honestly, Gary, I fail to see the point of the doctor being a
Christian or not as important to anything in the story.  Is there a
specific reason for the mention?

       With a low, soothing purr, she snuggled up next to him. Their
lips met, and her tongue began exploring his mouth. His heart beat
faster. He felt wetness and a throbbing, pulsating sensation in his
cunt. So this was what it was like to be aroused as a woman.

Gary, I would be really careful with the language in this chapter.  
Words such as 'cunt', 'fuck' and otherwise carry a lot of baggage 
around with them.  Each time I've seen them used in this chapter, it
has been like getting an electric shock - they aren't the kind of
terminology I've gotten used to in the previous nine chapters.

       He only hoped she wouldn't want to do it girl-girl all the time

>from then on.

Which is part of the problem I have with this sequence.  The idea of
Akane deliberately going out of her way to seduce Ranma in his girl
form doesn't strike me as plausible without some glimpse into her
thoughts.

       "Darn that Pantyhose!" Ranma said. "Who does he think he is,
coming in here and...."

'Darn' from Ranma after all his use of 'fuck' and otherwise?  Make it
a 'damn', at least.

       "Oh yeah. That's a good idea. I remember what she was like last
time. Hey, let's get to the store. I wanna buy some more of that ice
cream that I like. You know, the one that has chocolate and peanut
butter ice cream, and inside there's cookie cups, marshmallows, fudge
bits, cereal pieces, three different nuts, M&Ms, ..."

       "I know the one you mean. Mousse tracks. Go easy on that stuff,
Ranma. You don't want to get fat."

I presume this should be 'Moose tracks', unless you're making a joke.

       Their mouths met in a long, slow caress. For Ranma, it was like
something out of a fairy tale. A magic kiss that transformed the ugly
monster back into a desirable human being. If he had to be pregnant, he
was so glad that she was there to help him through it.

Last sentence reads clumy.  I would recommend:  "If he had to be
pregnant, he was glad she was here to help him through it."

       For a while, various nurses and other people in lab coats
swarmed around his bed. They checked his temperature and blood pressure
and told him that he was doing just fine. One nurse even came by to
shave him. He told her that he didn't need to shave while he was a
woman, and she explained that what she was talking about was a little
different.

I like the insinuating tone of the last sentence better than the 
usual blunt description that's been used primarily.  I think I 
would like the whole chapter much more of it had been used to a 
greater extent.

       Then the white curtains were pulled back. A team of orderlies
had arrived with a gurney. It was time to go to the delivery room.

"That is the machine that goes ping, and that's the most expensive
machine in the hospital..."

***

This chapter of the HaM Preludes shares two distinctions:

1.  It is the only one I had not read previously.

2.  It is the only one with which I have major problems.

I cannot fault it in any way beyond tone.  I simply don't like the way
the subject matter was dealt with.  To some extent, this may be my own
uncomfortableness with the matter of pregnancy... I can tell that you
did a fair bit of research into the topic, and that shows.  The method
of getting Ranma impregnated I found rather grotesque, but interesting
all the same.

On a deeper level, though, I simply find the tone so very different 
from the other HaM preludes that I feel as if I'm reading a different
series.  The repeated (and, in my opinion, generally uneccessary) use
of crudities like 'fuck' and 'cunt' made me cringe in places.  This
tone of crudity which prevails throughout the chapter is my major
problem with it, and it is what prevented me from enjoying this
chapter as much as the others.

I don't mean to sound high-minded here.  I've used 'fuck' myself
before, because it's a powerful word when used in the proper place.
I've also written some fairly unpleasant things.  The problem I have
with this chapter is that it seems to descend from the level of making
the reader uncomfortable with the realism and details (which, when
done right, is good) to reading like a toilet-humour joke.  In short,
I found the way in which it was written jarring after the previous
nine chapters, and also somewhat contrary to my own personal sense of
aesthetics.

Well-written as always, but this problem of tone left me unable to 
enjoy it.  For me, at least, it ended the preludes to the main series 
on a somewhat sour note.  I am now awaiting the main series in the
hope that it will take some of this away.  If I'm the only one to 
mention this... take it with a grain of salt, then.  Everyone has 
different tastes.

Ciao,
-Alan Harnum

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