At 02:39 PM 3/5/99 GMT, Gary Kleppe wrote:

Matthew Lewis <maybeso@ican.net> wrote:

   "Mu Tsu! You're using a weapon! You know we don't rely on
weapons!" the elder shouted.

His name is Mu Si.

Oh sure, and the next thing you're going to say is that her name
isn't really Xian Pu, aren't you? ^_^
(Actually, I knew I was forgetting something, so I thought I'd try to
remember hearing how they pronounce it... <sigh> it's what happens
when you rush things. I usually like to get the some of the details
correct, at least....)

   Mu Tsu sheepishly tried to hide the staff behind his back, but,
owing to his small size (being only four or five, most likely) and

Doesn't he know exactly how old he is?

Most likely, but the narrator does not necessarily know it.

   You want to know what Purgatory is? A glimpse, or maybe just a
taste of heaven while you are in Hell. Worse than Hell, in a way,
because in Purgatory there was hope that it would end, eventually.
Hope? That sounds good, doesn't it? but when that hope is

Capitalize but.

Actually, this is something I've done before. Something I do to denote
a rhetorical question and the response following it. After all, 'but'
is not a word that should be starting a sentence either, should it?
Abominable practice, I suppose, but there you go. :)

   A hand reaches out casually and grabs Ranma as he runs by. The
hand is, of course, attached to a person. Ryouga manages to lose
track of Ranma and takes a wrong turn somewhere.  "You are, Ranma?
Ranma Saotome?" a sing-sing voice asks. 

This whole paragraph needs to be in past tense: reached, grabbed, ran,
was, managed, took, asked.

Hehehehe. You know, the hardest part about Second Sight wasn't the
constant switching of tenses, I do that naturally unless I'm careful
(you can tell how careful I am by how much I screw up the tenses,
really), but doing it consistently, and to such an extent....

   Upon leaving the Nekohanten, Xue walked around Nerima. A boy
with a bokken came by. A girl in a leotard, wielding a ribbon. A
boy using an umbrella and thrown bandannas which could cut through
wood.

Actually, the bandanna thing only worked in that one fight (the one in
which Akane got her hair cut).

They were used then, and not at any other time that we have seen, true,
but that does not necessarily mean that they only worked in that one
fight (which implies that they do not work in later fights when they
are used).

2. The explanations are too expository. Quite contrived and lecturing
in tone. In other words, presented in a boring fashion. If they could
be brought into the fic, instead of being pointed out in such a 
glaring fashion....

Right. Not only too lecturing, but too repetitive. Kinda like a Roger
Corman movie. "The word is the law, and the law is...."

Roger Corman was a god! Do you hear me? A god! A god! (not a big G god,
but one nonetheless) ^_^
	Of course, not all gods are necessarily good, or wise, or all that
great, but that's beside the point.... ^_^

But I think this has potential to be a pretty good little vignette. Work
on these problems and you'll have something really good.

Actually, I think I figured out the right way, or at least a big chunk of
it, on the weekend while I had nothing better to occupy my mind with at
work....
	

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

Matthew Lewis is:
	Matt on IRC
	Sojiro_Seta on Kawaiimuck
	maybeso@ican.net
	a casualty of causality
____________________________________________________________

	"Khattam-Shud," he said slowly, "is the Arch-Enemy
of all Stories, even of Language itself. He is the Prince of
Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends,
because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish
of everything we use his name. 'It's finished,' we tell one
another, 'it's over. Khattam-Shud: The End.'"

	-excerpted from Haroun and the Sea of Stories,
		by Salman Rushdie
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