At 12:18 AM 3/10/99 +0800, Chan Wei Lik wrote:

The way this fic goes, the children (make that babies) are taken from their
parents and placed in the 'singles' villages. Is that right?

Well, I would suggest that a more likely scenario is that the children
probably
have a few years or so with their parents, and that this holds true only for
those trained to be warriors. Plumbers, for instance, would probably stay.
A child has to at least be weened from his or her mother, yes? This means
that the rules about defeating your bride and stuff only really applies
between combatants-- a way of ensuring even stronger and better ones in the
future, as well as testing styles.

Second, the married couples no longer practice martial arts? Doesn't seem
likely to me, given what they would have gone through before getting
hitched.

That they stopped practicing martial arts was never stated. Possibly they
stopped learning, but I could see married couples learning to integrate
their styles somewhat, or at least learning to fight as a team. Once a
fighter, always a fighter....
	Still, they probably do not have as much a single-minded devotion
as the single men and women (after all, they've already got a spouse now,
right? Certain obligations, don't you know).

Something else to contemplate adding to the story.... ^_^
	

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