On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Gary Kleppe wrote:

Vincent Seifert <seifertv@ccshp1.ccs.csus.edu> wrote:

{"oh, about that stupid..."  :)  It's particularly amusing that it's
Shampoo, that inveterate abuser of doors, windows, and walls, who
points this out. This whole exchange dances somewhere between realism
and vaudeville.  Applause, and giggles.}

Heh. True, but she tends to be pretty pragmatic about it. I don't think
she'd do it if there were a reason not to.

Oh, I'm not saying it's not in character.  Irony happens to the best of
us.  :)

{Another area in which I have no direct experience, thank goodness... but don't
bullets to the skull reult in neat entrance wounds and very messy exit wounds?
Or are you implying that these AREN'T bullet wounds?}

Nah, they're bullets. I'll see what I can do about checking into what
the wounds should look like and describing them better.

My understanding is that for military bullets (probably from AKs, as
short-arms are usually only carried by officers and tankers), you'd get a
small entrance wound, but the far side of the skull would be, er, blown
out in large fragments; the skull is much better at resisting impact from
the outside than the inside, for obvious evolutionary reasons.  If you can
find someone who actually knows, that would be good.
 

	*No more,* Lan vowed to herself. The Amazons were warriors, but not
stupid ones. They died in battle only when necessary.

{This is especially important for a matriarchy, of course.  A group which loses
some of its men can recover a lot faster than a group which loses some of its
women; this is thought to be one of the original reasons for human sex-role
separation, which has men do the dangerous stuff.}

Of course, they can always reproduce by Cologning. :-)

Groan!

Well, yeah, but then they'd have a lot of trouble finding mates who
were a) strong enough to defeat them and b) blind enough to want to.  :)

Say, maybe that's how Mousse inherited his myopia.  :)

doing. Think of our history. I am sure you all know of the Three Years of Hell."

{...well, we don't, but I guess we can imagine...}

Not what you might think. It's actually a reference to Ranma vol. 34
part 11.

D'oh!  My fault, I should have recognized it.

keep fighting, protesting loudly as Akane dragged him away. Kasumi admired his
dedication to his art.

{... even if others think it bullheadedness.  If you want to win, having
someone on your side who just won't give up is a virtue... and you can't
turn that quality off like a lightbulb.  Glad someone's cutting Ranma some
slack.}

Well, Kasumi, at least in this series, is like that... she sees the best
in everyone. Which can be a good thing... or not....

Yes, but this isn't just rose-colored glasses (sounds like something
Kodachi would wear): it's real.  It's popular to scoff at Ranma's
fanatical unwillingness to lose at anything, but it's not a vice.  He
could not have been as good as he is, as young as he is, without it; it's
what drives him to improve his skills and abilities.  Once in combat, it's
what enables him to emerge victorious when, by all rights, he really ought
to lose.  Without it, he'd be just another young martial artist.

As he said, he's going to keep tangling with Kodachi until he figures out
how she's winning, and then he's going to work out a countermeasure, and
then he's going to defeat her... and a good thing, too, because if he
waits until he HAS to defeat her to work this out, it may well be too
late.  Saffron taught him that.

{Aw, c'mon, do the "marital arts" pun!  Pleeeease?}

Nah, too cheap. :)

Rats.  :)
 

{*blink*  Okay, that's plausible; I can easily believe Kasumi has taken
cluelessness so far that it's gone right out the other side to a Zen
artlessness capable of reshaping reality to The Way It Ought To Be.

Well, there's more to it that that, as will be talked about next
chapter.

But... Ranma's going to blow a gasket if Kasumi doesn't tell him about
this little trick REAL soon.}

Not to worry... by next morning, all of the cursed characters will know
the technique. Except one.

One... oh.  Kasumi doesn't know about P-chan, does she.  Oh, dear.

Huh.  I just did a check to make sure Ryoga was where I thought he was
(feeling a bit like Akari); he's in Part 1 at the train station, but he
isn't mentioned in Part 2 at all.  Intentional? 

Thanks for the excellent C&C!

You're welcome.

Is it my imagination, or does the FFML seem unusually... er... effective
these days?  The fic/spam ratio seems to have risen.  Maybe ELL's rant did
some good.

I think it's funny that you got more C&C (public, anyway) on Justice than
you did on HaM 2.  I'm not surprised that a lot of people missed the
point: it's a cautionary tale.  Ukyo should have asked for mercy, not
justice... but it's just not in her character to do so.  If it were, she'd
be in a better position to get over Ranma and get on with her life. 

Folklore is full of this sort of thing, for some reason.  I think maybe
generations of storytellers were influenced by generations of parents to
tell stories that had as their moral "Be careful what you ask for, you
might get it."

Ja mata!

Vince Seifert    Network Analyst     seifertv@csus.edu
http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/  updated 1998Jun04
CSUS hired me to build their LANs, not to give away the homeworld.