"Akane, it's not as bad as it looks. We never meant to hide it. I
mean..." She laughed uneasily. "I gave you so many hints..."
BTW, how many hints did he actually give her? I know this was done a
lot in the anime, but what about in the manga?

I've got no clue.  Fortunately, this story is based off the anime
continuity.  :D

This scene's a bit long. I quite liked the earlier one with Akane, but
this oen drags a bit. You might wanna trim it down some.

It originally was shorter, but even *I* had problems believing that
Ranma would agree to Ryoga's plan.  So I lengthened it, trying to
have Ryoga anticipate and shoot down some of Ranma's more likely
objections.

Ranma talking about his promise isn't really necessary at all, but I
felt the need to insert some levity at that point.

Um... you do know that these versions of the names are fanfic
constructs, and the actual Chinese characters shown in the series are
Shan Pu, Mu Si, and Ke Lun? Just so you know. Also, I've never seen
them hyphenate between the family name and given name. No big deal, but
it looks a little weird.

Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.  I'm not using the above spellings as
they look too different from the English names, and, silly as this
sounds, they don't "look Chinese".

Maybe I can use Rhialto's Nyuchezu dialect excuse...

Actually, how would the names be spelled the in the non-Pinyin
romanization?  I know there's at least two major schemes.

Then again, Akira hasn't spoken any Chinese since his introduction,
so I might just drop the whole "Chinese spelling" of the Amazon's
names.

rather than the flowing lengths of his own hair. He was also wearing a
pair of glasses (although not the centimeter-thick ones that Mu-Tsu
enjoyed).

"Enjoyed" might be the wrong word for it....

It was supposed to be sarcasm.  I'll quote it, to make it clearer.

"Left." Mu-Tsu adjusted his course, guided by Akira. "Left." "Right."
"You're there."

Unquoting and then quoting again right away looks really weird. I'd put
something in between the words (like "Left." He moved left. "Right"
etc.) or just make it one big quote.

I'll make it one big quote.  I don't know why it was written that way,
myself.

"Not so. As time passes, she tries harder and harder to push me away.
She's testing my limits. After I show her that absolutely nothing with
keep me away from her, she'll be mine!"

Heh. He has no clue, does he....

What, are you telling me you don't find his argument compelling?  :j

Her hair is long. And red!"

And Chinese? Yeah right. :)

This is the anime.  There are Chinese girls with purple and aquamarine
hair...

"Isn't he just so manly?"
Obviously not. "Whatever you say, Mrs. Saotome."
"Although Akane should really be the one saying 'I do' to him. Still,

it must take quite a man to drive the woman to propose first."

"Um," he grunted non-committally.

Took me a little while to figure out that she was talking to Ryoga
here. Don't know if that's intentional, but if not you might want to
mention his name here.

Whoops.  I'll slip that in.

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, Tsu is not Mousse's family name.

It's not his (correct) given name either.

Hey, there's more than one way to romanize Chinese.  It just so happens
I am using the little-known Larson system.  Yeah, that's the ticket!

Actually, this note was in reference to a "Ranma myth" site I visited,
which said that (using your spellings) Pu, Si, and Lun are *not* the
characters' given or family names.  They're just the second syllables of
their given name.

Obviously I'm no Chinese scholar, so maybe I blindly accepted something
that's wrong, but it's what I went with.  The hyphens are supposed to
make it clear that the name is one word.

"Say Ranma?"
"Say, Ranma?"
"Yeah, Akane?"
"When you say that Ryoga's 'magic rod' made you fall in love with him,
you mean the koi fishing rod, right?"

ACK! Akane no hentai!! :-)

To paraphrase Nanami Kiryu, "Akane's a great big weirdo!"

This is the first I've read of this series. I had no trouble at all
following what was going on. I like the characterizations; everybody
seems pretty consistent with the source material. The scenes are good,

Holy crap!  Aren't you the guy known for complaining about OOC fics?
Whoa, I can use this for advertising!  :D

    _The Nature of the Curse_ by Douglas MacDougall
      "I like the characterizations" -- Gary Kleppe

but some of them drag a bit and they tend to get talky; you might go
through and see where you could cut, or else try to put in more
tension. Overall, I enjoyed reading this, and will look for it next
time.

I think that the whole series is "talky".  Still, I'm satisfied with
the pacing.  If I hear more comments about it, I'll take another look.

Thanks for the feedback!


Doug

----
Douglas MacDougall     Art and fiction available at my homepage:
dougmacd@thecia.net    http://www.thecia.net/~dougmacd/fanworks/