Douglas MacDougall <dougmacd@thecia.net> wrote:

"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

Ah. Didn't know that. Oh well, I enjoyed it anyway. :-)

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.

In the older (Wade-Giles) system, I believe they would be Shan P'u, Mu
Ssu, and K'e Lun. There's also the little-used Yale system, in which
they'd be Shan Pu, Mu Sz, and Ke Lwun. I'd be surprised if these were
any more aestetically pleasing to you than the others. :)

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.

Hmmm.... possible, I guess, but seems kinda unlikely. AFAIK those names
are the only ones ever given for the characters, even when (for example)
Shamps' name was quoted in the local newspaper. Maybe given names are
all they have, like Beavis and Butthead.

Also, some of the other characters use three-syllable names, namely Pu
Lanmu ("Plum") and Sa Fulang ("Saffron"). Chinese people don't normally
have three-syllable given names, though I suppose these people are
sufficiently abnormal that they could.

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

Heh. The seal of approval; your guide to quality fanfiction. :)

Yes, I am fairly picky about characterization because it's an important
part of what makes a good fanfic. (Except, of course, where the OOC is
an obvious deliberate part of the fic's premise, like in IMBS.) Still,
there are quite a lot of fics whose characterizations I'm happy with.


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