Larry F <lwf58@earthlink.net> wrote:

   "Not that he'd believed Pop's story about him having been cloned"?  That
line's a little hard to swallow.  I don't know why he'd ever believe
something like that, especially knowing his father's tendency towards
lying.  Yet the way it's phrased, it sounds like Ranma considered it
seriously at one point.

No, he didn't believe it. I thought that was clear but I'll see what I
can do to remove any possible misunderstanding.

   This paragraph is very choppy.  You begin several sentences with the
words "but", "and", and "so", a practice that is usually thought of as bad
grammar.  Most of these lines are so short that you could just use a comma
or semicolon instead of a period, and they'd work just fine.  I'd also
suggest dropping the "and" in the first line, using "now" as the first
word.  Here are some possibilities:
"Now here he was, together with his mother; but thanks to that stupid
promise..."
"Maybe she wasn't really serious about making him honor that agreement, but
if he was wrong, he wouldn't live long enough for a second chance. That's
why he was forced to keep up the act."

I'll see what I can do with this.

        "Er... you see, Mrs. Saotome...." Ranma fumbled for something to
say. "I wear special contact lenses. When I lose one of them, it's
*other people* who can't see *me* very well." Akane rolled her eyes.
Okay, so it wasn't a very good excuse; but it was the best he could
think of.

   Ouch.  For me, this joke fell flatter than last week's soda.  It's way
too goofy an excuse; Nodoka would have to be a moron for it to work even for
a moment.  I just can't suspend my disbelief.

Nodoka doesn't believe the excuse. But she isn't going to come out and
call "Ranko" a liar. Besides which, she has no explanation for what she
saw that's any more plausible than what Ranma said.

        "Oh dear." Ranma's mother pointed to his shoulder. There was a
big, sticky stain on the front of his shirt where Akane had poured the
soda. "Oh dear. Ranko, please let me buy you a new outfit after lunch."

   She's a mother.  She'd try getting it out with club soda first.  (Great
stuff, club soda.  A waiter spilled barbecue sauce on my shirt once, and
club soda got it right out, then and there.)

A mother she may be, but she's not an experienced mother; her son was
taken away from her very early. There was a very similar incident in the
canon (volume 34) and Nodoka did buy "Ranko" a new outfit.

        Ranma felt sickened. His mother was going to dress him up in
girl's clothes. Worse yet, Akane would see him that way. Then she'd
probably make fun of him for the rest of his life.

   Actually, Akane's playing the game too, so she's setting him up.  SHE'S
the one recommending the shop, after all.  You should play up the sadistic
humor possibilities Akane would be seeing in this.

Will see what I can do with this.

   I agree with the other reviews you got.  You really didn't play this as
well as you could have.  This should have REALLY got him into trouble.  For
one thing, how does he handle an irresistible desire to make out with every
reasonably attractive woman he sees, when he is in a woman's body?  How does
he deal with the physical reactions he experiences as a turned-on woman?
While the heavy cloth of the dress he's wearing might disguise the symptoms,
HE will still be embarrassed as hell about how it feels!  He should be
extremely self-conscious from here on!

Well, horniness isn't necessarily irresistible nor overwhelming. (This I
can attest to personally. ^_^) But your point is taken, and I admit that
this was a plot complication that I really didn't know what to do with.
I'll think about it some more.

        Reaching into his kendo gi, he pulled out a cellular phone and
dialed a number.

   Kuno does NOT wear a gi.  The kendo uniform (or dogi) consists of a
cotton top called a keikogi and pleated skirt-like trousers are called
hakama. It's a simplification of the everyday clothing worn by samurai back
in the good old days.

This is Gos' POV, and he might not appreciate the difference, but I'll
change it just so there's no confusion.

        "According to the information I have uncovered, it seems the
comely Ranko is possessed by a spirit known as an oni.

   That sounds like he never heard of them before.  Japanese children grow
up with stories about oni like we do with ghost and zombie stories.
"... it seems the comely Ranko has been possessed by the spirit of an oni."

Okay, that works.

        Worse yet, he'd had to look away from all of the female sales
clerks, because of the thoughts that stupid wish kept putting in his
head. He tried keeping his mind on other things, but that didn't help.
Even running through martial arts attacks in his mind only made him
think of ways they could be adapted for other purposes.

   This is way too mild a reaction.  He should be darn near uncontrollable;
even if he had partial control of how the wishes were granted, his own
hormones would be working in concert with the wish against him... he IS a
teenager, after all.

He doesn't have control, not at this point. But I don't see why him
being horny should have to be so extreme.

   I see the joke, but it doesn't work here very well.  This situation does
call for something extra from Ranma.  For one thing, he should view this as
a way of working out his frustrations, both emotional and physical.  By
rights, Kuno should have gotten the snot kicked out of him.  For Ranma to
just punt him out of the way so calmly, when his day is going so badly, does
seem OOC.

Will think about this.

   Usage note: "Farther back".  Farther is used when distance is involved,
further is used in comparisons:
"How much farther do we have to go?"
"There will be no further behavior of this kind."

My dictionary says that you're wrong. It gives "more far in space or
time" as one of the definitions of 'further.'

        "Of course not! I just...." Ranma stepped past her towards his
room's door, not bothering to finish what would be a lame excuse. He
knew that he was never going to hear the end of this now. *Cute little
Sailor Ranma. The toughest martial artist ever to wear a dress in
Japan.* Whatever. At the moment, all he wanted was to change his clothes
and undo all the wishes that had been inflicted on him.

   Why hasn't Nabiki said a thing about the dress?  Her only comments are
about the hairstyle.

The hair is a lot more noticeable. From Nabiki's viewpoint, Ranma
wearing a dress isn't all that odd -- he's a girl.

        "Forget it." He didn't know what her game was, but she had
obviously thought it out in detail. The only safe thing for him to do
was not to play. "I'll just go use hot water."

        "Let me know if you change your mind," she said, sounding not
the least bit disappointed. "The offer's always open!"

   Is Ranma smarter this time around?  That's a bum deal by any standards,
and it's a little hard to understand his going for it later, even given the
circumstances.

He had no choice in the end but to agree; it was the only way to get out
of getting killed. And I don't think it's that bad a deal from where he
stands, considering that Nabby could get wishes out of him anytime
anyway.

        "Whaddaya mean by that?!" It sounded like she knew. But how
could she?

   That IS too much.  Kuno never mentioned Ranma's name on the phone, so
there's not much reason for Nabiki to be associating the call with Ranma's
appearance.  It would have been more likely that she would see Ranma in a
nice dress and a new hairstyle, and been drawn up short by that alone.  It
should have been such a shock that she'd never think of the phone call until
much later.  The only way she could reasonably make the connection is if she
teased Ranma by grabbing one of the odango and realized that they aren't
supposed to have a hard, pointed core.

I'm gonna need to hear from other people on this one. I don't see why
it's such a stretch. Nabiki knows the following:

* Ranma has weird powers that are out of his control and tend to get
triggered accidentally, usually to his own detriment;

* Kuno's reported seeing someone with horns on the head;

* Ranma's got a new hairstyle that just happens to cover up the places
where horns would be.

Is it that unbelievable that she could put two and two together?

   Earlier is too undefined.  Akane's intent was to change him back to his
appearance before she wished to see the hairstyle.  The period where he
looked like that and had the horns was VERY brief.  It was in the store, and
he went to the bathroom and changed his hairstyle within an estimate of 15
minutes or so.

Her intent doesn't matter. What she said was "earlier," and that made
him look like he had when he had been in his room, after changing
clothes and fixing his hair but before jumping in the tub. Now why
should it pick this particular 'earlier,' you ask? And I reply, why not?
It's as good as any other earlier, and Ranma has extremely bad luck
where this sort of thing is concerned.

   Also, if he had changed back to the appearance when he had the horns,
then he would have also wound up back in the blue dress.  Since Akane's wish
was only to see the odango hairstyle, it shouldn't have affected anything
else, horns included.  The wish was "Awww, I bet it was adorable," she
teased. "I wish I could see what it looked like."  Since the horns weren't
visible, the wish wouldn't return them.

It was the second wish that returned them.

   Kasumi uses a rice cooker, not a pot.

I'm gonna change this to soup, as one person suggested.

Thanks for the comments!


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