At 05:43 PM 9/23/99 -0400, Miller, Bert wrote:
Finally!
Yeah, that was how we felt. :)
The palace was a rotten tooth protruding from the desert's ragged
mandible, its torn brown outline the last incisor in a gaping,
blue-roofed maw.
One almost has to read this sentence aloud, slowly. The
way you shift back and forth between one- and two- syllable, harsh
sounding words (especially with a 't' sound) and polysyllabic,
software words (e.g., mandible, incisor) makes this sentence very
difficult to speed-read.
I like sentences like these, actually, as they force me to slow down and
take my time in reading, so that I don't miss important bits.
... giving them a focus and a unity unknown to the neighbouring
Hordes.
Hmmm... 665 C.E., Qinghai. Too late for Huns, much too early
for Mongols. Generic steppe warriors? If I remember right, this
coincides with one of China's most expansive periods, under the
Tang. The lowland corridor just north of Qinghai, into Xinhuang,
was firmly in Chinese hands, separating Qinghai from the steppes.
Is this during the period of agressive, expansionistic Tibet?
Actually, or so I read in a New York Times article last April, Qinghai was
a part of Tibet until the 1700s, and is still commonly referred to as lower
Tibet.
Due to the presence of the powerful Musk Empire in Tibet, history took
place slightly differently... at the time of Wu Lin and Marpa Kon,
expansionist Tibet is already in contraction. They're trading their
religion for protection against the Mongols (same as in history, only
earlier) and the Musk Empire. Because of this, the Imperial Cult of the
Musk is a mix of elements Tibetan Buddhism and other practices that
predated the entrance of Buddhism into Tibet.
That's what SHE was there for. Water without a pit, an embodied
dakini that was one with the pools...
Let's see... (quickly rereads prefaces to parts 1 & 2)
in 647, the Emperor resurrected a consort, binding her with a
Fierce Protector. In 653, he and his Empress made his son a
consort from a tiger. Now, 12 years later, he's a joke and the
Empress, who holds all the reins, is exiled.
Bingo, except for the part about the son. Unless Chris added something
that I missed to the scene, we never indicated there was any relationship
between the bridegroom and the Emperor.
W A T E R F A L L S
a mystery
...and it's still not clear why it's billed as a mystery, though
there are lots of mysterious goings-on...
One of the problems of explaining why we bill it as a mystery is that to
explain why it's a mystery removes the mystery.
hour - her skin already began to tighten, and there was still so much
to do...
I'm guessing that the "skin tightening" is a weakness, perhaps the
wearing off of whatever she uses to postpone aging.
Could be.
a moment she considered spending some of her precious power in
annihilating him for the affront--
So her power has limits...
Most power does. :)
And then, she laughed, with her temple wind-chime voice. Why had
she never seen jesters like this one, before? That's what he'd be for
her, once... once...
Happosai as just a jester? An unnerving thought...
I think he could caper with the best of them. :)
"Hurry up," Akane replied flatly.
Very unlike Akane to respond "flatly". Perhaps there's a reason?
Could be.
"Go away, Mr. Saotome," Akane said commandingly.
To Ranma's surprise, his Pop turned and almost hurried down the
stairs, without even a farewell sign.
"You go away too, Ranma," she continued, turning her gaze to him.
"I've got to go to school tomorrow, and I don't really feel like
dealing with you right now. I'm too tired."
Ranma opened his mouth, closed it, and left her room.
VERY interesting... has Akane developed the Bene Gesserit Voice?
<pointing upwards over his head> See that? That's the reference. :)
"A meeting, Master of Pools?"
An auxiliary title for Musk rulers, I see...
Like any good ruler, they've got a few dozen.
As the customers began to shout louder, Mousse tried his hardest
not to break down and cry.
An effective way to break up the foreboding real plot development,
but it might have been even more effective if made a bit funnier.
Hmm... I'll see what can be done with that.
"Who am I kidding?" she said quietly. She had been dreaming
about him last night; he had woken her up in the middle, so the memory
was still vivid. She had been a princess trapped in a tower, kept
prisoner by an evil witch who bore a close resemblance to Shampoo.
The witch had two helpers, who looked quite a bit like Ukyou and
Kodachi, except not quite as pretty. All three of them had used all
their wiles to try to seduce the handsome prince who came to rescue
her, and...
And then Ranma, the stupid jerk, had woken her up.
Very similar to one of the scene's from the manga's "Akane's dream"
story. It rings true as the sort of of dream which would obsess
Akane repeatedly, but she should remember having had it before.
Maybe. Maybe not. Dreams, even the ones you think you remember, tend to
slip away very easily.
It's not completely clear from the description given if Akane is
consciously aware that Ranma is the prince.
As intended. :)
Don't be afraid, she told herself. Ranma is right outside; if
you scream, he'll hear you.
This is certainly Akane, to think this moments after thinking he's
a jerk...
Consciously or unconsciously, Akane knows that despite being a jerk, Ranma
is a jerk who'll always protect her if she needs it.
Akane reached out with her hand and brushed the flies away. And
they _burned_, burned like torches to her eye, and...
...and is the missing end of that sentence significant? "..and
they awakened her (memories | powers | potential)."
That it a secret.
"The pit," he said quickly, "down in the..."
A dry hiss cut off his next words. She saw the skin of his face
ripple.
Was Happosai throwing it off, and about to reveal something
IMPORTANT? And was suddenly murdered in consequence?
Seems reasonable. Could be.
"Finest Musk teddy bear wrapping paper." The Amazon cocked what
remained of an eyebrow. Herb bowed. "AND a red ribbon."
That wacky Herb!
Him and his wacky borderline psychopathic/sadistic behaviour!
Mousse sighed, and licked a dribble of blood from his lips.
"Shampoo is gone," he said.
So was Tarou sent to fetch Shampoo? Rouge seemed more likely at
the time the order was given. But, by the end of this episode,
Akane seems more likely to be the one the order _should_ have
meant.
All good theses, all possibly true.
"I wish they were not so insensitive," Nodoka said quietly. "I
remember the Master well from when Genma was courting me. He was a
most manly man, though he perhaps took it too far, if such a thing can
be done."
Certainly consistent with the manga Nodoka, though uninterestingly
so, except as light comic relief...
One of the purposes of this scene is to have the characters (except Akane,
and to a lesser extent Ranma) behave blithely as they do in the manga
towards such a horrific extent. This is a reflection of the collision of
the humourous manga world, and the horrific one embodied by whatever force
controlled and murdered Happosai.
Akane said nothing,
After all, what might happen if she did?
Ranma might call her uncute? ^_^
If I didn't know better, I would say that his blood
has been replaced with water. Though how that could happen, I cannot
say in my capacity as a medical man."
Perhaps some symbolic or mystical meaning for the swap?
Maybe even a practical one. The transformation of all the blood in a body
into water in an instant would be painful, and almost instantly fatal.
He laughed again. Ranma stared at him in open-mouthed disgust.
Not clear why Ranma reacts quite this way. He's seen Tofu around
Kasumi before. Sad horror, perhaps?
Well, he's never seen Tofu taste the blood (admittedly, what was once the
blood) of a human being around Kasumi before. :)
And she was, perhaps, the loveliest woman that Ranma had ever
seen. Her figure was perfection; looking at her made it hard to
breathe, hard to think. A mild buzzing began to emanate from the
centre of his skull. The woman smiled at him; the buzzing grew.
Black specks...
Presumably this is Wu Lin...
A reasonable guess.
Akane stepped between him and the woman, and the noises ceased.
_VERY_ interesting... (The final signs have been fulfilled, and
the Eternal Akane summoned forth to do battle once more...)
No. Believe it or not, this is a fanfic of mine that doesn't have Moorcock
references. :)
"Who are you?" Akane asked again.
"Never shall you know my name, little child," the woman said.
The serpent-fangs distorted her mouth and voice, but it was still
almost unbearably sweet and seductive. Even from here, Ranma could
see that her tongue was forked. "For I shall kill you before granting
you even that much of an increase in your power."
So she knows something about the power Akane now wields...
And sees her as a threat, obviously.
Well, another exquisite chapter. You've apparently cut back on
the "strange, impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness writing"
style (your own words), which, IMHO, is a plus.
We'll put extra in the next chapter to make up for it. ;)
The gap in time between parts 1 & 2, and this one, will probably
lose you readers. This is very tightly interwoven, and I had to go
back and reread carefully to figure out what was going on here.
<nod> That's the problem of any multipart fic, especially one written
collaboratively... if you get writer's block or anything else prevents you
from getting out chapters at a regular rate, people can have a hard time
picking it up again.
I'm still eager to find out where you're going.
Well, hopefully, the next chapter will be out a little quicker. :)
Thanks very much for the commentary, Bert.
Ciao,
-Alan Harnum