At 11:08 AM 10/3/99 -0400, Emily Siazon wrote:

"The Man in the Mirror"
An El Hazard Fanfic written by Emily Siazon.
All characters are owned by Pioneer Entertainment.
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Today is your fortieth birthday. You've been avoiding the subject all 
week, not liking the reminder of the unsightly wrinkles and the extra 
weight you've acquired during the past twenty years. It doesn't help 
that your wife still looks as young and beautiful as the day you met 
her. 

Interesting.  You avoided explicitly naming the central character at the
beginning, but made it so obvious that it's easy to infer this is Makoto.

You place your hand against the mirror, tracing over lines that you 
didn't notice the day before. 

Tracing lines on the reflection of his face in the mirror?  This sounds
like the intent, but it isn't grammatically clear.

And so you grew angrier. You began to hate her for not being able to 
give you the normal life you wanted: to have children and to watch 
them grow. To not feel like your whole life just passed you by.

This is something that's never dealt with in the series--is Ifurita capable
of bearing children, or even capable of a function such as the sexual
intercourse required to produce them?

Even if she can't bear children, though, she and Makoto could always
adopt... though it might be difficult, considering that Ifurita probably
wouldn't have any record of citizenship in Japan.

It had been so long since you've seen it. It feels like a whole 
'nother lifetime

Other lifetime(?)

You don't even remember the last time you'd had a conversation that 
didn't end into a fight.

Suggested change:  didn't end up in a fight.

"Ifurita, do you remember when we were in El Hazard and I wouldn't
stop chasing you until I could show you how much I loved you?" Your
grip on her sleeve tightens as she looks down sadly on the bed. "I 
was a nice person once, wasn't I?"

Aww.  I wanna know what Ifurita's reply was.  :/

*********************************************************************
Author's Notes: Um. . . I'm not really sure what to say about this
except that I'm sorry to all the Makoto fans out there; I didn't 
really mean for him to come out as such a big bastard.
Please send comments and criticisms to <emily9@erols.com>.

Well, I enjoyed it, despite being a Makoto fan.  I like to think their
relationship will end up a little better than it does in this story, but
considering the problems inherent in a relationship where one of you is
immortal and cannot have children, this situation is quite plausible.

I'm uncertain of what you were trying to do with the second-person
narrative.  Why did you think the story would work better that way than in
the more common first- or third-person narrative?  If it was to force the
reader to experience by proxy the same state of mind Makoto is in, I think
we might need more details to really get into his head.  As it was, I found
the narration rather distracting--unless it serves a really important
function, you might want to consider redoing the story in first- or
third-person.

Criticism of the narrative style aside, I liked it very much.

Ciao,
-Alan Harnum