David Homerick <dhomeric@jps.net> wrote:
A chilling wind blows.across Jusenkyo.
What a peculiar typo.
Hey, at least my mistakes are original. :) I use a fairly small font in
my E-mailer. The good thing is that I can compose mail and IRC at the
same time; the bad is that periods can get mistaken for commas, or
screen smudges. ^_^
Heh. I think it'll be more than thirty years before anything deserving
the name "glassteel" can be invented.
Nobody said the name was fully deserved. :)
I sit, staring at the pools in front of me. I wonder whether you understand. The thought that you don't is a massive weight that pushes down on me.
"Presses" is a better word choice, I think.
Probably right; will change.
Then I woke up. The dingy brown of the cave faded into my bedroom's familiar, muted whites and yellows.
That comma isn't necessary.
Really? I've always understood that when you have multiple adjectives
describing a single noun, they get separated by commas.
Youth, as they say. is wasted on the young.
"Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young."
Right.
Less than a month after Akane passed away, you followed. If anyone had told me that I'd outlive the two of you -- not to mention Ryoga, Kuno, even my own husband -- I'd
have called them crazy.
Could you please not use that plural-for-singular-of-unknown-gender
form? It makes my teeth hurt.
Normally, I wouldn't, but this is Ukyo's first person narration. Still,
I'll see if I can change this to something else.
After the recession hit, I'd had to move my restaurant downtown, where the businessmen ate who could afford to pay what I needed to charge to keep myself going.
And live in the house that Jack built.
The sentence needs some work.
I'll see what I can do.
It broke my heart to leave Nerima --
especially seeing how you and Akane just kept running your little martial arts school year after year,
"Little" sounds rather patronising. Next she'll be saying it's
"quaint."
Well, this IS Ukyo, who's been known to attach -chan to just about
anyone... but point taken.
But that's life, I suppose. Time keeps rolling forward, and nothing will stop it. I've heard people talk > about the 'stream of time,' but that's not what it is at all. It's a raging river with huge
waterfalls and rapids. We hang on to anything that floats as the current pulls us downstream, trying > desperately to avoid drowning or being smashed against a rock, all the while trying to enjoy the
scenery because we know we'll never see it again.
I imagine you're pretty proud of that extended metaphor, but it strikes
me as overblown. I'm currently resisting the urge to parody it. Plus,
it doesn't sound like Ukyou, IMO.
Well, not like sixteen-year old Ukyo, of course. A person who's seen her
body decay and most of her contemporaries pass away is of course going
to have a different perspective on the passage of time than a teenager.
As for it being overblown, you may be right, but I'd like to see what
other people have to say on it before deciding.
Sounds like Shampoo's grasp of Japanese has improved. I guess she
didn't spend all her time in China.
Yup.
So we went for help. Fortunately, one of the perks of being an Amazon matriarch is instant access to > transport.
It is? How so?
Diplomatic privilege.
Warner-Disney? They're both OOC. Happousai and Nodoka would be more
likely to get together than those two.
A discussion of this would probably be too off-topic for the list, so
I'll just say that I disagree.
Of course, none of them were actual Jusenkyo springs; Pu Langmu had dug holes, coated the bottoms with > polyshield to prevent any seepage from below, and filled them with the single-use instant waters.
The real springs were sectioned off behind glassteel barriers, so that the visitors could only stare at > the signs. Spring of Drowned Werewolf. Spring of Drowned Tragic Lovers. Spring of Drowned Mime.
I'm pretty sure that Pu Langmu had made some of these up, substituting for things like Spring of Drowned > Frog which were just not as impressive.
To be honest, it really doesn't sound like a very interesting park.
You don't think people would be interested in a place where they could
change themselves into something else, temporarily and safely? As one
reader said in a private response, the sex-changing pools *alone* would
attract huge crowds. ^_-
Even though she was my oldest friend -- both figuratively and literally -- I wasn't completely sure that I
should trust her on this. I like Shan Pu, really I do, but I know as well as anyone how
vindictive she can be when she doesn't get her own way. I hate to admit it, but that's something she and I > had in common.
Why would she admit this at all?
To herself? Why wouldn't she?
I hear isolation actually works really well against world-wide disease
epidemics.
Not sure what your point here is. Complete isolation may well work, but
the 'complete' part is easier said than done.
I listened to the shouting match that was resonating through the walls, and could make out a few of the > words. Shan Pu kept saying one particular phrase... "meirenyu de xinzang." Mermaid's heart? She
had mentioned an Amazon magic item by that name to me. I tried to remember what she had said about it.
"Don't eat it."
Besides that. :P
My flashlight stabbed forward, narrowly illuminating the cobblestone path.
"narrowly illuminating" doesn't make any sense. It's the flashlight
beam that is narrow.
Will reword.
Something howled in the distance; the sound sliced through the air like a scythe. Reflexively, the giant > spatula flew into my hands, and I spun around to look. Nothing. Just some animal in the
distance, I supposed.
Where the hell is Ranma buried? This doesn't sound like Tokyo.
It's meant to be the graveyard from Vol. 22 part 2. If your point is
that Tokyo wouldn't be quiet at night, well, a lot can change in 50-60
years, especially with worldwide recessions and disease epidemics. As
for the animal sound, there are several panels in Ranma 1/2 which show
outdoor shots where the sound of a dog barking is heard. I don't think
it would be out of the question for an urban dog to howl. Other than
that... if I got details wrong I'll happily correct them, but you'll
have to be more specific.
The sun came up, spilling its light across the horizon as we arrived back at Jusenkyo.
They did all that in one night?
Yep.
Shan Pu laid your remains carefully down on the ground next to me. I had no idea how she'd managed to
get you here from Nerima without the Transport Authority finding you, and I didn't really want to
know.
Wasn't she with her the whole time?
No, not all of it.
Your glassy eyes stared aimlessly like dull, brown marbles. I looked away.
He's in pretty good shape for a corpse. How long has he been dead?
Couple days. Vince has already mentioned the eyes, but if there's other
things I got wrong, as I said I'll need specifics.
Unzipping her satchel, Shan Pu took out a gem. It was round, made of clear crystal, a little smaller than an okonomiyaki.
That's pretty frickin' huge for a gem.
That it is.
Or is he? Maybe she and he are in adjacent jail cells. Close enough to be aware of each other, but never
able to touch. Maybe Shan Pu knew that that would happen.
Her suspicions of Shampoo are shading into paranoia. Why would she put
her ass on the line for something so petty?
Well, this *is* the same Pu who chased Ranma and Genma across China --
and later all the way to Nerima -- because the former defeated her in
combat, and then later bombed Ranma's wedding; I don't think it's out of
the question for Ukyo to suspect the possibility.
I liked the concept, but I thought the Ukyou narration was more a
hindrance then a help. I also thought Jusenkyo Park (insert Jeff
Goldblum muttering about Chaos Theory) was hard to swallow and didn't
pay off in any way. Likewise, the future history of the Amazon Village
was muddled and ultimately irrelevant.
Sorry that much of this story didn't seem to work for you, but I very
much appreciate your sharing your reactions.
Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html