Subject: [FFML] Re: [Fic] [Ramma] By the pool of the Drowned Sensei, Teas er MK2
From: "Miller, Bert" <bert.miller@unisys.com>
Date: 10/13/1999, 11:25 AM
To: "'John-Martin Lotz'" <johnl@gate1.tomatoweb.com>
CC: "'ffml@fanfic.com'" <ffml@fanfic.com>

was Nermia Ward,

(sp) "Nerima"

Shaking my head to clear it of the images, ! walked up the 

---------------------------------------------^  "I"

The young women who stood at the door studied me, then asked the last
question that I expected to hear, "Excuse me, but are you engaged to
Ranma."
<clip> 
"One more question,  Do you want to kill him?"

This would have been both funnier and more IC for Kasumi if she'd just
greeted your narrator in a friendly fashion, and asked these questions
on their way inside with a curious smile, blithely assuming one or
the other must be true but unconcerned.

I took a step back, the first question hadn't been the last 
question I had
expected --  this one surely was, I had no idea how meeting this Ranma
person would be, but  this was NOT it!!  Still I had to know 
the answers to
question.

This last sentence is confusing, given that you've just used the
word "question" twice in the previous sentence, in what appears to be
another connection.  I suggest "...answers to _my_ question.", possibly
as a separate paragraph.

"Ranma NO BAKA,"  There was the sound of crashing in the 
background, then

Too cliche.  You'll get more interest if Ranma and Akane are doing
something else.

to just past the shoulder and was dyed purple in the style 
she knew to be
popular with teens about Ranma and Akane's age.

??? "dyed purple", "popular with teens"?  I assume this is
an attempt to both explain Shampoo's anime hair color and convey
an unusual degree of obliviousness in Kasumi at the same time.
Still, taking a sample of one to be evidence of "popularity" seems
more than obtuse, when Kasumi knows perfectly well that Shampoo is
from a tribal culture in China.

I pulled out two thermoses of water,  one hot and the other cold.

What, are they conveniently labeled on the side?  It would be very
Takahashi-like to do so; it would be _more_ Takahashi-like to have
Tomoe pull out a steaming teakettle and a full bucket.

I cinched my kimono tight as Kisumi continued, "Ranma, 'hot' 
water changed her
into a girl, 'cold' changed her into that man."

Why the single quotes around "hot" and "cold"?  Are they for emphasis?
If so, that's an unusual choice of punctuation; all caps or underlines
or asterisks are the usual.

Ranma, now male, gaped, and I had to ask,  "Ranma, whose body is this,
Obviously you know."

He looked half ready to hit and half to cry as he said,  "My 
father's and it 's dead."  He spun away from Kisumi and stalked off.

Well, this opens up a lot of questions in your readers' minds.  How
could Ranma even arrive at the Tendo-ke, if Kasumi has never met
Genma?  Why would his relationship with Akane be the same, without
the more obnoxious of the two parents pressuring them to get
together?  Without Genma around, what is Soun like?

It's a nice hook; virtually every reader who reads your teaser will
want to read on to see exactly what your alterverse change is.  But
it's a risky change:  if Genma died at Jusenkyo (the logical assumption
at this point), a _LOT_ of the subsequent events will have also been
altered.  You'll lose readers very quickly if it appears that you
haven't thought through the events at the Joketsuzoku village, and
how Ranma got to the Tendo-ke, and what Ranma's relationship with
Akane is, and how it got that way.

But you have me interested.


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