Grayson Towler <grayson@rigroup.net> wrote:
On Thursday, Ranma was introduced to a weekly tradition at the
Tendo household.
Various lemon writers raise their hands, offering suggestions, but
Gary steadfastly ignores them.
Non-stop lesbian orgies? Nobody'd want to read that. :)
"Oh well. You had your chance! I wish it was gone." She tapped
the trophy with her finger, and it popped out of existence like a
punctured balloon.
Nabiki's either trying very obliquely to explain her own sense of
challenge to Ranma, or she's being very thick. My guess is the
former, of course, but Ranma doesn't seem to get it.
The former, yeah. It's also my (equally oblique) response to readers who
were wondering why Nabsy hasn't used Ranma's powers to get rich quick.
Akane turned. Dr. Tofu stood in front of his clinic, the stone
overhang above shielding his head from the late afternoon sun. "Oh, I'm
fine." She smiled. "It doesn't hurt at all anymore, thanks to you,
Doctor."
How did Akane hurt her ankle? Maybe I need to read over the last chapter
again.
It's not in the last chapter. You're just supposed to assume that it
happened over the normal course of her activities. Actually, I'd thought
about putting in some blurb about her having performed some especially
tricky gymnastics routine. Asks Tofu, "And that's how you got hurt?"
Replies Akane, "No, on my way home I tripped over a twig." For whatever
reason, this didn't make it into the draft.
This is an interesting bit here with Akane being tempted by the power
available to her, and it sets up a potential line of development in the
future. Resisting temptation a single time is doable, especially for
a young, idealistic sort like Akane. But how about five years from now?
Ten years? Already, we see Akane making moral compromises,
such as the wish to appear in Kasumi's form in this chapter. How long
before her sense of right and wrong starts to subtly shift, and she finds
herself willing to use magic to do things she previously would never have
dreamed of?
It's possible she'll come to realize this and put some serious ethical
clamps on herself. But how long will it take?
Good question. :) Your point is certainly a valid one, and a theme that
we'll see developed in later installments. It would be difficult for
anyone to resist the temptations that this level of power offers, and
it's easy to convince yourself that what you want is best for everyone
else, especially when you can prevent people from disagreeing with you.
OTOH, the unreliability of Ranma's powers make this not as much an issue
as it could (and will likely later) be.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Ranma said with mock sincerity. "My martial
self-defense training makes me automatically throttle any boy who gets
too near me. I can't do anything about it."
Technically, he didn't try to throttle Ataru there. Perhaps "pound the snot
out of" would be more apt.
Yeah, that does sound better.
Moroboshi sprang forward and wrapped his arm around Ranma's
waist. "By letting you get used to it!" Ranma's fists began pounding on
him, but he held on with an iron grip.
Little does Ranma know that this is excellent training if Happosai ever
does show up in this fic.
Which leads me to wonder... where ARE some of the other cast members?
The timeline is flexible, but shouldn't we at least have seen Ryouga by now?
We're still around the end of volume 1 as far as the timeline goes.
Ryoga's scheduled to show up in either the next part or the one after
that. Kodachi'll be along something like two parts thereafter. As for
the others, Shampoo and Cologne will be in the series finale. Ukyo will
probably get a cameo or two, and Happosai might get one as well. I've
got no plans for the other regulars, though that might change by the
time I get back to continuing this as new and better ideas occur.
Carefully, Tofu slid the door closed. He paused for a few
seconds.
"KASUUUUMIII!"
The lemon writers sigh forlornly, knowing that Gary's Tofu would
never have the imagination to really take advantage of a situation
like this.
Lucky for Akane this wasn't Tofu from WUE....
A facefull of Ranko's hair cut off Ataru's words. Her head
nuzzled up against his face. Her arms tightly hugged his chest. Finally,
she'd gotten over her inhibitions. What a brilliant idea it was to talk
to her!
Couldn't Ranma think of a better way to shut Ataru up at this
particular moment? Maybe I'm not visualizing this properly.
Doubtless there were better ways he could've thought of, but he only had
a split-second and had to do the first thing that came to mind.
Akane's stomach trembled. She had hidden in the closet, hoping
that the doctor wouldn't open it. But now Kasumi would see her. Knowing
what Ranma's powers could do, she would inevitably put two and two
together. And there was no way to get out in time.
Ah, and here you have an opportunity for a classic Marx brothers scene
involving an open doorway which is interpreted as a mirror.
Yeah... but then Akane would have some explaining to do to Kasumi. :)
"What kind of restaurants do you like to go to?"
"Um...." Ranma considered. "Dunno." Were there different kinds
of restaurants? He'd thought they were all the same. "I don't go out to
eat much."
Hmm? That seems a little dim even for Ranma.
Well, Genma's never really taken him to restaurants... but still, you're
probably right.
No, of course not. As he'd told himself many times, there were
doctors in this world, and there were patients. Tofu had made up his
mind long ago to be a Doctor. Doctors didn't get sick; they helped sick
people get well.
This is an interesting insight into the mind Tofu, which is territory
rarely explored in fanfiction. It says a lot about him, and suggests
even more about things that may have happened in his life. Even
if you don't explore the Tofu thread farther, it's a nice touch to hint
at the hidden aspects of his character this way.
Admittedly, my primary purpose for this bit was that I didn't want Tofu
to be *too* sympathetic; I wanted his suffering to be at least partly
his own fault to make it easier to laugh at his troubles. But I agree
that there's a lot of room for development of the character, and there
must be some reason why we never saw him seeking help with his
Kasumi-problem in the manga, no?
Leaning over, Nabiki whispered in Ranma's ear. "I wish Kasumi
was right back where she was a minute ago."
This should lead to a very short-ranged teleport on Kasumi's part,
of course.
Unless she happened to have been standing still for the last minute,
yeah.
"I accidentally wished that Ranma would go insult someone else
instead of me. Should've known the idiot would pick somebody like
Kasumi."
Wow... that's pretty fast thinking for Akane.
I find that this is one of the areas where I'm tripping up a bit in this
story. Sometimes, the characters seem very sharp and clever,
and other times they seem to be rather thick and clueless. There's
room for portraying the Ranma cast either way, but in this story,
you seem to jump around a bit (unlike "Hearts and Minds," where
your handling of the characters seems very fluid and consistent).
Here, though, the plot seems to dictate how the characters behave
more than the other way around, so the characters are alternatively
smart and dumb when the story dictates.
Well, yeah, I admit freely that I'm not as careful about this in a
primarily comedy fic like this one as I would be in a serious character
drama. The original Ranma 1/2 series isn't absoultely consistent in this
sort of regard either (though it's much better than the anime); Akane,
for example, can see through Ranma's disguises but misses every
painfully obvious clue as to P-chan's identity; she's also something
like a black belt in martial arts but she can disable herself by
tripping over a conveniently-placed ball.
Anyhow, I'll go over this story and see what can be done. Perhaps some
thinking time on Akane's part before she comes up with her excuse.
"Oh, don't worry." She chuckled. "I won't wish for anything
bad."
How about he'll just agree not to tell anyone that she disguised herself
as Kasumi? That seems fair enough.
Akane's just teasing here. She doesn't follow Nabby's self-imposed rules
as regards Ranma; she'll help him out when she can, and make wishes
whevever she decides to.
It seems like a tough series to write, for all its lighthearted tone. I can't
When I started working on this, my thought was to have something as a
break from my more serious stuff that's fun and easy to write. As it
turned out, it's been one out of two. :)
help but wonder about the "cure for cancer" storyline, which didn't even
get a mention in this chapter. Maybe you re-wrote Chapter 4 and I didn't
see (I glanced at your website, but didn't have time to do much more than
skim the chapter again). The problem I had with the cure for cancer plot
is that it seems too big to just drop and get back to the fun-and-games,
which is what happened this time around. Maybe it's just me.
A revision of 4 is in the works, but hasn't been done yet. I've been
rather seriously neglecting the job of rewriting old work in favor of
forging ahead on new chapters.
I do enjoy this story and hope you get back to it eventually. However, it
seems you're on much firmer ground when you're writing "Hearts and
Minds," so I'm certainly pleased to hear you're getting back to that one.
In the mean time, I'm trying to settle back into the habit of doing some
C&C, which I haven't had time for in the past several months. Hope that
it has been of some help to you.
You betcha. Your comments are always insightful and thought-provoking,
and I thank you for 'em.
Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html