On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Alan Harnum wrote:
At 03:01 PM 1/25/00 -0800, Vincent Seifert wrote:
And now for something slightly different...
Gary already made the obvious joke, so I won't. :)
heh. I actually intended that to show that this wasn't Toth/Centaur,
and one of my prereaders pointed out that this was way too subtle... too
late. Oopsie. ^_^;
The traveller returned to the Tendo home on an afternoon in
late spring, one of those boisterous days when the rushing rain
showers would send water sluicing into the gutters one minute and
five minutes later the sun would sparkle off the clean streets.
She was a small woman, lean and athletic, with her hair pulled
back and braided into a pigtail. Her clothing was baggy and
soaked, worn and stained with journeying, but her step was light
and quick despite the large pack she bore.
I like the cinematic quality of the opening; a slow pan from a distance
with neutral terms and a focus upon setting, moving into more intimate
details of character and action. Effective.
Thanks. Not my usual style, but I'm trying to grow a bit.
"Yes, Daddy," the boys chorused, looking solemn. "We
won't," the younger one amplified. "If Taro does, I'll clobber
him!"
Taro? Nahh, couldn't be... just a coincidence, I'm sure.
I knew readers would make that association, but it's spurious: Taro,
Kotaro, Kentaro, and Pantyhose-Taro are all different names...
The door closed, the soggy silk
Love that sibilance. :)
Alliteration allows awesome audio analogues. :)
"It's me, dear. Shall I wash your back?"
"You can wash more than that, honey..." <bowm-chicka-chicka> (sorry)
Yeah, right. I'd like to see YOU say that to Kasumi in person without
stumbling to a flustered pause in mid-innuendo. :)
"I'd like that, thanks." The door slid open and Kasumi came
in, wearing a thin cotton yukata and with her hair back in its
usual bun. She knelt behind Ranma and picked up a washcloth.
The little details are handled very assuredly; the description of who is
wearing what or how their hair is styled never seems extraneous--the
surface details give deeper insight into the characters, how they've
changed, and how they're remained the same.
Oh, good, it worked. *whew*
"It was no more than you deserve, Ranma." Ranma couldn't
see Kasumi's face, but she could hear her blushing,
_Hear_ her blushing? Wow, Ranma's sense must be really good; did you
intend this? I can certainly see him being able to sense a blush with his
MADM senses; is 'hear' the verb you wished to use?
Mmm... perhaps not. What I meant to describe was the way tone of voice
can carry subtle emotional overtones (hey, an audio analogue there, too)
that are also expressed in visual signals like blushing. I'll see if I
can come up with a better way.
Kasumi's eyes were politely averted. Sometimes she would
join him in the furo for a leisurely half-hour of conversation,
but evidently not today. Oh, well, if something was bothering
her, he'd hear about it when she was ready to tell him, and not
before....
Questions on my mind at the moment:
-why Kasumi?
-why isn't Akane resentful?
Need answers... reading on. :)
Questions and answers are rife... some hinted at, some explicit.
Ranma grinned. "Funny, Cologne says that, too." He
followed Soun in.
Excellent narrative flow. No telling at all; nothing but showing,
revealing what's changed and what's stayed the same through snippets of
conversation.
*bow*
Ranma lay on his back with his hands behind his head,
waiting patiently. Kasumi might come to his room, or she might
not, but unspoken habit established that he was not to come to
hers.
Revealing. So, they don't share a bedroom... more questions. :)
These answers were, at best, hinted at... but consider that Kasumi is a
very private person, their lives aren't fully merged, and that Ranma is
often gone.
"Thank you for your consideration, Ranma," Kasumi said,
lowering her face again. "But please don't concern yourself with
that. I do want to. I want--" She stopped suddenly, then said
in a voice so soft that only the stillness of the room enabled
Ranma to hear her words clearly, "I will continue to perform all
the duties of a wife, and you will continue to return to me."
Okay, so... it's a marriage of duty, not love? Why? What about Akane?
Ack. So many questions... thank goodness this is just a moderately short
one-shot, so I won't have to wait too long for answers. (I hope)
I hope these answers were evident eventually, but Kasumi's motivations
are left deliberately ambiguous. There are several possible answers to
that question, some more cheerful than others; Ranma won't ask her,
because he doesn't want to know, and neither will I.
He saw her swallow convulsively. "Last night, did she...?"
"Yes."
Akane let out a puff of breath, half relieved, half unhappy.
"All right, then. Um... the third place."
You know, Vince, throwing out this many questions and intriguing situations
without giving requisite answers would be very cruel. :)
Cruel? Moi? I'm a fuzzy bunny compared to certain other writers. :>
"They're little hellions, is what they are," Ranma said
proudly. "Shampoo wanted another generation of Joketsuzoku
warriors; well, that's what she's getting." Three girls, each as
pretty as their mother and as tough as their father, he thought.
Come to think of it, the other way around would have worked too.
Oh, my. Ranma, you casanova. o.o
A Man Among Men, by Nodoka's standards... *shiver*
"She's still a great old bat. A little older, a little
battier."
Wonderful turn of phrase. :)
Thanks. Did I mention how much I admire Cologne? :)
"Yeah. Her people live inside this big mountain. They have
a lord who sits in this big lamp thing and sort of glows, and
that's where all their heat and light come from. Decent guy, a
bit standoffish maybe, but kinda... resigned-like. Anyway, they
all have wings, so she has wings." Elegant wings, strong and
proud; wings that could fling air in metal-cleaving blades, or
enfold a lover in rustling softness.... "Her feet have claws,
too." She'd worn soft boots to keep from shredding his calves
when she--
I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone did this for real;
good to see it done so well. :)
The germ of the idea came from WUE, of course, but you didn't even throw
poor Kiima a crumb. *sniff* I think she'd find him attractive, though,
particularly a few years on. "I am NOT an old lady!!" :)
"Sort of, or maybe the other way around, depending on how
you look at it. She lives near Jusenkyo, and I was poking around
before I knew who-all lived there, and they caught me, and then
they wished they hadn't. Man, that was an adventure and a half.
I'll tell you about it sometime."
Oh, yes, please do; it's a story I'd love to hear told. :)
Er... no promises, but when people say things like that, my subconscious
listens... and that seems to be where my stories come from. They're
certainly not organized enough to be coming from the conscious.
Finally Genma broke the silence. "You should be grateful
for the bounty that fortune has bestowed on you," he reproved his
son.
"Bounty?" Ranma asked softly without shifting his gaze or
altering his expression. "Is that what you call it?"
Well, it'd be what I call it, but, then again, I don't know the situation
yet. :)
Well, Ranma's not the lecher some people think he is, not by a long shot.
One of the twanging heartstrings here is that Ranma is unhappy with a
situation which some readers would probably give up a body part (as long
as it wasn't THAT one!) to be stuck with...
Genma sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. "As I say,
you've done well, but there is one thing I'm concerned about.
This... affection for women that you have is understandable, at
your age, but it is a serious weakness. They have their world,
and we have ours. Protect them, yes, enjoy the comforts they
provide, but do not love them to excess. They will steal your
strength, the very quality that they claim to value, if you give
them the chance."
Nice; explains so much about Genma, both in the manga and in this story,
just in this one paragraph. "Protect them, enjoy the comforts they
provide, but do not love them to excess."--sounds like Genma all the way.
I see Genma as a Takahashi-style exaggeration of a certain Japanese
stereotype, the Ascetic Warrior. This stereotype has little use for
women, and indeed finds them to be a threat to the masculine virtues.
This crops up in connection with Miyamoto Musashi, too.
Akane let out something that might have been a gasp, or
might have been a sob, and flung herself into his arms. And then
their world was nothing but thirsty lips, and questing hands, and
trembling skin, and forbidden love.
"Forbidden"--how could that be? Why is Akane the only one "forbidden" to
him? Oh, this suspense is so cruel. ;.;
Even in the tradition which Kasumi and Nodoka are upholding, screwing your
wife's sister on the sly is going a bit too far. You're supposed to keep
it outside the family.
"I KNEW you were going to see Ukyo and Shampoo!" Akane
shouted, crouched in the tangle of sheets on the bed. "I
COULDN'T not know that! But I told myself that you weren't
screwing them! I managed to convince myself that you wouldn't!
But then I saw that cute kid, and I KNEW! She was every bit as
cute as, as, as YOU are, you son of a bitch! I didn't ask, but
she HAD to be yours! HOW COULD YOU?!"
So... are none of the other girls aware of each other's existence, or is
Akane the only one kept in the dark? So many questions...
This one was also barely hinted at. They know Ranma visits the others,
and they know he's married to Kasumi... beyond that are things they may
not want to know, so perhaps they don't ask either, preferring their
illusions. I think it would be pretty easy for both Shampoo and Ukyo to
reach the conclusion that *she* was the one Ranma really wanted, even if
he had to go to the others for inconvenient reasons.
"Akane, if you really want me to tell you, I'll tell you.
No lies, no excuses, no regrets; it's all my fault, and that's
all there is to it. But you have to ask, and you'd better be
damn sure you want to know the answers. I trust you not to hurt
anyone with them."
Answers? Yes, please.
Here they come...
"I'm my father's son, and my mother's," Ranma said wearily.
"My father thinks women are only good for making heirs and
keeping house, and my mother thinks a man among men can have as
many women on the side as he can handle as long as he's discreet
about it and doesn't embarrass his wife, and I was a dumb kid who
couldn't see another way out and thought the girl he loved with
all his heart didn't love him back."
And the truth comes out; things begin to fall into place. My tension is
relieved, but replaced by melancholy; very good.
"Melancholy" is one appropriate response-- that's certainly how I feel
about it-- but other responses are also appropriate. The situation is
entirely subjective.
Akane nodded. "But you were a jerk, and I reacted
appropriately." Ranma smirked ruefully, but didn't comment.
"But after that, things just kept on the way they'd been going.
I loved you, but I was afraid to tell you, because I didn't think
you loved me back. I thought I had all the time in the world.
If only something had happened that made me sure you loved me...
I think I could have told you, then. Or if I'd been braver.
Or...."
Ahh... so this all depends upon the flip side of ToTH, in which Akane
_doesn't_ come to the conclusion that Ranma loves her by the end of the
manga, and things begin to fall into place from there...
Precisely. Also, in TotH, Akane and Ranma get what they want, and
everyone else gets zilch. Here, the situation is reversed, more or less;
it would be precisely reversed if R&A weren't carrying on.
"Mmm." Akane clearly wasn't happy about the distinction,
but she didn't ask the next question. "What really irks me about
finding out that I wasn't the only one you were unfaithful to
your wife with-- oh, hell." The convolution was just too silly
to take seriously, and Akane had to stop to straighten her face.
Ranma was evidently employing soul-of-ice to keep from cracking
up. "Anyway, I thought I was special. Now I've lost that."
Soul-of-ice? So, does that mean Ranma's got a girl in Antarctica, too? :)
No, but Ryoga does. He's got girls all over... well-separated, of course.
The one in Antarctica fell into the SOD Penguin. :)
"Well...." Ranma suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "My,
er, female form is still a, er, virgin... but you can have that.
If you want it, that is. Er." He cleared his throat, not daring
to look at Akane.
An offer both odd, and oddly touching.
Quite... and again, different from TotH. But Ranma's female form has
become something of a refuge for him under the circumstances: the part he
hasn't compromised.
Note: This originates in a question Dave Roeder asked me, to
wit, what scenario could be devised to have ALL the girls get
Ranma while remaining serious and IC? I'm not saying this
answers the question, mind you, but this is what resulted.
Well... it's hard to imagine a more effective treatment of so implausible a
situation.
That's really the best I could hope for. This was another
get-it-out-of-my-system fic, and I took the opportunity to stretch a bit.
Excellent job, Vince; really enjoyable, with an autumnal
quality to it.
Even though it's set in spring. :) Thanks for your kind words!
- Vince