I seem to have missed part 1 the first time around, but a number of my
comments seem to apply to both parts... All are, of course, IMHO, and
you can ignore/refute them at will :)
First off: I am very much enjoying the story; you do a wonderful job of
varying your writing to fit the scene and POV - the simple details of
the Akane scenes contrasted with the more complex scenes with Kasumi or
some of the others. (I have a couple of specific scenes I'll comment on
later.) Story comments are later, to avoid spoiling the tale for other
FFML readers.
I do have a major problem, however, with the use of quotations - or
rather, the fact that they are not in English. Quotes are really
wonderful for enhancing the mood of a story, and can really add to a
scene - but if most of your readers can't understand them, they tend to
be more alienating than anything else, and it's a pretty good bet that
99% of your readers know little to no Classical Japanese, not to mention
the other languages you've been using. (Heck, I *can* read classical
Japanese on a good day, and I was alienated...) Having the translations
at the end really doesn't help, either; by the time the reader gets to
them, the context has been lost - and that is much of their power. I
*highly* recommend either presenting the quotations entirely in English
or, if you don't wish to part with the flavor of the original
language(s), placing the translation in parallel or just below.
I could whine about the use of furo, moshi moshi, and other Japanese
terms which have perfectly good English equivalents, but that's
something I'll leave to your preferences. However, to satisfy my
nitpickiness, I'll point out that "kaiyu" means "complete recovery"
while "kayu" is a type of porridge or gruel, usually eaten by invalids
or for breakfast. (Miso soup and rice is a more common Japanese
breakfast, and AFAIK the only one we ever see Kasumi preparing, but I
can easily buy Kasumi having changed the Tendo's bill of fare to exclude
dishes which might remind Akane of meals with Ranma.)
Colleen Leah Morgan wrote:
"G-great! I mean, good. At the teriyaki place? In two hours?"
(nitpick on) While teriyaki is a genuine Japanese food, I don't think
it qualifies as a restaurant specialty - or at least, I didn't see a
single restaurant in all of Kyoto that specialized in it. Yakitori,
sukiyaki/shabu-shabu, sushi, etc. were all pretty evident. (As a matter
of fact, the only teriyaki I remember seeing was a pariculary
frightening burger at McDonald's). Maybe I'm totally off base, but this
really struck me as odd. Okay, so this is the ultimate in nitpicks -
but you have such a clearly presented image of Japan that little things
like this feel out of place. To me, at least. (nitpick off)
The storm of the night before had passed and the sky was a
bright, blazing blue. The low-hanging frenzy of power and telephone wires
segmented the blue, lending an abstract touch that contrasted with the old
feel of the neighborhood in an odd, yet pleasing way.
This sentence is a bit too wordy for me, and feels somewhat awkward; not
sure how to best fix it, though, as the inherent image is really nice...
It was one of the
few places left that had a majority of pre-war houses rather than the ugly
new concrete mode of construction. Progress had brought their destruction
more readily than the veil of fire rained down by warplanes. Prayer papers
rustled in the boughs of the budding plum trees in the yard surrounding a
small shrine. Few visitors graced the shrine these days, and the gong
stood silent for months at a time. There was an old man raking the rocks,
robes covered by a thick down coat to keep the chill off. Akane waved to
him as the sisters walked by, and he smiled and waved back. His face
darkened after they had passed and he slouched down, leaning on his rake
for support. Sometimes prayer didn't seem like it was enough. He shook his
head and added another ridge to his wave pattern in the rocks. The gong
chimed quietly. He turned toward the noise, but the shrine was empty. The
wind, he thought.
(super nitpick on)
Well. you have an old guy putting wave patterns in the rocks, which is a
characteristic of rock gardens in Buddhist temples (specifcally Zen
ones). And the prayer papers and gong would be things you'd find in a
Shinto shrine. There are two ways to read this: (1) you *are*
describing a Zen rock garden, or (2) he's just raking some rocks around
to keep the grounds neat, but it's not a Zen rock garden. If (1), then
you need to decide whether the temple or the shrine would be more
appropriate for the situation, and pick one - while there are Buddhist
temples that have Shinto shrines on the grounds, they tend to be larger
ones, and it's rarely the other way around. (I'd pick the Shinto
shrine, but that's me.) If (2), then I'd take the reference to the
wave-pattern out, and maybe even go so far as to have him raking leaves
instead.
(super nitpick off)
Oh, and I like the little "wind" effects that you pile up one after the
other throughout this chapter. More on this later.
(snip)
"Okay, Kasumi-oneechan." She noticed that she was leaving small drops
of blood behind her, like a trail. Perhaps that's all the cracks wanted,
she thought. She could understand being hungry. Kasumi halted suddenly.
Akane tugged on her sister's hand. "C'mon, we're almost there."
That is one *heck* of a skinned knee!
The weathered sign squeaked and the awning rustled as a small
breeze whirled through, seeming to bid farewell to an old friend.
Hmmm... Here's that wind again!
(snip)
Surprise crossed her features; something was attached to the
mirror. She carefully touched the dry thing, realizing it was a flower
taped to the mirror. Standing on her tip-toes, she peeled the tape off
and it tumbled into her hands, dry petals rasping against her
fingers. She raised it absently to her nose, but all she could smell was
dust. A wind rustled her hair and blew the flower out of her
hand. Suddenly she felt cold, like ice. Like ice skating. Her hand,
already descending to pluck the flower from the dirty tiles, froze. Ice
skating. He had been so nice.
My gosh, that wind is pesky...! :) I like this part a lot.
A roaring filled her ears and she clapped her hands over them,
trying to shut it out, dirt and rocks were coming down all around her
and there wasn't anything she could do to help. Ice skating. Something.
It was there, but the chaos wouldn't let her get to it. "Please," she
whispered, and her voice screamed in her ears. Desperate to withstand
the storm, she fell to her knees. A sharp pain. Pain and blood. The sound
stopped and the quiet loomed large in its absence.
A small pool of blood was forming around her re-opened knee
wound. It flowed like a river in the cracked tile, a small rivulet
meeting up with the husk of the flower and dying it pink.
No offense, but if her knee was this bad, I doubt Dr. Tofu would have
just told her to go put some antiseptic on it...
(snip)
Kasumi pushed through the tight crowd of people, almost ripping
them aside in her rush to get to her sister. Didn't they understand? Why
couldn't they move? Tears of fear and frustration spilled down her
cheeks. She finally pushed past the final line and stopped short. A
twisted ruin of a truck loomed behind Akane, its mishandled metal frame
forming peaks and spirals around her. Glass lay shattered on the ground
in a perfect arc around where the girl stood. Kasumi thought she
could see the yellow reflections of Akane's coat in the shards.
Akane walked toward her sister with a sunny smile. Kasumi felt
a strange buzzing in her head, and noted that the truck was for "Happy
Sunday Treat," a candy that was advertised with a big orange octopus.
Someone whistled behind her and she caught another fragment of speech:
"She was just standing there, and the truck smashed itself!"
Must have been the wind... :P
(snip)
Shan Pu wiped the sweat from her face and hands with a spare
birthing rag. The hut had been kept hot with a small furnace used to boil
the traditional tea given to the baby and mother to bond them forever. In
this case it was useless, as the baby was a boy and not given the tea.
He would be raised communally, without the privilege of a mother. Shan Pu
smiled. She had been robbed of the the privilige of a mother early; was
^^^^^^^^ typo here
she really that much better than the village boys?
Well, you do seem to be using primarily manga continuity, but then you
refer to the second movie later on, so it seems to be a combination; in
that case, there is an episode in which Mousse's mother writes to him
asking him to come home, or some such (haven't seen the translated one
yet)... But this is pretty interesting as an idea anyhow.
Some general notes on story and plot-
I really like the way you've structured the story to leak the backstory
to the reader a little bit at a time, while advancing the story itself.
L:ast episode, we figured out that Ranma was dead; this episode, we
start seeing that maybe he's still around (play eerie music here)...
Meanwhile, you've evaded some of the worst of the darkfic traps - too
much moping by the characters, revealing too much at once, too many
cliched descriptions. Instead you have a lot of fresh prose and
evocative descriptions, and some really good dialogue. Bravo! I could
probably come up with more to say, but my daughter just decided to get
extremely fussy, so I'll just note that I am looking forward very much
to the next part!
bridget
--
"I choose you - PIKASPEW!!!"
Jamie to 2 month old daughter Madeline,
shortly after being spat up upon...
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Bridget and Jamie Wilde!
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http://www.psn.net/~wildeman/