Hi. First off, I like this very much. I don't recall seeing any
other stories that put Ranma into Kyousuke's shoes. I'll be looking
forward to future parts of this.
However, there are a lot of basic writing errors in it, so now
comes the "criticism" part of C&C. Here goes:
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
No reason for this to be a separate paragraph, since you continue
the thought in the next line.
A teenage boy dressed in a deep-green Mao-suit along with a green
hat lay
on the ground with his hands tucked behind his head, his eyes
tracing the
puffy wisps of marshmallow white over him and idly watched the sky
floating backwards against the stationary clouds. A light gust
lifted
strands of hair above his face, only to have them settled down a
moment
later. He sighed for no particular reason.
"Mao-suit"? It's a Chinese Army uniform, and it's usually colored
medium green in all of Takahashi's illustrations.
Suddenly, he noted something drifting towards him from one corner of
his
eyes. "Masaka?" It was rather large, deep red, and round like a
UFO.
"Nanda kore? Mu, mugiwara boushi ka?" Before he had identified it,
the
young man had already leapt up from prone position into the air and
caught
the object intruding his rest with one hand, all in the blink of an
eye. A
long pigtail snaked out from underneath his hat and fluttered in the
wind
as he did so. He afforded himself a close look at his prize after
he landed.
What reason is there for the use of Japanese language in this
paragraph? It doesn't seem to be there to make a point, and all of
the words used have perfectly good English translations.
It's almost always best to avoid gratuitous Japanese words; save
it for words that don't have a direct English equivelent, or to make a
special statement.
For example, one possible use would be a situation where everyone
around only speaks English, and the main character is trying to
communicate. Then, having him use only Japanese language phrases
would express the confusion of the situation.
It was a red straw hat.
You already said that in Japanese, in the last paragraph. You're
just repeating yourself with this phrase.
"Nice catch!" A voice behind him made him tense and turn his head
back
immediately, promptly forgetting about the hat.
"The wind just took it away." He stood wide-eyed and stunned like a
deer
caught in a headlight as the figure in front of him went on. "I'm
glad, I
thought it was going to fall all the way down to the bottom."
"Ah." The voice had belonged to a girl, and a beautiful one at
that. She
was dressed in a white shirt and shorts, covered by a floral-paint
shirt
tied into a knot at her waist.
"It would've been a real hassle since this stairway is so long."
The way you're switching from Madoka's dialog to a description of
Ranma and then back again is confusing. I keep wanting to think that
Ranma's the one talking. Generally speaking, it's best to group
descriptions of a character's actions and that character's dialog in
the same paragraph. Then, when you switch to another character's
actions and/or dialog, make a seperate paragraph for it.
He had no idea what she was talking about, but agreed anyway.
"Y-yeah, it
really is." It wasn't really his fault that he couldn't help but
notice how
her indigo-blue long hair flowed with the wind like it had a life of
its
own, and how the multitude of expressions set themselves onto her
face in
quick successions as she smiled or pouted slightly, seemingly
without a
care in the world. "After all, it's got ninety-nine steps."
You did it again here; this paragraph seems to begin with Ranma
talking, so when I read it, it looks like he's saying the last line
too. Very confusing.
"Don't you know? There are ninety-nine steps, if you count from the
bottom to here!"
"Uh. no, I didn't know that." Still recovering from his daze, he re
plied
absently. Not wanting to let girl talking to him know that he
hadn't been
listening to her, he tried to find an excuse and quickly added, "I,
ah, took
the elevator."
Blue-green eyes stared into his own and blink-blinked. "But...
there is no
elevator."
For the first time that he could remember, he was at a loss for
words.
"Well, um, anyway," the young man stuttered out in hope to distract
her, "I
bet you there're actually a hundred steps."
I know that you're borrowing from Kyousuke's speech for this
scene. It really doesn't match the situation. Why would Ranma
suddenly start arguing with her about the number of steps when he has
no reason to give a hoot? Kyousuke argued the point because he'd just
finished counting them, and it was a point of pride. Ranma doesn't
have a stake in the situation, so this is coming out of nowhere.
"Well, what does it matter anyway," the blue-haired girl finally
said after
a while.
He smiled back. "I guess so."
If you do want to keep the argument anyway, at least trim it down
a bit. It went on for much too long, and interrupted the smooth flow
of the story.
He looked up to see her leave. "Uh... bye." The pigtailed boy
trailed off
when he realized that he still had her hat in his hands, and called
out to
her. "Hey! Your hat!"
She looked back. "It's yours!" She said with a small, mysterious
smile
after a little pause. "You look good in it!" Then she was gone,
leaving
only the faintest trace of a laughter in her lingering voice.
Without
knowing why, he clasped the hat to his chest and a healthy shade of
red
slowly crept into his cheeks.
Another quote from the first episode of KOR that doesn't fit the
scene. Ranma is wearing the Chinese Army cap, and never put the straw
hat on his head; so why is Madoka saying he looks good wearing it?
My name? It's Ranma. Saotome Ranma. Sixteen years old. Nice
meeting
y'all.
Oh... so Ranma is from _southern_ Japan? ^_^
Matsuoka-sensei examined the new student with a critical eye and
inwardly sighed. The boy certainly didn't look like the studious
type, and
his records showed. Man, he thought, when will they give me a
break? One
delinquent was quite enough for him, and the possibility of having
another
one in his homeroom just warranted a long series of migraines down
the
road ahead. The guy looked more like he'd be a club bouncer than a
school
student - for god's sake, the kid's even wearing a Red-Army uniform!
"Red Army". No hyphen.
No doubt about it. There was something decidedly not right about
this new
student. The smell of trouble emanating from this boy, he judged
from
past experience, had already shot way past the mere danger level of
being
strongly volatile and sublimed into a realm of disasterhood more
readily
comparable to an wide-spread oil spill from a barge of ships
carrying
premium grade Exxon-quality gasoline around an island hosting
multiple
active volcanoes.
This analogy is way-y-y overblown. You could have said this
better in a sentence 1/3 this length.
Tip: read this paragraph aloud to yourself.
If a phrase doesn't sound natural when you say the words out loud,
then it's a good idea not to write it that way.
But I couldn't let it go yet, no, not all of it. Every time it
rained, I
would get a reminder of what had happened in China, the stupid
training
ground, the stupid curse, the stupid dreams...
The stupid oyaji.
"Oyaji" is just a disrespectful way of saying father, so "the
stupid father" doesn't make sense in this context.
Something came out of the spring all right; but whatever that thing
was,
it ain't Pops. In fact, I could almost swear that it was a huge,
soaked,
half-crazed panda flying towards me with that look that said it
wanted to
have me as a side dish to go with raw bamboo shoots. Then, half a
second
later and still in shock, I felt the massive ball of wet fur nail me
with a
punch in the gut and I fell and fell and fell
You forgot the punctuation at the end of this sentence. It does
need it. I'd recommend "and I fell and fell and fell..."
What a mess, Matsuoka-sensei groaned inwardly, and on his first day
no
less. He thought about having to deal with the new student in the
class
for the rest of the yearand shuddered.
"the year and"
I was kinda numb when the doctors told me out of the blues the next
day
that I probably weren't going to survive the week, with more toxic
chemicals floating around in my body than a mercury plant and the
lining
of my guts and what not washed out from being force-fed so much of
her
junk over the years.
The proper expression is "out of the blue".
Ranma shrugged, disinterested. "It's only for a day. Besides, she
wasn't
using it."
The two boys gaped at him for a moment, then laughed. "You've got a
lot of
courage to say that. I envy you." One of them, the plump one with
the
glasses, said. "Anyway, I'm Hatta, and this is Komatsu, glad to
meet you."
Describing ignorance as courage? Not even Hatta is that dense. I
think he'd say something like "Just wait until you meet her. Then try
saying that!".
"What?" I shouted. "No way! I don't want to go through all that
again, and
I certainly don't want to share my body with a girl if I can help
it -
particularly with a saucy tart." I added the last part just to get
back at
her. However, she did have a point - the dreams of all those years
after I
was cursed did cushion the shock a great deal. Of course, that
certainly
didn't mean I wouldn't object to it as loudly as I possibly could.
"Saucy tart"? That sounds like a British term. It doesn't have
any impact at all over here in California. I wouldn't even classify
it as an insult. It would be a cold observation, at worst.
Upon getting closer, I strangely found myself moved by the soulful
music
as it reached me with more clarity. The tune was slow and probably
played ad-lib, and though I wasn't one to judge, I felt a sense of
unbridled
freedom expressed from the song. Then, soon following that
short-lived
exultation of freedom, a trace of irreparable loss and loneliness,
and a
little touch of longing for something that I didn't know then. I
listened in rapt attention despite never caring much for any music
before, because at last I realized that I could relate, and even
resonate, with those feelings the song had evoked from me. It was a
sweet euphoria that was not sweet in that it was just stating a
fact, but
at the same time that fact to me was truth presented with such a
helpless
nakedness that I could not stop but force myself to stare in awe at
its
sheer beauty.
"found myself strangely moved by"
Getting a bit wordy again in this paragraph. Say it aloud a few
times.
A sudden compulsion seized me to find out the identity of the person
playing on the other side of the door, and noticing that the door
was not
shut completely, I leaned in to get a better look. My eyes nearly
bugged
out when I discovered who it was. It was the very same girl whom I
met
by those long stairway last Sunday.
"by that long stairway" or "by those long stairs"
The male population in the crowd winced in sympathy as they
unconsciously rubbed their own chins. It was a undeniably feminine,
yet
cleanly forceful SLAP with big, capital letters complete with etched
horizontal lines in the background. Ranma was sent to the ground
after
pirouetting four or five turns in mid-air. Performed on ice it
would have
been a quintuple-axle and an immediate Olympics gold medal.
"It was an undeniably"
Dewa mata,
LarryF