"Ryoko" <kathy@linuxgrrls.org> wrote:
Genma-panda shifted his sitting position
uncomfortably, looking like he was perched on a
wasp nest, and lifted his unbroken arm. Raising
a sign with poorly written hiragana (even by HIS
standards) Genma tried to protest his innocence
Have you actually looked at one of Genma's signs? His writing is fine.
Happosai is the one with the terrible handwriting.
Ranma was in no mood for his fathers excuses.
his eyes fierce with unexpressed rage, he spoke
in a cold harsh whisper.
"Of course it's your fault Pop! It's *always*
fault, Pop!
your goddamn fault!" Even Ranma had his limits,
and he also had had habits that were hard to
break. He began to work his way towards a full
bore shout.
"There was Akane, a drunken agreement with
Tendo-San, you screw up Ucchan's life, and the
there's all the others you've yet to tell us
This, frankly, is IMO one of the dumbest of fanfic cliches. Ukyo's dad
proposed the engagement between her and Ranma, and Genma was initially
opposed to it. There's no evidence in the original series that he ever
arranged any other engagements for Ranma, and it seems pretty unlikely
to me that hordes of fathers would want to betrothe their daughters to
the son of such a disreputable-looking man just because one father was,
for whatever reason, desperate enough to.
about - so how the hell could you get me engaged
AGAIN!" he crescendoed. Kasumi laid a gentle
hand on the overwrought youth's shoulder,
breaking his concentration.
"Ranma, please, you'll wake your iinazuke up."
Kasumi laying the hand on Ranma's shoulder would be IMO better moved to
the next paragraph. Also, please be consistent with your paragraphing;
either skip a line between each one, or don't. BTW, what's wrong with
the word "fiancee?"
Ranma actually paused at this. True, he had
desire to get engaged again, especially not to
the Usher of Souls... although he had to admit
this was a complication he hadn't really ever
thought about...Even if she was cute. But
mostly he paused because he REALLY didn't want
to get on Kasumi's bad side. When you thought
about Kasumi you came up with ideas of vapid
cheerfulness, and placid mothering. What you
didn't get was the demonically perverse attacker
who had shaved his fathers posterior, tattooed
'kick me' onto it, and then attacked said
creature with a broom with nails in it...
Um... come again?!? I guess this was supposed to be funny, but to me
it's more distracting than anything else. Kasumi the Closet Psychotic is
IMO not the kind of thing you can drop into a story and then go on as if
everything's normal. This needs to be explored fully if at all.
Ranma relaxed slightly. He'd been worried
about the demon head attack that he'd felt he
would be receiving, but just for once he'd
lucked out. He also had a moment to think about
his next move... literally a moment.
"Tadaima!" Called Akane cheerfully from the
called (no caps.) What's wrong with "I'm home?"
entranceway, P-Chan held absently in her arms.
Ranma panicked. Death might not have killed him,
but Akane would!
Er... why? Was he making some tomboy crack just as she came in? Was
Death glomping onto him? There's no reason I can see that you've shown
that he should expect this kind of reaction from her.
Not even pausing to ponder the
absurdity of that last statement he grabbed a
mallet, and sent himself into low earth orbit.
Huh? How exactly does one mallet oneself into orbit? Even given the
cartooniness of Ranmaverse physics, I just can't picture this.
It would probably hurt less in the long run.
He spent the time until his inevitable rude
landing wondering just HOW he'd managed to
summon Akane's mallet...
*sigh* It's NOT exclusively Akane's mallet. Ukyo has malleted Ryoga.
Ranma and Soun have malleted Pantyhose. And so on, and so on. It's a
sight gag that a lot of characters use.
Akane looked at the new hole in the ceiling
in some surprise. Not that Ranma had been sent
flying, but that he'd volunteered to do the job
himself instead of allowing her to speed him on
his way. Drawing the one conclusion possible to
her, she seized her dropped mallet, and sprinted
back out of the door, ready to give her errant
innazuke the beating he so richly deserved...
afterall... if he reacted like this then there
had to be some truely appalling story behind it.
truly. And this is ridiculously OOC for Akane. She doesn't fly off the
handle unless it at least appears that Ranma's done something.
"I'll say," agreed Nabiki grimly, "I'd only
budgeted for ONE hole today...." Sighing
mentally, Nabiki wondered if the familly
finances could stretch to the repairs or if
There's no actual evidence in the canon that Nabby handles the family
finances, or that the money she gets from people like Kuno goes to the
family.
she'd hve to sell more of those unpleasant
have
photo's to Kuno again. It wasnt even as if she
wasn't
liked taking the photo's, conveniently
photos
forgetting the toples photo's of Ranma in his
photos
It was also lounging around it's realm
its
barefoot in a pair of jogging bottoms and a
Hello Kitty T-shirt. The overall effect was ...
Cute. Sickeningly cute. Attractive and
unutterably sweet. This suited Desire fine,
after all slobbing around the temple of it's
its
"~Well met brother mine,~" greeted Desire
met,
"Indeed, I haven't seen your ugly mug around
in a long time either," grinned Destruction,
garbed in the clothing of a soldier in Hanibal's
Hannibal's (I think)
army. Desire bristled, it was all for teasing in
it's place, but not aimed at itself! Still that
its
It was also the reason Desire liked it's
its
brother in homeopathic quantities.
"~But that's not why you wanted to see me is
it?~" Guessed Desire shrewdly. Destruction
guessed (no caps; it's part of the same sentence)
Ranma landed in the park... in the fountain.
Even now she had to admit that the situation was
kind of funny. Even SHE malleted herself into
The reader begs to differ.
"RAAAAAA-AAAAAANNNNMMMMAAAAAAA!" Growled
Akane.
All I can say here (besides that "growled" shouldn't be capitalized) is
that you badly need to go back and read the original series. Nothing
you've shown in your fic would've provoked this kind of reaction from
Akane.
Akane glared at the fading spot in the sky
that HAD been her iinazuke. With an effort of
will she calmed somewhat, the glowing aura
winking out. She hadn't really meant to hit him,
it just happened. Again. She was getting
heartily sick of Ranma making her so angry that
she would hit first and ask questions later. It
wasn't as if she LIKED being so angry that she'd
hurt people... it was just that Ranma by his
very existence seemed to bring out the very
worst of her.
Pardon me for saying so, but... that's just crap. Look at the Hiryu
Shoten Ha story, where she braved Ranma's tornado attack to get the
scroll that would cure him. The "Happosai's Revenge" story where she
brought him food after the rest of the family had kicked him out. And so
on. Akane does get mad at Ranma (though not without any sort of real or
imagined cause as you're showing here), but she's also one of the few
characters in the original series who's shown him any sort of empathy or
compassion.
It's painfully obvious to me that this is a case of "author wants to
break up Ranma and Akane so she can hook Ranma up with her character of
choice." If you want to do that, fine, but it's not going to be
believable to people who've actually read the original series unless you
treat Akane with some measure of fairness. Your Akane acts nothing like
Takahashi's, and you haven't shown any sort of plausible reason why she
wouldn't.
Khu Lohn the elder was sweeping the floor
Cologne, or Ke Lun if you read the Chinese characters for her name as
given in the original series. I don't know where you're getting this
version of her name, but these aren't even syllables in Chinese.
Shampoo stood in the doorway of the kitchen
glowing with rage, a bucket of hot water
negligently held in one hand, a mace, rather
more firmly in the other. At the other end of
the mace Mousse slowly peeled out of the fce
sheped dent in the weighted ball and slowly slid
to the floorm, watching the halo of circling
floor,
ducks in happy bewilderment. "Ailen get
It's Airen, not Ailen.
engaged to more stupid womans? Hmmph, not good,
more obstacles. Obstacles only good for one
thing - Killing!" Idly discarding the damaged
This is a rather cardboard treatment of Shamps.
"Hmph! stupid womans no match for Xian Pu!
Even if have silly name.."
That's not actually her name. The characters for it are quite clearly
given in the original series as Shan Pu. And why would SHE think it's a
silly name anyway?
Anyway, chases, amazons, idiots, and special attacks! just what a Ranma fic
needs<sighs> Not quite what I was hoping for.... I'd quite appreciate feedback,
but then, I'm a praise powered little bun on the QT...
I wish I could honestly find something to praise here, but I'll try to
be at least constructive.
Firstly, it would help a lot for you to be more familiar with the
original series. From this story, I'd guess that your impressions of the
characters come mainly from other fanfics. This is a dangerous thing;
fanfic characterizations vary a lot, and are sometimes just plain wrong.
If you aren't familiar with Takahashi's treatment of them, it's
difficult to know which ones are accurate.
Can a story have OOC characters and still be entertaining? That depends
on the reader. Most of us are willing to forgive OOC if it's a
well-written and engaging story -- up to a point. Individual mileages on
this will vary. But it's best not to take this chance at all, except
when you really need to.
As for the story, well... "Ranma discovers a new fiancee that Genma
hadn't told him about" has been done countless times. I'm not sure what
to tell you on this. You need to show us whatr's different and more
interesting about this engagement than all the other similar stories
we've all seen.
Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html