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OK, lets try it this way...
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-- File: Night Toughts.txt
FIRST FANFIC ALERT!
I had planned on delaying any attempts at fan fiction until after I had finished
with my thesis, but recent developments have resulted in a change of plans. A
few weeks ago I e-mailed the moderators to ask if I could post some questions
on copyright and fan fiction (or more exactly the fan fiction authors'/readers'
views on the matter) without getting banned. I don't know if it somehow never
showed up, if they simply decided to ignore the question, if they suspected a trap
set by a publishers' legal department or something else but I never got any reply.
More on this after the fic.
Besides, it gives me a chance to see if my computer decides to change anything
when I send this (it has in the past) before I start working on my epics.
I suppose I can't avoid asking for C & C, especially since I'm going to ask for
volunteers later on. This has not been pre-read, spell-checked or fact-checked.
Finally, a few words on the fic:
This has been lurking at the back of my head for a long time and has been imposed
on you at this time mainly for the reasons given above (and below). (I would in all probabilities
have subjected you to this sooner or later anyway.) It should probably be considered a
prologue/character introduction for a longer series, but I have no clear idea of where to
go from here. If anyone wants to take over they are welcome to do so, but please
tell me before you do. Also, it began as an Evangelion crossover (of the "the Children
gets stranded in the past"-variety) but that element was so contrived that I dropped it.
This story takes place several years after the end of the manga - Lin Lin and
Ran Ran are sixteen and has been relocated to Nerima (and Furinkan) while most
of the main cast are away at various universities and colleges. It also includes
several new characters (mainly prevously unheard of cousins and younger siblings)
to make sure that the twins schooldays are as eventful as Ranma's. Crossovers are
also a possibility, if it ever progresses beyond the prologue.
Is anybody still reading this?
Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 etc. does not belong to me, but to Rumiko Takahashi
and others whom I can't quite remember at the moment. I merely use them for
what might be a blatant copyright infringement or possibly is acceptable under
the fair use doctrine. Since most new characters can trace their origin back to
the copyright above, I probably can't claim any rights to them either.
I'm sorry about the footnotes (below), but they didn't quite fit into the main text.
Night Thoughts
A Ranma 1/2 fan fiction by Hans Holm
Lin Lin was pondering the injustice of it all. Ever since she and Ran Ran had
been relocated, not entirely unwilling, to Japan she had developed a habit of
making lists and so she was mentally a list of all the injustice she was subjected to.
The current number one was the fact that, since Mousse was home from university,
she had to sleep in Ran Ran's room. Even if he was getting an degree that would
greatly benefit the village if he should return1, she couldn't see why he had to get his
old room back for the week instead of sleeping in a cage like he used to do when it
was Lin Lin and Ran Ran who did the visiting. Even if he wasn't cursed any longer.
1 It was generally considered a win-win situation. The village would benefit either from Mousse
returning and using his knowledge for the good of the village (even if noone was quite sure of
what he was studying) or from Mousse deciding to not to return.
The second, which was normally number one, was that Ran Ran had developed a
number of bad habits since they moved to Japan. The current leader of these were
snoring. Ran Ran's snoring was so loud that they reverberated throughout the
Nekohanten, and led Lin Lin to the conclusion that Ran Ran was snoring
willfully to annoy her and keep her from sleeping. It was also quite obvious that
she only snored this loudly when Lin Lin was either a) sharing a room with her, or
b) having a test first thing in the morning. Another of Ran Ran's newly acquired
bad habits was that of not having to wear glasses. Lin Lin, on the other hand, had to
and now had to deal with people's assumption that she was Mousse's little sister and
also subjected to almost daily insinuations of sado-masochistic tendencies2. Other
bad habits that Ran Ran had developed included cutting her hair (Lin Lin still had the
"official Chinese Amazon girl"- hairstyle), making friends with the popular kids at school,
going to a lot of parties and clubs and, Lin Lin suspected, behaving in a way unbecoming
of a Chinese Amazon. Even if she herself wasn't strictly following all Amazon rules anymore,
or rather wouldn't if she got he chance and wasn't busy with training, school, homework and
waitressing, she felt that the defeated-by-outsider-male rule was the really main point of
the whole moving to Japan deal. Which brought her to number three on the list:
boys.
2 For some reason these tended to peak every time Tarou showed up in the neighborhood
When Shampoo was sixteen, Nerima was swarming with eligible martial artists. The
current crop of Nerman boys couldn't punch their way out of an extra-strength
garbage bag (and most of them probably couldn't out-think it either). The martial
artists, and even the non-martial artists, of "the Ranma era", that Lin Lin was
familiar with was rapidly becoming ineligible. Ranma had been pretty much
inseparable from Akane for years, even if Shampoo hadn't, in theory, given up yet.
When Shampoo visited she generally gave Cologne a report on her lack of progress,
while telling Lin Lin and Ran Ran what jerks the guys she actually dated turned
out to be. Mousse, who had given up on Shampoo and was pointedly attending
another university, denied having a girlfriend, but according to Nabiki and Kuno3,
there was a girl who dragged him to parties and movies, got him to pay for those movies
(and dinner) and, rumour said, had been known to wake up in the same bed. Ryoga
was married to Akari and the "okyonomaki-guy" was still a girl. The list went on
and on. If Lin Lin had known that the current crop of eligible martial artists in
Nerima had been virtually non-existent, she would have stayed in the village even
if this meant the perpetual risk of losing to someone from the Musk dynasty and daily exposure
to Feng Feng. Feng Feng had been OK when they were kids, but since
puberty he had been increasingly trying, much like a second-rate Mousse without
the latter's good points (like martial arts skill and chasing someone other than Lin Lin).
3 Or, as they were now generally referred to Nabikiandkuno. The so-called Superglue-incident
might have had something to do with this.
Feng Feng was at that very moment sneaking off the ship on which he had stowed
away in order to get to Japan. Or at least he tried to. Unfortunately, at that moment
a beautiful girl passed by and Feng Feng's nature yet again got the better of him,
only to get him hammered into the ground. To Feng Feng this was only a temporary, if frequently
occurring setback, and as he climbed out of the Feng Feng-shaped hole he
reflected on his good luck. Barely off the ship and already the girls were throwing
themselves over him. It was obviously a good omen, and somewhere in this city were
Lin Lin . . . and Ran Ran . . . and Shampoo . . . and lots of other girls who were not
necessarily better at martial arts than he was. Well they would have been if he had
stowed away on a ship bound for Tokyo and not Manila, but he didn't know that
and one of four isn't that bad4.
4 And he's bound to make his way to Tokyo eventually.
The previously mentioned girl was also unaware of her actual location at the
moment, but this wasn't that unusual. Ryosei Hibiki was actually somewhat
grateful for the opportunity to work off her stress and worries on the pervert who
tried to glomp her (she could have done without the glomp though), but it had
wasted precious seconds and if she didn't catch up with her brother soon he was
sure to get lost and then they would never get to cousin Ryoga's wedding on time.
It should go without saying that Ryosei's brother, Ryoma Hibiki, was nowhere near
Manila. He was currently just outside Sapporo (but he thought he was on Okinawa)
hiding from a number of people. These included his sister - he hated having to dress
up5 and wasn't very keen on going to weddings in the first place, the person who
had caused this aversion to weddings in the first place as she would I either
misinterpret it or find it encouraging and people who was upset that he never
showed up for their duels (on time or at all).
5 It inevitably meant wandering around in a tuxedo for weeks and then having to get a
new one for the next occasion.
The second person mentioned in the previous paragraph, was currently sleeping
happily. After years of badgering, whining and puppy-dog eyes her family, and
more importantly her cousin, had given in. Tomorrow she was going to Tokyo
and, as long as she didn't neglect her schoolwork, help her cousin's assistent/
not-boyfriend-honestly take care of her restaurant. With a little luck her cousin
would be able to take some time off her studies to train her and most importantly:
since Ryomas cousin apparently used to hang around a lot it was surely only
a matter of time before Ryoma himself turned up. Fortune was indeed smiling
on Haruka Kuonji.
Half a world away, in London, another person were almost as happy as Haruka. Most
people would have been terrified at the thought of moving to the Tokyo Kuno
Mansion6, but Shunnichiro Gilbert Sullivan Kuno was not most people7. He was
actually looking forward to living with what Kunologists refer to as the sane
part of the Kuno family and especially living without permanent light opera
and the trappings of the English judicial system8. He was especially looking forward to
getting rid of the wig which had caused him nothing but ridicule and extensive
practical experience in street-fighting (he didn't care much for either). Even though
it was quite likely that the Tokyo Kunos would spend most of their time elsewhere, he
had prepared himself thoroughly. His head had already been shaved for years, so his hair
wouldn't interfere with the wig, and once he started to seriously plan this he had
taken every opportunity to eat what Grandaunt Agatha, a great admirer of classical
English murder mysteries and poison murderers in general, offered and believed
he had built up the requisite immunities. It would be good to move somewhere where
the Kuno name was respected9.
6 There are Kuno Mansion wherever Kunos live, hence the prefix.
7 He frequently wished he was.
8 His father, Judge Kuno, suffers from severa anglophilia focusing on the late 19th century,
unfettered by such factors as reality. He reputedly communicates to the music of Arthur Sullivan,
his favourites being Trial by Jury and H.M.S. Pinafore. The dubious logic of sending him to
Britain was formulated by the Gravediggers in Hamlet and had resulted in Shunnichiro G S Kuno.
9 It should be noted that Shunnichiro's knowledge of Nerima was largely filtered through his
cousins' perception of reality.
Back in Japan, Kazuya Sanzenin was already out of bed or maybe he was still up.
Some would say that this was because he had seen something fascinating in the bathroom mirror
and he either couldn't tear himself away or had to make sure it was still there,
but this wasn't quite true. The truth was that since his brother generally hogged the
bathroom every morning, Kazuya had to resort to this in order to achieve his full potential
appearance-wise. Besides this was going to be the day when he finally got Ran Ran
to admit her true feelings. Surely, the daily refusals and beatings was just her playing
hard to get. After all he was the best-looking and most skilled martial artist in Nerima, if
not the world, wasn't he? His fanclub always told him so and there was no reason
for them to lie to HIM.
The president of said fanclub, Chigusa Gosunkugi, was sleeping soundly (even if you
wouldn't know when you saw her awake) and dreamed of the day when Kazuya-sama
woke up to reality.
A few blocks away, the male Kazumi Ono (not to be confused with his cousin's wife),
was falling asleep again as his cousin's children stopped crying. Just before he fell
asleep he silently swore that if they, or anybody else, made him late on his first day
at his new school, he would punish them as soon as they were able to, in theory,
defend themselves.
Elsewhere, Tsukumo was already up and practising. Even if he took after his mother's
side of the family, he lived in constant fear of waking up one morning looking like his
father (the Dojo Destroyer, yes I'm really scraping the barrell for people who's
relatives can show up), and tried to avoid this by sleeping as little as possible. Besides
if he as going to track down the Hibikis he first had to sneak away from his
mother, who was at best embarrassingly and at worst homicidally overprotective.10
10 One of the reasons for this was that her second cousin, who was also married to a martial
artist, had let him take their son on a training trip and then hadn't seen either of them for
ten years.
Just of the coast of Japan, Tandoori was finally beginning to question the wisdom
of "infiltrating" human society with the help of the spring of drowned Akane (it
had seemed so easy when Kiima did it) as a sudden rain turned her into an
insufficiently buoyant and distincly wingless human. The rest of the Phoenix Tribe
had frequently predicted that her curiosity would get her killed11 and for a few
seconds she started to believe it too. Then she found out (the hard way) that
the water was only a few feet deep and she could easily wade to the beach.
Thanking whatever gods she could think of that the weather had been good while
she was over the open sea, she then collapsed as days of flying took their toll.
11 Usually the prophecy was along the lines of "If you ever go through my stuff again I will
kill you".
All over East Asia, mysterious warlords and minor princes were reaching for
the latest edition of The Guide to Martial Artist Brides and Where to Find Them.
Just like the last edition, a few years back, it was designed so that if opened at
random the Nerima pages came up.
END (for now)
This is deliberately vague, as detailed descriptions of the characters would have
broken whatever flow there is (I tried). I have some ideas, available on request.
I've somehow gotten the impression that Kazumi is a name that both men and
Women can have. I'm not sure why.
I don't know the Dojo Destroyer's last (or first) name and consequently
Tsukumo is familynameless (for now).
Somebody has claimed that the Phoenix Tribe characters' names come from
Indian dishes, hence Tandoori.
Now we return to the possibly ban-inducing matter which brought about this.
(I maintain however, that this request, in practise is no different from a request
for pre-readers (which I'm going to need if I write something else, eventually)).
I am currently writing my Master's thesis on Copyright and fan fiction (mainly
whether it is possible to deal with it in a way that makes everybody happy -
protecting the original authors' rights while allowing fan fiction authors to write
and distribute (e.g. on the FFML) without the risk of being sued). As it is bad
manners to assume that everybody else shares your own views, I thought that it might
be useful to find out about other fan fiction authors'/readers' views on the matter.
If you're interested e-mail me (hansholm@bredband.net), and I'll send you the
questions that I have managed to compose. I don't need to tell you to reply to
this PRIVATELY, do I.
Thank you.