Hi again,
This story had its genesis in the outtakes I did for "Genma's Daughter". I
had so much fun with Ranma and Ranko together that I thought it would be fun
to do a story with both of them. I thought of Richard Lawson's concept for
"Definitions of Hell," and decided to rip it o... I mean, I was inspired by
it. In tribute, there are a couple of easter eggs from "Definitions of Hell"
in the story.
I told myself I'd just do a nice little short story. After nine months on
"Genma's Daughter", I didn't want to do another monster. 132 pages later,
here is my "short story", "Equal Halves". It's completely written, though my
prereaders are still poring over the last couple of chapters; there are six
in all. I'd like to express my deep appreciation for my prereaders, Steve
Pardue, Nick Leifker, Zen, and Rachel Blackman; thanks to them, it is a much
better story. I'll be posting chapters 1 or 2 per day for the next few days.
Tonight will be just chapter 1 (it's too late for anything else...)
A note on typography: as someone who has loved beautiful type since high
school, I find ASCII to be necessary, but truly an evil. My master copy of
this story is formatted and uses proper typography. The ASCII version I will
post here (and eventually to rec.arts.anime.creative) is automatically
generated from the HTML that I consider the "real" version. For those who
are interested, there will be a URL at the front of each posting pointing at
the nicely formatted HTML version. I would really appreciate it if you all
would not publish this URL outside the FFML until the story is finished and
posted to rec.arts.anime.creative.
The automatic generation worked pretty well, so the ASCII version should be
quite readable. There are only two typographic conventions:
/italic text/
*bold text*
As always, your C&C is eagerly solicited.
Deborah Goldsmith