Working through more backlog....

I hope this wasn't too rushed. Nonetheless, I think it's a fairly decent read. ^_^

We shall see. :) Hope this un-timely response isn't too late to be of
any use.

It's much better late than never. I'm sorry for using the cliche. I'm also sorry for responding so late.

Nodoka Saotome was smiling. She was humming. She was chopping 
a carrot into perfectly equal slices without any moment of 
hesitation.

In general, it's a good idea to keep your sentence structure varied, and
to limit your use of "was" verbs. A sentence like "She was Xing" can be
translated to "She Xed" (e.g. "She hummed"), and tbey generally have a
more dynamic feel in the second form.

You're right. It sounds a lot better. Thanks.

Her husband, Genma, lumbered into the kitchen, and opened the 
fridge.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to tell us that Genma is her husband.
Nodoka knows this already, and doubtless your reader does as well.

Well, I'm a doubter, since as a writer, I was introduced to Ranma 1/2 through fanfiction, and not through the original source material.

On the other hand, you're right.

I wrote this story for a Christmas contest, and I knew for a fact the majority of judges had no background knowledge of Ranma 1/2. I guess they were my intended audience firstly.

"Dear, would you please wait until dinner is finished?" 
Nodoka asked.

"Nodoka, I'm sure nobody will mind if I have a little snack 
before the dinner." Genma responded, with a look of innocence 

dinner," Genma responded,

"responded" is telling you directly that Genma said the line of dialog,
so it's part of the same sentence. If it were an unrelated action, your
punctuation would be correct:

Oh my.

I never fully understood why a comma followed a line of dialog, which was directly described by a narrative description, so I purposely ignored the rule thinking it unimportant.

Crap, because I've made this same mistake in everything I've so far written...

Crap, crap, s%!-, crap, and damn it all!

...

I guess the only bright spot is people who've been following my work can recognise it to be something I do...

Thanks.

Beside the fridge, Genma sulked for a moment, before turning 
out of the kitchen towards the living room, where happiness 
could be heard.

What does happiness sound like? ^_^  Could do with some more sensory
detail here.

Damn. I was hoping no one would catch that. I was really rushed, you know. :)

Quietly, Nodoka said to herself, not knowing her son Ranma 
had just entered the kitchen, "I hope this family Christmas 
dinner is the greatest ever!" She smiled, noting the irony in 
her words, since it was the first dinner held for her family 
in eleven years.

Why is that ironic? I don't get it. Irony is when something ends up
accomplishing a purpose oppsite to the one for which it was intended. If
Nodoka wished for a Happy New Year and it turned into the Year of the
Ancient Perverted Martial Artist, that would be irony. (Okay, so that
was a dumb example. :)

Hmm. From my perspective, it's ironic because Nodoka's never really had a family dinner before, since she's not had a family to have it with.

Unknowing to Nodoka, Ranma quietly slipped out of the kitchen 

Unknown to (I think)
As written, it seems to suggest that Nodoka considers Ranma to be
ignorant. Which may be true, but probably not what you had in mind. :)

Oops. Nope. It was definately not in this mind.

Ranma looked about the living room. He saw his father 
speaking and laughing with Soun Tendo, an old family friend. 
He saw his fianc�e Akane Tendo, Soun's youngest daughter, 

fiancee, Akane

(The accented e will show up as a blob on other platforms, so it's a
good idea to stick to the standard character. Since "Akane Tendo" is
identifying who "his fiancee" refers to, and doesn't have a "who was" or
similar connector, you need a comma setting it off. Though you can
probably just drop everything between "fiancee" and "cheerfully" since
we all know who Akane is.)

I never knew that. And here's me going through a lot of trouble trying to learn how to give the dang word the accent. Something like Ctrl ' + e, or whatever.

Ranma's tensefully glanced over at Akane, who had just seemed 

I don't think "tensefully" is a word, and you don't want the "'s".

To me, tensefully seems pretty cromulent...

"Ucchan, glad you could make it." Ranma replied, to his 
friend and other fianc�e, Ukyou Koniji. "You enjoying the 

Her name's spelled "Kuonji." Also, since you haven't been using the
extra-u romanization for anything else (e.g. Souun Tendou), it should be
"Ukyo."

Thanks, and thanks.

"That's a secret." Ranma said, disguising a retreat from 
Ukyou's personal space by turning around and away from her. 

Not much of a disguise there, is it. ^_^;;;

RANMA: Don't think I'm running away from you, just 'cause I'm, um,
running away from you!

You might want to change the line of dialog. He might well say something
to that effect, but using those particular words is to Xellos for my
tastes. :)

Hmm, then I'll definately keep the dialog.

Ignoring Ukyou, Shampoo said to Ranma, "Ooh! Shampoo is 
thirsty. Let's go get something to drink, okay?" She lead him 
to the refreshments table. "Fruit Punch!" she quealed.

squealed (I think you meant)

Nope, it was quealed all the way. After all, it's also a perfectly cromulent word. ^_^

The couple under the bridge began to sputter out denials, but 
were interrupted by Kasumi, who stood beside Nabiki, "Oh my, 
is this true Akane? A secret romantic meeting on Christmas?" 

this true, Akane?

(When a speaker identifies who is being spoken to, set the
identification off by a comma. Otherwise she's asking whether this is
"true Akane", i.e. not an impostor.)

Whoops. Missed that one by a mile.

Nodoka squeezed the hand of Genma, who was laughing with 
Soun. She was happy. Everything, for one night, was brought 
together in a perfection.

together in perfection.

("perfection" is an abstract and singular concept; you can't have "a
perfection.")

I never knew that.

Everything was merry. Everything was Christmas.

End Side-Story

Okay, overall impressions time... your writing's pretty clean, and
mostly good grammatically; a few problems as noted, but all fairly minor
issues that can be fixed. Where it lacks, I think, is in detail, and in
what you might call flavor.

Generally, I avoid anything that looks purple and/or black. All other flavours are fine.

To take an example, there's about a zillion places where you simply tell
us "she smiled" or something like that. (Well, okay, I just counted and
there were only six. But even so. ^_^) It gets tiresome to keep reading
the same description over and over. Sometimes you can just use another
word, but generally the best cure for this problem is to give more
detail. What kind of smile was it? Exactly what did it look like? How
did it differ from other smiles you might see elsewhere? Note that
descriptions that give you a direct image of what something looks
(and/or sounds, smells, feels) like are, generally speaking, the best
kind.

Alrighty.

Story-wise, I liked some parts of it. The catfight turning into a
snowball fight was a particularly nice touch. I think I could've gotten
more into the story if there'd been more narrative detail, as I talked
about above -- particularly as regards the characters' thoughts and
feelings. The part I liked least was the ending. It seemed forced, as if
you were trying to jam a happy ending down our throats.

Open wide, FFML. No, that's not quite wide enough. You see this? ::Troy points to a McDonald's cup sized pill. Large size. :: You need to fit this whole ending down your throat, in one go. ^_^

"Everyone was happy. Everything was marvelous. Happy, happy, joy, joy! Did we mention
that everyone was happy? Well, they were." This is very different from
Ranma canon flavor; in the manga, these kinds of warm and fuzzy moments
are pretty much always balanced by something humorous happening. Which
is not to say a fanfic can't differ from canon in its approach, but
yours *was* tagged as canon-flavored, and I think following Takahashi in
this might help you make an ending that feels less saccharine.

I'll give it my best shot the next time round.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Likewise!

I already did. ^_^

Thank you for the comments.

***

Check out my writings webpage. Find my stuff. ^_^
http://ca.geocities.com/therealsilentnova/fanfiction/entrance.html

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