------------------------------
newRanma
Author's Notes and Omake
------------------------------
20 chapters. 810 kb. 140,000 words. I have it on good authority that
new authors who publish novels are usually never allowed to exceed
100,000 words. For comparison's sake, (size alone, I'm not trying to
compare quality by any means) Neil Stephenson's 'Snow Crash' is about
910 k long and weighs in at a little over 160,000 words.
newRanma was never supposed to be longer than 3 chapters, let alone
novel-length. Of course the first 'chapter' I had planned started with
Ranma's injury and surgery and ended with the 'Nurse Academy' dream
sequence.
Well, first I'd like to thank everyone who read newRanma, and everyone
who emailed me comments. I'd like to thank everybody on the FFIRC who
encouraged me to post it.
I'd also like to apologize to everyone, friends and new readers alike,
who asked to preread or edit. For reasons I'll explain in a bit, I
told them 'no'.
------------------------------
Omake 1
------------------------------
It certainly wasn't Kunou's first kiss, but as the trembling
pigtailed-girl pressed her lips to his cheek, he found it was the one
he treasured most.
"Oh, pigtailed-girl," Kunou whispered as high-powered martial
arts played out on the screen in front of the pair.
"Kunou-sempai," she said, tightening her embrace. Man, faking
this concussion was the best idea I've had in weeks, Ranma thought to
herself. This way I get to be with Kunou-sempai all I want, and I can
pass it off later as a hallucination!
Kunou wondered if he was shaking as badly as the pigtailed
girl as he gently wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
He turned, moving his face closer to hers. Her vacant smile
gave him no reason for concern, so he leaned in and pushed his lips to
hers.
She clumsily returned the kiss with trembling lips.
Yes! He kissed me! Ranma had a hard time keeping from crowing
out in victory.
With his arms around her back, Kunou leaned her back and began
to let his lips roam up and down her neck. He took her increased
shaking as a sign of her arousal.
"Kunou-sempai," she whispered, struggling to move out from
under him. Anxiously, he stood, acutely aware of his own desire for
her.
Weakly, the girl stood. She moaned in desire.
"Pigtailed-girl," Kunou said, wondering if something wrong. "Are
you okay?"
She cried out in lust and fell against him. Kunou blinked in surprise.
"Pigtailed-girl?"
Take me, Kunou-sempai, Ranma thought. She just couldn't say it
out loud, but the feelings were there nonetheless. Take me now.
Her blouse was only about half-way buttoned, revealing a
generous amount of cleavage above the top of her school dress.
Likewise, her short skirt had flared out as she fell and settled up
around her waist, displaying her white cotton panties for him to gaze
upon in wonder.
Her body was so close to him! She was flaunting herself so
daringly. He kneeled in front of her, his hand reaching out almost of
its own accord to gently brush her exposed thigh.
"Oh here," she snapped out in irritation when Kunou didn't
touch her. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties and
dragged them down over her hips. "You get the idea, right?"
Kunou's bokken was held high.
"Oh, pigtailed-girl," the kendoist cried, tears of joy running
down his face. "I'm so happy!"
------------------------------
Where did newRanma come from, you ask?
newRanma, like my Pink Lemonade stories, is pure, unadulterated
fanservice. A lot of people have written me and told me that they
thought I was trying to write 'realism'. I can see that, especially
since some chapters of newRanma were so dark. I never intended
newRanma to be that realistic. I started out playing pretty fast and
loose with neurosurgery and ended the story playing fast and loose
with the results of the changes the surgery induced in Ranma's love
life.
Consider in the nature of fan art. That's what I was trying to do. I
started with a series of images... girl-Ranma in a Furinkan High
uniform making out with Kunou, Akane holding the vial with a 'piece of
Ranma's mind' in it, Nabiki, Ranma, and Kunou proudly leading the
students of Furinkan High on a walkout, Ranma in the 'Nurse Academy'
uniform, Ryouga, stabbed and bleeding to death, but about to kill
Mousse with a stone in his hand, etc... etc... etc...
I wanted to work these all into a story with a great deal of humor and
sex, and newRanma was what came out of it. What realism there was
just... happened.
------------------------------
Omake 2
------------------------------
"RYOUGA!!" Ranma screamed, bolting upright on the cot where
she had been sleeping.
Akane jerked awake. She had dozed off next to the martial
artist.
Nodoka was already leaning over her child, who was visibly
shaking. "Ranma, are you okay? Ranma-chan?"
"Oh god," Ranma whimpered, coming awake. "Oh god. Ryouga's
dead. And... And..." The memories of what she had just dreamt assailed
her.
"No, Ranma. He's alive," Akane assured her. "The ravener queen
hurt him, but didn't kill him."
"What?"
Ranma looked up in horror. Akane had long, powerful wings
growing out of her back. A chance glimpse back at her mother revealed
that the woman's fangs were protruding slightly.
"Ranma," the nameless girl whispered. "It's time to fight. The
evil is still waiting."
"Ah, dammit!"
------------------------------
Why newRanma instead of new chapters of 'The Clan'?
That's a little tricky to explain, but I'll start by saying this...
The Clan was getting painful to write.
I started The Clan as a big fan of vampire stuff. The idea behind the
story was to make Nodoka and the Tendou girls into vampires and relate
how they dealt with the world and Ranma. Akane was really supposed to
be the main character, but after a certain story change (the
introduction of the raveners as bad guys), it switched back to Ranma.
I was having a great deal of fun with it right at first, but after a
little bit, I had a pre-reader list a mile long, tons of suggested
editing changes for each chapter, and a lot of really negative
commentary. I had a handful of prereaders and readers who were really
interested in helping me make The Clan be the story I wanted it to be.
Each of you knows who you are. Most of the rest of the commentary I
got was in the nature of trying to convince me to change the story...
or telling me that I was ruining the story... or complaining one way
or the other that the story wasn't going the way a certain reader
wanted it to go.
I should have just ignored those comments and done what I wanted to
with the story. Instead, I made the mistake of thinking that all of my
readers were rational, mature people who cared about reading what I
wrote. After all, I'm writing for fun and not for profit. The story
should be by me for me, right?
After a while, I lost track of that. I started making suggested
changes that I shouldn't have. I lost a lot of what I originally
wanted the story to be. The delay between the chapters kept getting
longer and longer, and I had less and less enthusiasm for putting them
out.
The Clan, holding at Chapter 24, is scripted all the way through to
the next-to-last chapter, Chapter 27. I just got sick and tired of
writing on a story I wasn't having fun with any more. Instead, I
started putting more and more time into other, simpler and sillier
projects... Like the Pink Lemonade stories.
People bitched at me for those because I spent all my time having
Ranma and Akane humping like weasels and played Shampoo and Ukyou for
as much humor as I could. Still, they were fun to write for me when
the only thing at all I was getting out of The Clan was angry
grumblings.
While trying to get some inspiration to flesh out the rest of 'The
Clan', I happened to show the original draft of newRanma (which you
can read if you like. It's on the newRanma page on my web site) to a
few people on FFIRC. Dave Roeder was one. I think Vincent Seifert saw
it as well. At any rate, everyone I showed it to encouraged me to
flesh it out and post it.
I did so, converting the single chapter I had into five smaller
chapters. Before posting, however, I made an important decision-- one
that has served me ever since. I refused any kind of pre-reader input
on newRanma, and have discarded any kind of plot advice submitted
after I posted a chapter.
It was a painful choice to make and I feel like it's alienated some
people over the last year that I used to be a lot closer to. It means
that the quality of the chapters was not quite as high in terms of
grammar and spelling. My process went like so: I scripted a chapter,
fleshed it in with dialogue and descriptive prose, proofed it for
errors, and then spell checked. Once done, that was it. The story was
in the can.
What this did for me was keep newRanma *fun* to write. Unlike The
Clan, I never had to struggle to write a chapter of newRanma. There
were months at a time that I was too tired from work or too sick to
write, but even when things got really bad, I still *wanted* to write.
On September 11th of last year when the world seemed like it was going
to end, I wrote a couple chapters of newRanma in just a few days to
keep the grief and sorrow at bay. When two of my wife's relatives and
my aunt died in the space of just a few weeks in the last couple
months, I continued through with chapters 18, 19 and 20, albeit at a
snail's pace, because they were a welcome relief from all the stress.
Now that it's done, I find myself asking... what am I going to do for
fun now?
The Clan has not been abandoned. I've invested way too much emotional
energy, time, sweat and tears into the story to let it die. After a
year of inactivity, I don't think that I can go back and pick up right
where I left off. I'm going to have to tear it down and rewrite it
from the ground up. Some chapters, especially towards the beginning,
won't see many changes. A lot of what was near the end will be
completely discarded.
When I do make those changes, I will be using the same publishing
model I used with newRanma. I'm not going to accept any kind of story
input. Even if it makes The Clan a worse story, it will still be *my*
story, and I will have had fun writing it.
I very much hope that all of you who were prereading before won't be
mad at me for cutting you out of the process like that. With newRanma,
I've found that I just have more fun when I'm playing a solo.
------------------------------
Omake 3
------------------------------
"When did Charlotte get so dirty?" Azusa demanded. She dumped
another handful of warm liquid soap on Ryouga's back and started to
scrub roughly. "Mommy will get you all clean."
"Agghgh! Let me go, you crazy woman!" Ryouga screamed as he
struggled to get free. Years of ice-skating had given the petite girl
legs of steel, however. She had her ankles locked around Ryouga's
waist, and he just couldn't manage to break free.
"Doesn't Charlotte like bathing? The water's all nice and
warm, just as you like, sweetie!"
"He does like bathing, Anna-oneesan," Yoiko assured her from
the other side of the bathtub where she was lathering her own body
with a wash cloth and a bar of soap. "You just have to convince him to
stay put some more."
"Let Mommy wash your front now," Azusa commanded. "Oh my! What
did little Azusa-chan find?" she asked in wonder as her hands began to
work in front of Ryouga.
"YAAAHHH!" Blood began to flow from Ryouga's nostrils as the
skater's hands worked more and more rapidly under water.
Yoiko giggled. Her Oniichan was so funny!
"What is it? What... Oh, my! Azusa thinks that she will call
you Jean-martine!" Azusa said to her new discovery.
------------------------------
Why the hell didn't Ranma end up with
Nabiki/Ukyou/Kodachi/Ryouga/Kunou?
Again, this was a fanservice story. Think about it. Ranma got to be
touchy-feely with just about every character in one way or another. It
was also a good chance for me to experiment with all the things I've
wanted to write, like the Ranma/Ryouga lemon scene, but never had the
balls to do before.
The Ranma/Nabiki and Ranma/Kunou arcs were planned from the very
beginning with the knowledge that Ranma would end the story more or
less with Akane. I know that I've horribly disappointed all the
Ranma/Nabiki fans, but I'd like to thank you for reading anyway.
I will tell you that I had at least one death threat... I won't name
names... *cough* *cough* if Nabiki broke Taiyoko's heart. After
receiving said threat, I was sorely tempted to match Ranma/Nabiki and
Taiyoko/Akane just to see what wrath I would incur, but that would
have munged up what I wanted to write in the first place, which was no
good.
Hamlet (and every other Kodachi fan), I know I disappointed you
leaving Kodachi an unreasonable, loony bitch at the end. I'm sorry,
but I also had the last scene with Kodachi planned from almost the
very beginning of the story. newRanma was never intended to be a 'fix-
all' story. Yes, it has closure, but it's also got a 'dirty' end,
leaving a lot of shit lying around for the characters to clean up.
This was always my intent. There's your realism if you're still
looking for it because that's the way real life works.
Why did I make an otherwise interesting story so full of meaningless
sex?
Short Answer: I'm a pervert. You should avoid me. ^o^
Long Answer: From the very, very beginning, newRanma has been a story
about sex, which I consider to be a very natural, normal, healthy
thing. The only scenes without at least some sexual tension were those
involving the gore of Ranma's surgery or the introduction of Ryouga's
litter sister, Yoiko.
It's only natural that a story about sex should have many, many
descriptions of sexual behavior. It's only fitting, at least in my
opinion, that a story about sex should climax with an explicit sex
act.
A lot of people have complained that I didn't write the story so that
you could read it without skipping the lemony sweet chapters. To all
of you I say 'Nyaa!' Go find a story without all the lemony goodness
of newRanma. Yeah, yeah, I know minors aren't supposed to read that
kind of stuff. I'd be willing to bet that each and every person under
18 who happened across the explicit scenes in newRanma had seen
similar scenes before... and had probably seen worse in real life. In
deference to those who do care if they get caught reading something
like that, however, I will label the chapters as 'lemon' on my web
page where they weren't previously.
Why did I include so many original characters, and then why did I do
so little with them.
Taiyoko and Makuna were the only two original characters I really
planned to do anything with. Yoiko, Soap, Ayanobu, Tea, Cola, Soda,
the geologists, and all the others are just scenery. Yoiko and Soap
got a few extra lines, but they were mostly used as foils or running
gags.
Makuna was Ranma's 'healthy' example of homosexuality, which I
intended to include from the very start of the story. Taiyoko was
Ranma's 'normal' friend with whom he could compare his distinctly
abnormal life. She started out being an idol signer that Ranma had
known when he was a little and then met again after his surgery. Her
stuttering was a remnant of that. She was supposed to be able to sing
just fine, but have trouble speaking. Then she turned into a transfer
student to Furinkan High. Then, as more and more of the story started
locking into place, she became one of Makuna's patients, and therefore
a lesbian... and eventually Nabiki's lover.
I cut an entire chapter about Soap because I lost interest in her. It
was replaced with the chapter about Ranma and Kasumi going to church.
For those of you paying attention, that chapter is my one and only
self-insertion... No, not the perverted priest. The goofy guy at the
end who talks to Ranma while sweeping the walk.
Yoiko, on the other hand, grew entirely out of a need for a punch line
to the 'His sense of direction is out in the waiting room' joke Tofuu
tells when Ryouga's in the hospital. She grew a little out of that and
once I gave her a poor memory for names, she became a running gag...
one I couldn't resist revisiting in the last chapter.
I didn't do any more with any of these characters... or even Akane for
that matter... because this is a story about RANMA! --hence the title.
It's about the way he interacts with all the other characters and not
about the way they interact with him. But I digress...
------------------------------
Omake 4
------------------------------
A petite girl stepped up in front of the audience. She had
long, light-colored hair with two pink streaks. She was also standing
next to an impossibly huge pig done up in ceremonial Sumo-garb.
"Hello," she announced. "My name is Akari Unryuu. On behalf of
the minor characters of Ranma 1/2, I would like to register a
complaint against Jones-san for not including more of us in
'newRanma'. It's completely unfair that he included new, original
characters in the story while ignoring the rest of us."
"Akari-san," a beautiful ninja said from the front row of the
audience called out. "I'm not sure we should be complaining about
this. It's not really that big a deal, after all."
"Who are you to talk, Konatsu? He made you the star of the
'Nerima Boys Club'! The last time I got time in one of his stories, I
got turned into the Ravener Queen. That's not what I call quality
screen time."
Hiroshi, Daisuke, Yuka, and Sayuri all shrugged. They were
just happy that all four of them had survived newRanma.
------------------------------
So what's next?
Well, I've got a few things planned, all or none of which may come to
fruition in time. There's the last chapter of 'Ranma's Apartment' to
consider, in which Soun has a heart attack and Ranma is reunited with
the rest of the Nerima crew. There's also a non-Ranma 'Pink Lemonade'
story I want to write about Nokoru and Suoh from CLAMP. Just imagine
all the lemony potential in that one! Speaking of lemony potential,
I've been experimenting with a plot for a PWP (oxymoron, I know)
Sailor Moon lemon tentatively entitled 'Sailor Domination'. I'll let
your imaginations fill in the rest of that one...
The big project in my future is the planned rewrite of The Clan. We'll
just have to see how it goes.
------------------------------
Omake 5
------------------------------
After some hot, wet yuri nookie behind Furinkan High, Ranma
and Akane returned to the Tendou Dojo, only to find that all of the
girls, Ukyou, Kodachi, Shampoo, Nabiki, Taiyoko, Hinako, Azusa, Mio,
Futaba, Misaki, Tsunami, Pixy Misa, Excel, Makoto Kino, Minako Aino,
Victoria Cellas, Keyne Aqua, Ifurita, B-ko, Lime, Cherry, Bloodberry,
Nuku Nuku, and Belldandy, were waiting there for them.
"Ranma," Soun demanded. "You must make up your mind. Which
girl will you marry? Remember, if you choose right, you inherit the
dojo."
"Choose me, Ranma!" All the girls shouted.
"I choose..." Ranma ripped off her Chinese clothes to reveal
that she was wearing a complete latex body suit underneath. "ALL OF
THEM!!!"
She pulled out a super-soaker filled with 'Spring of drowned
Sex Slave' water and began hosing the assembled throng down.
"Oh, Ranma-sama!" all the girls cried. "Make us yours!"
"Gladly, my sweets," Ranma replied as they all began to strip
out of their clothes or costumes and started to make out in one huge
lesbian orgy scene.
"And now that we're naked," Akane suggested as she was being
licked, fondled, rubbed, and sucked, "let's give all our panties to--"
*BOOT*
Jones punted the shriveled pervert away from his computer and
examined the damage to the end of newRanma. He sighed and began to
delete lines of text as rapidly as he could.
"I knew there was a reason I didn't write Happosai into the
story," the author said sadly. "Man, he left panties everywhere.
Ewww... some of these are still sticky..."
------------------------------
Thank you all for reading. Please send e-mail... or fanart *hint*
*hint* if you like my story.
Until next time....
C. (I finished newRanma? What an amazing thing...)
* * *
C. Jones - guilty@furinkan.net - http://www.furinkan.net
Public Key: http://www.furinkan.net/key.txt
Everybody in the room stared at Mihoshi. The policewoman
began to cry. "I didn't mean to infect the world! I'm so
sorry!!!! WAHHHAHHHHHHH!!!!"
- From 'The Virus'
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