I merged your 3 messages.  Was posting the story in parts more convenient
for you as a C&Cer?

Great story, as always, Vince!  Nice to see this one come out,
and nicely told.  There couldn't be any big surprises, of course,
but there were enough small ones, and enough other material
(especially pain) to make for a compelling read.

Oh, good.  I was hoping for masochistic readers.  :)
 

I went back and reread the original AMAW right after finishing
this, and found myself astonished by how faithful you managed
to be to the recap from the original. I can't think of any other
author I've ever read who managed to write an earlier-occuring
story later without leaving in numerous little discrepancies.
With yours, I didn't find any.

Well, you were the one who warned me about that after the full audacity
of my plans became apparent, good grief, a year and a half ago... and I
took the advice to heart. Thanks.

rope.  It parted.  "Auwe!" Kuno wailed again, making a futile
grab for the edge as he fell through the trapdoor to the waiting
crocodile.  Hiss!  Snap!  "OUCH!"

Great start.  The normal Nerima scene, applied to graduation.
Loved the way you just hint at what's come before, letting
our imaginations run riot.

Also, I didn't want to waste time getting to the real story.  :)

     "Happy and sad both.  A lot of these folks'll never see each
other again," Ukyo elaborated, "so they're saying goodbye.  Some
are goin' off to college, some are getting jobs. 

"Some are joining secret underground ideological organizations."
;)

urk. You know, I thought that very thing, but I wasn't expecting anyone
else to. Silly me. :)

thoughtfulness, I really do.  It was so considerate of you not to
get any of your girlfriends in a family way while-- are you all
right, dear?"

Heh.  Nodoka at work.

Yes. For the last year or so, Ranma has had to protect the secret of his
unmanliness from her-- but now the secret is that he's a virgin, not
that he's cursed... wacky hijinks ensued on several occasions that I'm
not planning to write about. :)

     "Now you know you're not getting away with that!" Akane
huffed.  "I made them especially for you.  Try one!"

Just the slightest evidence of being older in this speech, I
thought.  Given that Akane's behavior as a whole doesn't
display much of that, IMO (not that this would be easy to
do, mind you, given the stupidities she has still to commit),
this one is nice.

My hands are mostly tied, yes.  More on this below...

hands.  "Ranma, do you WANT to be a ronin, struggling against
impossible odds?"

     The image that came to his mind was not of a student bent
over a table under a single light bulb, surrounded by books, but
of a warrior standing tall on a lonely road, ringed by faceless
enemies.  "Hey, sounds like fun."

Heh.  I can just see this miscommunication, too.  Might have
been a good place to use your patented split column mode:

   Under a single light bulb,	    On a lonely country
   seated at a table, a lonely	    road, Ranma, fists ready,
   Ranma, surrounded by		    stood, facing down
   books, wearily turned a	 	    a ring of enemies.
   page.

I was trying to maintain purity of POV in this scene, but yeah.  :)
 

else he could think of.  Akane was telling him she wanted to go
to college, and that he couldn't.  She wanted to leave, not just
Nerima, but him.  She was trying to make the "sayonara" speech.

Just the beginning, but the reader is already uneasy, even
at this first misunderstanding, given that the subject is so serious.

Ramping up the tension is what I was going for; good.
 

night peevishly.  She'd show him.  She'd go away to college, and
she'd have a great time, and he'd miss her, and then he'd be
sorry.

This is just a little immature for a supposed 18 or 19-year old,
I think.  It's grating a little on my suspension of disbelief.  Not sure
what you can do about it, though; you're locked in to the
decisions Akane has to make in this one.

Yes, exactly.
 

(Or, maybe, given what else I've swallowed from other authors,
the problem is that YOU don't really believe in this version of
Akane.)

I certainly don't. The Akane I believe in is the one who got what she
wanted in Taming, and is having the time of her life in Centaur...
writing these scenes took some gritting of teeth, and they're weaker as
a consequence.  I'll try to do better.

     "Akane," Kasumi ventured, watching her hands moving in the
soapsuds, "now that you and Ranma-kun are out of school, you know
they'll bring up marriage again...."

Second time through, I find that I'm wondering what Kasumi
is thinking here in a way I didn't the first time.

Good.  :)

appreciate it when I try to do something nice for him."  Worst of
all, he's opposed to it, she thought.  I can't say I'll marry
someone who won't say he'll marry me....

     "I really don't think he's as bad as all that, Akane."

<clip>

"He doesn't even WANT to go to college.  Well, I do."

     Kasumi sighed.  "We can't all have what we want, you know."

     "Sorry, Oneechan," Akane said with a remorseful look.  "I
know you wanted to go, and your exam scores were good enough to,
but, well....

Despite the way she catches herself here, Akane is really
coming across as slightly spoiled here.

Yes, in the self-centered sense; her problems are preoccupying her.

allowed.  "Maybe."  Maybe if she really went away, Ranma would
follow her. That would certainly prove something... and if he
didn't, that would prove something else.

"and if both of you are thinking the same thing, then that
proves a third thing."

That the writer is a really mean SOB, yeah.  *sigh*

     "Oh, Akane... do you really think he'll wait four years for
you?  Maybe more?"

     "If he takes the engagement seriously, he will."  Akane
liked her idea better the more she thought about it.  She could
find out how he really felt without having to risk disclosing her
own feelings.  "If he doesn't, why should I?"  It was a win-win
situation... wasn't it?

     After Akane had dried the last dish and gone, Kasumi
continued to stand there for some time, gazing at her unsmiling
reflection in the window over the sink.

Again, second time through this is more interesting.  Is
Kasumi deciding that Akane doesn't want the engagement?
Or doesn't deserve it?

Could be either, couldn't it?

     "Is treat, is not trick," Shampoo said, pouting a little.
"Special ingredient only for, how you say, vigor."

     "Huh."  Vigor was always a good thing, wasn't it?

Heh.

Innocence is so precious... :)
 

     Perched atop a power pole, Ranma stared out over Nerima's
night-mantled rooftops, unseeing.  It had taken a while to sink
in, and it was still sinking.  Akane really didn't love him.  The
knowledge was a hot, jagged mass in his chest, making his breath
come in shallow gasps. 

Good description, IMO.

Thanks.  I don't like hurting *him*, either...
 

Akane didn't want to marry him,
didn't want to be engaged to him, didn't even particularly want
to be in the same town as him-- she actually thought more school,
a fate only a little better than death, was preferable!  There
was nothing between them.

Nice accumulation of misunderstandings here, especially
the bit about school.

Just one wouldn't suffice. Even this bundle was barely enough... maybe
not enough.
 

this was her chance.  The look she'd given him... he couldn't
have said "no" to that look without a really good reason to hold
out.

     Like the reason he didn't have any more.

Nice passage.

My prereaders' influence there.  :)
 

I think you're achieving a melancholy effect successfully.
You're not, IMO, achieving the level of pain I experience when
I read Noakes or Zen, but then it doesn't suit the overall mood
of this series to do so.

If I may be forgiven for dropping the name, that's why I asked Mike
Noakes to join the preread crew for this: because he's a lot better at
this sort of thing than I am.

Continuing...

table, and poured.  Ranma picked up a cup and blew on it to cool
it a little.  "Thanks."  He sipped cautiously.

     "You're welcome, Bridegroom."  Cologne rolled her own cup
between her palms, staring into the amber liquid.

Heh.  Deliberately inserting an ambiguous scene, to make the
more reluctant-to-believe readers think there might be something
in the tea?

No, that interpretation hadn't even occurred to me. I'll take it as a
happy accident.

that all that was over.  The pain would be because Akane wasn't
clobbering him, not because she was. 

Nice turn of phrase.

Thanks...

"What I really want to know, though, is why Kasumi would marry
Ranma."

Having all your characters ask this question works to underline
that we don't really quite know, at the end of this, though we
do get hints.  Are you planning to ever answer this question
fully?  (If not, suggest you dispense with a few of the echoes
of this question in this story.)

Not anytime soon (note that Akane is still in the dark about that 7
years later in AMAW, and Ranma, while he knows Kasumi better, isn't sure
either), maybe not ever. *I* very carefully don't know exactly why
Kasumi married Ranma.

However, the "echoes" serve two purposes: you may note that each of them
may say more about the character suggesting the answer than it does about
Kasumi herself, and they also enumerate possible motivations that should
all be consistent with the evidence. I need them to be there for
structural reasons; they're not just a motif.

     "You can't," Ukyo managed.  "You promised to marry me.  You
promised to take care of me."

     "That was if the sauce turned out good," Ranma couldn't help
pointing out, "and it--"

Heh.  Really put his foot into it here, didn't he.  This is so like
Ranma.

OK, good.

     "Huh?" Ranma began, but Ukyo had already spaced out.

Of course...  (and that's a nice way to put it)

Wandered off into la-la-land?  In a world of her own, folks?  :)
 

     Ukyo sank back down on her stool and put her head in her
hands.  "Oh, crap."

     "Deep an' sticky," Ranma agreed.

And here.  Ranma turning a phrase exactly the wrong way.

I can't write him as foul-mouthed as he really is, for some reason, so
that's the best I can do...

     Ranma took a deep breath and committed himself, reflecting
that he was beginning to get the hang of it. 

And that's part of the melancholy of this series.  Almost any
man _would_ get the hang of this, given these kinds of experiences,
whether they wanted to or not.

"It gets easier and easier each time... and then it gets hard
to stop." -Davies

Yes, indeed.  That thread runs through the next three stories.
  

     "The other woman you go to for love because you're trapped
in a loveless marriage?  You'll sneak out and come to my place,
and we'll, um, you know-- oh, I'm so embarrassed!"

Heh.  Never occurred to me to use Ukyou's romantic imagination
for this purpose, though her performance in the Hinako-sensei
intro story ("a forbidden love between student and teacher")
certainly makes it plausible.

Thanks, I thought so.

     That sounded like the usual Ucchan.  Ranma sneaked a peek,
and sure enough she was looking dreamily at the ceiling with her
hands clasped beside her cheek.

Well, except that for "the usual Ucchan" the phrase
"I'm so embarrassed" is usually followed by violence..

It is, it's just delayed a bit.  :)

     "I accept."  Ukyo gave Ranma an unhappy look.  "Don't get me
wrong; it's not my first choice, not by a long shot. 

Strikes me as a trifle fast, though, even so.  Maybe you should
have her get violent, followed by contrition, first? 

I suppose I could have, but the scene was running long as it was (a lot
of them did), so I took advantage of Ukyo's propensity for emotional
hairpin turns and hoped to get away with it... I'll turn my muse loose
on this as well.
 

     Kuno Tatewaki assumed the wakki-ga-kamae stance and centered
his concentration on the straw target dummy at the other end of

"pigtailed straw target dummy" (I suggest)

I like that.  Thanks.
 

     "If you say so," Ranma agreed casually, thinking that sudden
blood loss on Ryoga's part might have more to do with it than
what kind of girl Akari was. 

Interesting observation on Ranma's part.  He can get that
some girls might be like this when he's not the guy in the picture;
but he can't (yet) think this way about Kasumi, or think that
Shampoo might be a "nice girl" like Akari, given appropriate
circumstances.

Ironic, isn't it? But Ranma's always been pretty good at that when he
wasn't involved directly; note how quickly and accurately he picked up
on what was going on with Akane and Tofu, or with Ryoga and Akari. I
suspect this was a comic irony for Takahashi, but it can serve other
purposes too.

     Ranma grimaced.  "Listen, Ryoga," he began seriously, coming
around the tent and sitting down on the ground, "you gotta
understand something.  I wasn't in the way.  Nobody was.  To her,
I'm just a-- a friend."

This passage, in particular, seems to me to underline that this
Ranma clearly is a bit older than the one we're used to; he is a
bit more observant when it comes to other people.  (The Ranma
we're used to is always obsessed that Ryouga might make
time with Akane.)

Mmm... in the manga, I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
Early on, maybe, but later I think he realizes that Akane really isn't
interested in Ryoga that way, and won't be (I think the turning point is
the waterproof-soap fiasco). After that, he seems to be motivated more
by the flipside of the fiancee-propriety thing that causes Akane to
resent it when Ranma pays attention to other girls, even though she won't
admit it's jealousy.  Also, there's the combat-rivals thing.

Which makes it the more jarring that Akane's
behavior is exactly what we're used to, or maybe even regressed
to the early part of the manga.  Not sure what you can do about
it, though; she has to make these decisions.  I suppose you
might consider trying to show her a bit more grown up in other
respects, however:  improve her cooking, give her another
new hobby, have her make some interesting observations
about Nabiki or somebody.

What, wanting to go to college doesn't count?  :)

I'll see what I can come up with. She'll do a lot of growing up in a
hurry after she goes away, of course...

     Ryoga bristled.  "And what's wrong with Nabiki-san?"

Heh.  That's SO like Ryouga.

P-chan: guardian of moral propriety.  Oink.  :)

     "I--  You--  All along, I've been expecting you to tell her
about P-chan at any moment! 

The actuality is that, in several stories, Ryouga shows clear
expectation that Ranma will help him conceal matters.  It
is quite plausible that Ryouga would misremember this,
however.

Sure, he's exaggerating. In fact, Ranma seems to seesaw back and forth
between threatening Ryoga's secret and protecting it, depending on his
mood of the moment, all through the manga, and I expect that would
continue.
 

course.  Ryoga was about the best friend he had, not counting the
girls he wouldn't marry and the girl who wouldn't marry him.

GARY:  "There's no evidence of that!"

Now, now. :) As I see it, Ranma thinks of ALL of them as friends, maybe
even Mousse and Tatewaki. His best friend is Akane, though he'd rather
bite off his tongue than admit it.

And his cursed form has black hair.  :)

     "Akane would go bananas," Ranma muttered.

     Nodoka sighed again.  "Yes, well, Akane-chan has many
virtues, but Kasumi-chan will certainly make you a better wife.

Interesting definition of "better wife" here...  (Not that Nodoka
would apply it to herself, of course.)

Well, we don't really know that, do we? Does Nodoka never express any
concern on-page in the manga over what Genma may have been up to while
he was away because she's totally sure of his fidelity, or is there some
other reason? Could it be that even if he did stray, it wouldn't bother
her enough to make a fuss about it, and in any case she wouldn't ask?

     Or maybe they were planning to slip her into Kasumi's
wedding costume and makeup, which would mask anyone's identity,
and then Ranma would end up married to her without even knowing
it.  She wasn't sure she'd go along with that one, though,
because it threatened to give away her hypothetical feelings
without revealing his.

It would be just like canonical Akane to try to initiate a plan
like this herself.  And the Akane who did disguise herself this
way in the Combat Cheerleader story didn't worry overmuch
about revealing her feelings.

I plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the readership...
 

Not that I'm suggesting you change anyone's actions, of course.
But this does add another point to the problem I'm having with
Akane in general in this story.  On the one hand, her decisions
are stupid enough so that I have no problem accepting the
pain she gets from them; _this_ Akane is consistent in this
story, and I care somewhat for her, and feel for her pain (in a
melancholy rather than heartbroken way).  OTOH, this Akane
is not consistent with her canonical self plus 1 1/2 years in the
same way that pretty much all your other characters are.  (In
some places, I think you've even displayed originality in your
canonicity.)

I'm stuck here. Akane HAS to be boneheaded enough to do things that will
cause Ranma to believe she really doesn't want him, and then not do
anything to correct the error, long enough to get him married to Kasumi,
or the story won't end up at AMAW. This tightrope act is in danger of
falling off the wire in a dozen places as it is!

You _might_ want to make a few allusions here and there about
events which stiffened Akane's resolution not to give away her
feelings, not to act first.  Perhaps something fairly recent, which
looked to her like Ranma humiliating her for doing just that?

Right, but I was thinking in terms of general state of affairs rather
than any specific incident. The idea here is that the major players ARE,
in significant ways, still the same: everyone is stuck in a rut while
the pressures increase. Ukyo refers to this at the beginning, Ranma
muses on how comfortable the rut is, but Akane's getting tense about
which direction the circus is going to depart the rut, peeved at Ranma
for keeping things going, subconsciously mad at herself for not having
the guts to do something decisive herself, and still in denial about her
reasons for it all.

But if it doesn't come out properly in the story and I need to explain
it, then I haven't done my job right. I'll see what I can do about it.

     She didn't have to do anything about it.

     She could just wait.

     Everything would be back to normal again before she knew it.

     It'd always happened that way before.

     It'd happen this time, too.

     Wouldn't it?

The above, specifically that last line, _could_ be interpreted
as Akane's having grown up a little.  But to me it looks like Akane
being even stupider than usual.  If she can even think "wouldn't
it?", she can think that it might not happen that way this time.

She's certainly sufficiently aware of that possibility to fear it... her
mistake (and it is a stupid one) is that she doesn't fear it as much as
she should, not enough to take action. She thinks just that later, after
getting clobbered with the consequences of her mistake in a very intense
learning experience... and one might say that the reason she didn't
learn that before is that this is the first time anything this bad has
happened. Imagination is often not a substitute for experience.
 

Might also want to go into a bit more detail about the additional
failed marriages:  if Akane'd been really hopeful, and really
hurt, by the failure of one in particular, that _looked_ really
foolproof in advance, this passage would go down easier.

hmm... maybe. Thinking back to it would probably be less cumbersome than
a flashback... I'll muse on it, thanks.

costume; Nabiki knew they had names, but didn't know what they
were and didn't care.

Good detail for Nabiki.

:)

     "How can you do this to Akane?" Nabiki interrupted.

     Kasumi sighed, carefully so as not to disturb her makeup or
clothing.  "Nabiki, you know what happened.  You were there."

<clip>

     "Father was getting desperate.  We tried everything, don't
you remember?  

Nabiki struck me as a strange choice for this conversation,
though I don't know who else you might have used.  Akiko?
She seemed a bit OOC in a couple of places, but it's clear
that Kasumi's side of this conversation needs to be shown.

That was my thinking, more or less.
 

     "That's a very personal question," Kasumi said evenly after
a moment.  "But love isn't the issue here.  Marriage is the
issue."

     "I must be hearing you wrong," Nabiki said, sticking her
little finger in her ear and rotating it.  "Love might not be
about marriage, but marriage is definitely about love."

     "Is it?" Kasumi asked, her tone challenging something Nabiki
took for granted.

Here we get to the gist.  Kasumi comes through pretty clear
here:  this is primarily about marriage and duty, at least as
far as she's willing to say to Nabiki.  But why portray Nabiki 
as the person who takes "marriage is... about love" for granted?  
You need some interlocutor who believes this, and it can't be
Akane for obvious reasons.  But attributing this POV to Nabiki
doesn't work well for me.  Suggest making it Akiko, perhaps,
though I think we should see _some_ reaction from Nabiki.
Or maybe Nabiki comes in, assuming this POV, but Kasumi
can see it's an act, and says so before Nabs leaves?

It's primarily the authorial "something Nabiki took for granted"
that I'm having a problem with, so you ought to be able to
do something with that (of course, you might have surprising
plans in sequels for Nabiki, but it's hard to see what they
could be that would require this reaction here).

No, not really. Nabiki pretty much drops out of the storyline after
this. The main reason for having Nabiki here is to get in what she says
below, and thereby suggest that possible motivation to readers who might
not have thought of it themselves:
 

     "That's the obvious reason," said Nabiki, still speaking
slowly, as though she were afraid of her own words.  "I'm sure
Father and the Saotomes believe it.  But I thought of another
one.  If you shove Akane out of the way and marry Ranma-kun
yourself, you get everything.  The house, the dojo, the land, the
accounts, the line of inheritance and the family name,
everything.  You'd be all set."

     Kasumi didn't move, and her white makeup concealed her
expression.  Her voice, when it came, was light.  "Wouldn't that
be YOUR reason for marrying Ranma-kun, Nabiki?"

     "My--?"

     "Anyone who knows me, and Ranma-kun, and our situation,
would understand why we're doing this.  It's very sad that you
don't.  And it's very surprising that you, of all people, would
lecture me about love... since you've always chosen your
boyfriends for the size of their wallets."

All this is precisely the point.  This IS Nabiki's reason for marrying
Ranma, which she's not following through on.  So why is she
confronting Kasumi at all?  Clearly Nabiki hasn't changed that much
in 1 1/2 years if this is the first reason she can think of why
Kasumi might be doing this.

I would phrase it differently: that would be Nabiki's reason for
marrying Ranma, so when denied a reason by Kasumi's opacity, it's the
reason she ascribes to Kasumi... but, again, it says more about her than
it does about Kasumi.

Where she's changed since the manga would be that she's concerned about
Akane more than she was, e.g., when she was engaged to Ranma herself...

I guess this is another place where I know what I want to say, but
haven't written it right.

Would it work better if the first part was an act (Nabiki preparing to
shake Kasumi down for a payment) and Kasumi takes the act at face value,
but her response deflates Nabiki's scam? I have a little trouble with
that, since Kasumi certainly has access to more money than Akane or
Ranma, but Nabiki is never seen trying to scam her in the manga...

Or maybe tweaking Nabiki's motivations or internal reactions would suffice?

Examining this scene in the illumination of your comments, it now looks
"muddy" to me, and that means I need to clarify it.

still blow this sky-high," she hissed vindictively.  "I'll bet
Ranma loves Akane too.  What do you suppose will happen if I go
tell him she loves him back?"

<clip>

to ruin our wedding.  Ranma wouldn't believe you, you see."

<clip>

he?  Especially after what you did last month."

     Nabiki flinched.  It'd been a beautiful practical joke; the
expense had been moderate, and the expression on Ranma's face at
the payoff had been priceless.  Kasumi was certainly correct.

Interesting that it occurs to Nabiki to try to talk to Ranma to
stop matters, but never occurs to her to try to talk to Akane
to stop matters.  The latter would still work at this point (maybe).

Well, it seemed to me that it did occur to her but was dismissed
immediately (because Akane always responds to that sort of urging with
stubbornness) and so wasn't worth comment, but perhaps I should work in
that comment, since we are privy to Nabiki's thoughts here...
 

face; white headdress... was it really supposed to hide horns?
Weird.

"Weird" is probably not what Ranma should be thinking, on
the subject of hiding horns on Kasumi.  How about "wouldn't
work.  When Kasumi had horns, they stuck out right where
they'd be pushing the headdress up."

Hmm. Maybe he would, at that. SOME sort of back reference seems called
for. (I was thinking "Lum!" when I wrote that... :)
 

     Kasumi-san had sipped from the same cup his lips had just
touched.  He was about to do the same.  What was usually a
serious social no-no was done here on purpose, just to whack them
over the heads with the fact that the rules were about to change
for them, that some forbidden things were about to become
permitted... or even required.

Nice wedding description, btw.  Obviously you've done your
homework.

I found the matter intriguing, yes. :)

"Sa, uh, Tendo Ranma," he managed in conclusion.

As the text stands, we're to suppose that Ranma is taking "Tendo"
by virtue of Kasumi heading the new family register, since no
previous adoption has been mentioned.  The problem, of sorts,
is that this is regarded as the unmanly path in Japan, and it
in implausible that Nodoka would tolerate it.  She'd insist on the
adoption the day before, and Ranma heading the family
register.  A minor nit, I assure you, but also one easily
fixed.

Um... maybe not so easily, since I planned it that way. (If you check,
you will find that nowhere in AMAW or Heart of the Phoenix are Ranma,
Kasumi, or their, er, her children referred to as "Saotome".)

As I see it, Nodoka settled the manliness issue back in manga v36, and
since then has been certain of Ranma's exemplary manliness (rather more
exemplary than he actually was, in fact), with only a few brief bobbles
due to wacky hijinks. The usual reason for the unusual event of the
groom joining the bride's family rather than vice-versa has less to do
with manliness than economic circumstances (which could be considered to
apply here) and, in particular, a well-to-do family with no sons
(ditto), so I don't think Nodoka would object to it on those grounds.
The real issue is that Ranma is eldest and only son, and the real
question is why Nodoka would permit the "loss" of said son... and there
is a reason, but this isn't the proper time to go into it; it'll come up
in a future story, so I beg your indulgence until then.

(Also, I'd like to leave open the possibility of a precedent: it isn't
certain that "Saotome" was originally Genma's family name and Nodoka
married into it, nor that "Tendo" was Soun's, is it?)

As for the bureaucratics of the matter, I imagine it was handled
off-page on the morning of the wedding by transferring Ranma from the
Saotome register to the Tendo just before submitting the marriage forms,
deeding the property, and filing Ranma's change of residence. In
unseemly haste, to be sure...

(It occurs to me to wonder why the possibility of Ranma becoming a Tendo
that opened chapter 9 of Taming of the Horse didn't provoke any dissent
then, though. Maybe because it didn't actually happen. :)

     Ryoga and Happosai were waiting in the tearoom when the
wedding party came in.  Happosai, amazingly, appeared to be in
his "stern and proper" mode; he hadn't broached the bottles,

So your Happi doesn't qualify as the go-between?  He'd have
been at the wedding itself if he did.

No, that was Kasumi and Pantyhose-Taro he was the go-between for, in
another fic far, far away. :) Here, Happosai was off stealing panties or
something; he had nothing to do with the planning or preparations.

     They returned in a few minutes; now Kasumi was dressed in a
magnificent outer kimono, resplendent with brocade and embroidery
in symbols of good fortune. 

Ah, the oiro-naoshi, where the bride changes into the uchikake. 

Yes, but I'm trying to be good about the Japanese even if I don't think
it's gratuitous. :)

     Ranma was in charge.  It was a strange feeling.

Heh.

Well, it was!  :)
 

     "Stupid Ranma," she whispered.  "Stupid Father.  Stupid
Saotome-no-ojisan.  Stupid Nodoka-sama.  Stupid Kasumi-oneechan."
She paused.  "Stupid Ak--"  Her voice broke, and she swiped
angrily at something on her cheek.

Nice paragraph here, I thought.

Thanks... hurt to write, of course.

     Ryoga suddenly stood up and Akane looked at him, startled.
He stared back down at her with an expression of determination on
his rugged face, one fist clenched.  "I'll get P-chan for you,"
he vowed.  "Just wait right there."  He leaped down the steps
into the yard and ran towards the house.  Akane's eyes widened.

Just amazing.  Yes, Ryouga is stupid enough to interpret Ranma's
advice this way, but it really IS the very worst thing he could
be doing here.

I can be mean to everyone impartially.  :/

     Ryoga disappeared into the night sky, a shooting star going,
as usual, in the wrong direction.

Before reading this, I think I'd have said that there couldn't be any
new, compelling way to do the P-Chan revelation; that it's been done
enough times, by enough masters, that it would be pointless to
seriously try.  But this is a new, compelling version.  Timing it
now, and having Ryouga voluntarily, eagerly reveal it himself,
make for a very uncomfortable combination.

I always said I wouldn't take up the P-chan issue unless I had something
reasonably new to say about it... glad it worked.

meeting Ranma's just as Kasumi picked the stray grain of rice off
of his cheek and popped it into her own mouth.  Akane broke off,
the color draining from her face.  Her lips moved slightly,
speechless, and a look of such anguish came over her features
that it needed only an instant to etch itself on Ranma's memory,
the instant before she turned away and staggered out again.

The way this scene accords with what you'd previously written
in AMAW was particularly amazing, I though; just the point where
most authors take liberties with the chronologies in their earlier
works.

It continues to amaze ME how AMAW is more of a guide than a constraint;
blame it on Dave Roeder, he's the one who planted this seed. :)
 

Very compelling description.

Thanks. I cannot for the life of me recall where I got the
eating-the-rice-grain as intimate gesture from; does it ring any bells
for you?

     Ranma sat petrified with shock, his eyes fixed on the
glistening spots left on the hardwood floor where Akane had been.
He knew what fallen teardrops looked like.  He'd recognized the
expression on her face: heartbreak.  The magnitude of his error
crashed onto him in a mighty wave.

Another good paragraph.

Thanks... I guess the trauma was worth it, then.  :/
 

     If he'd known that, he would have defied mother and fathers
alike, fought legions of Ryogas and Shinnosukes and pansy foreign
princes to keep her, turned all the would-be fiancees down flat
and to hell with the consequences, protected her from lethal
rivals, fearsome monsters, and lecherous spirits as long as
breath remained in his body, traveled the mountains and deserts
and seas of the world to stay at her side.  Never offered
compromise, never accepted defeat.

This, OTOH, in my opinion shouldn't tbe needed.  If you've
done your job right up to now, the reader understands all this.
(I take this to be mostly authorial voice, as this Ranma doesn't
seem this articulate, but it may not be clear in your own mind.)

Right, it's me articulating what Ranma can't. This is what I call a
calibration issue; in my experience, some readers need this, some don't,
and some know it but want to read it anyway. Often I guess wrong.

from, but to abandon Kasumi?  She'd gotten up early the morning
of her own wedding night, folded their clothes, filled the furo,
seen that he had everything he needed waiting in the bathroom,
cleaned up the tearoom, and then cooked him the best breakfast he
could remember... just because she wanted to please him.  Because
she wanted to be a good wife.  She looked like she'd been pleased
by his reactions, too.  It meant something to her.  She had a lot
invested in this marriage: her virginity, obviously; her pride,
different though it might be from the pride of a warrior; her
feelings, even if she didn't love him the way... the way Akane
did.

Good again.  Might be worthwhile reminding us somewhere that
Ranma goes off-track on seeing tears from just about any woman,
even Shampoo or Kodachi.

Hmm... I'll look for a good place.

 Once convinced that any prospective
action would do the same to Kasumi, it's right out-of-bounds.

Yes, exactly. But also it's a self-image issue: when you get right down
to it, he doesn't want to be the kind of guy who would do something like
that.
 

made itself at home, an undeniable and comforting reminder that
there was an upside to this situation.

And that's the other thing.  As much as he wants to, Ranma _can't_
feel as bad as Akane about this, since there _are_ upsides to
it for him.  And that just makes him feel even more guilty, both
now and at the time of AMAW, seven years or so hence.

Exactly again. The depths of that emotion are going to drive much of the
next few stories.
 

     Hidden in the far corner of the yard behind the dojo, curled
around her pain like a small, wounded animal, Akane wept quietly.
Her tears sprinkled fragments of tile and concrete, debris from
her breaking exercises.

I'm not sure why, but I don't feel quite as hurt by this paragraph,
or your descriptions in general, as I feel reading other authors,
even with similar word choices.  You could add something about
ice on her spine or hot pain in her throat, but would that make
any difference?  I'm not sure.  Maybe it's because I know how
all this comes out; that there is no suicide on the horizon, merely
a suboptimal status quo of melancholy.

That makes a lot of sense.  It's a quiet, resigned sort of heartbreak...

fiancee again... and she hadn't, like an idiot, because she
couldn't imagine any pain worse than the humiliation of doing
those things.

     Well, she didn't have to imagine it now.

Especially effective, IMO.

Akane, meet major learning experience... *sigh*
 

     "Hey, is that my laundry?" Nabiki asked, meeting them in the
hall.

     "No, I'm afraid not, Nabiki," Kasumi said sweetly.

     "Rats.  Any idea when you'll get to it, then?"

     Ranma frowned, but before he could say anything Kasumi spoke
again in the same sweet tone.  "I expect I'll be too busy to wash
your clothes for quite a while.  A pity, isn't it?"

Heh.  This is another partial explanation for Kasumi's actions, and
it's telling about Nabiki, too:  she's been out of high school for a
year, away at college, and she's still relying on Kasumi to do her
laundry?

Not "away"; she's been living at home because she's going to a college
close enough for it to be practical and she's too cheap to move out. One
of my prereaders said I needed to mention this somewhere; looks like he
was right and I was wrong...

     "Should we go by Ucchan's and make sure nothing's happened
to them, do you think?"

Earlier it seems that Kasumi had bought into Nodoka's illusions
hook, line, and sinker.  This seems more ambiguous, somehow.

Good.  :)

Kasumi is expecting to see that something's changed at Ucchan's
as well, maybe that it too is closed.  Does she think that Ranma
has arranged for his mistresses to leave town so as not to
embarrass her?  Or does she think that Ranma did a more
Lawson/Eddy thing here:  defiantly confronting the Chinese/Ukyou
to make them leave her (Kasumi) alone?  She's not going
to let Ranma know which she thinks, of course; but that's
not the same as not letting us, the readers, know.

Could be either, or could just be anticipating Ranma's concern for his
friends... there's lots of evidence in the manga that Kasumi is quite
perceptive about such things. She may be artless, but she's not
clueless.

And phrasing the above as a question allows Ranma to decide
against, as he would have, presumably, in other scenarios.

Also, it allows Ranma to decide, as is proper.

shopkeepers and passersby called and waved to Kasumi, and she
carefully introduced Ranma as her husband to everyone she
exchanged words with.  

Another of the reasons why Kasumi said "yes"...

Which one: a handsome husband, an increase in status from daughter to
wife, or someone to fend off the attentions of the Evil Dr. Tofu
brigade? :)
 

Some congratulated him on his good
fortune, though, and a couple of guys sounded envious.

Well, Kasumi _is_ most Japanese men's ideal wife (which is
why more and more Japanese women are saying they're not
interested in marriage).

Yes... but on the other hand, if someone *wants* to do that with her (or
his!) life, I think it should be respected. Especially if it's done with
competence.

     "I know.  I just figured I might as well go now.  

"That way I might be able to get some sleep."

Yes, we don't want her to start looking like Gosunkugi...
 

     "I... see.  Yes, that certainly makes sense."  Kasumi
hesitated, then said, "Do you want someone to go with you for the
first few days?  Father, or maybe Ranma?"

Given the sensitivity Kasumi showed the night before, she has
to know what might happen if Ranma indeed went.  Which makes
this an incredibly generous offer of hers.  She can't be certain
that Akane will turn it down, even if she is certain that it is in
Akane's best interest to turn it down.

Isn't it? Makes you wonder if maybe Kasumi in AMAW knows what's going on
with Ranma and Akane, perhaps?
 

     The pain in her voice drew Kasumi a half-step forward, her
arms lifting a little, and that was all it took.  Akane gulped
and stumbled towards the comfort of her eldest sister's embrace
as she had not since she was a little girl, her eyes filling with
tears and her throat with sobs.  Kasumi caught her and tapped the
door behind her with one heel; it swung shut and clicked.

Nice scene.

Thanks... *sniffle*

and the train began to move.  Ranma searched for her face in the
windows, but couldn't find it, and then the train was gone.

Excellent last sentence to this scene.

Parting at the train station is just so anime/manga, isn't it...

     Sure enough, Ucchan's was just another storefront the next
day.  Shampoo, Mousse, and Cologne were gone; he hadn't seen
Ryoga since the wedding party; Kodachi had "departed"; Akane was
off at college, and Kuno had headed north after Akane as soon as
he got out of the hospital.  Now Ukyo and Konatsu had left too,
and he was reduced to teasing Happosai just to get some exercise.

And this, of course, is the other reason for the outcome we see in
AMAW:  Nerima is now intensely boring for Ranma, and he would,
sooner or later, start going off on those "training journeys" even
if there were no women waiting for him, from sheer boredom.

Bingo.  I'm glad this is apparent.

     "A Man Among Women" was inspired by a question Dave Roeder
asked me: what serious and in-character scenario could be
contrived in which ALL the "fiancees" got Ranma? 

Still no Nabiki, though ;)

Hey, she was only a fiancee for about a week.  :)

Seriously, do you think I should work her in somehow? If so, what would
be the point: what would it say about her, and about Ranma? My immediate
reaction is "ick", and I think Ranma's immediate (and enduring) reaction
would be "Not a chance!"

* this story, "Compromising Situations".

* "Triangles", about Ranma's first "training trip" to Kansai and
China (in preproduction).

Good choice ot title, I think:  Ranma-Ukyou-Konatsu; Ranma-
Shampoo-Mousse; Ranma-Ukyou-Kasumi; Ranma-Shampoo-
Kasumi.  You've at least four to explore.

You can see the shape of it already, I'm sure. The devil is in the
details, though...

I expect to tell all of these stories eventually, and then the
original AMAW will be merely an epilogue.

Unfortunately, for such an original story, that does seem to
be its fate.  If I may make a suggestion, though:  either
place the stories on your web page in the order you wrote
them, rather than the order they appear, or clearly document
on your web page, somehow/somewhere, what the order
you wrote them is, so that readers can go back and read
them in that order later.

Good idea, thanks. The AMAW series is getting so big that it needs its
own page on my webspace anyway.

There are numerous cases in SF of this, ground-breaking
stories later reduced to pointless epilogues, or even 
of half the mystery of stories pointlessly dissipated by
going back and writing preludes.  At least, I suggest, allow
your readers to read your stories either way.

Right. I can present them both ways on the webpage. I think the most
effective order would be to read AMAW first, then flashback to CS and
read in timeline order to Heart of the Phoenix. (At this point, I think
of Better Part of Valor as an omake. :)

Anyway, very good work, as usual.  The only possible
improvements I can suggest would be fairly hard to
implement, as they have to do with Akane's and Nabiki's
characterizations.  To me, the scenes mentioned above
disturb my suspension of disbelief, but not enough to
kill it entirely.  Whether that reaction, from one reader, is
enough for you to do any rework is, as always, up to you.

I think you're right; I'm just not sure I can do it. I certainly need to
fix the Nabiki/Kasumi scene, but I may need more skill than I have to
improve Akane throughout. Well, I'll try anyway.

Thanks for taking the time to go into this (very large) block of text in
detail; I really appreciate it.

Vince Seifert    Fanfic Analyst   FFIRC Frog
Prime:  seifertv@csus.edu
Backup: seifertv@myrealbox.com
Techie: http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/
Fanfic: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/seifertv/toth/
Ideas are worth their weight in gold.




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