On Sat, 21 Dec 2002, Gary Kleppe wrote:

Yes, I'm finally getting to this, after something like a month and a
half. ^_^;; What can I say, I was put off by the sheer amount of
material posted at once (and splitting it up into separate emails didn't
help since they were posted consecutively.)

Sure.  It was helpful to Bert, but I didn't expect it would be for
everyone.

It was... a compromise.  *rimshot*
 

But hey, I'm still faster than Doug. :P

He may still be recovering from the stunnage.  :)

Vincent Seifert <seifertv@ccshp1.ccs.csus.edu> wrote:

... She pressed
his arm into her cleavage to emphasize her point.

    "Urk."  Ranma's arm felt red-hot; like Akane, Ukyo and
Shampoo, Kodachi was even more attractive at eighteen than she
had been at sixteen.  Fortunately she was still wearing her
school uniform rather than a leotard or a slinky dress.

Then how is it she's got exposed cleavage?

Not exposed, but her uniform isn't rigid or even padded: she can press his
arm into her cleavage even with a couple of layers of fabric in the way,
and still achieve some significant fraction of the desired effect.  Trust
me.  -_^

    "I have a delightful evening prepared for us to celebrate
our adulthood together, Ranma-sama," Kodachi continued, ignoring
the two who stood there panting, clenching their weapons, and
glaring at her.

    "Over my dead body," Ukyo declared to Kodachi.  Shampoo
nodded firmly.

SHAMPOO: I agree totally. Over your dead body.

I've used that gag before (Taming 7), and I'll use it again.  :)
 

    Daisuke, watching the massacre from a safe distance, nodded
to Hiroshi as the other youth came up.  "Got the pool disposed
of?"

    "Just about.  Too bad we couldn't just keep the money.
There was over twenty thousand yen in there."

    "Hey, now.  That'd be a Nabiki trick."  Daisuke winced as

NABIKI: No it wouldn't. That's fanfic cliche. I *never* ran betting
pools in the original series.

No, no, not running a pool -- scamming the bets.  But I'd call running a
betting pool "anime canon" rather than "fanfic cliche", myself. 

HIROSHI: And Daisuke and I never wrote fanfiction.

GARY: Yeah, that's another-- HEY!

Dang, beat me to it.  :)

    Daisuke considered.  "Not a bad hedge bet, really."

TSUBASA: Hey! I'm the only one who'd pose as a hedge!

KONATSU: Sorry, but no you're not. I was one of the million billion
ninjas from the Tick. "We're a hedge. Move along, please."

TSUBASA: Darn.

Konatsu's certainly wacky enough.  :)

    Ranma pasted a #3 smile (Knowing & Worldly) on his face.
"Sure, Momma, I understand."

The author pasted Terry Pratchettism #2 (Goofy Enumeration) into the
narration. :P

Derision noted.  :)
 

IMO, this scene might have made a better opening for the fic, since it
cues up what's presumably going to be the main theme. While I liked the
scene with the principal -- a quality Kahuna appearance is worth its
weight in macadamia nuts -- but it still feels a bit extraneous for this
fic, particularly as the opening.

hmm... well, where to start a story is even trickier than where to end it,
I'll admit.  But I like to think in terms of setup, and in this kind of
alternate-continuation fic where significant time has elapsed, I think the
reader wants the situation (especially things that have changed -- and not
changed -- from last knowledge) established in some detail.  (It's
different from the original AMAW, where the gradual revelation of what
changed & how was critical to what was essentially an extended vignette.) 
So, rather than dump a load of exposition, I wrote a couple of scenes that
would provide that detail before diving into the meat of the story.  It's
the last of the old wackiness.

IMO, you don't need to use the script-type attributions here. It's
obvious from the dialog itself who said each intro line, and we can
likely guess out who objected, to the extent that we really need to
know.

Well, let's see:

     "Look!  Shampoo knocked up!"
     "RANMA!"
     WHAM!  CLANG!  POW!  JINGLE!

     "Look!  Ranchan's and my kid!"
     "RANMA!!"
     GONG!  WHAM!  POW!

     "Lo!  I bear the fruit of Ranma-sama's loins!"
     "RANMA!!!"
     CLANG!  GONG!  WHAM!  SLICE!

     "Look what that baka did to me!"
     "RANMA!!!!"
     WHAM!  POW!  CLANG!  GONG!  BOOOM!  SLICE!

Hmm... that may be too cryptic for some readers, but it works for me, I
have to admit.  I'll consider that, thanks.

    Akane: "Look what that baka did to me!"

[shakes head ruefully] And you a co-author of the GoETfMFW. Tsk, tsk,
tsk.

Aw, c'mon, just one?  Er, two?  :)
 
(DOug's gonna flay you for that, you know.  :)

    "How did your college placement exams come out?"  I kept
trying to talk to you about them, but you always just brushed the
whole thing off like everything was taken care of.  "My exams

The first person stuff outside of the quotes kinda confused me at first.
If this were on-paper writing, I'd suggest putting the quoted thoughts
in italics, but given the limitations of ASCII, I'm not sure what to
suggest.

Yes... I've used ** for thought-quotes in my other stories, but for
AMAW I'm deliberately trying not to.  I'll use italics in the eventual
HTML version, though. 

    "I can't believe it."  Akane had her face buried in her
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."

Nice joke, but the full explanation there kinda dulls it. IMO, I'd at
least take out the first part that explains what a ronin really is. It
breaks POV, and even people who haven't read MI ought to be able to get
the joke just by context.

It would work that way for me, of course, but my instinct is that it would
be too subtle for most readers... well, maybe Love Hina tipped the balance
recently.  (I suspect that Maison Ikkoku, which I regard as an influential
classic, may actually be unfamiliar to many newer fans because it's not
out on DVD and the GNs are backlisted, if not out of print...) 

    "Ah, to be swept away in your strong embrace!  How happy I
am!" Kodachi enthused over the rush of the wind.

    "Yeah, right."  Ranma dodged a spray of little spatulas
without stopping.  I grabbed one so the others would follow, he
thought, and I grabbed YOU 'cause you'd gain the least by it.  He

Wouldn't he blurt this out loud? Ranma is not noted for tact. :)

He's a) busy and b) not quite disgusted enough for blurting.  :)
 

    Ranma returned home at suppertime, dragging herself along on
a staff, covered with lumps, bruises, and scrapes.  She could
easily imagine himself a hundred years old, short and wizened

Using "she" and "himself" in the same sentence (to refer to the same
person) is really confusing. Pick a pronoun scheme and stick with it.

Well, I thought I had:  Ranma is female at the moment, but is male at the
future time of the vision, so the question is whether the pronoun refers
to the present or future Ranma.  It's a weak point in my (consistent
across this and other stories) pronoun scheme that pronoun gender reflects
outward part, I'll admit.  :)  Maybe "herself" would work better.

    "It's so nice that we can all meet here like this," Nodoka
began, smiling graciously.  "I suppose we've all guessed why
we're here, so since we're almost like family already, I'll get
right to the point.  Now that Ranma has graduated from high
school, it's time he took the next major step in a man's life."

RANMA: Shaving?

You know, it occurred to me recently that I can't imagine Ranma with a
beard or mustache, even a wispy one... I wonder why that is? 

I wonder what would happen to it when he gets hit with cold water, too.
Maybe that's why.

NODOKA: Urology exam.

RANMA: Oh.

NODOKA: And in your case, gynecology as well.

Run away!  :)

    "I'm sure you don't, Ranma, but that's not what I was
asking.  I mean, are you giving the same, ah, attentions to Akane-
chan that you are to your other companions?"

    Ranma's brow furrowed.  "Uh... pretty much, I guess--"  He
blanched suddenly.  "You're asking if I did THAT, with HER?
Hell, no!"

AKANE: So you DID do it with the others?!

RANMA: Huh?

Yes, that crops up in a few other places, contributing to the disaster: 
Ranma has been leading his mother to believe that he's more "manly" than
he is.  Akane knows that, and is disgusted by it, but she knows he isn't,
so she lets it slide because it would cause problems between Ranma and his
mother.  She lets it slide this time because it would profit her nothing
to reveal the deception: it's a side issue, irrelevant and even
distracting to her gripe that the attentions Ranma DOES pay to his other
"fiancees" are inappropriate. 
 

    "Also, I've got a chance to go away to college, and HE
can't," Akane said through gritted teeth.  "He didn't pass his
exams.  He didn't even take his exams!"

    "Hey, you callin' me stupid?"

    "Arrangements could be made to allow that, Akane-chan."

AKANE: Really? Good. [sticks tongue at Ranma] I'm allowed to call you
stupid. Nyaaaaaa!

That was wide open, yes, but things were already bad enough for my
purposes.  :)
 

    ~~~~~ end part 1/3

I thought the developments between Ranma and Akane were very well done.
After so many fics cast from the "Akane turns into a maniac for no
particular reason, driving Ranma into the arms of the author's favorite
character" template, it's refreshing to see a story that takes the time
and effort to show us something that we can believe the characters we
know would actually do.

Well, you know my bias, of course.  Also, if Akane and Ranma didn't have
strong feelings for each other, AMAW couldn't be melancholic-to-tragic in
tone...

All in all, it's a great read so far, and as usual carefully edited,
leaving me without much of anything to complain about. :) Now onto the
next installment....

Thanks for the comments!

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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