Vast snippages of material that everyone has now read more than once ....
At 03:21 PM 11/12/2003 +0100, Sebastian Palm wrote:
[snip]
And mine are: You (Thermopyle) should go reread the whole thing, before
spewing up such a massive amount of invective. It's unbecoming.
It's not the first time he's done this in my direction, which is how he
ended up in my killfile a long time ago. I get his comments second hand
like this when someone like you makes intelligent responses about the
story's internal logic.
[snip]
Well, which is it? He's a pathetic, emotional wreck, or he's the
character from the manga? You can't use both. If he's a pathetic,
emotional wreck, well, why the hell is the backstory the same as
for
the original Ranma?
The most time Ranma has ever been stuck in girl form before was during the
Phoenix pill incident - which we have only guesses as to how long it was.
The metaphysics of the situation are also under debate - I could interpret
the effects of the pressure point as being that Ranma would change back to a
boy - then revert immediately (such as when he fell into the hot bath after
getting the lemon drop, in which case he wasn't stuck at all). If so, then
Ranma never spent more than a day or two as a girl at a time.
Going with this assumption, we come to the situation with Herb - Ranma gets
locked, and chases after Herb towards Horaizan. Suppose this takes a few
days - we have no official word, IIRC. Then the day of the fight, plus a day
under the mountain, and another two or three at the house - at least a week
total since he changed, and by now there's been plenty of time for the
changed hormones which never showed before to become apparent. Good enough?
And totally spot on. Also, in this story the chase after Herb take a
considerable amount of time, which is stated right up front in the Prologue
in Akane's scene.
"It had been weeks since anyone had heard from Ranma ..."
Add *another* full week (I put timestamps at the start of every chapter)
after the battle with Herb and you have a martial artist who is *very*
unstable. I'd like to think that I've succeeded in portraying him as
somewhat bipolar at this point - swinging randomly back and forth between
emotional states.
[snip]
> Hm. I'm not really sure what the failure you're referring to is. He
won the fight against Herb, didn't he? The fic cites physical and
emotional trauma as being Ranma's problem, but he's been close to
dying a number of times before. For emotional trauma, he's been stuck
as a girl before, and Eiko has a cure coming right up, so that's not
really an issue, either.
Eiko said that he'd always be a girl for real - that the male form would be
a disguise. That, while it might look like a cure, isn't really one, and for
some people there's a difference.
Also, from Ranma's current point of view he *lost* the fight with Herb. The
bits Eiko stated about him now being female inside are being ignored by denial.
[snip]
Hell, Eiko probably could have been able to make big letters appear in
the surface of the Gates, or something. Regardless, Eiko has no right
to bitch about Pluto not doing what Eiko wanted her to do if Eiko just
sat around and did nothing for so long. At the very least, Eiko could
have searched for a new guardian any time after her old guardian died.
Pluto turned Eiko's I/O off - Eiko says so when it talks to Ranma in chapter
one. Only Pluto being "dead" allowed Eiko to circumvent the lockout -
referred to as "emergency command override" in the next half of the chapter.
Pin pon!
[snip]
> plot. Actually, all those ANCs don't really contribute anything,
either. Unless the girls are going to end up as Ranma's knights or
something after Eiko decides to give him some, there's no need for so
many of them running around.
It gives us setup for a resolution for the fianc�e mess, and Ranma's
parents. I've got a pet theory, which I'm not sharing...
... and the truth is even stranger. :)
[snip]
Um. You didn't get the point. They could have been in school. They
could have been outside. They could have been on the moon eating
green eggs and ham. There's no way for the reader to know where they
are, what they're doing, or who all is there. It's the fictional
equivalent of putting the reader in a dark room and then having
speakers' faces light up as they announce their presence by talking.
It's very bad writing.
Considering how much you were harping about unnecessary filler - do we
really need to know anything else than that Ami got questioned on her
findings, and didn't have any (or whatever)?
Now, this complaint is just silly.
1) It's Friday (remember the timestamps?).
2) It's a school day (both by the calendar and by the numerous mentions of
"Finals").
3) Usagi, Ami, and Makoto are eating lunch (they all go to the same school).
4) Rei and Minako aren't present (they go to different schools, remember?).
5) The scene is labelled with a "Juuban" location tag.
Just how difficult IS it to figure out that the three girls in that scene
are at school during lunch break?
[snip]
They're ninja girls, not martial arts girls. They should go bug
Konatsu for lessons, wherever he is. Anyway, the problem isn't so
much that as that it adds nothing to the story to have Ranma teaching
them. It's just an extremly overused, and in this case quite
gratiutous bit of nonsense.
The problem here is the definition of ninja - I've yet to read a story in
which ninja are portrayed historically. Ninja weren't combat masters - they
were a combination of actor, parlor magician, and chemist. If the enemy is
blinded by smoke or a flash of light, they won't be able to defend against
even a novice with an appropriate weapon. Ukyo and Konatsu are close to
being ninja, but not quite there.
It should be obvious from the story by now that the Yamada Ninjutsu Ryuu is
primarily ninjutsu but with a definite amount of traditional martial arts
training included. Midori would be classified as a martial artist first
(primarily kenjutsu) and a kuniochi in the traditional manner second. Given
that, having the other three girls gang up on Midori in the dojo scene's
free-for-all makes perfect sense ... as do the results. Notice how
Harukichi acts when the field was reduced to her and Midori.
[snip]
I never knew it was her fault! Let's all blame Pluto!
That notion is indeed non-canon. OTOH, so is pretty much all
fanfiction. It's
cliche but so are a lot of otherwise very good fics.
It's easy to see where the whole thing comes from, though. Pluto can see
timelines through the gates. Pluto can change timelines based on
foreknowledge. Pluto is charged by Serenity to find a way to bring either
the Senshi or the Moon Kingdom back, OR Pluto, in despair after the Moon
Kingdom falls, looks for a replacement. She finds the "Crystal Tokyo"
timeline, and decides to work towards it. Then Chii-Usa comes along, and it
becomes a matter of priority to prevent a paradox - since there have been
travellers from a certain future, that future needs to happen, or else.
That is really really close to what I'm using, Sebastian. The senshi's
backstory is being driven by events Queen Serenity put into motion well
before the fall of the Moon Kingdom's Silver Millennium.
Oh, I have no problem with cliches. I don't really consider something
cliche unless it's tossed into a fic without any attempt to back it
up. He doesn't even try to characterize Pluto or make her drive to
create CT real. All the fic has is tons of Pluto bashing because
she's so obviously wrong obsessed and evil etc. It's just a ripoff of
every other fic out there that uses the idea. Hell, the whole fight
scene (Key's effects included) feels ripped straight out of Destiny's
Child.
I really need to reread that one...
The effects of the Key are the only thing taken from Destiny's Child, and
anyone who reads Science Fiction will recognize Fire's treatment of the Key
as being derived from ideas that date back to E.E. Doc Smith's Lensmen and
Skylark series.
The rest isn't even close. For one, Pluto's opening is cribbed directly
from the Sailor Moon R episode where the senshi travel to the future for
the first time. That one should be *easy* to spot.
[snip]
I think Nodoka's being insulting here (very insulting IIRC) rather
than
actualy saying something about the Tendo's actual family status.
Yeah. Somebody else told me that's how they read it, too. It could
be either one--I don't have any trouble believing that he decided to
make them burakumin just for the hell of it.
My take is that she calls them Eta for their treatment of Ranma, as relayed
by the anonymous video cassette. Remember, she's acting not on the whole
truth.
Nodoka came up with the worst insult she could think of at the time. It has
nothing to do with the Tendos' actual status or background.
[snip]
Hah! So Eiko was not only being a bitch about Pluto trying to regain
control, she was being a bitch AND locking Pluto out beyond time for
millinea, and complaining that Pluto wanted out?
Millennia? Where'd you get that? What's happened is this: You need a key,
and the user privileges to get to or from the time gates - either the minor
or major key. Pluto and Chibi-moon's user privileges have been revoked,
pending a replacement for Pluto. Thus, Pluto is stuck until Ranma can get
the minor and major key. I saw nothing regardin how long Pluto had been
stuck, or perceived she was - only that she'd tried everything she could
think of.
Pluto ends up back at the Gates after she dies because she goofed. Eiko
stated to Ranma that Pluto had taken measures to insure her own survival.
Evidently those measures didn't take everything into account.
[snip]
Good point, which does need to be addressed. Again, plenty of
ways to deal
with it but having Pluto trapped at the Gate doesn't make sense
in the context
of her losing her powers. And I agree that her assumption that only
a member
of Serenity's court could be the guardian doesn't make a great deal
of sense.
This was probably Serenity's idea - "Gee, here we have a bunch of seriously
powerful artifacts, all in need of guardians. If I choose the guardian's
>from among my court, I'll have more or less personal control of the
artifacts. Heck, I'll take the most powerful one for myself."
Pin pon! You're doing great, Sebastian!
[snip]
============================================================
Mark Shurtleff
email: gaijin@sfcmd.com
irc alias: Gaijin -or- togashi_gaijin
fanfiction homepage: http://www.sfcmd.com/fanfic
============================================================
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