Damned outlook and its massive herader spamming...
Thermopyle wrote:

So your take is that women are weepy?

Not exactly. The idea was that Ranma has never experienced the full force of
the hormone changes before, and has trouble adjusting at the moment, which
makes his temper a mite unbalanced. So far we've only seen weepiness - I'd
be expecting to see some unreasoning anger and bright happiness too, before
things mellow out. Consider how women supposedly react to pregnancy - and
that is not even of the same magnitude as the hormonal changes Ranma has to
deal with at the moment.

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.

Heh.  Really?  Okay, I'll go with that, then.  Although I do have to
say that with Eiko on Ranma's side, it's pretty goddamn unlikely that
he couldn't be cured.  I mean, Eiko's forever old and Ranma's going to
have plenty of time to work with Eiko.  Why the hell can't he reinvent
the unlocking kettle?  It had to be invented at some point.  Ranma can
presumably look backwards in time to find out about such things,
right?  I mean, UbEr EbIl Plooto has all these time-watching related
tricks, shouldn't Ranma be able to get something out of that?

...except that Eiko blundered and destroyed the male form, and the curse
magic, while bonding itself to Ranma in chapter one, and states flat out
that due to the blunder, Ranma wouldn't be able to unlock the curse even
with the Kaisufuu. Eiko also states that there's a way to use the guardian's
powers to assume male form, once the bond is complete - that's the "cure"
that Ranma has to hope for.

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.

That really doesn't mesh with Pluto's thinking that the gates are
nonsentient at the end of this chapter.

There is a bit in the first chapter that said that Eiko tried communicating,
several times, but Pluto apparently though something was wrong and used the
key to switch operating modes. I'll have to look things up again - it might
be that Pluto thought Eiko's consciousness was an AI on the order of an
advanced "Clippy", rather than a self-aware intelligence, and did what any
power user does when faced with an annoying "helper program" - turned it
off.
 

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...

Yes, but it's overly complicated and so far there's been nothing to
justify it.  Hell, Ranma just being locked as a girl resolves the
fiancee situation, so that's automatically fixed.  For the parents...
what really needs to be fixed?  Why does the fiancee situation really
need to be fixed?  Ranma is going to be 'cured' soon enough anyway, so
there's no reason for things not to go back to normal if Ranma wishes
it.  Intervention from some third party to 'fix' things usually just
ends up with ANCs who want to solve all the problems the author sees.
In this fic, that certainly seems to be the case.  Instead of real
characters, all we get is a bunch of Ranma-supporters whose existences
seem to revolve around remaking Ranma's life in the author's image.

First off, it's too early to dismiss any form of setup for future chapters -
if there's a natural place for discussing the familial relations, this is
it. Consider Jim Bader's main fics - and the *****huge***** family tree he
put in there, connecting basically everyone in the original cast, plus the
cast of another dozen or so Anime and Manga. That was revealed in chunks
because it was natural in that story - yet some of it felt like retcon just
to get another crossover in. In this story, the relations are more or less
on the table, and nothing needs retconning in later.
 

*--- Juuban ---*

This should read as:

MEANWHILE, somewhere in JUUBAN, in an UNSPECIFIED PLACE

without

WALLS

or FLOORS or a CEILING or ANY OTHER SETTING CLUES... THINGS

ARE

HAPPENING to UNSPECIFIED PEOPLE.

Maybe which part of Juuban it is doesn't matter. It's the bit

with

Usagi, Ami

and Makoto in it.

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)?

No.  There were a number of other scenes that I didn't make that
comment for that felt unnecessary, actually.  Hell, even being told
that Ami found nothing is unimportant.  It could have been cut
completely.  As it is, there's no sense of conflict in the scene.  It
reads like "The senshi searched and searched, but found nothing."
It's actually a major problem the story has--lack of real conflict.
Sure, there's people hitting each other, but there's no central
conflict that the story revolves around.  That's probably why there's
so much filler and useless crap--lack of focus.

Considering where we are in the source material, there's a set of villains
coming up soon - either the manga or anime Super S villains, depending on
which TG swears by. (Can't remember off hand.)
 

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.

I'm not sure how this is a reply to what I or the other person said...

It was an agreement, and a comment on the situation that leads to ninja
being defined as martial artists. Actually, what little I know of the ninja
historically, says that "Anything Goes" as shown in the manga comes fairly
close to what was actually used, except with fewer weapons. Ukyo and Konatsu
come closer to the lifestyle of the ninja than Ranma, though.

Sure!  That's great!  But there's only problem--it's NOT IN THE STORY!
All we get is the standard 'Pluto's fucking with the timelines, she's
an evil bitch!' explanation.  There's no attempt to characterize Pluto
at all.  Pluto's conflict--the desire to fix the world population
level, apparently--is never addressed.  She's not real in the story at
all, except maybe at the end of the chapter and even then not much
effort is put into giving her a personality.

Check the previous chapters - there's a bit more on Pluto in there.
 

I really need to reread that one...

Well, after reading this, I'm not sure you need to... ^_^;

Of course I do. I *always* need to reread "Destiny's Child".

 

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.

Right.

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.

Um, it says straight out that she can't leave, since her access to the
Key is disabled.  By millennea I meant 'forever', sorry if that wasn't
clear.  From Pluto's perception, she has no way to escape.  It's not
like she knows Ranma is coming to beat the crap out of her.

It's a self-inflicted situation, in my mind - and it does look worse than it
is...
 

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
artefacts. Heck, I'll take the most powerful one for myself."

Besides, who

says it wasn't Serenity, or one of her ancestors, who created the

gates and

decided the rules? What if Ranma is the only viable candidate

because he's

the only currently female member of Genma's line - which turns out

to have

been major nobility in the Silver Millennium?

Um, Eiko said she'd have looked on another planet if she hadn't found
Ranma.  I don't think any of the other planets would have any SM
nobles.  I mean, you can argue that, but....

Either that, or the original creators - if it wasn't Serenity that made them
in the first place.

As for Pluto's assumption, yes, she would WANT anybody with control
over the artifacts to be from the SM, but that doesn't mean she'd
think nobody else had the capability of using them.

Depends on what kind of info she's gotten on them. If she was flat out told
that only she and her chosen successor could use the gates - and she never
did choose a successor - she'd be surprised. Even better would be if the
wording was "*a* chosen successor" - she might have assumed it was her job
to find the successor, and not the gate's...


SP



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