----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Haynie Jr." <kenjiko2@knology.net>
To: "ffml" <ffml@anifics.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 5:27 PM
Subject: [FFML] [draft] [Ranma/Sailor Moon] Paragon, episode 5

    Describe and define Destiny in ten words or less.

"The way things are supposed to happen."  Seven words.

    You can't.

Eh?  You lost me.  My definition works perfectly fine, in my opinion.

    You can try, but you will fail.  There are so many possible
definitions of Destiny.  NO-ONE one in the world has ever been able
to define Destiny.

Okay.  Here you're calling me wrong.  I have a definition of destiny that is
under ten words long, dammit, and you're telling me it's no good.  Why not?
What's wrong with my definition?  Who the hell are you to say I'm wrong?

Now, I'm exagerrating things slightly, but that's how the opening reads for
me.  You're picking a fight with the reader that you simply cannot win.  It
makes this first segment a very bad intro to the chapter by setting the
reader (me) directly against the narrative.  Not a good move.

By the way, 'No-ONE one' needs to be fixed.

    "Pretty much the kinda crap that happens to me.  Ain't no way to
get around it."

    He did define it... but he didn't get it under ten words.

Just for the record, I did not like this definition at all.  I like mine
better.

    "Huh?"  The Champion of Love and Justice took on a blank
expression, as she looked at the unconscious girl laid on a couch in
Mamoru's apartment.

The comma is incorrect.

    "What I have to.  She once said, 'You tell me, I'll tell you.'
Well, she didn't exactly tell me... but it's not fair to keep my
secret when I know hers.  Besides, I KNOW she's on our side-- or
we're on hers, I just KNOW it.  So if we both know each other's
secret, we can work together."

This would be moving, but it lacks any form of emotion.  You've got the
dialogue here, though it's a bit weak, but you don't have a strong enough
exposition to support it.  There's no concern for Naoko, for one thing.
There's no anxious feeling of worry that maybe Naoko IS an enemy.  There's
just meaningless words in a void of blandness.

    Mamoru stared at his princess, wondering why her face had
suddenly taken on an expression of near panic, her eyes oddly glassy
in her stare over his shoulder.  Looking back, his own countenance
became wrapped in sheer confusion, which was really to be expected.

    When a pretty redhead in a miniskirt becomes a striking young
black-haired boy in Chinese styled garments, it is confusing, after
all.

    "I think she... ah, he has a lot to tell, Usako," he said, trying
to keep his voice even and failing miserably...

Sorry.  The reader knows exactly what is going on here, and you're not
putting any real effort into making Usagi's or Mamoru's confusion seem real
and immediate.  This doesn't work.  Adding the author comments of "Well,
that's confusing," just makes things even worse.  The reader is told
something is confusing when they're obviously not going to agree, since they
know what's going on.  Telling the reader how they're supposed to respond
simply doesn't work--they should be responding because of what's in the
story, not because of obvious little author notes that tell them to.

    The boy stood in a place that was not a place.  Screwy
description, yeah, but that was the best way he could think of it.
There was nothingness, only nothingness... but there was, somehow, an
awful lot of it.

    (Okay.  The last thing I remember was standing up after
Chainmail-chan's chains were cut by Sailor Moon.  With her headband.
THAT was weird... not as weird as that giant pink heart thing, but
weird.  And then I started to feel... I'm really fuzzy about that
bit.)

    He looked around, and sighed.  (And now I'm here, wherever here
is, if here is even a here in the first place.  And I'm a guy.  I
wonder if I got killed, or something?  If this is the afterlife, it
sure don't look like anything I ever heard of.)

Two incorrect commas in the last paragraph.

Again, this is really bland writing.  It's description without a trace of
emotion.  It's impossible to become excited about this.

    "It's not the afterlife, Ranma.  It's just that right now your
mind is on an astral plane.  One that your world's mystics don't know
about."

Oh.  Well, that adds a lot of importance, I guess.  "One that your world's
mystics don't know about."  Hm.  Cut it?

    The pigtailed martial artist spun, ready for attack, only to
relax at the sight of the little kid that had started him on the
whole Paragon thing in the first place.  "Oh, you.  So, this is a,
whaddyacallit, out of body experience?"

    "More of an out of mind experience, actually."

    Ranma smirked.  "Well, ain't like a lot of people don't think I'm
not already out of my mind.  Say, you got a name?"

Really?  Who?  The joke didn't work, if it was supposed to be one.

    "A name?  Hmmm.  I suppose you can call me... Elvis."

    "You're kidding."

    "It's as good a name as any.  Personal identifiers aren't a major
issue for my kind."

    "But ELVIS?"

    "Is there some significance to that name I'm not aware of?"

    Ranma sighed.  "Never mind.  Well, Elvis, why am I here?"

This one didn't, either.  It's a bit of sillyness that adds nothing--and
anything without meaning becomes filler that kills the story flow.

    "Hmmm... how to explain this... simply put, we hadn't expected
for you to wind up in a situation that would trigger the Fusing so
soon.  We'd expected the enemy, the Dark, to continue with assaults
on passerby.  Instead they decided to try to kill you directly."

    "Yeah, but I think that was more my getting to Chainmail-chan
there in person and hacking her off so bad.  Damn lucky Sailor Moon
showed up when she did... I'm not sure I could have gotten out of
that on my own."

    "Quite."  The boy looked "up" and sighed.  "But the injury you
received caused you to actively fuse Magic and Chi together, which is
normally impossible.  It also allowed you to access your final
attack... rather sooner than anticipated, again."

This is interesting, but why does it matter?  His magic and chi has fused.
Adding all this "Oh, it wasn't supposed to happen yet!" makes no difference.
If Ranma were in some form of danger because of the fusion being early, that
would be fine, but he's not, and so this also becomes unnecessary filler.

    Ranma looked blank for a second, and then whispered, "The Sword
of Judgment..."

    "Yes.  Oh, you're going to awaken soon, I think.  And when you
do, I'd suggest you be ready to explain a few things."

    "Huh?  Explain what?"

    "Unless I'm mistaken, you probably detransformed in front of
Sailor Moon."

    "Oh, crap."

Why?  You haven't developed any real form of tension throughout the story
that makes Ranma's identity being revealed an emotional or physical danger.
Usagi finding out who Ranma is doesn't really matter.  Again, bland writing
that could easily be spiced up by inserting a bit of actual emotion into the
story.  Simply physical description and dialogue does not create
emotion--you have to write GOOD description and GOOD dialogue for that to
happen.  In this chapter, you have completely failed at that.

    "You pushed your energy very hard after your first powerup.
And-- oh, dear."

    "Why do I not like the way you said that?"

It should probably be "And--oh, dear."

This little bit of dialogue is completely indicative of what I was talking
about just above.  There's absolutely nothing going for what you wrote.  Not
even Goku is powerful enough to squeeze any real tension out of that
passage.

    "You used a LOT more energy than I had thought."

"than I thought."  Had is unnecessary--thought is already past tense.

    "And that means?"

    "I'm afraid you detransformed again, just now."

    "But I only got one-- Oh, CRAP!"

    "That's about the size of it," the child called Elvis said, as
the not-a-world started to fade away around Ranma Saotome.

Hm.  This scene didn't really add anything.  You already covered the
transformations with the Usagi and Mamoru scene earlier.  All the
Ranma/Elvis did was repeat that from a different perspective--one that added
nothing to the story.

    Ranma looked into the clear blue eyes of Sailor Moon, and froze
for a moment, then carefully made sure he WAS Ranma.  Which he was,
with the attendant 'he' part.

The first comma doesn't work with the way the sentence is structured.

    "I can explain this, well, I can't really EXPLAIN it, not in any
way that makes sense, but it's really very simple?"

    (Okay.  VERY smooth talking, Ranma.)

Not really.  Skipping down...

    "I make a friend-- a just plain friend-- for what may be the
first time in my entire LIFE and she's Sailor Moon.  Ain't ANYTHING
in my life EVER gonna be normal?"  Ranma was half torn between an
impulse to weep and another to explode in hysterical laughter.  Once
again, the universe had thrown him a curve ball when he'd been
expecting a hockey puck.

Your delivery here is lacking.  Again, there's a complete lack of emotional
setup to support Ranma's reaction, and so that reaction becomes dry and
uncomfortable to read.  It's the difference between your girlfriend slipping
her hand down your pants when you've been cuddling for a while and some ugly
chick coming up to you on the street and doing the same without warning.
The first is an erotic, heated moment.  The second is just upsetting.

[Explanation crap.]

We've seen this a million times.  Say no to repetition!

    Ukyo Kuonji sighed as she polished the counters in her
restaurant.  And yet again berated herself for what she could only
describe as the single stupidest thing she had EVER done in her life.

No, I'd say casting aside her gender in favor of revenge upon a childhood
crush was a lot dumber--crashing the wedding simply progressed unnaturally
from there.  But hey, she's entitled to her own opinion.

"And yet again..." doesn't work well structurally.  You should rephrase the
paragraph for smoother reading.

    And yet she'd had the stupid idea that Ranma would be grateful to
her.  Instead, Ranma wouldn't speak to her unless spoken to, and
didn't come by anymore.  He called her Ukyo, not Ucchan.  He refused
offers of lunch, even.

Commas abound in unnatural ways.

    And for all that, she was getting better treatment than Shampoo,
who was being TOTALLY ignored by Ranma.

    (He likes her.  I should have seen it coming.  They had been
getting along better and better, and he wasn't refusing the
wedding... he likes her.

Who?  Shampoo?  Being vague doesn't add anything here.  We all know your
writing well enough to know who "her" is, even if it weren't a simple matter
of elimination.

    Careful, tentative trading of information.

The complete lack of tension in delivery causes this whole passage to become
a waste of time.  Instead of characters we know saying things we already
know, I'd like to see some actual progression of story.

    Meanwhile Ranma was gazing at Mamoru, and putting two and two
together.  It was obvious that Sailor Moon had a thing for the guy in
the tux.  It was clear that Usagi and Mamoru were an item.  That
meant--

    "So, if she's Sailor Moon, then you're..."

    "Well, yes.  I am."

    "Wow.  Sailor Moon and Captain Opera."

This was somewhat amusing, but not very.  The delivery is still dry, so the
joke ens up being limp and unimpressive.

    Mamoru found the taste of carpet oddly soothing for a moment, but
then jerked himself to a sitting position.  "CAPTAIN OPERA?"

I have yet to see a fanfictional facefault that wasn't annoying.  It's
usually annoying in the source, actually.  It's the sitcom equivalent of
fake applause.  "That was a joke, everybody!  Laugh!  Laugh!"

    "That ain't it?"

    "Of COURSE not!  It's Tuxedo Kamen!"

    Ranma paused, thinking.  "Seems to me that Captain Opera sounds
better."

And here you're beating it to death while the volume meter on the applause
track maxes out.  The technicians are screaming, and the audience begins to
drop like flies as their heads burst open.  Gallagar runs around the room,
swinging his hammer like a demented comedian...

    Mamoru began to protest, when he was distracted by Usagi's
giggles.  "It's not funny, Usako."

    "Oh, I don't know, Mamo-chan.  It actually sounds pretty
dramatic."

    "I put a lot of thought into Tuxedo Kamen, you know.  It's a very
good name for someone who couldn't remember who he was at the time."

    "Couldn't remember--"

Speech tag.  I can guess, but this isn't a simple back-and-forth between two
people.

    "Glad someone thinks so," Ranma replied, feeling somewhat dizzy.
Usagi was easily the most accepting person he'd ever met, in fact
possibly the ONLY accepting person he'd ever met.  It scared him a
little.

Show, don't tell.

    Mamoru, on the other hand, was peering at "Naoko-kun" intently.
There was something about him that was on the edge of his mind.  That
pigtail, that style of dress, his physique-- Oh, this was RICH.

It's not.

    Usagi scowled at that statement.  "Well, if you want this kept
secret, I can agree.  But I think we can take care of ourselves
eeeep."

    The Eeeep was because Naoko-kun was holding out his hand, a ball
of swirling golden light collecting in his palm.  "Can any of them do
anything like this when they ain't dressed up all super-girly?"

Very dry.  This dialogue is nowhere near powerful enough to stand on its
own.  Get some good description in here!

    "no..." Usagi whispered in awe.  She couldn't tell what the
lambent sphere was, but she COULD sense it wasn't magical.

No...

    "It's chi.  Yeah, just like in the anime.  Except most people
don't think it's real.  Well it is.  And I can take your apartment
wall out with this."

What anime?

    "Darts?  Oh, the thing with the roses.  That's pretty cool, you
know."

    "They... they are?"

    Naoko-kun nodded.  "Mainly a defensive weapon, right?  And a
distraction.  I get the idea you ain't a front-line fighter, more
there to give support fire to the girls, and keep their spirits up.
Nothing wrong with that in my book, since they're the heavy
hitters... you're there to give them a clear shot."

    Mamoru stared.  "You may be the first person I have ever met who
understands that.  My powers draw from a different source than the
Sailors... but you can't imagine how many times I've been out for a
quiet beer after class with Motoki and heard someone discussing the
latest rumors about the Senshi... and me."

    He began to glower.  "The rose is wimpy.  He's just a cheerleader
for the Sailor Senshi.  Who is this weakling, anyway, lets girls
fight for him?  Damn it, I sometimes want to go over to those tables
and show them just what a rose can do--"

    "Whoa, calm DOWN, man!"

This is annoying.  Yes, there are a lot of people who trash Tuxboy.  Trying
to confront that problem in this way simply doesn't work.  If you want
Tuxboy to be cool, make him cool--don't whine about the way other authors
characterize him.  I recently reread Lines of Destiny.  Didn't get much out
of the fic, really, but damn, that was a cool Mamoru.  Yours is a whiny
bitch.

    There was a pause.  "There's one thing I gotta tell you.  Naoko
Takahashi is the girl... keep it to yourselves, but my male name is
Ranma Saotome."

Let's all bow our heads for a moment.  "The tension...it died."

[Insert long scene where the author rambles about how stupid Haruka and

Michiru are]

Why did you bother?  It didn't work.

[Insert scene where the story STILL fails to progress.]

Filler.

    From a shadow, thin strands of silver wove out, forming the
outline of a female form, then coalescing into a attractive woman in
gauzy silver robes.  She looked across the city from the window of
the clock tower that she had arrived at, and smiled.  It was a pity
about Ferriko, but it was also to be expected.  The Mistress of Iron
hadn't ever been exactly the most strategic of the Master's minions.

    Quite unlike herself.  After all, she was the Mistress of Silver,
the metal of Magic.  Really, she should have been sent in the first
place.

    Argentiko smiled.  It was not a reassuring smile...

For whom?  Is this smile not reassuring to her boss?  Does she look like a
stupid kid who's been kicked in the head by a mule, and so is her boss
thinking, "Damn.  This isn't reassuring.  She's gonna fuck it up now."  This
whole smile thing is way too vague to work.

    Naoko stared at it dully.  It was pink.  It was, in fact, about
the pinkest thing she had ever seen in her life.  It radiated pink in
the same way that a blue thing didn't.

That was somewhat amusing.  The last line, anyway.

<[More filler.]

    For some reason Naoko seemed rather... uncertain.  "I don't know.
I'll have to ask the duck."

    Which left Usagi, understandably, quite nonplussed.

    ####

    Somewhere in a Chinese restaurant, a certain Master of Hidden
Weapons sneezed.

Again, author-speak.  It's annoying.

    As he stepped into the parlor of the Tendo household, he was hit
by a bucket of icy water, and a familiar "Sweeto!" was heard,
followed by a small creature of indistinct lineage-- although it was
theorized that it was human-- snuggling into his chest.

This isn't clever description at all.

    "I see."  With that, Happosai dropped off of Ranma and quietly
went upstairs.

    (Wow.  He took that a lot better than I'd expected.)

This was standard and uninteresting.

    "To celebrate your cure, we are going on a training trip, Ranma."

I know where this is going.  It's a bit too obvious.

    "And while we're on the road, we can swing by Jyusenkyo and get
you a nice new--"

Yup.

    Paragon or not, Ranma Saotome was still fairly clueless about
women.

Author-speak.

    (The Tendo house, an hour previous)

Period?

    Akane sat in her room, solemn and quiet.  She was afraid.
[Consider this the whole scene]
    How she knew that, she couldn't say.  But she was certain that it
was the case.  And so she sat in her room, solemn and quiet... and
afraid.

This was, I have to say, the strongest part of the chapter.  It wasn't
great, but you had some emotion going on.  The Nabiki part was dumb and
didn't really do anything, but you did a fairly decent job of showing
Akane's fear of the changing situation.

    "Please!  Help me!  I'm frightened for him... I don't know why!
He's not acting like himself!  He keeps disappearing!  He won't tell
me anything-- he won't tell anyone anything!  He's... he's..."

    "Changing?"  The apparent child smiled.  "And that bothers you
most of all.  He's changing in ways you can't understand.  He's
turning into someone else, or so you think.  And you don't know how
to feel about that."

    "No.  I-I don't."

I don't really buy this Akane.  I buy the earlier scene where she was
worried, but I don't believe this whole talking about it openly with a
complete stranger when Nabiki is Uber-Biki the Master of Espionage Cliches
Who Is Always Listening In On What You Say.  Well, that and the whole denial
thing she's got going in general.  Maybe I just haven't read the first four
chapters recently enough, but I don't think you've set this up enough.
Hell, it seems more like Akane should be suspicious of this "Kami" than she
should be spilling out things she's never been able to admit to anybody
else.

    "Kid was raised to be the best fighter of his generation-- and
damn little else.  Social skills?  What are those?  As far as Genma
was concerned, if it couldn't be eaten or used as a weapon, no need
to teach it to Ranma.  It's a real miracle that he turned out as well
as he did.  Genma wasn't trying to make a Ranma, after all... he was
trying to make a Chibi-Genma."

"generation--and"

    Akane blinked.  She'd never considered his life in those terms
before.

Your readers have.  Billions upon billions of times.  Bringing it up like
this is new info just doesn't work.

    "You're afraid you'll lose him.  Because you've been every bit as
big a jerk as he'd been.  Just in different ways.  And you're
beginning to realize that."

    Tears began to well in Akane's eyes at that.

    "Because you honestly, deep down, are afraid that you're not good
enough."

    Her shoulders began to heave, with quiet sobs.  "I... I'm not, am
I?"

    "That remains to be seen.  You want to help him, right?"

    "Sure.  I can help him real good, I can.  I'll make a bento so
that Ranma can feed it to one of his enemies and poison him.  Or I
can trip and fall over his enemies.  Or, I know!  I can get KIDNAPPED
by another freak and stay out of his way!"  Her voice was now bitter
with self-doubt.  "It's not like I can FIGHT with him!  No, wait, I
can fight WITH him.  Just not ALONGSIDE him.  Yeah.  I'm the PERFECT
helper."

This part isn't bad.

    "Ah, but you CAN help him.  You've done it before, after all."

    "How?  How have I ever helped him?"

    "Hmm.  I seem to remember a certain rather dehydrated girl who
saved his life in China, for example."

Bleh.  Too obvious.  Ruined the segment for me.  She knows what she's
done--she's helped him lots of times.  This read more like you're telling
the reader, "Hey, Akane's not worthless!" rather than letting it come out
naturally in the story.

    "It's time to make a choice, Akane Tendo.  Will you let your
pride guide you... or your heart?  Will you choose to go along the
way you have always gone, or will you accept that it is not only
Ranma who must change?"

    Akane stared into the eyes of the child, and realized that those
eyes were older than anything she could imagine.  One could not lie
to oneself in the presence of this "child".  One could only see
truth.

    And for all her protests, all her fears, all her pride, she knew
that Ranma was true to her.  And she knew she loved him.  And she
knew that she would die for him.

    She could help.  All she had to do was the one thing that she
found hardest to do of all.  Trust him.

    And she made her decision.

Again, this whole Akane thing is by far the best segment of the chapter.
Part of that is because you got more emotion into the writing--you still
bombed the whole description thing, but the dialogue was a lot better.
There were bad spots, to be sure, but it was better.

The big thing is, though, that you moved the story forward here.  There was
no action, but there was a significant change in Akane's state.  This is,
sadly, the only important part of the entire chapter.  I think you should
cut out some of the author-interjection segments of the Akane scene,
concentrate on making the scene more descriptive and emotional for the
reader, and slaughter and rewrite the entire rest of the fic (because it
sucks, in general).

    Cologne stared at the world's greatest hacker and groaned.
"Well, that's just wonderful.  You know the code as well as any of
us.  There must be five."

Know where this is going right away.  Kind of annoying to have to wait for
it.

    David Wong nodded.  "But where do we find a fifth?  Where do we
find anyone to take his place?"

    "That's not really necessary."

    All heads turned to a young boy, who smiled at them.  "I'd like
you to meet someone half of you already know.  And unless I miss my
guess, our Paragon should be here in a moment."

    Akane stared at the unexpected sight of Doctor Tofu and Cologne
in, for some reason, Juuban.  For that matter, she wasn't sure why
she was here herself.  All she knew was she could somehow help Ranma.

Yup.  Bad delivery.  You do a horrible job of portraying Akane's surprise
here, by the way.

    "You-- the kid!  What are you doing here?"

    Akane turned to a stunned redhead at the door, who seemed somehow
vaguely familiar-- as if she'd met her in passing.  What did this
girl have to do with Ranma?  For a moment, jealousy began to raise
it's head, but she flattened it with the mental equivalent of a
mallet.  She would-- did-- trust Ranma.  She HAD to.

"its head"

Dude, quit with the messed-up dashes.  It's annoying!  >_<

    A panting voice at the door complained, "Blast it, Ra-
Naoko-chan, do you HAVE to run so fast?  It's not like we were late
or anything why is SHE here?"

"anythi--why is SHE here?" might work better.  Or something of the
equivalent.  As it is, it fails to express surprise properly.

    "Change, 'Naoko-chan', and explain.  I can stay no longer, lest
the Dark detect me."  And the boy was gone, as though he had never
been there.

Drop the comma at the end.

    Before the financier/archeologist could reply, Naoko began to
laugh, almost hysterically.  "Why not?  Ain't like nothin's supposed
ta make sense, anyway!"

Just like the earlier hysterical Ranma bit, this does not work.  No tension
exists--none at all--in the whole realization scene, and so Ranma's cracked
reaction is just unimpressive.

    "What are you people talking about oh my GOD," Case choked out,
as Naoko wavered, and began a definite male in loose Chinese
garments.  Akane stared, her confused fears proven, as Cologne
continued to giggle and Wong blinked, startled that his crude
deduction was correct.

Again, the whole surprise sentence doesn't work, and for the exact same
reason as above.  Use dashes or do something, but don't leave it as it is.

    "I'm Ranma Saotome, I'm a part time girl because I have to be a
magical girl sometimes to save the world."  He paused, and added,
"And I one damn bit sorry about it at all!"

"And I ain't one..."

    And Akane quietly fell to the floor, in a faint.

Comma?

Hm.  As I said, most of this chapter adds nothing to the story.  Other than
the Akane segment, it should all be trashed in favor of writing that
actually moves the plot forward.  The narrative comments were annoying
without exception.  The writing itself was a clear-cut case of the author
needing to be smacked with the "Show, don't tell," ruler.  The constant use
of ellipses and misuse of dashes was very distracting.  The dashes are
easily fixed, and the ellipses should be cut for the most part--they're
annoying in general.

For the humor... well, it's hard to say.  I didn't laugh a single time when
reading this, but I had a smile on my face for the entire reading.  I don't
know if I found it funny on some really low level or of I was just in a good
mood while going through the chapter.  I think most of it was from a
happiness to have had the chapter to read in the first place, to be honest.
A few years ago when I first read this I had much lower standards, and so I
suspect I remember this fic with more fondness than it really deserves.  I'm
not going to reread the earlier chapters to see.  It seems too risky.  ^_^;

Anyway, I'm glad to see the update.  I hope you fix the problems with this
and move on to write a better chapter six.


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