Thanks for the c&c. To keep things short I will only reply to the
corrections, suggestions and comments I did not use. Spamming the list
with a checklist
of errors followed by "Right!" or "I used that correction" probably is not very
helpful to anyone. If I did not reply to one of your comments than it means
that I used them exactly as they were.


On 6/11/05, rgorman@telusplanet.net <rgorman@telusplanet.net> wrote:

Quoting Loki-L <loki.laufeyjarson.ffml@gmail.com>:

what this
person wanted and give me the address?"

"Idiot," she rebuffed his well-meant filial assistance, "it was

Hm.

"Idiot," she scolded, "it was your friend from that fairytale castle."

This was sort of supposed to be show that the scenes is from Ichiro's pov
and that he is putting his own spin on things. I guess it did not work very
well.

She was obviously trying to steal his thunder and be send to the
castle in
his place even if she did not actually believe in its existence
herself.

delete "herself"

I thought that I could use 'herself'  for emphasis here.

Meanwhile at Kunou Manor the young scion of the house Kunou was
making a
shocking discovery.

Well not so much shocking as irritating.

Surely, he can't be that irritating.
 

"What manner of recreancy is this, Sasuke?" Tatewaki Kunou demanded

Ooh.  Nice word that.  Goes well with "knave".

It is not quite that archaic and it describes the percieved situation
rather well.

of his
manservant, "I send you out to find information about the
whereabouts of
the beauteous Akane Tendou and you are lying here in the garden
sunning
yourself. What sort of man are you that you can pursue your leisure
when
you have been given a mission from your master?"

The ninja lying motionless in the garden tried to explain himself.
"I am
full of remorse for my deplorable behavior, young master, but might
I
bring up in my defense that I am not lying here out of my own
volition.
Miss Kodachi has seen it fit to test one of her newest paralyzing
powders
on me when I came to report to you the day before yesterday and I
have
been lying here every since.

If it lasts that long Kodachi overdid it a trifle.  Usually on Ranma,
that kind of powder only lasts a few hours.

As Sasuke said, it was a new blend and she might have bee a bit liberal
with the doseage to get more of a headstart.

have done
with the information. She could have warned Akane's abductor of my
coming.
We have to reach him before he flees from my wrath."

Well I can't tell where this is going.  I suppose Kuno could decide
Ashes to his list of crushes if he recognises her fairy-tale stereotype
means she must actually be of upper-class birth.  I kind of doubt you
are going to spend time on tieing up Kuno, fun though Kuno versus
Severa might be.

I had not really planned to involve Tatewaki as an active participant in
Ranma's fun and games.
 

                             * **  ***  ** *

                   Part 22: Kodachi vs. the Penguin

Akane felt really glad that Kodachi had decided to join her in
Sister
Holle's lesson. She really had not been looking forward to
suffering
through another abusive lecture from the evil nun all by herself.

Hm. Given that Kodachi will surely incur the nun's wrath that's a
trifle ignoble of Akane to want Kodachi there to draw Holle's fire.

That is a valid point.

As she knelt on the cushion waiting for Sister Holle to arrive she
just
hoped that she had managed to impress on Kodachi just what sort of
person
was.

The Kunou girl could be a bit strange at times and Sister Holle was
bound
to misinterpret any sort of abnormal behavior as signs of sinful
pervertedness.

Kodachi had only boasted that she 'knew that type' looking very
confident
and happy in her new dress.

Well Kodachi does go to a parody of a Catholic girl's school so I
suppose it might have flagellating nuns.

That was what I had thought.

He normally would not have remembered any of the stuff he had
read.
Ranma's memory worked very erraticly enabling him to have near
photographic recall of any fighting technique he had every

Ranma's memory was erratic at best when it came to anything except
fighting techniques, allowing him to forget his closest friends or
even that he had a mother.  However, Ranma's subconscious had
recognised a challenge and decided his best weapons were obscure bits
of half-remembered information.

I meant that Ranma's unusually good memory for martial-arts were part of
the erratic nature of his memory. sometimes it works very well and in other
situations it works very badly. But it does sound better the way you wrote it
so i will probably use it.
 

Another aspect of Ranma's fighting skill came into play at this
point, his
creativity and ability to improvise.

Suggest deleting that sentence.

It is a bit superflous but I think that I will keep it.

"Oh, every man can have has many women as he can afford." Ranma
decided
it only seemed fair that way.

can marry as many women as he can afford."

I changed it to "have as many wives" it also solves the problem and
makes Ranma sound more like the women are considered as some
sort of possesion.

an
arrangement in a vicious attack on Ranma's carefully constructed
social
system.

"It's traditional," he retaliate.

retaliated.

And that's not much of a retaliation. More like stalling for time
while he thinks of a real answer.

You would be surprised how many people consider "it's traditional" an
ultimate argument that trumps all reason and common sense.

traditionally
being mercenaries. In any big war that had been fought anywhere in
the
world in the last dozen centuries there had been hired
Lichtenburger
warriors; quite often on both sides. Ranma could respect and
remember such
facts much better than numbers about tourism and cheese export.

My eyes are glazing over much like Ranma's when he was reading
the encyclopedia.  I'd prefer to see this slimmed down into something
like:

Out of the boring trivia about Lichtenburg in the Tendo family
encyclopedia entry, only one thing had caught Ranma's attention.
"Lichtenberg is a nation of mercenaries," he said, only slightly
exaggerating.  "The brave young men of our country have fought in
every major war for centuries, and many minor ones.  Many men fall
in battle, retire in the nation they fought for, or return already
possessing foreign brides."

I will try to shorten it a bit to make it easier to read, but I don't want to
make it too short.

"Lichtenburg is a nation of mercenaries", he only slightly
exaggerated in
making up an explanation that sounded believable to him, "The brave
young
men of our country have gone out to fight in other people's wars
since
ancient times. By the time the wars were over many had fallen,
some
decided to stay with whomever they had fought and some of those
who
actually returned brought home women with them from the exotic
locations
they had been."

"I see a one-to-one ratio would be difficult to maintain under
these
circumstances. And I guess it would explain a certain multi-ethnic
makeup
and multi-culturalism among the population with such a large influx
of
foreign people and foreign ideas." Kodachi mused more to herself
then to
the room at large.

But Kodachi hasn't seen the multi-ethnic makeup of Lichtenburgers,
so why would she need to explain it to herself?

This was supposed to be the beginning of an explantion of why the
family that own the light-castle restaurant and others look Japanese.
When I came up with it for the addventure I could not change past
episodes and simply put it into this one.

I will have to change this. Either by deleting this explanation and putting
it into an earlier secenes and different context or by having Kodachi
become aware and wonder about the fact that Lichtenburger can look
like normal Japanese. 

Having pictures of prominent Lichteburgers as decor for the castle might
be an easy way to do that.

"does
that not sit in opposition to your prince's habit of having his
servants
and prisoners dress in a certain ways that might by some outsider
be
considered as indecent?"

Ranma thought about that for a moment. As a loyal subject of the
prince
she could not very well accuse him of being a pervert.

Not directly.  She could, of course, take a tack something like:

"At times, men may make demands upon their wives and servants that
are...difficult for virtuous women to bear but to deny one's rightful
lord would be as wicked as to take sinful pleasure in carnality."

Then again there's another approach.  Ranma could just decide that
Wildpferd's "Sister Holle" is actually his sister, Holle.  That way
she wouldn't be restricted by being his subject nearly as much.

We don't want to send to many mixed signals to Akane. 

Ranma want's Akane to stop calling him a pervert and uses the
various charcters to try to make this point. Right now half of the
things Ranma tries to teach Akane are probaly backfiering
or having unintended sideeffects in some ways.

If Akane buys into Sister Holle's philosphy she might end up coming
to the conclusion that it is okay for her to be peverted with Ranma
since they are engaged.

Ranma watched helplessly as Kodachi word by word destroyed all the
progress she had already made with Akane. Kodachi was destroying
Sister
Holle's authority and deconstructing the value system she needed to
teach
Akane about the dangers of calling someone a pervert.

Hmphf.  Not really a "danger" as such.  More like trying to "teach" her
the unfairness of interpreting everything as perversion.  Or more
accurately, just get revenge on her for calling him a pervert and then
willingly subjecting herself to Wildpferd and Severas little quirks.

I admit that danger is a bit of an odd word choice here. The danger
might be that you end up looking as stupid as Holle, that you might
falsely accuse and hurt an innocent person or that you later get
punished by your disguised fiance in revenge.

Ranma's motivations are likely not nearly as noble as he likes to
pretend, but he won't admit that to himself.

As Kodachi stopped to catch her breath Ranma frantically considered
how to
react to Kodachi's allegation.

I vote for turning to Akane and saying "What do you think, Akane?
When I call someone a pervert, do I really mean myself?"  I mean, if
he's actually going for getting Akane to stop calling him a pervert.

Good idea. I might add something like that.

This only had the effect of throwing gasoline into the fires of
Sister
Holle's rage. She went into a mostly incoherent rant about being a
bride
of the Lord and above such sinful desires.

OK, so once again I have to ask what Ranma is trying to accomplish
here.  This Ranma believes that losing your temper and freaking the
way Akane keeps doing is a vulnerability.  So pretending to freak the
way he's doing here (because let's face it, he's far less Holle than he
is Severa or Iron Mask so he can't really have lost it) is just dumb,
assuming that he wants Holle to keep from discrediting herself.  The
initial outburst might be worth trying in case Kodachi could be
intimidated, but after it is clear that she can't be, doubtless
through long nun-taunting experience, Ranma should calm down to a
pretense of icy cold anger and switch tactics either directly to
infliction of corporal punishment or looking for some verbal jab that
could provoke Kodachi to lose control.  Were I "Sister Holle" and
looking to shake Kodachi's calm, I think I'd ask about her
relationship to her father.  There's gotta be something there.

You are right the freaking out part really does not work and an icy-calm
and methodical punishment of Kodachi would work better.

Ranma's
lead without feeling at least slightly guilty was her
upperclassman
Tatewaki Kunou.

Well, let's face it, Tatewaki has no legitimate authority over her.
He's just in the next grade and all that entitles him to is the title
"sempai".  All the other idiots she shows respect for are actually
educators of one type or another...as is Severa.

Yes, but Akane still calls him sempai and treats him moderately
respectfully even after he set up the hentai horde to attack her in
the mornings. 

"Prepare yourself Kodachi and don't be afraid to cry out if you
have to
for I will not let thy soul spare for your crying." Sister Holle

Hunh?

Proverbs 19:18

This and the other time Ranma talks somewhat odly are quotes or
paraphrased parts of the Bible.

Why would Kodachi not say something to make her stop? Why did she
allow
the nun to do this to her? Why did she not at least cry out? How
could
she suffer like this in silence?

Ah reckon she's had practise.

Possibly. She most likely simply does not want to give Holle the satisfaction.

She suddenly noticed that the constant sound of meaty cracks had
ceased
and that Sister Holle was now looking at her.

"Akane," the nun hollered, "I don't believe you! I thought you

Not really a word, that.

The  American Heritage Dictionary says to holler is a word.
It also makes for an inadvertant pun with the nun's name.

Akane tried to deny, to explain that it was anger and not being
turned on
that had caused her to be bound, but her veil had already turned
into a
gag again. It had been so natural to assume her kneeling position
once she
had felt herself heat up

Well, she was already kneeling.

Still she probaly would have noticed her arms getting bound on her
back if her attention had not been elsewhere.

Ranma would spank Akane's butt with a wooden ruler.

Uh-hunh.  That's intuition is it?  Well, this scene is a trifle on the
problematic, I'd say, if taken as more as kink for kink's sake.  Since
in Ranma 1/2 virtually any degree of nonsense can be excused if it is
effective martial arts training, "Mistress Severa" isn't that far out
of line.  But this exercise in thrashing Kodachi and Akane's butts has
no such excuse.  Dangerous ground, particularly when deciding how to
finally resolve the storyline.  Akane has real reason to be angry at
Ranma, now.  He's stepped over a line.

I did not put that much sort into the story when I orginally wrote these
episodes for the addventure, but you are probably right that I can't get
away with the simple lemon/lime without reason or plot in a normal story.

Things might get even worse in the last few episodes that I have already
written. I will still fisrt post them as they are now, but I might have to do
some rwriting ther.

I am tempted to mostly let Ranma's actions in this part stand as they are
and have him reflect on the inconstencies of his plan later rather than
rewrting the actions in this chapter to try to get it to make sense.

On the other hand, I found myself oddly touched by the development of
Akane and Kodachi's friendship and Kodachi cracking out of guilt over
Akane getting drawn into her thing with Holle.

That was not exactly what was supposed to have happened. It was merly
Ranma's impression of what was going on, but I admit that it does not
really make all that much sense and that I might have to revise the ending
either to make it clearer what is supposed to have happened or to change
it to something more plausible...

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