On 3/23/06, Aaron Nowack <anowack@tulane.edu> wrote:

And here we go again.

Standard C&C Disclaimer:  All the below is my only occasionally useful
humble opinion, my only occasionally correct grammatical and spelling
corrections, and/or my only occasionally funny humor.

Standard boilerplate with equally standard wisecrack reply.

Brian Randall wrote:

      For Keitaro, time seemed to have stopped almost entirely.  In the
pocket of the abstract world that had consumed the area around him, no
physical substance could move.  Only energy was free to shift about.

"In the pocket of the abstract world that had consumed the area around
him" just doesn't read very clearly to me.  Not sure what I would do
instead, but you might want to take a look at it.  Or it might just be a
brain fart on my part.

Mmmm.....  Well, it's superflous.  The 'pocket' is everything he can
presently percieve.  I'll just shorten it down to 'as far as he could
see'.

      In this dimension of frozen time, Ranma's aura remained flared,
flickering at a slower pace than the rabidly leaping flames.

While "remained flared" is probably correct, it scans oddly to me.
Suggest "still flared" instead.

I went with that.

Also "rabidly" should be "rapidly"?

Nope.  It's now 'hungrily rising' instead of 'rabidly leaping', though.

But most
of that aura wasn't around Ranma, it was a leaping, oddly shaped lump
of energy that was sliding across a silver, five-pointed wire
connecting him to someone hidden behind a screen of flame.

Perhaps I'm being over-sensitive to word re-use, but I'd maybe change
the "leaping" here or in the previous sentence to "jumping" or some
other synonym.

I doubt it; I hate repetition, too.  Now there's only one instance in
the entire thing.  I repeated 'energy' a lot, too....

      The flames which now consumed the entirety of the building,
collapsing into a pile of blazing timber and ash.

Probably intentional, but I think this is a sentence fragment here.

It is!  On both counts.  ;)

Yadda yadda yadda, mock the metaphor, yadda yadda.

Blah blah blah, retort semi-humorously by rote, blah blah.

      "Mmmm?" Naru noised, waking, and struggling to sit upright on her own
pallet.  "What's going on?" she asked, rubbing the sleep from her
eyes.

Either drop the comma after waking or change struggling to struggled, I
think.

Went with the former.

      "Well, I meant more in the sense of someone throwing a ball of their
own life energy at you to help you save yourself from a roaring
inferno, and accidentally bringing a few of their memories with it,
but I suppose that will do," Mutsumi said softly.

The comma after inferno is unnecessary.

Dropped.  If I don't reply to a grammar comment it's because I used it.  ;)

Earlier you established, or at least heavily implied, that Mutsumi had
woken up Naru unusually early.  Why is everyone else up?  (Or is Naru
being a late riser a part of Love Hina characterization I'm not aware of?)

Well, it's New Year's Day, for one....  And I didn't see (or at least
intend) any kind of implication beyond Mutsumi waking up first.  That
line now reads:

	"Your place burned to the ground," Naru said.  "Ugh.  I stayed up too
late last night celebrating.  As long as we're awake, let's go take a
bath."

This might or might not be grammatically correct, but it reads poorly to
me.  Suggest:

Keitaro, crouched into the water up to his neck, frowned thoughtfully
and looked at the martial artist, his eyes sleepily half-closed.

Also, I think in both cases the "his eyes" might be technically
referring to "the martial artist," but I can't come up with any good way
to fix it.

Rewrite, maybe? :p

Keitaro frowned thoughtfully and looked at Ranma.  The other man's
eyes were sleepily half-closed, and he crouched into the water up to
his neck.

The fact that she's only "reluctantly" agreeing implies to me that she's
not actually forgetting what had upset her.

Reflexive use.  Dropped offending word.

      "But that was then!" Shinobu exclaimed, putting her hands on the
table, and looking at Ranma with the sternest glare she could muster,
even if her eyes were watering.  "We thought you were ... violent ...
and a pervert ... and didn't belong ... but we were wrong!"  She
halted with a sniffle, and bowed her head to stare at her own
breakfast.

Yep, this scene was pretty inevitable.

No good?

      "And ... I think by staying here so long, I've brought trouble to
you.  If I'd been on the road, I could have done my own work.  I could
have set things to right without causing you so many problems."

Huh.  While it's a usual fanfic cliche, I actually can't think of any
trouble that Ranma's brought that would have him thinking this way.  I
guess the early fights with Motoko, but that hasn't been a problem for a
while.  Unless there's something I'm forgetting, of course.

Which is pretty much what Mitsune says, and why Haruka hits him.  No good?

Do these two really need to be separate paragraphs?  One sentence
paragraphs like that are kind of iffy, I think.

One paragraph scenes are even iffier, in my mind.  :/

      "Ronin Quartet!" they all cheered together.  "Let's go!"

I ought to be able to make a Ronin Warriors joke here, but the funny
just is not flowing tonight.  Oh well.

I'll be secretly thankful for that.  ^_^

Or not so secretly!  :p

      Smiling, he drifted off into a daydream....

Specifically, into one of your surreal fics? ;)

No, he's having a good dream.  :p

      Naru could feel tears welling up in her eyes ... she wasn't certain
how, or why, but she knew that something was wrong.

It was because of the suddenly serious, ominous narration.

Very curious ending, though.  The implication from the chapter is that
this is something from Ranma's past catching up to him, but I'm having a
hard time recalling anybody from Ranma's past that we know of that

a) knows where Ranma is

and b) would go after Keitaro to get at Ranma

Weeeeeell....  I'll admit that this is an intentional red herring on my part.

As always, good work, looking for the next chapter, etc.

Glad to hear it!  I'll post it later tonight.  :)

Thank you very much (as always) for taking the time to C&C!

           Aaron Nowack
"Never let reality get in the way of a good hypothesis."
http://www.mimiru.net/

--
Brian Randall

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