On 22/01/2007, at 10:39 , Brian Randall wrote:
On 1/21/07, Angus MacSpon <macspon@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
On the whole, I liked it a lot. (I am pre-disposed to like Ranma/
Ukyou match-ups, especially when they're credible ones, as opposed to
the ever-popular FanFiction.net favourite Akane-is-a-psycho-bitch-
killer storylines. And hey, I even hope to see more of "The Unbroken
Circle" someday ... though I kind of doubt that's gonna happen.
Heh. But anyway.)
Actually, that's next on the list. <_<
Egad!
I could try and justify this, but if the story can't stand on its own,
it's a failure.
Curses. Toss this one on the pile. -_-
There I think you may be overreacting. One "it had problems" review
doth not a failure make. For everything I've said, I've still
happily saved this story away in my collection, and will be equally
happy to re-read it in future.
The second point that didn't work for me was when Ranma follows Genma
"home" to find he has a second family -- or, at least, a daughter
than Ranma didn't know about. It's harder for me to analyse what it
was that I didn't like about this -- perhaps it's that I've come to
dislike the blatant Genma-bashing stories that I tend to overreact
when I see anything that even looks like that. But this story isn't
blatant Genma-bashing; it's a good deal more subtle than that
(unsurprisingly, coming from you). In the end, all I can really say
is that when I first read that scene, it left me feeling, "Where the
hell did *that* come from?" On re-reading it, it still comes across
that way. So it could be just me, rather than a story flaw. I don't
know.
Others have told me they really liked that point. I'm personally
uncertain if it works, just that I thought it was giving Genma some
nobility, all things considered.
Huh. I didn't see that at *all*. So it is just me, then.
The third point, the one that felt a little too easy, was the
revelation that Genma was eta. During the revelation scene, when
Nodoka bursts out, "You swore a contract on your life that no one
would find out!" I thought, "Oh, wow. So *Nodoka* is the burakumin!
That's different. And I can *totally* see that." Only it turned out
that she wasn't, and Genma was after all, and I felt a little
disappointed. That's all. :)
Nnng. You're not the first person to think it was going that way.
But if I _did_ go that route, and Genma abandoned Ranma for being
Nodoka's son, burakumin, then it _would_ be Genma bashing, wouldn't
it? I mean, I'm kind of stuck on choices there. My fault for
revisiting that old cliche, but I wasn't sure how else I could manage
the 'everyone's life goes downhill right at the start, but everything
works out in the end' overarching goal without bashing the Tendo
family.
Well, obviously the story would have gone in a different direction if
it had been Nodoka. :) I can't really call this a problem at all;
just that there was what I thought of as an interesting twist coming
up that ... didn't come up.
Hell, it happens *all the time* that, as I'm reading a story, I start
composing what comes next in my head, as if I'm the writer.
Inevitably, the story doesn't go that way, and ... meh. Move on. As
often as not, the real continuation of the story is better than what
I imagined anyway.
Incidentally, I note the following from Wikipedia (not necessarily
the most reliable of sources):
-- Anti-burakumin prejudice, while perhaps persisting in older
generations, is nowadays virtually a thing of the past.
-- In any case, in modern times it tended to be centred in the Kansai
region, being virtually unknown in other areas of Japan (including,
by implication, Tokyo). Ironically this suggests that Ukyou might be
more likely to be prejudiced than the Tendos.
-- The background investigation that Kasumi and Soun had done, to
check for burakumin ancestry, is explicitly illegal.
Yeah, that all came up when I was doing research. Then I had to
choose between having a story, and being factual (guess which won?).
The burakumin thing as expressed in fanfiction is almost purely fanon.
And Ranma even mentions in chapter four that he expected Ukyou to be
more uptight about it than Akane.
Pretty much what I figured, and I don't actually have a problem with
it. (I included it as much for other FFML members, should they
bother to read it, as anything. *I* didn't know a lot of the above,
until I read it this morning.) After all, this being Ranma 1/2, you
could simply say that the story's set in the 1980s and have done with
it.
Eh. Another failure. I'm running out of genres to attempt, but I
will eventually get this right.
I won't delete this one, like Order to Go, but it still didn't work.
Closer, maybe.
You've made me go back and re-read "Order to Go" (*I* haven't deleted
it). I still enjoy that one. It's not flawless -- perhaps its
biggest problem is that it simply comes off a little too easily --
but I don't think it's worth deleting, either.
Cheers,
Angus
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Angus MacSpon Email: macspon@ihug.co.nz
ICQ: 65719513 http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/
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