[FFML] [Mai Hime, Future] Road Trip Revision Effort Two

[John Biles]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:08 PM, Bert Miller <hkmiller at theeddy.com> wrote:

> Right.  Let's get started...
>
> John Biles wrote:
>
>> This is a huge revision of this and Crystal's following scene.
>>
> Yes, it certainly is.
>
>   I'm a lot
>> happier with this version as it covers some ground I'd need to cover later
>> and sets up some stuff for me for later well and avoids people finding out
>> things I don't want them to find out yet. :)
>>
>>
> I take this to mean that we're not supposed to find out 1) whether the
> next-generation Battle
> Princesses retain their powers more widely than their mothers do, and 2)
> whether this fact
> makes up part of the price Kasumi will end up paying.  I don't recall any
> scenes in the original
> "Road Trip" outside the Shun-Kagami fight which gave us a definitive answer
> to 1), so now
> we don't know; you may have changed your mind completely.


This will be addressed in the next story, Roger's Rules of Order.

However, this is in Road Trip still:

    "If I bathe with any of our elders, they may notice my... tattoo,"
Kasumi said slowly.  She ran her fingers around it slowly, studying it
nervously.

(So yes, the new generation can use their powers anywhere.  I haven't
changed that.)

However, it's actually PEOPLE IN THE STORY whose eyes I need to pull the
wool over, not my readers.



>
>     April and I had dated for several months; we'd slept together, in fact.
>>
>>
> That's pretty good going for sixteen year olds.  Although I suppose, given
> that this is 2028, we
> readers shouldn't make presuppositions about norms.


Even today, 30% of sixteen year olds have had sex.

(Mind you, in modern America, April would have been more likely to have had
sex with someone 1-3 years older than her than someone her own age.  (59% of
modern american teen women lose their virginity with an older guy, according
to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.)



>
>
>     Which it suddenly struck me was the kind of thing I could easily see
>> Kagami's parents doing if they found out about us.
>>
> More emphasis on this element in this version.  Nice ratchet up here.


Yeah, thanks.


>
>
>   I don't want to go
>> through that again; April and I broke up because we knew we'd probably
>> never
>> see each other again at least until college, but it hurt a lot.
>>
>>
> So Shun is strongly motivated to go along with secrecy w.r.t. Kagami's
> parents.
>

Yep.


>
>
>     I could tell he was trying to assess my threat level as well;
>>
> Odd reaction on the part of a sixteen year old jock to the
> androgynous-looking Shun.  I'd have
> more expected a bit of incredulity that April ever went out with Shun.  The
> various reasons why
> a girl might like Shun ("he makes me laugh", or "Duh!  He asked me out?")
> tend to escape many
> teenage boys.
>

Hmm, now I'm torn.  Part of this is supposed to be that April still
addresses Shun (and vice versa) in the same way they would have when they
were dating (ie, more informally than most kids in Japan to each other)
OTOH, you're right, a guy like him would have to be thinking 'she dated this
freak boy before me???)

I'm gonna have to run around in a circle on this some.

>
>
>     I'm kind of surprised myself. On the other hand, we've never been
>> attacked by monsters at Rosewood, so I have a feeling that's why.
>>
>>    "Our family wanted us closer to home.  We're a good ways away at
>> Rosewood, but not hours away like we'd be here," I said.
>>
>>
> BINGO!  One of the kids gets calls it correctly!
>
>     "I am going to be training Kagami to fight," Mother said.  "And working
>> on your training, too, as best I can with you being grounded to the
>> school.
>> And as best I can since I still have my own students to teach who I don't
>> want to leave high and dry.  Which means you're both going to have to work
>> with Akane most of the time."  She sounded frustrated by this.
>>
>>
> ?? Are you going to cut the Akira-and-Fumi-underground scene as well, if
> Akira is announcing this
> now, before that scene?  Originally, I thought it was that scene which
> caused Akira to decide to do
> this.
>

Urgle, yes.  I will have to revise this here, especially as I now realize
the later 'Ambush in bed' scene is still there.



>
>
>     "I'm sure she will teach us well," Kagami said very seriously.
>>
>>    Taught by Aunt Akane?  Well, she has been teaching Kasumi and Kasumi
>> totally tore the hell out of those snake monsters and...Aunt Akane has 23
>> years of experience on Kasumi.  Holy shit, she must be death on a stick...
>>
> Heh.
>
>
> No fighting at all.  I suppose, given Akira's announcement, that there is
> no particular need to
> demonstrate that Kagami really, really needs the training; she's going to
> get it whether she
> needs it or not.  And I suppose it's possible that Akira decides as she
> does solely on the basis
> of 1) knowing that Kagami is a BPNG and 2) hearing Kasumi's report on
> Kagami's performance
> in battle ("Less effective than YOU?!  She must really suck!").
>
> It still wouldn't hurt to have either Shun or Akira, during their
> respective POV scenes,
> take note of Kagami's utter lack of training, perhaps simply from the way
> she moves.


Great idea!

Anyway, will have to work on that.  But yeah, it should be obvious to Akira
just looking at her...ahaha, I have an idea.





>
>
>  Crystal's Tale:
>>
>>    "Maybe we should check on Mitsu-san and Shun," I said to the others as
>> we hung out on the porch listening to music.  "They've been gone a long
>> time."
>>
>>    "They're probably doing it like weasels," Natasha said.  "Mad weasels."
>>
>>    "You always think that," Dan said dismissively.
>>
>>    "I don't think Mitsu-san would jump right into bed with Shun," Kasumi
>> said.  "She has more sense than that."
>>
>>
> Might consider replacing Kasumi's "said" with "objected", just for variety.
>  You use "said" four
> consecutive times.


That works.



>
>
>     "I was a little more worried about black oily snakes," I confessed.
>> Those things had scared the hell out of me yesterday.
>>
>>    "Surely Aunt Fumi would not have snake monsters attacking people in her
>> gardens," Erica said.
>>
>>
> Might consider having Crystal rejoin that they're not sure they themselves
> didn't somehow release
> the snakes, and that therefore Fumi might not know if she did have some.
>  Erica, I think, is more
> certain-sounding than any of the kids ought to be, based on what they know
> (at least, based on
> what the other five know; after a few re-readings I find myself inclined to
> reserve judgement on
> how much Erica's been told by her mothers.  If nothing else, Chie and Aoi
> may have let a few
> things slip before themselves becoming privy to the secret.).


Good point too.  I add:

    "Just because Aunt Fumi doesn't want snake monsters in her gardens
doesn't mean some couldn't have snuck in," I argued.  "I doubt whoever owns
that mountainside wanted snake monsters there either."



>
>
>     I was just a touch jealous.  I don't want to kiss either of them,
>> though
>> I have kissed both boys and girls in the past.  Mostly boys, though.  I've
>> never actually dated a girl, but I have kissed at parties and kind of
>> liked
>> it.  But then, so does Mom.
>>
>>
> Right; good point.  It had struck me as perhaps comment-worthy that
> Crystal's thoughts were, up
> until this point, so uniformly hetero despite the environment of her
> upbringing.  One might think a
> sixteen year old would be wondering and perhaps uncertain, rather than
> either naively unquestioning,
> one the one hand, or at ease and certain in her own mind, on the other, or
> possibly Politically
> Correctly bi, on the third hand.


Yeah.  The answer is 'John not thinking about it enough until now'  ^^;;



>
>
>     "Kagami-san and I are dating now," I said.
>>
>>
> I see this has already been caught:  "I" should be "Shun".


YES.


>
>
>     "Hah!  That's an easy promise to keep, given none of us have ever met
>> your parents and aren't likely to any time soon," Natasha said.
>>
> Oops!  This makes it almost certain that Natasha will blab to her parents
> in the very next story!


Natasha = Natasha, so even if she DIDN'T say that, she was likely to blab :)


>
>
>     I bowed back, as did the others, then came over and took her other
>> hand.  "Welcome aboard, Kagami-san," I told her.  "And good luck to both
>> of
>> you." I squeezed her hand and released it.
>>
>>    We all then hung out and chatted about school stuff until it was time
>> to
>> go back to the shrine and sleep.
>>
>>
> This scene is a nice addition, I think, in cementing Kagami's relationship
> with the other kids.  The
> original draft was trending towards isolating Kagami as a disliked pet of
> the parents; this makes it
> more likely that she will eventually integrate well with her future
> teammates.
>
>
It struck me that I had to address all this now because the next story
focuses on Roger, Shizuru, Dorothy, and Natsuki, so unless I added
extraneous scenes or for the roughly 30000th time changed my mind (I now
have over 700 pages of possible post-Road Trip material, most of which will
NEVER BE USED because I couldn't make it work), it would be hard to write it
later, as none of my foci chars for Roger's Rules of Order have much to do
with Kagami or Shun or Shun's family internal politics.

I will have a revision of this up soon.
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