[FFML] [Ranma] Hearts and Minds, Part 10 of 10 [2/2]

[Gary Kleppe]

On 08/31/2013 01:08 PM, Michael Clark wrote:
> Comments on both parts 1 and 2 below.
>
> (Plot and Structure)
>
>> Extending her hands toward Mu Si, Biaozi focused her energy to
>> generated a certain special form of ki. "Sweltering dragon's fire!"
>> she announced. A sphere of air in front of her began to blaze with
>> power as it sailed toward Mu, briefly engulfing him before
>> dissipating.
>
> It melts and warps metal but (a) doesn't leave any of it hot and (b)
> doesn't burn Mousse?  Well, that's handy.


It's meant to simulate the effects of warping after being exposed to 
low-level heat for an extended period, only due to the power of the ki 
attack it works much more quickly. I suppose there should be more of a 
sensation on Mousse's part, and I'll think about adding something to 
this effect in a revision.


>> Biaozi tried to talk but could barely even breathe. Her chest felt as
>> though it were being squeezed by an invisible hand. *It can't end like
>> this,* she thought. *It can't--*
>
> So Biaozi keels over because Mousse conveniently has an urn of hot
> water?  Shampoo's effort to use her own spirit to stop Biaozi doesn't
> have any ultimate effect?


Gosunkugi left the urn in the previous scene, because of Lan's hint. 
Whether Shan's spirit had any effect is left to the reader to decide. 
Ranma was often something of a water magnet during the original series, 
whereby he would often get splashed with cold (or sometimes hot) water 
due to some rather unlikely coincidences. HaM explains this as being due 
to the influence of the curse spirit. So Shamps may have pulled off 
something similar here. She doesn't know whether that happened, and 
neither do we.


> The aftermath of the battle with Herb, Ryoga, Kasumi, etc. is given
> solely through the word of one of the Americans.  An interesting choice.
> It gets across the "enemy's" viewpoint on what happened to Kasumi
> clearly, but I feel like it's emotionally disconnected from the shock of
> what's happened.  There is no time for grief.  There is just regret.


My intent in writing this was to leave unsaid reactions that everybody 
expects anyway, and concentrate on ones that might not be so obvious, 
such as Ryoga's guilt over not having confessed to being P-chan. Maybe I 
went too far in this direction. I don't want to minimize the impact that 
Kasumi's loss has on our heroes.


> Kodachi holds off from attacking Ranma's children, reasoning that
> seeking vengeance isn't part of who she is and wants to be--it signifies
> weakness and a desire to avoid future conflict.  This strikes me as a
> new dimension to her character, one not present canonically.  Is there
> anything you would point to as evidence that supports this line of
> reasoning as being consistent with her character?


Kodachi would say (and I tend to agree) that it isn't weakness, but 
strength. She's ending her involvement in this conflict simply because 
at this point there's nothing left to gain from engaging in it.

As for examples from canon, at the end of her first story the Pig-Tailed 
Girl defeats her. Yet she doesn't go hunt down the PTG, nor does she 
hunt down Akane for whom the PTG was competing as a surrogate and who 
she could easily find. Basically all of Kodachi's other appearances go 
the same way. She fights when she has something to gain by beating a 
current opponent (or thinks she does, as in the first Hinako story), not 
to punish a former one.


>> "I'm okay. I wanted to go back on duty, but Elder Lan asked me to take
>> a few more days off. Let's go have a drink sometime and we can catch
>> up on everything."
>
> Is that what Amazons do when they're off duty, so to speak?  They go
> have a drink?  This seems a little culturally off to me.


Yeah, I think you're right. I was trying to do a gender reversal thing, 
which often works well for Amazons, but I don't think it did in this 
case. I'll think of something else here.


> So Ranma goes to get cursed again, in part because Ryoga convinces him
> that to forsake that advantage would be foolhardy.
>
> (Style and Command)
>
>> Days later, when Akane and the others would report back to the Amazons
>> by telephone, there would be some confusion over what occured next.
>> [...]
>
> Occurred.
>
>> "You need to exercise more." Werczynski prided himself on having the
>> body of a man twenty years younger, although his strict fitness
>> regimen hadn't stopped his hair from thinning into a horeshoe-shaped
>> ring around his head.
>
> Horseshoe.
> 	
>> "Put that in your report." Werczynski shut down his tablet. "And be
>> sure to double-check all of the file codes before you file it." ll of
>> the file codes before you file it."
>
> You duplicated a line here.


Corrections noted. I think I'd found all of these at one point but 
screwed up by editing from an earlier draft.


> Some general comments about the story as a whole:
>
> The story is structually sound.  I've commented on the short, almost
> rapidfire way you go from scene to scene.  I think overall this gives
> the story a unique ability to cover many characters continuously and
> quickly.
>
> In the final chapter we at last get an idea of what Herb is trying to do
> and how and why the Americans have aided him.  Again, I remark that the
> nature of Herb's motivations doesn't really contribute to the greater
> thematic conflict because it is unknown and thus nearly irrelevant for
> most of the story.
>
> I felt the first few chapters might've been a little slow, in that it
> took a long time for Ranma and friends to arrive at the Amazon village.
> These chapters spent a good deal of time depicting the interactions
> between those characters while the war was ongoing. Once that the group
> arrived, however, things picked up nicely.


Yeah, I don't know if that could be helped. I needed to spend some time 
showing life for the Amazons under occupation and that required slowing 
down our heroes as they came to the rescue.


> The characterization has some strong moments, but I feel that they're
> mostly confined to small realizations.  Ranma comes in, questions
> himself when Kodachi beats him, undergoes a crisis of strength when Lili
> leaves him, and then decides to take Lili back, so to speak.  This
> decision, I think, is somewhat understated.  It's done for largely
> pragmatic reasons (certainly not through any explicit reconciliation
> with Lili).


Well, explicit reconciliation would be difficult since they can't even 
talk to one another without a mediator such as Kasumi or Kaede. But for 
Ranma this is a start, not a finish. Were I to go on with this it could 
develop more but that probably won't happen since there doesn't seem to 
be much interest in this series anymore.


> I also want to highlight Kasumi and Genma's deaths, which strike me as
> merely happening without adequate foreshadowing.  I think it would've
> been very interesting for Kasumi to have known *from the start* that she
> could go and make a difference in China, but at the cost of her life.
> Instead, she only finds this out near the very end of the piece, and as
> such, the issue of her dealing with this knowledge and making a decision
> for herself takes up only a tiny bit of narrative time.


In my view, Kasumi's decision wasn't whether to go along with what 
happened -- her mother and other spirits deliberately left her with no 
choice as to that -- but in how she reacted to the inevitability. She 
could have gone out kicking and screaming, or at least complaining. 
Instead she embraced the destiny that was given to her and never looked 
back.


> What does it mean to develop a character?  Is it enough that they're
> merely different as a result of enduring the story?  No, I don't think
> so.  There must be a *choice* to do and be something different.  Kodachi
> is, perhaps, the closest to making that choice, when she realizes that
> she's not acting the way she wants herself to be.  I thought this was a
> very interesting development, but I didn't feel that it was an
> undercurrent throughout the story--that is, I felt it should've been
> more prevalent in her thinking prior to this point.


I'm not sure how that could've worked. In the beginning of the story 
she's confident in her ability to act with impunity and only Kasumi's 
noticing of her aura (or rather her pets' auras) changes that. In the 
middle of the story she's thought to be dead so obviously we don't get 
to follow her thoughts then. Ultimately she doesn't realize the mistake 
she's made (from her own point of view) until her final scene. I do see 
the issue but I'm not sure what if anything could be done about it.


> Let me say a bit more about theme, then, to conclude.  I could identify
> that each character had a well-defined character arc:  Ranma with his
> strength and with losing Lili; Ryoga and his curse; Kodachi's revenge;
> Ukyo's sham relationship; Biaozi's quest for recognition and leadership;
> and so on.  Many of the characters had personal struggles and overcame
> them (or succumbed to them) in the story.  I can tell you made it a
> point to develop a *lot* of characters here, to give them all attention
> as best you could.
>
> But I fear you may have split your attention too much, at the cost of a
> cohesive whole.  No character's struggle really reflects or informs us
> about the others'.  They don't struggle with the same sorts of things.
> I could look at Kodachi and Biaozi and Herb and say this is a story
> about the lengths people will go to to get what they want or to repay
> previous slights.  I could look at Ranma, Ryoga, and Ukyo and make an
> observation about people too prideful to admit their own weaknesses and
> failings.  I could look at Kasumi and Genma and contrast them as people
> doomed to die in this adventure.
>
> But what do I get when I look at them all together?  Not much.  All of
> it simply *is*, and I get no greater message from their struggles.


Your point is taken. No doubt I could have written a more cohesive story 
if I dropped a lot of the stuff not directly related to the main 
plotline or at least dropped things that couldn't be tied together 
thematically. The price would've been that some characters would've 
gotten the short end of the stick. Were I doing an original work this 
probably wouldn't bother me too much, but this being my major opus as a 
Ranma writer (and maybe as a writer in general -- I'm not getting any 
younger) I felt almost obligated to try to do right by all of the major 
characters as much as I could.


> I will say that you closed the story on a good note.  Ranma and Akane
> still have lives to live and adventures to go through, even if those
> adventures are not part of this story.  I thought that was a good vibe
> to end on.
>
>
> While I know I've been critical of some aspects of this story, I have
> enjoyed the privilege of commenting upon it over these past few months.


I wish more people on the list would see it that way. :)  But I greatly 
appreciate the thoughtful feedback you've provided on this series. While 
I haven't always ended up agreeing with you, your comments have never 
failed to be thought-provoking and I'm grateful to you for providing them.


> I do think that it is definitely a piece that relies heavily on the
> Preludes you've spoken of at various times, and to try to make it less
> dependent on them would likely be a mistake.  The story is what the
> story is in that regard, and I certainly would make no apologies for it.


No apologies offered, but the more backstory that's required, the fewer 
people who'll read the thing. So I figured it was in my interest to 
experiment to see whether the series could stand on its own, and it 
looks like it did, to some degree.

Thanks again!


-Gary