Sebastian Weinberg wrote:
Jeezus, Richard. You really gotta cut down these long-winded,
apologetic intros. Authors notes belong at the *end*, so as not
to influence the readers opinion unduly.
I was trying very hard *not* to be apologetic. Just wanted to set
everything up. Maybe it was a bit much. :)
You could get the impression that the intro is longer than the
fic. If you go on like this, you should rename the fic _Magic,
the Dithering_.
:D :D
Seriously, Richard, this was terrifying, which is apparently what
you intended. Do Nate's last thoughts mean what I think they
mean, i.e. that he is losing all of his, um, self-esteem, for want
of a better word (limited vocabulary, y'know?), as an effect of
being drained of some kind of spiritual energy? Probably the
stuff that the Mouko Takabisha is made of.
You'll see.
: relevant to their respective requests. If it worked, Nouma could
: cut the CPU requests by 25%, maybe even 40%. An algorithm sprung
: to mind; if he could take the derivative....
I *like* this. This is what I wanna do when I grow up - if that
ever happens, of course.
Ditto. :)
: Nouma's eyebrows rose. What did the CEO want with him? Nouma
: grimaced; he could guess.
Again with the "nameless" CEO? :)
Whaddya mean, 'again'? I wrote this *before* I wrote "Life Fish to a
Cat". You'll probably see other stuff like this; ideas that I lifted
from this story to use in other stories.
: They entered the restaurant. Ranko was already seated at a booth,
: and she waved enthusiastically at them. Nouma always had the same
: reaction to Ranko. She reminded him so much of his father's female
: half, except Ranko had black hair.
Which means, of course, that she looks *exactly* like him, since
Ranma's female form *has black hair*! :PPPPPPPPP
:) When I first started writing Ranma fanfics, I was going to insist
that Ranma's female form had black hair (and I was not going to call her
"Ranma-chan"). I kinda caved in to popular perception here. Even Zen
told me that female Ranma's hair was red.
I did find the Ranma 1/2 Memorial Book interesting. There's a two page
spread of all of the characters that appeared in Ranma 1/2. The artwork
is by RT, and is in color. Ranma's female form is prominently
displayed, of course, and has red hair. However, in the background we
can see female Ranma in her various disguises - as Ryoga's fiance,
sister, and one other disguise I couldn't place. All of those
manifestations had black hair. I think it was RT's way of saying that
she intended Ranma to have black hair regardless of his gender, but she
wasn't going to fight the perception of female Ranma's hair as being
red.
: Her hair had no gray in it, but Nouma was almost certain she dyed it.
: He didn't begrudge her the vanity; she did have an image to maintain
: as the Chief Executive Officer of Tendo Investment Enterprises.
I dunno. I heard that Asians have a tendency to go gray later
than Caucasians.
I've gone back and forth on this myself. I just wanted a way to show
that Nabiki was aging. This is all just a setup to later contrast
Ranma's agelessness.
: Nabiki snorted softly. "I don't see why. Your mother always got
: along much better with Akane and Kasumi. She and I hardly ever spoke."
Probably echoes from the _Thy Outward Part_ universe. :)
:) This reminds me of one of my favorite stories from the recent Batman
: Black and White series.
: This ability to converse without words was something he could only do with
: Nabiki.
This was utterly great. I *so* love Nabiki, and this was a
marvellous scene for her and Nouma.
This is an extension of the scene between Ranma and Nabiki in
"Brother". Oh, and I *so* love Nabiki, too. :)
: She reminded Nouma of Aunt Kasumi and Grandmother in that respect,
: except that Ranko had a lot more energy and wasn't above being
: malicious in her play.
She's younger than him, isn't she? If you count _The Missing
Ingredient_, then he was born while Nodoka was still pregnant with
her. Doesn't make such a big difference, though.
In my mind she's about two months younger than Nouma. Is there a reason
you asked?
: Something shot out of it. It hit him squarely in the chest, and he
: flew backwards. He landed in the yard, with a teenage girl astride
: his chest, her hands pressing his shoulders to the ground.
:
: She smiled wickedly at him. "You've gone soft, Brother."
:) I like this. Mikanma's cool, but I dunno about her name - it
doesn't really sound like a girl's name. I'm no authority on
Japanese names, so please someone tell me if "Mikanma" is OK for a
girl.
Kun-chan has stated before that it's an awful name for a girl. Still, I
keep remembering back to all the times Ranma introduced himself when he
was a woman, and no one commented on how inapporpriate "Ranma" was for a
woman.
I'm still willing to change this, however.
: Akane smiled. "Good for her. I'm glad she keeps her eye on you as
: well as her own children."
O-*hoh*. I hope we'll get to see something of them. Soon.
Patience, Grasshopper. :)
BTW, it's good to see that Akane hasn't evolved into a kind of
_TIL_ Nodoka over time. It seemed so for a moment, when she
scolded Mikanma, but she proved otherwise, right afterwards.
I hope to show how Ranma, Akane et. al. have been matured by the passing
time, yet still retain some of the qualities they had in the manga.
: She had continued in that lecturing tone she used when leading
: Nouma in a logic exercise. "Notice that he said 'young girl'.
: Not 'girl' or simply 'woman'. He implied that there was an age
: factor. It would be logical to assume that being young is as
: important to the curse as being female."
Um, well, this is probably going to become a major point, so I am
uncomfortable about saying this, but.... the girl part exists only
in the english translation, and the adjective "young" doesn't come
into it at all. I am not 100% sure whether the "Nyan" part means
woman or girl, but judging from the kanji used for it, I would say
not. The kanji used in the Manga just means female/woman.
Anyone with more information?
Oh heck. This just blows the whole thing out of the water.
I *did* base this on the English translations, thinking they were
accurate. I really should have known better. Now I'll have to rewrite
major portions of the whole story.
Grr.
: Nouma used his legs to put a scissors hold on Ranma's stomach,
: at the same time trying to give him an uppercut to the jaw.
: Father pulled his head back, grabbed Nouma's shirt, and quickly
: rolled, slamming Ranma to the mat. The jarring blow caused Nouma
: to loosen his scissors hold ever so slightly, but enough so that
: Ranma broke free of it and sprang to his feet.
This paragraph is a little off. First of all, the "Father", which
would be Nouma's perspective, while the rest of the passage is in
omniscient third person mode. Also, he slammed "Ranma" into the
mat, i.e. himself? And the blow was jarring to Nouma? That last
one, I can understand, since Nouma has Ranma in a lock, but it's
still a little confusing, when coupled with the sentence
immediately before.
It is supposed to be Nouma who gets slammed and jarred. Will fix.
I've gone back and forth on whether to call him "Ranma" or "Father".
One of the people who commented on this scene when I accidently posted
it a few weeks ago said that he got tired of reading Father all the
time. I was also having problems later when characters would refer to
their own fathers while talking to Ranma. It just got too confusing.
So I switch back and forth between calling him "Ranma" and "Father".
It's not meant to show a switch in perspectives - it's all Nouma's
perspective still.
: "No!" Nouma was trembling in anger and shock. "What're you
: gonna do, take me to China and dump me into a pool at random?"
Oh *man*. "Follow in his footsteps", indeed. I wonder what Ranma
is thinking. How does he suppose Nouma is to "inherit" his, well,
position in the scheme of things. He says he doesn't mean to
curse him, but what else does he have in mind?
Patience, young Skywalker.
In other words: Get out the next part, Richard. Or else.
:) Now I'm going to have taskmasters after me.
: Nouma closed his eyes. He strongly suspected that whatever was
: about to happen, the quiet, peaceful, happy life he had known
: recently was going to vanish forever. He silently watched it
: begin to slip away, and mourned its passing.
An interesting dilemma. I hope it gets solved without leaving
someone standing in the rain. But then, this is a Lawson fic, and
if you can say one thing about Richards fics, it is that they all
have tidy resolutions. :) (I would have said "positive", if not
for _Appearances_)
I want to comment on this, but I don't want to give anything away about
the ending, so I won't for now. I'll come back to this later.
Sebastian
Thanks again for the excellent commentary.
-Richard
sterman@sprynet.com
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