"Razorclaw X" <spiceoflife@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

 I'll be brief.
 In spite of risking being branded a bigoted loser again (I'm sure 60% of 
you remember why that was so, but for those who don't I won't elaborate), 

I for one am not here to brand ya... just to respond to your comments.

I'll say that I wanted to throw this one out the window. I didn't get 
through a third of the story before miasmal boredom overcame me, and I 
started skipping sections at a time until I hit something potentially 

Sorry you felt that way.

interesting; scenes such as Kodachi's shower (zap that perverts) and Ranma 
sneaking into Kodachi's tent to get a 'good look at her chest' (snicker; I 
know that wasn't what it was, but still....) were interesting enough, but 
sometimes the text seems to drone on between such scenes. Then again, 
perhaps I'm not all-for the long-winded thoughtful paragraphs.

Perhaps not. HaM is primarily a character development fic; it's about
how the characters react to their situation, more than it is about the
situation itself. When the preludes came out, a fair number of people
were worried that HaM itself would be one big battle sequence, and I had
to assure them that that wasn't going to be the case.

Now, if you just don't like character development scenes, then this is
probably the wrong series for you to be reading, If, OTOH, there's
something that could be done to the ones in this fic to make them more
interesting, that's something I'd be interested in hearing.

 I thought the part where Ranma switched his conversation point to the game 
with the 'hundred levels' seemed silly--

What do you think should've happened at that point?

reminds me of the one fic where 
Ranma and Ryoga play Street Fighter 2, which I thought was only good for 
cheap laughs, but not much more.

Haven't read that one, so can't really comment.

 I'm not liking these bad guys, but then again, they're probably not 
supposed to be likable, either-- more and more they're sounding like a 
terrorist regime that has nothing to terrorize (okay, so they are 
terrorizing, but nothing unexpected).

Terrorist is probably the wrong word for them. They're a military
occupation force. In a sense, Ranma and company are going to be
terrorizing *them* soon. They are at the Amazons for definite reasons,
but these are (mostly) still unrevealed.

 The more I read the parts about the 'switching bodies in an instant,' the 
more I want to kill the cursed characters; sure, this'll probably have nasty 
consequences later (they always do with good writers), but it reeks of plot 
convenience at this point.

Not even sure how to understand this. You mean it isn't believable that
someone could come up with a magical technique that unlocked the curses?

 I'm wondering how long Ukyo and Sanzenin are going to play chicken with 
their lives. To me it's starting to turn into something of a weird doomsday 
bomb, something that'll probably blow or diffuse by the second-to-last story 
or so. Of course, at this point I don't see how it's going to matter much in 
the grand scheme of things, other than a fancy subplot for filler (which it 
is not; no writer in their right mind would put in 'filler' subplots like 
that unless they deliberately want red herrings in their story, and I, 
again, suspect that this is not).

Well, I don't think of it as 'filler.' I'm not under any obligation to
pad these chapters out to any certain length, and nothing in them is
there unless I feel it should be there. Will Ukyo/Mikado relate to other
things that are going on in the series? Eventually, yes. But even if
that answer were no, I don't quite see why that would make it
problematic.

 Okay, at this point, I think Kasumi is going to die. This is based on the 
power-with-price idea-- so far she's thrown some tremendous power (if 

Well, she at least would say that you're wrong about that. "The spirits
have power; I don't."

subtle) and hasn't paid up yet (I mean REALLY paid-up). Or, at the very 
least, if not death, then lose her soul to the big bad monster at the end of 
the road. Theory subject to change with each chapter release.

Interesting speculation. ^_^ Thanks for your comments!


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html