"But anyway, it had to be pretty terrible. Big sister was up all
day and all through the night, forcing herself to read every word.
When I came to check on her in the morning, I found her on the
floor, like that," she said, indicating the lawn where Natsume had
been so recently writhing. "Ever since then, she's been vulnerable
to bad poetry."
Genma coughed violently and mopped the sweat from his brow. Tendou
Soun looked rather thoughtful. "Well," he said. "Every great
martial artist has a secret weakness, I suppose."
In my experience, few if any kids the age that Nats must've been would
know good poetry from bad poetry. In fact, for most of them the worse it
is, the better they'll like it. :) Genma's reaction to this makes it
pretty obvious to me where this subplot is going, though maybe there'll
be some twist ahead.
I guess this joke fell flat for you. With humor, it's often a matter of how
far you can stretch implausability. I think I won't change this bit because
it does dovetail into something else, though. You win some, you lose
some.
The teenager showed all the expression of a stone slab. If she
hadn't been visibly breathing, Ukyou could've sworn she was no more
Suggest 'Ukyou would've sworn'
Okay.
<I don't care,> she thought. <Ban Dai Du has been nice enough, and
if she takes care of Ryouga, that's all that matters.>
Yes, and Ban Daidu is very persistent. When she starts working on
something, she really sticks to it. (You get points for using syllables
that are actually found in Mandarin, BTW.)
Many thanks, though my limited source indicates that "Ban" is a male
name. It comes out meaning something like "A Team of Sincere Black
Pigments," which is hardly the equal of a Takahashi-san pun. But it is,
at least, somewhat partially authentic.
The news was good, but the healer's voice was laced with flat
anger. Ukyou didn't understand. "I... that's great," she said.
"Then you think we can..."
"In fact," the elder woman interrupted sharply, "I've only seen a
I didn't know she was an elder until this point.
"Elder" only in the sense of "older," which means I should probably
change it to "older." Ban Daidu's character is established in an
earlier segment which will be published with the whole chapter. Mind
if I borrow some of your puns, though? If I can fit them in...
"Stupid girl," the healer hissed. "Men have their own healers in
our village. You have no idea what you've done."
Ban Daidu, of course, strictly adheres to Amazon law....
Especially in sticky situations like this.
It became clear as the day wore on that it was not going to be so
easy to get away from the Amazon village unscathed. Where she has
Where she had
Oops.
The manga versions of these characters were Pink and Link, and Ranma
purists might wonder why I didn't use them (and their biochemical
arsenal). I plead ignorance - I confess that I haven't actually
seen those issues first hand, and as nice as the translations on the
web are, I didn't feel comfortable enough with the characters to
write them. Truth be told, I had a hell of a time settling on
someone to make trouble with Ukyou in this chapter (do I use Pink
and Link, their anime counterparts, or do I make someone up with a
silly name... decisions, decisions!), which is one of the reasons
this chapter has taken a bit of time.
P&L would probably be unliklely to attack Ukyo without some more
motivation than just xenophobia/bullying the foriegners. They only
attacked Ranma because they thought he was Shampoo's husband. As it was,
this fight itself wasn't all that interesting to me, but the development
of Ukyo's character was.
Ukyou also gets off lucky - while Ling/Lung are pretty much joke characters,
I think Pink/Link have some genuinely serious skills that would have given her
a whole lot of trouble. Since Ling/Lung are not really serious characters, I felt
I had more liberty to have them behave very badly in this chapter than Pink/Link
would have. Anyway, the fight was mostly a vehicle to demonstrate
another stage of Ukyou's growth, so at least that came across.
Looking forward to the rest of the chapter. Don't lose that paper copy.
:)
Transcribing is a pain, but it's better than writer's block.
Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html
Many thanks, as always, for your comments.
Grayson Towler
http://www.rigroup.com/~grayson/relentless