C&C, as is ever the case, more than welcome. Be advised that I
I didn't actually read the first version of this story, so I can't
comment on what changes you made. But maybe a fresh
perspective will help some...
loud it made his head hurt. His abdomen felt all puffy and he had that
greasy feeling that he got a couple of times back when Ko Lon had given
him the Full-Body Cat's Tongue.
A couple of times? I didn't think he stayed trapped in female form for
THAT long, but I suppose that's open to interpretation.
Ranma woke with a jerk.
AKANE: "He's in bed with himself, so he ALWAYS wakes up with a
jerk."
Thanks Akane. That's a big help.
I'm in Tofu's clinic, he thought to himself. Why am I here? What
happened? Why was I dreaming about marrying...Oh, shit! The wedding! Why
won't the stupid bastards give us a rest! Akane's gonna be furious.
Okay, this is just a formatting question. Here you have him thinking to
himself without quotation marks, but later he has a conversation with
himself and everything is in quotes. I didn't think he was answering
his own questions aloud, so this seems a little strange. Maybe you
could offset thoughts - and the voice of his "smarter half" in the interior
monologue below - with brackets or something.
Gritting his teeth, made the pain in his head nearly unbearable. He went
through the flashing lights and blurred vision thing again.
Maybe "routine" or "ordeal" as opposed to "thing"...
"Glowed, hell! She shined like the morning sun on a clear day in
winter."
"shone"
Though you could argue that Ranma is simply using bad grammar
to himself.
"I ain't worthy of her yet," he whispered aloud to himself, "What
the hell do I have to give her besides me? Ain't I some kinda sweet
deal! What good am I to her? I'm a girl half of the time! How am I gonna
take care of her? Sure, I'm a world class martial artist. So what? That
don't put no rice in her bowl by itself. Besides, all I've ever done is
make life hard for her. Akane's lucky to have lived through all the crap
that followed me here."
If you wanted to take this scene at a different angle, you might have
Ranma's "wiser" voice take on the aspect of his girl-side. A clear
metaphor that he is the way he is for good.
"Yeah, I suppose."
"It's the money, ain't it?"
"Yeah."
While it is very believable that Ranma would be deeply worried about money,
since he and his father lived penniless for so long, though you might want
to include some explanation as to why he's never expressed this worry before.
"Easier said than done!"
"Not so hard you can't do it though. All you really need to do
is end the chaos."
"Things are never goin' to be neat, peaceful and orderly around
me. No one has that much control. Whadda ya think I am? Lord High Daimyo
of the Universe or somethin'?"
"No, but you can put a stop to much of it, and you should."
This is where I lose you a little, though not entirely. It's very hard for
me to accept that Ranma doesn't LIKE his life the way it is, with all
the "chaos" that entails. It runs against the way I see him from the
source material, and I can't just take it as a given that Ranma really
desires peace in his life without more explanation.
You do have him thinking that he'll have to settle his life down to
marry Akane, which is a believable approach to me. However, I
would like to see an acceptance on Ranma's part that he nourishes
the chaotic nature of his life by his own actions and desires. To have
him just blame everybody else makes him seem too shallow.
"Pop comes first."
"Why your dad first?"
"Because he's the one that set up the wedding, then went and
messed it up by trying to steal our most important wedding present."
Ranma has forgiven his father for much in the past, and I don't
know that this would be SO different. Perhaps it's reasonable for
Ranma to become disillusioned with his father's self-centered
nature... I don't know. It seems like a lot, on top of everything
else. The Ranma of the original series does not hold deep
grudges, and we see him now compiling a long list of them.
It makes me wary of the direction the story is taking.
"What about Happosai?"
"We'll hold off on the old lecher."
"Good idea, Saotome. I don't think we want any more blood on our
hands, now do we?"
"Whadda ya mean, more blood?"
"You killed Saffron, remember?"
This is fine, though. It plays into your overall "battle fatigue" theme,
and Ranma doesn't have much reason to care about Happi's welfare
(though he has shown sympathy for the old goat in the past).
"Do it this way. Wait and cool off a little so you know you can
stay in control, then you can make him miserable for a couple of
months."
"I really like that idea."
I actually like this because it reveals Ranma's overconfident nature.
Whether or not he's a better martial artist than Happosai by the
end of the series is up for debate, but he's miles and miles behind
the old lecher when it comes to making someone's life miserable.
better, no more pictures until things are settle between us and Akane.
This is for damned sure going to be on top of whatever it is Akane is
already doing to her. Akane is a little too quick to forgive and
forget."
A curious thing for him to say about Akane, who is not too quick to
forgive and forget Ranma's offenses. I know that you have Ranma
and Akane falling in love in this story, but that doesn't necessarily
mean they haven't got some things to work out still.
What are we going to do to Kuno?"
"I will think up something massive for Kuno. He drew steel at
Akane's wedding. Worse, he thinks he can lord it over her and tell her
and her family what they can or can't do. That shit is going to stop as
soon as I can get out of this bed. I am going to hurt him so bad that
the very mention of Akane's name will make him break out in hives."
Much more believable to me that, in this new dangerous state,
Ranma would focus his aggressions towards Kunou rather than
his father, at least at first.
Another thing you might consider with this "voice in the head"
tactic - maybe the voice is not really as reasonable as it sounds.
Ranma is edging into battle fatigue, and is therefore beginning
to consider levels of violence that he previously would have
eschewed. Maybe the "voice" should provide the suggestions
and encouragement - "You've got to hurt Kunou. You can't just
beat him up - that's never worked before. This time, you have
to make sure it lasts."
Ranma must learn to cope with this suggestive voice if he is
to cope with his condition. Something to think about.
"What about Ukyo?"
"Jeez! I can't really blame Ukyo for being angry with me and dad,
now can I? Okay. I'll let her off with no more than a spanking."
"Yes! Then you must spank all of us!"
"A spanking! A spanking!"
Ahem. Excuse me. Castle Anthrax flashback there.
No, really, I have to warn you about this part. Ukyou and Shampoo
essentially do the same thing at the wedding, yet you have Ranma
coming to VERY different conclusions about them. This is where
the story begins to feel like Character Slam territory. Perhaps I'm
wrong, but it comes across to me like this: you, the author, like Ukyou
and don't like Shampoo, and thus Ranma feels the same way.
There's nothing wrong with having character preferences, but I find
that I am not very sympathetic towards stories where the author
transparently chooses sides and beats up on a character they don't
like. Any character in the Ranma universe can be cast as your
villain in a given story (yes, even Kasumi), and it can be believable.
But if it starts seeming like author bias rather than a legitimate role
for the character in question, it stops being a believable story, from
my experience.
So you might want to be careful here. You get deep into "Shampoo
the murderer" territory in this story whilst glibly forgiving Ukyou. If
the problem is Ranma is becoming paranoid, maybe he should be
afraid of Ukyou, too. If Shampoo is really a murderous sort and
Ranma is just figuring it out, you need to explain a little better why
Akane is still breathing. You do a good job of going over the evidence
which supports the Shampoo-is-a-murderer theory, but you also
should explain the great number of instances where Shampoo could
have killed Akane but did not - starting with the first amnesia storyline,
when Shampoo had no idea Akane meant anything to Ranma and thus
does not have that excuse to hold back from killing her, if it was in
her nature to do so.
If Ranma is right about Shampoo, you haven't yet convinced me of
Shampoo's murderous intent. If he's wrong and if he's just being
paranoid, I think that needs to be a little more clear.
ain't laid up on her ass and helpless like you are right now."
"I _will_ stay in control."
"Ah, Ranma-kun! I see you are awake at last," Tofu Ono said with
a wry smile, "How are you feeling?"
You might work on this transition. It comes rather suddenly, switching
from Ranma's internal conversation to his external one with Tofu.
Ranma felt a sudden surge of relief. Tofu was a more than
capable martial artist. One of the few that Ranma knew of who was
capable of concealing his aura to the point of masking his presence in a
room. Akane would be safe with Tofu around.
"One of the few..." is a sentence fragment.
"You'll have to watch for trouble like you were in a combat zone,
Doc."
This sounds too soldier-like to me from Ranma. He's a fighter, but
he's never been in the military.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Tofu! I didn't realize I was doing it."
Tofu smiled and said, "I know that, Ranma."
"I didn't even know I _could_ do it," Ranma said sounding
puzzled, "What the hell was I doing?"
Variation on the "Soul of Ice," sounds like. Interesting.
Akane's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as she nodded
her head in the affirmative. They walked on in silence for a few steps
"nodded her head in the affirmative" is kind of stilted. Also the
sort of phrase which attracts Megane 6.7. Be careful.
"How can you say that, Dr. Tofu? It isn't natural?"
"Oh, really? Throughout history Akane, nearly twenty-percent of
the human population has been homosexual. That percentage has gone up or
I've never heard the percentage rated as quite so high... and I even
lived in the Santa Cruz area for three years. I think Tofu could
reassure Akane without drawing upon these kinds of statistics
anyway.
to suffer the ills the majority of his patients suffered from. Either or
both could die in an accident or a fight, but heart disease or lung
disease or any of the most common killers of people were pretty much
ruled out for this pair.
Like they were for Bruce Lee? And Jim Fixx? I don't mean to be
unkind here, but Tofu would know that even incredibly fit people
are still vulnerable to defective hardware.
"I see," Tofu said speculatively, "but didn't Ukyo throw some as
well? That's what I was told."
"Yeah, but she was throwin' her stuff at me because she meant to
hit me, not Akane. Her argument is with me and she knows it. I didn't
mind that too much. I can understand her bein' mad at me."
I see the attempted explanation here, but it just doesn't work for
me. If you take as the assumption that the bombs were of the
deadly variety (rather than the conventional exploding pineapples
and Happo-firebursts we see routinely in the original series), then
Ukyou would have been trying to kill Ranma by throwing the bombs
at him rather than Akane. Seems that he's forgiving that rather
easily. Unless you're also assuming Ukyou was using some
other kind of bomb... and that starts to seem like a real stretch.
looked at Akane as she stared at Ranma and realized that Nerima might
soon be embroiled in a feud little different from that between the
Hatfields and the McCoys. Tofu broke from his reverie with a shudder,
only to find Ranma staring at him with a fevered gaze.
Suggest that you substitute a Japanese cultural reference rather
than the American west one. There are undoubtedly a number of
significant feuds in the past to use as examples.
Kasumi blinked at his calling her nurse and Tofu hated being so
impersonal with her, but now was not the time for him to loose control
"lose" control.
The interchanging of "loose" and "lose" is becoming an increasingly
common grammar failure.
solution I-I-I think, Tofu said silently to himself as he carefully
Is he mentally stuttering? I don't understand that.
"Now you should be able to hear a gnat land a hundred meters
away, Genma-kun," Tofu said in a voice so low he should not have been
heard by anyone.
Genma quickly covered his ears with both hands as his eyes grew
wide with shock.
"Don't worry," Tofu subvocalized, "It will only last a few
hours."
I still don't understand why Tofu does this. It also seems to be
professionally unethical. Having a patient to treat does not give
him license to abuse anybody else.
"Right away, Doctor," Kasumi said, working hard to keep a
straight face.
How does Kasumi know what happened?
Nodoka began setting the table which provided Genma with a number
of alarums and scarums. He reached for the aspirin bottle.
A number of whats? And I didn't know Nodoka was here up to this
point. Maybe Tofu should have said hello to her (if he isn't going to
apply some sort of devious pressure point, which is how he seems
to be introducing himself right now).
By the time the tea was served, Genma had begun to adjust to his
new condition, that is until Soun sipped his tea. Genma shivered from
head to foot and stared at his old friend as though he were a
gelatinous, movie monster.
You have "gelatinous" appearing twice in two consecutive paragraphs,
which is conspicuous for such an unusual adjective. And when did
Soun wake up?
"How so, Kasumi-chan?" Tofu silently thanked all the kami of
"Kasumi-chan" doesn't seem right, coming from Tofu. He doesn't
see her as a cute little girl.
Japan for his recent exposure to the confidence drug. Kasumi's presence
would have otherwise turned him into a gibbering idiot.
The "confidence drug" really seems like a bit of a cop-out. If you're
going to have Tofu behave himself around Kasumi, I prefer that it
simply be a force-of-will thing rather than some sort of vaguely
magical drug.
"I think Ranma is like this because he grew up without his
mother. We learn most of the things Ranma does not know from our
mothers. His life is out of balance. I have never met anyone like him.
The Tendou sisters grew up without their mother...
Genma for his part, had begun to take
on a remarkable resemblence to the gelatinous, movie monster.
Again with the "gelatinous."
eyes. Genma, now mostly a very large pair of eyes embedded in a pile of
sludgy looking humanity, was staring at Nodoka as though she might be
the gelatinous movie monster.
One more time, we have the "gelatinous movie monster."
This is severe overkill.
see that she was struggling to hold back a flood of tears. Genma, still
slip-sliding into a viscous puddle of utterly boneless humanity, fixed
his large, staring eyes upon Nodoka as though she were the one about to
change shape.
This bit with the melting Genma seems very out-of-place with
the serious scene. I'm all for injecting some humor into a
serious story to lighten it up, but there's a balance that has
to be achieved so the humor doesn't detract from the serious
themes. The melting Genma is so bizarre that it clashes with
the rest of the scene, in my opinion.
"Even if the demons are Fiends of the Happosai?"
"Especially, if they are friends of Happosai." Tofu laughed.
Is it "fiends" or "friends?"
"I can't say for sure. What's wrong with her cooking?"
Ranma looked down at Akane with a bemused look mixed with humor
and affection. He reached out and stroked her hair with his right hand.
"It's like everything else she does, Doc. She tries too damned
hard."
Ranma's explanation is very nice, concise, and seems in character.
A good sign of a maturing Ranma without seeming over the top.
Nabiki smiled at him, then stood up by the bed and bent over so
that she could whisper in his ear.
"I'm sorry, Ranma-kun."
"You don't owe me an apology, Big Sister. You should apologize
to Akane."
This conversation between Ranma and Nabiki goes too smoothly for
my tastes. Ranma seems to fall very easily into the Nabiki-style
scheming and planning, which is a trait we've never seen in him
before. He plans, but he doesn't share his schemes, and he doesn't
like to rely on anybody else to implement them. If this battle-fatigue
has increased his paranoia, would he really be MORE likely to trust
Nabiki to do things on his behalf?
On the other hand, Nabiki now knows Ranma is like a time bomb,
but she doesn't show the least bit of tension around him. Maybe
she should have to try harder to convince him that she is worthy of
his trust. Mix in just a pinch of "Ill Met By Starlight" seasoning into
this scene, and you could make it much more powerful.
"Nope. I'm gonna cover it all under one A.F.E.," Nabiki said with
one of her most predatory of smiles, "Get some sleep, Little Brother."
What's an A.F.E.?
More reading warned of the signs and portents manifest when the
Cold Dragon woke. Ko Lon shuddered. There was no longer any doubt in her
mind about what she had felt for the past two days, nor was there much
doubt in her mind as to who had received the Cold Dragon's gift. She
carefully put the tattered old scroll away, then looked at herself in
the mirror. She looked herself in the eye and considered all she had
learned, all her accomplishments, all her failures, her strengths and
her shortcomings, then she wept. She wept for Ranma Saotome. He was
beyond her help. She could not help him and she knew of no one who
could. So she prayed to the kami asked them to show the boy a little
mercy.
The Cologne segment is your best piece of writing in this story,
and the thing which I found most intriguing (and which made me
decide to offer commentary). This is not the evil Cologne I was
expecting to see - it hints to me that maybe you aren't going to
do as evil a Shampoo as we've been led to believe thus far.
Instead, she seems largely benevolent and compassionate
towards Ranma, as she was portrayed through the bulk of the
original series.
She is also spotting something new, something dangerous and
magical, this mysterious "Cold Dragon" from which the story
draws its title. This, to me, is very interesting, much more so than
just a stressed-out Ranma who is now going to try to solve all his
problems in life. She believes this Cold Dragon problem is out
of her league, which means that it's probably way out of Tofu's
league, too.
This is very good. It means this story may not follow along the
somewhat cliched lines I had been led to expect by everything
up to this point.
There are still some trends in this story I think you might want
to address. The first is the "Ranma-the-victim" portrayal. This
is a very popular fanfiction rendition, but I find my own patience
for it has diminished over time. I have a hard time swallowing
an interpretation of Ranma which sets him as a victim of
circumstance - everyone else around him is crazy, while all
he wants is a peaceful life. Ranma causes many of his own
problems, and the ones he doesn't cause he frequently
aggravates. Sometimes, he IS the victim. But not always, by
any stretch. I think Ranma can be a sympathetic protagonist
without casting him so firmly in the victim role. Your idea of
combat-fatigue is believable to me, but Ranma is as much
responsible for his own condition as anybody else.
The other cliche-danger here is the Tofu role, which I think other
folks have already commented on. It's a very popular fanfiction
theme. For whatever reason (or in some cases, for no discernable
reason at all), one character steps up and takes charge, acting
as the voice of reason to help guide the cast through solving the
problems which vex them throughout the series. Sometimes this
is Nodoka, sometimes it's Kasumi, and sometimes (shudder) it's
a self-insert character. I can sympathize with the impulse to
use a character like this - so many of the problems faced by the
Ranma crew seem like they could be solved by just a tiny
application of logic. But it doesn't always make for a good story.
I think you'll be fine if Tofu isn't successful in all his attempts.
If the good doctor shows some weaknesses, some lapses of
judgement, and has some of his plans backfire on him, then I
can see this story as being very enjoyable. Especially if this
Cold Dragon situation turns out to be much more dangerous
than he understands...
Good luck with the story.
Grayson Towler
grayson@rigroup.net
http://www.rigroup.com/~grayson/relentless