Just have some time to toss off some quick comments....

I agree with the gist of what Bert and Doug have said on this one,
including the part about feeling distant from (this version of) Ukyo. I
think that for me, the problem was that all of the emotional narration
was just overdone. The Ukyo in this story came off as a lovesick puppy,
something like Gosunkugi ("Akane spoke to me! I'm in heaven!") but even
more so. The extremeness of this makes it hard for me to work up a lot
of sympathy for her.

Generally, showing a character's pain does not *by itself* make a
character sympathetic. Your average hypochondriac tends to get very
little sympathy. Showing a character enduring pain for some sort of
noble goal can evoke a lot of sympathy, but I'm not sure how you could
apply that to this case.

My other comment is that at the end of this, my reaction was fairly high
on the "So what?" scale. Okay, so Ukyo feels that Ranma betrayed her.
And? I think it would've helped if you'd shown some sort of consequence
of her feeling this. This wouldn't have to be external (i.e. her going
out and doing something about it). A change in mindset would work if we
had some idea of what it would mean for her future behavior. If she
thought "I'm so selfless and saintly that I'll leave Ran-chan alone with
Akane from now on, if that's what he wants" or alternatively "That
jackass is never going to get a moment's peace from now on until he
dumps Akane, I swear it!" I think I'd have had a better sense of your
story's "so what." Perhaps you can find something somewhere between
these two extremes. :)  Also, you'd have to work to reconcile whatever
you came up with with Ukyo's actual behavior in the canon wedding, but
that can be done.

ST. UKYO: I only bombed the wedding to sever any emotional connection
Ran-chan has to me. I don't want him feeling any guilt over choosing
Akane. *sniffle*

Anyhow, good luck with this and any future fics.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.akane.org/gary/comics.html

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