"Philip Bloom" <dracos12@hotmail.com> wrote:

 Greetings and welcome to another session of the Evil Commentary
Bureau.

Have there been previous ones? I must've missed them.

They are generally sent only to the author in question and archived on the 
site.  Only included this one to the list at large by multiple request.

 The author shall be allowed a single response sent to the email:
dracos12@hotmail.com.  We apologize for not being able to provide

The author will decide for himself (subject to the mailing list rules,
of course) what he is and isn't allowed, thank you.

ECB: A solid start, save for one thing: "Why?" ECBTenshi: Mwahahaha,
I am going to enter a small and likely poor restaurant and contemplate
ways I can sabotage it just because!  Look at me, I'm a rat!

It's called professional curiosity. As a web programmer, when I visit a
site I often take note of what sort of technology it uses, even though I
don't work for the site in question.

Ah...but you aren't a conman.  Your priorities naturally differ.  As you 
specifically note him to be coming in looking for a way to make money, 
having him not observing the place from that standpoint makes no sense.

ECB: Because people dressed in an eccentric fashion that advertises
their store are obviously just the hired help.

Ever been to a MacDonald's? Ronald doesn't own the place. Neither do the
people in the fancy uniforms. Granted this attitude is more appropriate
for American restaurants; the unintentional Americanization in this is a
problem which other people have pointed out and I intend to try to
address whenever I get around to revising this fic.

It's not even appropriate for American restaurants either.  You are looking 
at a franchise and comparing how it is run to a small two person restaurant. 
  It's not comparable by any means.  Especially as, at the least, there'd be 
several in that uniform around if it was a standard workers fare.

 You build up a small
amount of confusion here in Tenshi that doesn't add anything and just
seems silly.  Anyone so 'knowledgable' to feel confident in shutting
down a place at a glance would certainly be perceptive enough to spot
the owner acting in the classic fashion for owners of those types of
resturaunts.

For one thing, there's a difference between feeling knowledgable and
actually *being* knowledgeable. For another, the latter doesn't
guarantee that one won't make mistakes. The primary purpose of this bit
is to show that Tenshi *does* make mistakes and at least in that sense
is not the classic Annoying New Character.

It doesn't achieve that effect though.  He still comes across as a classic 
Annoying New Character.  Adding a pointless 'flaw' that doesn't hurt him any 
or come into any real effect doesn't change that.

"Gimme the deluxe," he said. "And a beer. And tell the owner that I'd
like to have a word with her." He nodded toward the woman in the
kimono, obviously the owner, who stood on the other side pouring tea
for another customer.

ECBTenshi: "Look at me.  I come into a fast-food resturaunt where the
only visible workers in the place are high schoolers and order beer."
ECB: But if it isn't served there, why would it be on the menu or
wherever he pulled 'deluxe' out of to be ordered?
ECBTenshi: "Bah, who needs such things as menus.  I'm building my
character!"

In my experience, people rarely look at drink menus unless they're
ordering a cocktail or something like that. It's not uncommon for people
to order Coke and be told that the restaurant serves Pepsi instead.

Sure, I guess you see people heading into fast food joints and asking for a 
beer all the time because without looking at the menu they naturally assume 
a fast food joint would be serving beer.

ECB: Why in the world would anyone go after a hole in the wall
fast-food joint with that type of offer?  That's almost as bad as
walking up to the guy selling food out of his cart and asking him if
he'd be willing to pay to have the nearby resturants taken out of
commission.  It's a silly offer, especially to what is clearly a
teenager.

Well, why would a traveling salesman sell magical paper dolls to
Gosunkugi, when there'd be lots of people who could and would pay more
for them. Why would Ryoga manage to find a love-fishing rod in a
department store, when all the other characters who would obviously like
to get their hands on one can't? I don't see why the premise here is any
less believable than a lot of what happens in the original series.

Nope, nope, nope.  You can't compare a one instance 'deus ex machina' item, 
naturally devoid of reason or motive, with a character, who should contain 
both.  The items lack any sentience or choice in it.  Whether they are 
picked up at random magic store X, found on the ground somewhere, or any 
other contrivance, they fall into a wholly separate category than a what a 
supposedly intelligent and thinking character would.  Tenshi is not running 
some random store and selling to whoever randomly passes by.  He's 
intentionally and directly entering a business with the belief that it can 
be a potential money maker for him.  Given this, it brings the question 
obviously to bare: "What's his motive?"  This question is inherently not 
asked of finding something on the floor that happens to be valuable.  You 
don't attribute the same rules to the lucky hundred dollar bill you found on 
the ground as you do to guy coming up to you and trying to get you to do 
something.

She flashed a patronizing smile. "I don't think I could handle that
much business, sugar."

ECB: Reasonably patronizing, though the lead up for it doesn't make
sense.  Nor does his quick entrance and immediate throwing of his pitch
without even taking time to assess the resturant beyond a brief glance.
I mean, sheesh, you paint this guy as both incompetent beyond belief
and capable of examining and analyzing targets in the restaurant
with a glance.  You just rush right in without taking any time to build
the atmosphere.

Though I think you're overstating the case and you know it, it's true
that he is both incompetent and capable. Welcome to the Ranmaverse. It's
the same place where someone can be smart enough to learn complex
martial arts moves but can't follow even the simplest of directions. Or
strong enough to survive being slammed into a rock wall but not enough
to avoid being knocked out by a falling coconut.

Totally unrelated.  I'd raise the same red flag if Ryoga suddenly was unable 
to figure out how to throw a punch.  It's neither an unrelated skill set or 
slapstick.  You've painted him as very perceptive and yet at the same time 
you paint him as not demonstrating the skills that go along with being very 
perceptive or even being a conman.

 And of course, there is no one like
Kasumi around who makes their own food.

There are, but restaurant owners generally don't consider them to be
competition. Unless they're self-insert characters, strangers don't
often decide to drop in at the Tendos' becase the prices at Ucchan's are
too high.

You missed the point.  I wasn't saying they'd all go to the Tendos'.   I was 
saying that offering to let her raise her prices as high as she wants is a 
stupid offer.  Any businessman worth his salt knows that if you charge too 
much for something, people go elsewhere.  Even if she was the only gig in 
town, people could, and would, cook at home.

 And why would a con-man set up
for a long term job with the local Yakuza after him?

One particular group of thugs, who may or may not be Yakuza (Tenshi says
they are, but he isn't exactly a reliable source) is after him. He
doesn't expect to run into them in this neighborhood.

It really doesn't matter whether they are or not.  He calls them it and so 
we have no reason to disbelieve him on that... but really, even if it wasn't 
the 'official Yakuza family', there still renders the fact that he's setting 
up for a long term job with a likely equally large amount of publicity when 
there are thugs in the same town after him to the point they are willing to 
shoot on sight in broad daylight.  Why doesn't he expect to run into them in 
this neighborhood?  He's obviously within common driving range of them.  If 
he's that afraid of them (which he shows he is), he should be way out of the 
way for them to be there.

ECBTenshi:
"It's just for the excitement!  After all, I can make more money if I
have to deal with hiding from crimelords and evading bullets when
trying to make a pitch at a fast food joint." ECBRealLife: And a part
time resturant owner wouldn't laugh at the concept of being the only
food supplier for about a half million people?

She might if that were the actual offer, yes.

BTW, in the event you do more of these commentaries, for readability's
sake you might want to consider skipping a line between each virtual
speaker's comments.

If you'd looked further, you'd notice most are.  It was a formatting goof 
from utilizing winhelper to format it to a seventy-five character width.  
Truthfully, I do have to stop using that and go code one of my own as that 
tends to be a rather annoying common problem and having one that scans for 
those to produce linebreaks would be useful.  Anyhow, thanks for the 
suggestion ^_^.

ECB: Ranma has big muscles?  Anyhow, nice analogy, though this is
probably the most observation skills you've given this putz so far.
ECBLogictrain: *Beep Beep* There's a tree in the road.
ECB: It's observant actually to the point of disbelief.  He manages to 

see

Ranma's ass when he's lumbering in and towards them?  How?  Did he have
a mirror set up behind Ranma?

Who said Ranma was making a direct bee line to Ukyo? That tends to be
hard to do in a restaurant.

Yeah, except you know how large Ukyo's restaurant is.  Heading to the 
counter in it is not an onerous task that involves slipping this way and 
that.  Looking at the manga right now, volume 9 of the scans(I'm told this 
is part 5, no 3 of the Viz releases, but I don't have those sitting next to 
me to check), it's clear there is no visible reason to have to turn between 
the door and the counter.  No tables even remotely nearby, and it's only a 
few steps.  As I believe you've informed us before in previous criticisms... 
Ukyo's restaurant is quite tiny.

Glancing back at Tenshi, the waitress flipped an okonomiyaki in his
direction. It slid across the counter, stopping precisely in front of
him. "Enjoy, sugar. Then leave. I don't think we can do business."

ECB: Who would eat an okonomiyaki that was flipped off the grill, onto
the counter, and then slid across it to stay in front of them... with
no plate?

ECBUkyo: But I serve all my okonomiyaki fresh off the counter
without plates.  The sink is just decoration.

Again, I think you're trying to apply a higher standard of realism here
than in the original series. The image of sliding an okonomiyaki across
the bar like a glass of beer in an old Western was, in my opinion,
amusing enough to include, and not any more unbelievable than much of
what goes on in the manga.

Translation: I forgot to include the dish in my description and instead of 
being a man and just owning up to it, I'm bullshitting.

Of course it was obvious you were making the parallels to an Old Western 
there.  It was quite obvious from the description style.  But just like an 
old western wouldn't forget to have the mug for the beer to be poured into, 
your description shouldn't lack a plate for the Okonomiyaki to fall onto.

"Um... yeah, Ran-chan." The giant spatula swung into action. "I'll just
box it up for you."

ECB: Ranma... needs to box his food and carry it out?  Since when?  He
eats like a speed demon on steroids.

Got a cite from the manga for this? I can't remember him speed-eating
without a specific reason for it, and I can think of plenty of scenes
that show him eating normally.

The fact that he can is enough.  There's no reason for him to be in a rush 
here and several on camera reasons for him to be in anything but a rush to 
head back to the Tendos'.

ECB: You know, there's something off about this whole scene.  It rubs
one wrong not so much from a Make Sense angle but more the: "Who is
this guy and what did he do with Ranma?"  Ranma shows countless
times in the series that he doesn't make up unless prodded to.

Who says he wasn't prodded?

Who said he didn't decide to wipe out half of Japan in annoyance between 
walking from the Tendos' and coming into to the Ucchan's?  You can't slip in 
major deviations in character attributable to off camera stuff without even 
telling us about the off camera stuff.  Without it existing anywhere in the 
prose, being hinted at, or even being a logical precursor within the line of 
events, it does not exist.

If he was prodded, then we should see him trying to make up with Akane or 
mentioning something along those lines, not just going straight off into it.

ECB: You know, I can't follow this logic leap.  It makes no sense.
She knows he's an obvious con-man, but how she gets from: "I offer to
wreck your business competition" to "Hey, I'm a master of romantic
intrigue and can get rid of your rivals" without any prodding from the
departing con-man is beyond me.  I mean sheesh, it's like assuming
because Ranma could physically protect someone, that he's the guy to
hire to do your math homework.  The leap makes no sense.

Actually, it's your analogy which makes no sense. The same basic skills,
or at least a good portion of them, apply to convincing customers to
switch restaurants as to convincing a person to switch his love
interest. There are no skills in common between hitting people and
hitting the math books.

I trust that you hire untrustworthy conmen off the street to handle your 
romantic affairs as well.  The analogy holds.  You don't hire a conman to do 
romance counciling.  Neither do you hire a marketer to do it either(Which is 
the skill set you are referring to).  It doesn't work like that.  Of course, 
feel free to find a bunch of people who think: "Hmm, I'm having trouble 
getting my boyfriend.  He looks at other girls.  I should hire a marketing 
expert out of the blue!"

As to your point, yes, I could have spent more time developing Ukyo's
reasons for putting her faith in this guy. I chose not to, because I
wanted to get on with the story and showing the *consequences* of her
decision, and because generally people didn't have a problem with it.
It's been nearly a year and a half since this fic was released, before
which it was previewed in various one-hour challenges, and nobody but
you (and/or your anonymous collaborators) have expressed a problem with
this leap. So I'm really going to have to hear some fresh opinions
before changing it.

You didn't need to.  You could've simply had him offer the proposition and 
bill himself as a guy who could do that kind of stuff.  Of course, it has 
the inherent problem of why is he switching from a visibly profitable scheme 
to one that (even if profitable) won't be in the same range for far more 
work.  Even so, removing the setup to get into the plot doesn't help a fic.  
You got complaints about this when it was first written too, so don't pull 
the 'nobody has complained'.  The archive logs speak differently.

 Even worse,
it makes him trying it again as your ending seem like you forgot he was
leery of it in the first place!

Um... come again? Even allowing for the grammatical errors, I can't tell
what you were trying to say here.

Remember, the end of your fic?  Where he goes ahead and decides: "This is a 
great way to make money!" and decides to start doing the same stunt with 
Kuno?  If he is leery of it at the beginning of the fic and then has it turn 
out an overall disaster... why is he trying it again of his own initiative?

ECB: And again we ask, why is he taking the job?  There is obviously
not money in it.  It even goes against his whole mentality above.  Why

What are you talking about? Of course there's money in it. He's a
mercenary, and as such is going to work for whoever is willing to hire
him.

No, no there isn't.  Not compared to the amounts he was looking at for the 
previous scheme.  It's the equivelent of trying to get a high paying 
position at a corporation and then putting up with selling lemonade by the 
curve.  The amount he's able to wring out of a single small business is 
peanuts compared to turning it into a large business and wringing it out for 
cash through 'gratitude' and 'blackmail'.  He doesn't even ensure a fee for 
himself, just leaving it to discuss later saying he'll want money for it.

ECB: Why is she fixated on this random con-man?  He's neither shown
any demonstrated skill at his art, any reason to latch on to him, nor
even proposed the concept in the first place.  I mean, assuming in
context of your fic she's reached the point she doesn't believe she can
win him herself (Which is one of your premises), she just out of the
blue is latching on to a random person without even trying anything
nutsy herself first?

She's tried plenty of "nutzy" on her own and it all backfired or came to
naught. At this point, she has very little to lose.

Yes, but those nutsy schemes generally had precursors.  Something that 
helped inspire the thought.  An indication that "Hey, this might work for 
this!"  You don't actually place where the whole fic is taking place but it 
doesn't really matter, accepting she is desperate and having her latch onto 
a conman who shows no interest in the matter nor any belief that he could do 
it (even going as far as to indicate that he didn't think he could do it), 
just stretches the suspension of disbelief too far.  As with MANY of your 
logic errors in the fic, it could've been fixed just by providing the 
necessary setup.  Having him not be leary of it and instead be confident 
about it.  Having him slip the idea and like any other godforsaken stupid 
idea that could be ran by her at that point, her latching right onto it in 
desperation.  Ignoring having that makes the scene just become weird.

Okay, so maybe changing the subject would be a good idea. "This Ranma
of yours... he got other women after him, or just you?"

ECB: He's already figured it out as you showed on camera before, moreso
how exactly did he understand what she was asking at all without her
explaining the situation first?  Logic-flaw.  He either knows it's a
soap opera before this point and is merely asking specific details
or he does not.  Only one works.
ECBLogictrain: *TOOT TOOT*
ECB: Oh, one more hole... she's not called him Ranma yet.  Nor has anyone
else.
And as you show right below, she seems to be referring to him as
Ran-chan in the entire discussion.  So how does he know that his name
isn't just Ran or Ran-chan?  Where does he magically gain the second
syllable?

From, one can assume, conversations that took place during the scene
break indicated by the "***".

As I said...  either one or the other works.  Either he's been getting told 
about it during the break, or he hasn't.  If he's been getting told about it 
during the break, he should already know the basics of the situation (or at 
least that there are other girls there).  If he hasn't, than his knowledge 
and analyzing what she is really asking comes from nowhere.  So, yes, one 
can assume that, and if you read, you'll notice that I 'did'.  But noted 
that such provides a logic hole.

Anyhow, nice dodge.

You know, I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. But when
you harp at length on trivial points that are easily explained away with
a little thought, and that have no real importance anyway, it makes me
feel that I'm probably wasting my time responding to you.

ECB: A weak attempt at comedy.  There's only so far you can pull the
misrecognition joke.  He'd have to be a total idiot to assume that
someone he ranks as '5 star babe' is having trouble competing against
an old woman.  It's just too farfetched to be funny.

Again, I'm going to have to hear from more readers on this, considering
that nobody else has had (or at least expressed) a problem with it.

I'm not going to bother answering the silliness of your response.  You've 
shown in the past that even if many people tell you a joke isn't funny, you 
don't believe them.  Having more people stand up and say: "Man, this isn't 
funny", isn't going to change your opinion if just the analyzing of why the 
joke mechanics don't work doesn't.

"Uh huh. And she doesn't have a lot of shame when it comes to showing
it, either. She's been known to sneak naked into the shower with him,
or into his bed while he's sleeping."

ECB: Ukyo knows this?  From where?  Minor point really, but I think
you are attributing her knowledge she has no reason to have.

Ranma or any of the Tendos might have mentioned it to her.

She also knows Akane wears barney panties on thursday.  I can't believe you 
answer minor points and don't even get why they would be a point at all.  
It's an unnecessary addition of knowledge that adds nothing to your fic and 
just gets the observant to wonder: "Why does she know that?"  It's one of 
those extra chunks of fat a good prereader tells you to not waste your time 
keeping in.  You commented earlier about rushing to get into the plot of 
things...  so you skimped on doing the setup and intead padded it with stuff 
you didn't need to have in there at all?

ECB: Where does Ukyo get the cash?  Why does this guy start at all
without any payment arrangement?  He doesn't even have the semi-decent
concept you provided before of: "if he's increasing her business
share, he can blackmail her later and skim large amounts off the top of
her increased earnings."  Here he's working towards a situation
where she'd be able to pay him less as she's spending more time fawning
over her boyfriend.  Moreso, he spends an apparently ungodly amount
of money on it while already being in debt.  Where's all the cash
coming from?  Ukyo's secret stock exchange?

I don't know. Where did she get the cash to open her restaurant in the
first place? For that matter, what's Soun Tendo's source of income?
Again, you're asking for a higher standard than is maintained in the
original series.

Ah, but so are you.  This fic is written at a higher standard than the 
original series.  You include money as a serious and non-comedic concept in 
it.  You include law and medicine as the same.  When you raise the bar of 
realism in your fics well beyond the original series, you shouldn't be 
surprised at all that a higher standard of consistency is demanded of the 
fic as a whole.

"All right, then," she said, obvious unease coloring her voice. *Little
miss high-and-mighty,* he thought with a chuckle, *embarrassed
to have to deal with a scumbag like me.* She was no different than he
was. Not really. Some joker comes into her restaurant and plunks down
five hundred yen for an okonomiyaki, and she delivers the goods. The
guy could be an axe murderer for all she knows , and all she cares is
how big a tip he leaves when he's done. That's all it's about. *You
pay, and I play.* It's what business is all about.

ECB: Why did you just switch writing styles here?  This has all been
in his third-person limited perspective.  You were clearly showing
his thoughts just a few paragraphs above without markers.  Why the
sudden switch to them now?
ECBMeow: I would recommend that you take them out entirely.  While
I could expound on the reasons why, I think this parody fic should
make the reasons clear.
ECBLinker: http://www.garykleppe.org/fanfic/thekey.txt

Evidently you missed the point of that parody, which was to satirize
people who waste space explaining what their symbols mean. I;ve never
argued against the use of symbols themselves. As for the supposed switch
in styles, there's a difference between a character thinking in words
and coming up with an exact phrase in his mind expressing what he's
thought, versus a character just thinking. The first person marked tex
indicates the former, the third-person unmarked text the latter. If I
were writing for print text I'd use italics for the first, but that
isn't possible in plain text.

Unnecessary.  The same thing could've been written without it.  We're shown 
complex thought without this 'tool' just a scene before right from his mind. 
  In other words:

"Thanks for the bullshit, would you care to pass another serving down?"

Tenshi dropped his feet to the floor and straightened out his back.
"As far as this little... ad campaign... is concerned, there's two ways
you can play it. Positive, or negative. Positive means you tell 'em how
wonderful your own product is and how much it'll enrich their lives.
Negative means you attack the competitor's product, you tell them how
bad off they are 'cause they didn't buy yours instead."

ECB: Minor grammar point, abusing ellipsis==Bad.

And abusing C syntax is even worse. Hint: you want something like
abusingEllipses.isBad() == true. (Or TRUE or True depending on exactly
which language or variant you're using.)

Keep going, if you want to complain about it being C syntax, you should've 
noted that it doesn;t end in a ";" to indicate the end of the definition 
line.  Anyhow, it wasn't C syntax so much as just a bad habit of using the 
double equal sign.

Now perhaps you can tell me why you think I'm abusing ellipses here?
True, technically I should either space after each dot or not space
after the last one, but either of those approaches creates word wrapping
problems in plain text. If you mean I shouldn't use ellipses at all
there, well... I'm not sure how else I'd indicate his pause there.
Having the narrator explicitly say "he paused" seems like it'd be a
little clumsy.

A single ellipses is proper there.  A double one is not.  He doesn't pause 
both before and after saying it for a long time.  If there was a short pause 
after it, then it should've been indicated using a comma.

"Hm." Ukyo put a hand to her chin. "Which do you think we should do?"

"Well, your boy's got other women chasing him. So going negative
against the lead contender isn't gonna help if someone else comes in to
pick up

ECB: Which, as I'll note, he doesn't know which is the lead contender
as he hasn't asked.  More on this later.

Of course he does. It was obvious from the opening scene.

No, it merely indicates at least one contender named Akane is ahead of her.  
Of course, she's indicating everyone but Akane and telling him about 
everyone but Akane as I think you ingrained into yourself that she already 
covered Akane.  What makes it more amusing is outside of these couple of 
paragraphs and a single line at the end, these other two fiancees which you 
spend time detailing on camera (instead of Akane) don't even show up in the 
fic.

ECB: This really isn't the standard context of an ECB.  It's not
something I teach the other reviewers to note or pay attention to or
something that really belongs in one.  But in this case, I not only
couldn't help but notice it, but ran it by several others to check as
well.  And frankly, no one missed the pathetic swipe at Zen's Long and
Winding Road here.  Whether you think it's good natured or not, your
attempt to swipe here wrecked a large part of your fic.  You suffered

>from tunnel vision and thus didn't make the scene anywhere near as

funny as it could be.  A pity, but such is the fate of most people
who are trapped in rantficcing.

It's satire. I don't know whether Zen's read this particular fic, but in
general Zen's never had a problem with my parodying his work and has
always taken it good-naturedly. I don't know why you can't, too, or why
you think it's wrecked this fic. How do you think I should've done it
differently? (And just telling me to take out the L&WR references isn't
an answer. I asked what you think I *should* have done, not what I
*shouldn't.*)

You see, this is where basic pattern recognition comes into play.  Having a 
swipe at Zen in there is fine under the grounds of parody.  But...it 
shouldn't be the only thing in the fic.  You have two major conflict points 
in the fic.  One is the play section that just started (all revolving around 
L&WR) and the other is the medical condition (All an obvious jab at Bitter 
End).  You can claim it's meant in parody but you don't put anything else 
into it.  The only meat you have in this story is entirely jabbing at Zen.  
So what SHOULD you have done?  You should've had more there.  Had those 
other fiancees show up.  Covered more in depth into the play and worked the 
humor of it.  Provide some alternate areas of meat perhaps covering his 
investigations of the other fiancees and the like.  The options to go 
somewhere with this fic should be obvious to anyone who reads it cleanly 
through.  You hint at the potential all over the place but never go anywhere 
with it as you are too busy keeping the entire fic revolving around two of 
Zen's fics.  Thus, as I said, it's a pity.  The fic has some stuff that 
could be pretty funny if you weren't tunnel visioning the whole way through 
writing it.

Vice Principal Tsumaranai of Furinkan paged through the expense reports
on his desk, resisting the urge to tear out what was left of his hair.

ECB: Vice Principal... Boring?  Uninteresting?  Useless?  Was that
supposed to be some in joke that you forgot to clear up in your
author's notes?  Or did you simply pull a stupid name out of nowhere?

I needed a name. Stuff like this is an in-joke for people who bother to
look it up.

A joke that needs to be explained is not funny.  Simple as that.  
Personally, I'd have gone with a footnote on the whole affair.

Five hundred thousand yen to build a simulated jungle in the basement?
How was he going to explain this to the school authorities? Yet if he
didn't find some way of reconciling the budget, there wouldn't be
anything left to pay the faculty. Not to mention the administrators,
a certain one of whom had a wife and two daughters at home, counting
on him to bring back a paycheck that they could use to put food on the
table.

ECB: Seriousness of this type hurts the funny.  You are attempting
to bring the reality of the whole Ranmaverse in here and provide a
'need' in which the crap con-man shows up with his imaginary money

What are you talking about? This comment makes no sense.

It doesn't?  What doesn't make sense about not mixing seriousness with 
trying to make people laugh?  This isn't a joke given straight faced.  This 
IS a visible indication that "Hey, these people aren't just comic figures, 
but real suffering human beings with their own pasts!"  People don't need to 
know that and it sure as hell doesn't help them laugh at a scene when they 
can easily sympathize with the guy having trouble making ends meet.  
Basically, you went overboard providing the opportunity for Tenshi and hurt 
the comic atmosphere by doing so.

(That would go better to well, paying off the yakuza).

As I noted in a subsequent scene, it isn't his money. He's getting it

>from advertisers.

Your point?  He clearly pockets some of it already (As he notes).  What's to 
stop him from vanishing after he already got the cash?  I mean, he's 
demonstrated the ability to con some large sum of money (by the VPs 
reaction) with nothing from the school and no backup.  That's impressive.  
Way to go him.  And it makes him wasting his time with small money crap seem 
all the more odd in comparison.  Especially when the same cash he could've 
gotten whether or not Ukyo was there could've handled his debts or been used 
to other ends.

ECB: Mr. Practice now?  Boy, I guess having a little hint for your
non-japanese readers is too much!

Since you were (erroneously) trying to rip on my use of proper nouns
before, I'll point out that Japanese should be capitalized.

Cheerio ^_^

ECB: Where's he getting the money immediately from this?  Ukyo?  I do
hope you cover this later.
ECBRealism: You know, people don't ask questions like this when you don't
strive to add measures of Realism like cops and health agencies to your
story.

Realism isn't a proper noun, chuckles.

Should I have used glowing letters instead?  I was using it to refer to the 
larger concept of "Realism", thus the usage of a capital letter there.  To 
ACCENT that.

ECB: And here we wonder why the screwup isn't that Ukyo gets casted
as something other than the lead.  Or why he didn't put Ukyo clearly
in the lead role?  Why leave it to chance?

Because he knows she's going to volunteer for it.

So?  Volunteering for a role in a play doesn't ensure you get it.  You 
clearly show devoted actors later, so why wouldn't others be trying out for 
the lead female part?  Sure, she might win it...but it doesn't change the 
'why leave it to chance' contention.

ECB: Amusing character that is underused in this fic.  Very underused.
Of course, given you do almost the entire play off camera, that's no
surprise.  It's amazing how you run with things that suck, and give
barely any time to stuff that has the potential to work.  I mean, even
if this is stupid, it's at least Takahashi stupid and thus fits in
well.

If you (or whoever ghosted this particular bit for you) think Takahashi
(work) is stupid, why are you even reading a Ranma fic, let alone one
that's as close to original flavor as this one?

Stupid != Not Funny.  The three stooges often did stupid things, but it was 
in a theme and style that was funny overall.  Takahashi has a lot of stupid 
things happen, but in a vein that was generally funny overall.  If you are 
claiming it's in the original vein, then you should want it to be Takahashi 
style and us to think "Well yeah, that guy is an idiot, but damn if he 
doesn't fit into the mix well."

And is this original flavor or Parody?  Can you make up your mind?  
Personally, I'd love for you to point out to me where Ranma ever gets so 
serious that we are seeing guns shooting about, police officers threatening 
and arresting people, or anything near that level of reprecussions showing 
up.  It sure doesn't seem familiar with the series I read, but maybe I 
missed all those shots of the police officers along to the side right next 
to the mental asylum.

By the way, thanks for the ghost writer suggestions.  I'm sorry, but at this 
time, I don't think they are necessary.  If at a later point they become so, 
I'm sure you can suggest some of your personal troope.

Sorry, but that's the limit of my patience. So far, about all you've
done is to harp on some rather nitpicky points and throw out insults
like "suck" and "crap" without any sort of argument or explanation that
might persuade me to see things your way and what you think I should've
done differently. While you certainly have every right to your opinions,
this kind of feedback isn't of any use to me, and I'm not going to waste
my time reading any further.

That's fine.  These are technically written for my own amusement and those 
of my readers, sent to authors more along the lines of a gesture of respect 
(odd, but true and no I don't feel like spending a paragraph explaining it), 
then for any actual caring whether it's useful to them or not.  That is what 
actual C&C is for after all.

Have a nice day,

You too!  ^_^

Dracos

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