I have a moment free, so time for a quick C&C.
Thanks for taking the time, I appreciate it.
Quoting John Garrett <johnny.gman@gmail.com>:
Transcending Time, a Ranma/SM crossover
by JohnnyG
You can also find this story on fanfiction.net here:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2357156/1/
Summary:
I know it's either customary or compulsory to provide
these summaries on fanfiction.net, but it's not here,
and you might be spoiling your story for your readers
here. I'd take this out, at least for your first
chapter. However, it's not a bad idea in FUTURE
chapters to summarize what's gone before, and it's a
must (IMO) to put in a link to previous chapters.
Gotcha. I'll keep these ideas in mind.
Side Note: Ranma will NOT be a Scout or some kind of
Sailor Knight.
He is something else alltogther. O_O
Ah, come on! Surely there's SOME color combination of
fuku and/or tuxedo that Ranma hasn't worn yet in R/SM
crossover/fusion fanfic! ;)
LOL! If there is, I'm not going to be the one who tries to find it. ~_O
And "all together" is two words, not one.
Yep, I caught that after the fact. This was something I typed in as
an afterthought and didn't run through the spellchecker. <sigh>
Anyhow, on to the story.
Good idea; you're less likely to lose readers that way!
--
'Why me?'
The use of single quotes here struck me, as I'm not
used to seeing them on this list. I do see them in
some printed works, especially those printed in the
U.K., so I didn't particularly care... except that
lower down there's a few places where you use double
quotes. I'd suggest you pick one style and stick to it.
I use single quotes for thoughts and double quotes for spoken dialogue.
While this might seem a normal occurrence to
those who knew the young man, there were several
things wrong with the scene.
Alert! Alert! Authorial intrusion detected!
Exterminate! Exterminate! ;)
Seriously, just describe the scene. If you're right
that there are abnormalities, your readers will pick
that fact up. And I think you'll find this passage
becomes much better if you show us, rather than
telling us.
You're right. I think I was attempting to be cheeky and not
succeeding very well.
Another abnormality was the ripped and charred
remains of a white tuxedo that hung loosely on her
body.
Good! This effectively dates your story at later the
same day after the failed wedding.
Also, her whole demeanor did not portray the usual
Saotome cockiness, but rather a deep sense of
resignation.
Ranma, rather than looking up at the stars, was
looking straight ahead at nothing in particular.
She gave a heavy sigh, her shoulders slumped.
Show, don't tell.
Thanks. While all your commentary is helpful, these types of examples
are truly great.
However, the most frightening thing of all, the detail
that would have likely scared the wits out of those
who knew Ranma, was the contemplative look she was
currently sporting.
Veering towards authorial comments again. And this one
I disagree with: many of Ranma's acquaintances would
welcome a contemplative look on her face, I'd think.
Many of Ranma's problems come from reacting before
thinking, while many solutions come when he slows down
and does think.
I don't disagree that they would welcome it, it's more the fact that
it's so out of place. That's the part they would find shocking.
'Damn,' she thought with agitation, 'I can't believe
I almost got married today. I mean, Akane looked
good in her dress and all... but come on! I ain't
ready to be married to nobody, least of all that
uncute tomboy.'
For me personally, as one reader, this is way out-of-
character for Ranma at the time you've set it. Not
that I couldn't be persuaded about Ranma having second
thoughts; this just means that you, the writer, have
to work harder.
One suggestion would be to focus closer on the "I almost
got married today" and less on the "to Akane", as least
to begin with. Many men, in Ranma's shoes, on that day,
once alone, might be shivering about almost having
gotten married, and be very glad, for reasons they can't
articulate, even to themselves, that the wedding didn't
happen. It's called "fear of commitment".
I'm not sure how out of character it would really be. Even at this
stage in their relationship, when things go wrong with them, they
still resort to name calling (and physical violence in her case), even
if it's less so than when they met. While the wedding failed due to
the influence of many, both Ranma and Akane share a good part of the
blame as well. Ranma, who doesn't tend to look at his own faults very
well, will focus his attention elsewhere. In this case, Akane was the
other big player in the drama and thus he moves there. Even so, he
isn't able to fully dismiss her out of hand, showing that there are
some kind of feelings for her underneath everything.
Plus, what was with Akane thinkin' that I said I
loved her? I know I didn't say that! How could I
love someone... like...'
In the story itself, Ranma denies aloud having said it,
and it's (deliberately) unclear from the earlier panels
whether he said it aloud or not, but I never got the
sense that he's still denying it to himself by this
point.
That's why he trailed off. He was arguing with himself that he said
it out loud, not necessarily that he didn't think it to himself.
'What if it had been UChan? Or Shampoo? Would I've
fought any less for them?' The answer was a simple
one for Ranma. 'No, I woulda fought the same.
As one reader, my own credibility is being strained
beyond breaking here. (In my opinion, Ranma knows
perfectly well that he could never have exceeded his
limits like that for anyone else. And certainly that's
the message Takahashi tried hard to convey!
See my concluding remarks for concrete suggestions.
I think this is open to character interpretation. If you honestly
think that he wouldn't have tried just as hard to rescue Ukyo,
Shampoo, Kasumi, or Nabiki (notice I'm deliberately leaving out
Kodachi), then you're welcome to that opinion. From my perspective,
that's what it is, a matter of opinion, not fact.
'What would it be like to hold their hands? To
k- kiss them? To m-ma-marry them?' While the first
two held a vague sense of appeal,
I had an odd reaction at this point, stemming from the
fact that Ranma is trying to do this analysis while in
her girl body. It's strongly suggested in the manga
that Ranma doesn't feel quite the same way about girls
when he's a girl himself, or at least believes this to
be the case (see the 'Secret Sauce' storyline, where
Ranma and Akane are forced to sleep in the same room
overnight. Nabiki offers to sell Ranma a bucket of
water, and it strikes both Ranma and Akane that there's
no problem if they're both girls.)
Being in the girl body probably makes it easier for
Ranma to separate love from lust (separating signal
from noise, to use the metaphor I myself likened it to
seven years ago), a point of analysis you get to later,
but it might make it completely impossible for Ranma to
determine when, how, and for whom he DOES feel lust.
Also, I'd think it'd strike him immediately that a
conclusion that she "loves them like sisters" is
completely suspect if he reaches it when he's in the
girl body. He should be changing back and repeating
his procedure.
Again, I think this is a matter of opinion. At the beginning of the
manga, when Akane walked in on Ranma in the furo in girl form
(incident #2 I believe), Nabiki later comments (in what I believe to
be a teasing fashion) that it should be okay since Ranma was a girl at
the time. However, both Akane and Ranma recognize that he's still a
guy on the inside, thus meaning it didn't matter whether he was
physically a girl at the time.
Unfortunately, there is no way to really approach this topic with any
type of realism. Since there are no real world examples of men and
women magically changing sexes (sex changes don't count ~_O), we have
no idea what the actually change in brain chemistry, hormones, etc.
would actually cause. That's part of the reason why it's fun to write
in the Ranma universe, because it's one of things you can interpret
for yourself.
"Ranma," Kasumi called from the ground. "I'm getting
ready to close up for the evening."
??? Why does Kasumi bother notifying Ranma, and why
would Ranma care? It's well established in the manga
that Ranma can enter and exit through second-floor
windows, in the middle of the night.
True, this part wasn't really necessary. Thanks for pointing that out.
Ranma went to the room he shared with his father.
...and mother. Remember, at the time you've set the
story, Nodoka is still living there too.
Is she? I thought she was back at her home by then, but it's quite
possible I'm mistaken.
Ranma tried to think of examples of happily married
people he knew, and honestly couldn't think of any.
Heh. No real surprise here, given the Ranma-verse.
Nope.
With that wish firmly planted, Ranma fell asleep...
and dreamed.
Okay, without the story summary, I'd have no idea at
all where you're going with this, and I'd probably just
be annoyed that you'd stopped at this point. This is
NOT a pointer that you need the summary, necessarily;
you can address this just as easily by laying off the
anti-Akane stuff, and just limit Ranma's emotions to
fear of commitment; uncertainty whether, and how much,
he loves Akane (while acknowledging, internally, that
he does love her); and wondering about what a happily
married life would be like.
Sorry. As I think I mentioned, I've just been so busy that I wanted
to get this part out so that I could feel like I was actually
accomplishing something. <sheepish grin>
This last point you got to very quickly at the end of
your story, but IMO it should've been a much more major
point, on which you should be spending some time. It's
a natural enough thought for Ranma to have, having
narrowly escaped being married.
It's a thought that will continue to plague him over the next several
days, so I'm hoping it won't seem to be too glaring of an issue in the
end.
Now, given your story summary, I know that your intent
is to establish a Ranma-Setsuna relationship.
Presumably Ranma is about to dream of being happily
married to Setsuna, and will wake up with some concept
of what a happy marriage is like. And all the anti-
Akane stuff is just there to justify a break-up later.
Did it really come across as anti-Akane? To me it came across as a
confused young man who has no clue what love is and thinking he
could've made a big mistake that day. It wasn't necessarily that he
would've ended up married to Akane, rather to any girl at all since he
has no clue what love is. The main reason Akane is talked about is
because she was the one he would've ended up married to. I think the
same type of commentary would've come towards any of the girls if they
had been the one he'd almost married.
Also, in my opinion it's not an anti-Akane slant, more of an
anti-fiancee brigade slant. Are you sure you're just not a closet
Akane supporter? ~_O
One obvious suggestion is that you simply move all the
anti-Akane stuff until after the dream. So on this day
Ranma thinks to himself that he loves Akane; then he
dreams about a happy marriage to someone who
(presumably) never hits him or yells at him (but how
does the Ranma-Setsuna marriage mediate disputes?), and
wakes up the next day mentally comparing Akane and her
behavior to his dream of Setsuna and her (presumably
different) behavior. And Ranma slowly starts to get
dissatisfied with Akane (assuming that he believes that
his dream was of a state of affairs actually
achievable in real life).
The first dream will actually come in Chapter 3. The next chapter
deals with Setsuna and the Senshi. Hopefully, after the first dream,
and how both Ranma and Setsuna react to it in Chapter 4, the issues
you raise won't seem too bad.
Your story will actually be BETTER the more Ranma is
internally conflicted by his residual love for Akane,
so my other suggestion is that you just get rid of the
anti-Akane stuff completely, and just let Ranma's past
and present loves (metaphorically) fight it out.
I understand. I'll see how I can work that type of conflict into the story.
As always, take what you find useful and ignore the
rest.
Thanks again for reading and your opinion. Even if I don't agree with
everything, it's still greatly appreciated.