[FFML] [Fanfic] [Ranma][Crossover] Tamaranian 1/2: Illegal Alien Indeed

[Brian Randall]

Much delayed due to various circumstances, but now to return to the
regular swing of C&Cing.  I hope.

On 7/1/07, Farzad Mansouri <farzad234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well I had no idea the FFML was down but just to be
> number 2 on the posts here's a little something I have
> been working on Since the beginning of 2007.  Enjoy
> and creative criticism is appreciated.

I at one point had plans for a grand sweeping EULA/disclaimer for C&C,
because I thought it would be totally hilarious.  Then everyone
started doing it.  Therefore, in the interest of brevity:

I'm offering advice and opinions that may or may not suit you.  Take
what's useful, ignore what isn't.  I don't send my comments to the
list because I think I'm awesome, I do it because I may be wrong; I
also welcome comments and corrections.  That being said, if my
comments aren't acknowledged in some form, I tend to assume they
aren't welcome, and stop giving them.

Um....  Since it has been a while, by habit I don't actually read the
fics I comment on before commenting, and I think that about covers it.

So much for brevity. ;)

> Tamaranian 1/2
> By Farzad Mansouri
>
> Ch.1: Illegal Alien Indeed

Hum.  I notice that you're missing disclaimers.

>    The young man known as Saotome Ranma will be called
> many things in the future.  His un-cute fiancée Tendo
> Akane will label him as a pervert due to the perceived
> fact that the young Saotome enjoys his other fiancées
> lavishing attention onto him with physical contact and
> food.

Okay, second sentence there appears to be a bit long.  This may be an
illusion due to a very short line-length.  That makes this two issues,
I suppose.  So, I would first try to adjust the line-length if you can
-- it seems short.  I'd go with about 70 characters, if that's an
option.  Then I'd cut that sentence up into smaller pieces, but more
on this in a bit.

> She will also called him a jerk for insulting
> her both inside training and outside in real life.

called -- call (tenses)

I would further suggest saying 'in training' and then dropping the
'outside'.  Also, perhaps 'daily' instead of 'real'?

> These descriptions stem from two sources.  The latter
> is from Saotome Genma's upbringing of Ranma who
> thought insulting someone was the same as a rousing
> pep talk.

This second sentence here is missing a comma (right after Ranma's
name).  It's also a little stilted, as far as flow.

>  The former comes from the girls wanting to
> grab Ranma's attention in a show of affection in order
> to one up each other into getting him to choose her as
> the true fiancée.  In addition, Akane forgot about the
> simplest rule in the dynamic between boys and girls:
> girls are supposed to attract boys.  This fact refutes
> her claim that Ranma is a pervert deviating from
> natural behavior.

Okay.  This marks the end of the first paragraph of your fic.
Breaking it down, you basically provide the setting (Nerima), outline
the situation (it's Ranma 1/2), and so far, it appears you favor
Ranma, but don't care terribly much for Akane.  (I forsee this not
being a Ranma/Akane matchup.)

It doesn't flow terribly smoothly, and if someone judges your fic on
the first paragraph alone, I'm not sure there's really much of a hook
there, either.  I'd try and smooth this over by paring it down a bit.
It's ultimately up to you, but most of your fans are going to be
familiar with Ranma 1/2's backstory already, so figure out what you
can part with, and what you choose to leave and draw attention to.

Anyway.  On to the second paragraph:

>    Because of the number of women after him, some have
> called Ranma a womanizer or Casanova, which is so far
> from the truth its almost funny.

its -- it's

'It's' is a contraction of 'it is', which appears to be what you're going for.

> The fact remains
> that the young Saotome's knowledge on what to do with
> a girl is limited.  The only thing Genma taught about
> them is that they are weak and emotional creatures to
> be sheltered at all times.  This left the poor boy to
> seriously underestimate any female much to his later
> regret.  At most, the young Saotome would hang out
> with a girl, hold her hand, and MAYBE kiss her if he
> worked up the courage.  Therefore, a better term for
> Ranma is sexually repressed.  That is not to say this
> doesn't come with some advantages.  After all, since
> he doesn't consciously try to hunt down the ladies for
> dates or stare at certain parts of there bodies as if
> he is mentally undressing them, most girls assume he
> is a better catch than all the horny young boys they
> normally interact with day in and day out.

there bodies -- their bodies

>  This
> unfortunately leaves Ranma stuck with three women who
> would be glad to be his first any way he wants them
> and one that constantly berates him for his deviant
> ways.  Cursed boy indeed.

The end of another very long paragraph.  I'd seriously suggest
breaking these up to help the fic scan better.

>    To complicate things further there is the fact that
> while Ranma was born into Japanese society he doesn't
> seem to fit in.

I'd put a comma after 'society', I think.

>  Ranma only identifies himself with
> martial arts and the idea of honor above all else,
> both of which seem archaic to many modern Japanese men
> and women.  Ranma wears mostly Chinese Kung Fu
> clothes.  He speaks the Japanese language with a rough
> slang, writes it atrociously at best, and doesn't
> conform to any social group or clique.  Ranma is
> always standing apart from his age group and peers in
> one form or another.  In short, another good word for
> describing him would be alien.

Hum.  Interesting.

>    This would explain why, in the grand design that is
> the multiverse, someone thought to make this
> descriptor more prominent in his case.  Thus the
> reason for Ranma's trajectory being altered by a few
> meters after taking a hit from Genma panda. This
> resulted in the young man dropping into the spring of
> an actual extraterrestrial. It is also good to note
> that Ranma was slightly different in this dimension;
> after all if we just removed the gender curse the
> Ranma we all know would be quite a different fellow.

As a suggestion, I'd put a paragraph break right here.

> It was through a combination of luck, stubbornness,
> and general dislike of Genma's narrow-minded teachings
> that this Ranma got a better mental and social
> education.  All due in thanks to the various teachers
> the boy had who stressed developing the mind along
> with the body.  This gave Ranma a bit more logical and
> courteous attitude then what he had before.

I stubbed my toe on fourth-wall rubble somewhere back there.  Still, I
think I see what you're doing with the narrative voice.  I've seen it
best done by Eric Halstrom, but I think this is pretty decent; I
actually like this part.  It nicely contrasts the dryness of the
preceding bit about him being alien.  Well, now AN alien, I suppose.

And it's not like I haven't seen enough loose interpretations of Ranma
already; if that was going to deter me, I wouldn't be reading Ranma
fics, would I? ;)

>    "Dammit Old MAN! AHHH!" Ranma yelled indignantly as
> he fell into the pool.  Well at least he was logical
> and courteous to anyone other then Saotome Genma, who
> Ranma still thought of as a stupid moron outside of
> the Art.

Here, however, the narration is a bit jarring.  I'd suggest pruning
that last line down as much as possible, or perhaps reworking it a
bit.  Unfortunately, I totally suck at the type of narration you've
got, so I can't really offer any specific examples of how it might be
improved.

>    Genma panda slowly approached the pool.  Suddenly a
> form burst from the bubbling waters and hovered
> several meters above the spring.  "You kalnorf! I am
> going to put on the hurt so much you won't be able to
> genuflect much less sit down!"

I note you use 'I am', and then later, 'won't'.  I can't recall
clearly, but if this is Starfire (which I think it is), then doesn't
she avoid contractions entirely?  Would she use 'will not' instead of
'won't?

Assuming, of course, that Ranma adopts any speech-patterns from his
curse whatsoever.  Though, in that case, I think he'd use 'I'm'
instead of 'I am'.

>    The form was humanoid having two arms, two legs, a
> torso, and a head.

I'd put a comma after 'humanoid'.

>  However, beyond that it was easy
> to see the being as anything but human in origin. His
> skin was orange not pink, tan, nor dark brown but

And one after 'orange'.  Though, that could actually be a semi-colon
too, I think.

> actually a citrus orange color.  His eyes and hair
> were radically different too.  Where there was once a

And a comma before 'too'.

> black hair blue eyed youth was now a young man with

I think that's 'haired'?

> fiery red hair and blazing green eyes that almost
> certainly hinted to some righteous butt whooping about
> to be unleashed as they bore into the panda.

'kay.  Maybe I was wrong.

>    Sufficed to say Genma panda nearly decided to empty
> his bladder at that look.

Doesn't seem like the kind of thing someone _decides_ to do,
typically.  I'd switch 'decided to empty' to 'emptied'.

>  Quickly looking left and
> right he pointed behind the hovering boy and tried to
> mouth a fake warning that came out as a series of
> growls.  Ranma didn't bother looking behind him and
> cocked his right hand back as if to punch the panda
> were he not hovering several feet out of range.  The

I'd replace that 'were' with an 'if'.  And put a comma just before it.

> hand began glowing green causing the panda's eyes to
> bulge.  Ranma then quickly thrust the hand forward and
> a bright green ball of energy slammed into Genma panda
> knocking him several feet back as his bulk dragged a
> ditch across the loose soil.

Hooray for energy blasts!  Wonder how this is going to stack up to chi.

Also, be careful when blasting people near the springs.

Very tragic story of man who get chi-blasted into many springs!  Then
he fall in unmarked spring, we now call fanfictionichuan, spring of
drowned overpowered SI.

...er.  Sorry.  Ahem.  Back to your regularly scheduled C&C.

>    Ranma saw motion to his left.  Looking in that
> direction, he saw that the guide was waving and
> calling for him to come closer.  Slowly but surely, as
> if he had been flying under his own power his entire
> life, Ranma moved toward the guide and landed
> gracefully before him.

Okay.  So, I could be totally wrong about this being a Ranma/Teen
Titans crossover.  Which means I must now google 'Tamaranian'.  Nope,
my fanboy-memory core is intact.

Which means you are missing two disclaimers, still. ;)

Anyway.  This was a bit shorted than I had anticipated, but it also
reads like it's just the setup, and the actual story could be a bit
different.

On the downside: Your writing is a bit stilted, and you have huge
blocks of paragraph to wade through to get to your story.  Considering
where this story takes place, I'm not sure if the comments regarding
Akane/the other girls really fits; they haven't been introduced yet,
so it does come across as a bit of a bash on her.

On the upside: You seem to have a very interesting narrative voice at
work here, and with some refinement could have a real strength to any
story you tell.  Definitely keep working at that.

On the whole: Interesting story, and I'm curious to see where it's
going.  Good luck!

> A man earns the title 'Great' by having power and NOT abusing it.

-- 
Brian Randall
--
I write fanfiction. Too much of it. You can read it here, thanks to a
kind grant from the Larry F foundation:
http://www.florestica.com/brandall/
--
Together. Allegiance or death. BIGFIRE!
--
Haiku of my lament:

Forgive my spelling,
my U.S. education,
is the source of blame.