From: Gary Kleppe
Sent: Sunday, May 03, 1998 10:37 AM
sleep were the one (it's a hypothetical)

This is a new one on me.  Making it a hypothetical situation makes the
tense plural?

"Yes."  Kasumi sounded on the verge of tears.  "Yes, I will
let you know.  Please try not to hurt her."

Seems a bit of a leap for there. Maybe if Kasumi had said
something like "If I see her, I'll let you know right away,"
Akane's distrust of Kasumi would be more believable.

She *did* say that.  See above.  It's not spelled out, but it's easy to
infer IMO.

"Ranma.  She may have had a stroke, or beginning to suffer

>from an aneurysm, or any of a thousand other things that

might be life-threatening.  We need to get her to a
specialist right now."

That middle sentence isn't quite right... the tense seems
to shift in the middle.

Hurm.  Good point.

"Ranma.  Such an attitude may kill Akane.  Are you certain
you want to take such a chance?"

Geez, don't sugar-coat it, Doc, give it to him straight. :p

Tofu seems a little... cold in this scene. I can understand
him wanting to get proper medical attention for Akane, but
the way in which he expressed himself seemed to lack his
usual friendliness.

How do you tell someone in a friendly way that his actions may kill his
wife?

Besides, the Tofu who decided to partially paralyze Ranma just because he
thinks it's a good way for Ranma and Akane to get together is certainly
capable of this scene.  ^_^

Nodoka has a job?

Well, in my unfinished series "Genma and Nodoka:  A Love Story", I give
Nodoka the job of art appraiser.

And sometimes he didn't deserve it, sometimes you did
it because you got mad at the world in general and he
was a convenient outlet.

Yeah! And Ukyo always lectured you on it, didn't she?
Tried to help make things better and *never* wanted
Ranma for herself or tried to break the two of you up
for selfish reasons or bashed him over the head with
her spatula or...

...cooked him as if he was an okinomiyaki or tried to wake him up by
putting him on a hot grill or begged Genma for naked pictures of Ranma
or...

But that's a subject for another fic.  ^_^

Seriously, this was a very nicely written scene, probably
my favorite in the fic,

Thanks.

even if it does suffer from BE-style tunnel vision in that it
*only* considers Akane's violence toward Ranma. Other people
used to beat on Ranma too, including a certain bandanna boy.

Well, Akane's the issue here.  She wouldn't sit and think, "Oh, but it was
okay for me to hit Ranma because Ryoga and Ukyo and lots of other people
did it too."  Even Akane knows that multiple wrongs don't make a right.
:)

Ryoga let out a breath.  This was the hardest thing he'd ever
had to do, and he had no idea if he was doing it right.

"Let's see... top of the page represents east, and..."

Hehehehehe.

Suddenly Akane fell forward.  Her head hit her mother's
marker and she lolled on the ground.

Well, if this is based on the anime, then a bump on the
head should cure everything... :-)

True.  ^_^

Something I've never told anyone:  I wanted to name "Heart of the Home"
something else entirely:  "Kasumi's Story".  Alas, reading through the
archives revealed that there was already a fanfic with that name.  I
forget who wrote it now, but it contained a wonderful parody of the "bump
on the head" plot device.

She leaned over Ranma's marker and spoke in an
agonize whisper.  "But it hurts so much."

agnonized

D'oh!

"Thy Inward Love" is by me, of course.  Consider TIL and
TBE to be the bookends of possible endings to a Ranma/Akane
marriage.  :)

I prefer the middle of the shelf, but that's just me... :-)

Most people do.  ^_^

All in all, I liked it. The TIL characters were believable,
wiser and more experienced than in the original series but
not too much so.

Yes, the biggest (and most legitimate) criticism of TIL is that everyone
acts much more calmly and intelligently than they do in the manga.  :)

BE-Akane's disorder was also well-handled, if one can accept
that she has the thing in the first place (and don't get me
started on that ^_^).

Heh, I won't, but I accept that Zen's interpretation is possible.  Heck,
how can I, the author of Kasumi the matricidal cookie-maker, criticize
IED-Akane?  :)

Gary Kleppe

Thanks for the comments, Gary.

-Richard