Zorknot42@aol.com wrote:

The intro reminds me a little of the beginning of Red Dragon for some reason (note that I've only seen the movies). It rings a little wrong for the intro to be a dream. Akane feels guilt in the dream, and while its not impossible to feel guilt in a dream it feels wrong. In fact the rest of the fic seems more like a dream than the intro because of this. You might even consider making the intro an epilogue and have the rest of the fic be the dream. 

Yeah, I tried that, but I was stuck for over a month on finding a good
way to ease into the "present" of Ukyo's death.  Having that be a dream,
and having Ukyo actually be intended to survive, was the only resolution
I could come up with.

Thats another thing I found lacking in the fic. The ending was good, but I think it needed an epilogue. Like Ranma standing over Akane's grave next to all his other fiancees or something, or having it all be a dream, or at least revealing whether or not Akane died or was just knocked out and taken to prison or whatever. As it stands it seems unfinished.

Again, couldn't think of a good way past it once Akane was no longer
able to have a viewpoint - though, I thought the finality of "the last
thing she ever saw" would speak to what happened.

Finally, though I'm not quite sure how you would fix it, the reaction to the deaths isn't quite natural. Its like "Damn Kodachi's dead...Hey check out this potato gun!" It's almost funny. If it's supposed to be funny then you should exagerate the characters' indifference, but if its not, Ranma at least would show more remorse I think than he does. This is a matter of characterization though, and that's a matter of opinion and pure speculation. 

That part was intentional.  The mind of a deliberate, intelligent,
methodical killer is not natural.  (The title was a reference to "SID
Vicious", or "Sadistic, Intelligent, Devious, Vicious", an AI in a movie
a few years ago who was created to be the ultimate police nightmare
killer, stuck in a VR sim for training homicide detectives.)  Yes, there
is some humor - this *is* the Ranmaverse we're talking about - but dark
humor, mostly.

As to Ranma, by the time he knew what was going on, he had no time to
show remorse, at least during the scenes.  (He might, for instance, have
been remorseful about Shampoo's death the next day, once he recovered
from the night's activities, but by then Akane was elsewhere - and the
story's focus was on her.)

All this aside, I enjoyed the fic. I was wondering all the way through what Akane was going to do next. You really had me going with the Kodachi scene, and the bits with Shampoo were a pleasant surprise. 

Then this fic has done what I hoped.  ^_^

Thanks for sharing,
-W.B.R.

No prob.

"An epilogue is more than a body count. An epilogue, in disguise of wrapping up the past, is really a way of warning us about the future."
-T.S. Garp fr. John Updike's The World According to Garp

Umm.  Rather appropriate .sig.  ^_^;


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