Bit more time on my hands right now, and I haven't done enough C&Cing 
lately.
Time to get at it!

$Thanks!  I've definetely got more feedback on this one than any of my 
other short works.  Heh, part of that was probably that this had more 
MISTAKES than any of my other works.  Except my first fics, of course.  
*shudder*

I enjoyed reading this one a lot.

$Excellent.  Just trying to liven the place up with a little bit of humor.

     "Email the author at nugar@tds.net with any comments,"
Sakaki says quietly.  "And visit
http://www.livejournal.com/users/nugarwrites/  for updates and
new parts."
 

...updates, new parts, and cute cat pictures."

$Not till I get around to rebuilding my actual webpage.  
grumblegrumblensagrumble.

     "Yukari as she walks by waving her hammer and sickle,
dressed in thick felt boots, a heavy overcoat, and a fur hat,"
says 'In communist Russia, titles say you.'
 

I find I am inclined to agree that this last bit just doesn't work.

$Gone.  Response to it was overwhelmingly negative.   Should have 
thought twice about it anyway.

     Sexy.
 

I suggest removing the tab in front of the vignette titles, to make it 
a bit
more obvious that they ARE titles.  I didn't figure it out until 
half-way through
the third vignette.

$I guess I could all caps them like the manga titles, or something.

     Her jaw dropped as she saw Yukari undressing the mannequin
and keeping an irate store clerk away with one foot.
 

Heh.  This works for readers who can picture it well, I think (readers 
like me, who've
read the manga too many times to count).

$Right.  They're like big paper antidepressants.

     "Twenty thousand yen?!" Yukari screeched as she waved the
dress in front of the cashier's face.     "No way!"
 

I agree that this seems too low for the dress described.  On the other 
hand, it does seem
about the right amount for Yukari to react this way but for Nyamo to 
still be willing
to buy the dress.  One thing you might consider is describing the 
store they're in a
little bit more in the first vignette, or specifying that the dress is 
made of a cheaper
material.

$I'll just raise the price.

     A thought occurred to her as she stepped out the exit into
the mall proper, and she stuck her head back in.  "Hey, Minamo,
where do you want to meet back-  The dress!" she cried as she saw
her friend rather guiltily paying for it at the cash register.
 

This is funny, but I find I agree that it doesn't quite seem like 
Nyamo to do this.  Why
sneak around?  Nyamo can stand up to Yukari when it's important:  
Nyamo did buy
a car, but never (as far as we know) let Yukari drive it.

$True, but little items aren't worth as much effort, and what Yukari 
doesn't know rarely hurts others.

(BTW, why is Yukari calling the latter 'Minamo' instead of 'Nyamo' 
when they're out
shopping together?)

$Eh.  Faulty logic.  We'll leave it at that.

     Chiyo blinked.  She'd never thought of that.  "I'm not sure,
I mean, maybe we should ask Miss Yukari."

     "I did," Osaka replied.  "But she hit me with a book and
told me not to poke holes in that ridiculous language."
 

heh.  While this reaction is funny, I'm inclined to agree that it is 
not quite IC for Yukari.
The one thing she DOES take pride in is her ability with English, 
which is characterized
as well above average (I think) for Japanese high school English 
teachers, particularly
in speaking it.

$True, but Yukari would be a lot shorter with someone who probably 
hasn't mastered subject/verb order yet.  Plus, it's funny.

     "Oh.  Well, Yomi is pretty good at English, maybe she'd
know."
 

The problem with this is that Chiyo is better than "pretty good"; 
we're given to understand
that she either is or is close to fluent.  She knows perfectly well 
that she's much better
at English than Yomi.

$True, but if she doesn't know, Yomi is the next best choice. 

     "Mine did!" Chiyo replied brightly.  "Right after I took
that computer class!"
 

The obligatory line:  none of the older girls can ever go ANYWHERE, do 
ANYTHING,
or acquire ANYTHING without Chiyo-chan having gone, done, or acquired 
first.

$So true.  She's like a cheerful little Napolean.

     "No, I mean, what processor and speed?  Pentium four, 2.8? AMD 
3200 plus?" Chiyo clarified, looking up at Tomo.

     "It came with a CD full of cute animal pictures," Tomo
added smugly.

     "!" said Sakaki.
 

Heh.

$Another scene I had little difficulty imagining.

Yomi really ought to know by now that this wouldn't work...

$Tomo is Yomi's greatest weakness.  And singing.  And food.  And 
apparently self esteem.  But they're probably all Tomo's fault anyway.

     Tomo did a little happy dance.  "It means she's not a l33t
h4xx0r like me, and I wasted her like the n00b she is last night
in Cstrike!" she exclaimed, shortly before Yomi decked her.
 

Just so you know, not EVERY member of your readership knows enough of 
this
lingo to enjoy sections like this.  This stuff tends to just annoy me.

$That's the point, actually.  That's why Yomi hit her.  That and she 
beat her, but two birds with one stone and all that.

     "Touga, I need you to run an errand for me," the school
secretary said.
 

Touga shook out his long, flowing red hair and glared at the school 
secretary, making
the most of the visual impact of his immactulate white uniform.
"You deign to issue orders to the Student Council President?!"

$What?  Huh?

Seriously, your choice of a name here did take me aback momentarily.  
I'd try to
avoid using well-known anime names from other series for walk-on bit 
parts if you
can:  you can end up distracting readers when you don't want to, or 
making them
read things into your work you never intended.

$Right.  I almost never do cameos.

  Doing this as a conscious cameo is
one thing, but you don't seem to have been doing that.

$Heh, uh, no.

  My mind, however, insists
on trying to read this as a cameo, and just keeps tying itself into 
knots doing so.

Of course, it is a trap difficult to avoid if you've never seen the 
anime in question.

$That's true.  What anime is that?  You never said.  I picked the name 
like I always do, basically just choosing one at random from the credits 
of some anime or another.

         Chiyo blushed and turned hers over.
 

I'm inclined to agree that this seems out of character for 
Chiyo-chan.  She's more often
characterized as clueless than embarrassed in such situations.

$Heh, miss one sex reference and you're typecast forever.  But, true, 
this is before that summer vacation.  I shall bow gracefully under the 
pressure and change.

As for the other girls here, I find that I have no quibbles at all 
about Sakaki's or
Kaorin's reaction.  The other four (Yomi, Tomo, Osaka, and Kagura) are 
not reacting
quite the way I'd have them do if I were writing the story myself, but 
I find I can't
really articulate any justifications for them actually being OOC.

$Aww, I was proud of Osaka's reaction.

  The first time through,
as a reader, I just went with it; it's only this second time, as a 
critic, that I find myself
pausing and wondering.  Oh well, good enough, I guess.

$Heh, thanks.

     "I can't believe those boys were passing these out!" Yomi
says, scandalized, looking at her copy as they all walked down
the hall to their next class.
 

Lurker is right that the girls don't "walk down the hall to their next 
class" except for
PE, or similar topics like home-ec, but this point didn't really hit 
me over the head
the first time through.  I didn't really even register "to their next 
class", as it's not
really required to get your point across.  So you might just consider 
taking that
phrase out.

$Yeah, I'll fix it.

     "Umm, we think it's a teacher," he said helplessly.

     "I see.  Why?"
         "Umm, the stationary, ma'am."

     "Ah."  Minamo digested this in silence for a moment, then,
improbably, her eyebrow rose higher.  "You were looking at the
stationary?"
 

It strikes me that Nyamo would know Yukari well enough to at least 
suspect this
being the latter's posterior here, given the "teacher" clue.  She 
knows Yukari might
well wear the wrong day's panties, and she is highly likely to know 
that Yukari owns
panties like these if the latter has really had them for years.  
Yukari stays over at
Nyamo's place fairly often in the latter half of the series, and in 
the earlier half, Nyamo
goes over to Yukari's and ends up dragging her out of bed.

$Yeah, but I doubt Yukari would have allowed anyone, even her close 
friend who picks at her on occasion, see embarrassing underwear like 
that.  I also doubt Nyamo would pay any attention to Yukari's underpants 
if there was any way to avoid it.  Sides, it would have complicated 
things, possibly making Nyamo reluctant to turn it into the principal.

     "Who knew there was a teacher at this school as crazy as I
am?" Tomo said with a chuckle.

     "I did."

     "I did."

     "I did."

     "I did."
 

Heh.  Tomo's line here echoes where I thought her characterization 
just a bit off
earlier, too.  I thought Tomo might claim to the boys that a photocopy 
of her
posterior would be much cuter than the one they were looking at, but 
that none of
the boys would ever have a chance to see it.

$An angle I hadn't thought of.  I was thinking more from a perspective 
of Tomo being somewhat embarrassed to see boys acting like boys.  Sure 
she's crazy around the girls, but she might not be as comfortable with 
boys in some situations.  We almost NEVER see any males other than 
Kimura in the series, so I'm working from my head here.

     "Who?  No one could be as wild as I am!" Tomo insisted.

     "Yukari."

     "Yukari."

     "Yukari."

     "Yukari."

     "Yukari."

     Yukari, Sakaki thought.
 

While I didn't think the echoes themselves out of place, the count 
being different
between the first and second times did hit me.  Suggest you make the 
counts
the same.

$Will.

Sakaki was a quiet, yet comforting presence.  She'd make a great
teacher or social worker, but Chiyo had never figured out a good
way of telling her that.
 

Not sure if you're trying to say something about Chiyo-chan here, but if
so it escapes me.

$Just that Chiyo really likes Sakaki and feels comfortable around her.

  Sakaki actually wouldn't be very good at either of those
professions, I think; she's not talkative enough or easy enough to 
confide in
to be a good social worker:  how would she ever find out the nasty family
secrets that might necessitate intervention?

$Chiyo might not be thinking as much about the truly harsh realities.  
Her life has been mostly peaches and cream.

  While this would not be quite
such a handicap as a teacher, I still don't think she'd make a good 
one.  Her
own eventual choice, veterinarian, makes much more sense (provided, of 
course,
that she's willing to accept the consequences of handling cats!  ;)

$Heh, all in all I think I'll leave the college years to other people.  
Lots of possibilities when you're young.

Tomo had played for a while, but it just wasn't the same.  Now,
despite the wondrous things available to do on a computer, things
she had elaborated on in great detail to her parents, she was
bored.
 

Ain't it the truth!

Anyway, I find I mostly dwelled on characterization quibbles above, 
which gives
my overall feedback a negative tone which I don't really feel about 
the story as a
whole; I enjoyed your work very much, and hope you'll continue in this 
line.

$Nah, don't worry about the tone.  Thanks for the comments, and I do 
appreciate the time you took.  You did point out a lot of things I 
hadn't considered, and I'm glad you enjoyed the bits overall.  Next time 
I have some time off from work, I'll be writing more of these.  Got a 
few more little ones, and then a big one more like Osaka's Half Day or a 
day in the life of Chiyo-chan.  After that, we'll see.

Thanks!

-Nugar




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