Identity 03 - Journey to Jusenkyo (Prelude)

The prelude to "Journey to Jusenkyo" on Fanfiction.net.

I'm relieved to finally have this chapter out, and I'm confident in this new weekly process (if I can maintain pace, that is). Over the coming weeks, I'm hopeful this will give me more time to review what I've written and make changes to awkward phrasing and other issues (that is, allowing me to forget what I've written). I did an initial pass over the whole of chapter 3 to make sure plot and stuff was square, but I think these second passes will be very useful in their own right.

Just to be clear: all of chapter 3, all six acts and prelude, are basically finished and will be posted on schedule. What remains to be seen is whether I can finish chapter 4 in its entirety (which, ideally, I'd prefer) before I reach the posting deadline after that. But I will try. That's all I can do is try.

Notes on the prelude to this chapter below.

What I call preludes to each chapter are short, typically. I usually just called them teasers before I felt I needed a serious name if I meant to demarcate them in separate act-based FFN chapters. I seriously considered merging them with the first act of each chapter, actually, because on a functional basis, they mostly behave that way. If you look at chapters one and two, the preludes could be merged with little loss. In the end, though, I chose to post them separately for a couple reasons. One, I wanted the extra week it would give me, updating on a weekly schedule. As terrible as that sounds, I have hoped that setting that rule and maintaining it would be enough, even if that week is padding to some extent.

Because preludes are short, I probably won't have much to say about them in the future, but this prelude is kind of important. Originally, I conceived of this scene in the context of "In the Cold Rain." It would've begun the second act, "Akane," and punctuated Akane's sense of loss in seeing Ranma gone, but more and more, at that time, I couldn't write it well or make it work. The wedding scene is much more powerful in its place (and appropriate, even though I'd wanted to do flash forwards, not flashbacks, in that chapter). And so, I recycled the scene for this chapter. Starting with the Tendo family eating the cake made things much simpler than trying to show Akane baking it, and I'm very happy with how the scene takes Akane to Ranma's room. It will prove a good lead-in to act one on the whole.