Identity 5.5 - "Trades for Traitors"

The finale to chapter five on Fanfiction.net

As I wrote in the notes to the act, chapter six is still not yet written really at all, and as such, I feel it would be imprudent to promise a date of the next act's release. I've found outlining it somewhat difficult, and I've also been extremely busy with school this year, as I'm now a first-year grad student with a much different workload. Even so, I want to keep writing this story. It's just going to take some time.

Anyway, commentary below.

This was a tough act to write; I struggled with a lot of the mechanics and aspects of it. I must've gone through the beginning sequence three or four times trying to figure out whether I wanted to go with Ranma's perspective (which I ended up doing) or start with Kohl's instead. After all, Kohl would be rightly enraged to hear that everything they've done so far is based on a lie. In the end, however, I knew I couldn't present both. Trying to would just end up a mess. I started with Ranma, and later on, I worked in some of Kohl's reaction.

Tilaka's role in this story really has become quite important. She--and I'll call her she, as she sees herself that way, just as Ranma sees himself a man--she's not a selfless person. Far from it, for what the Sieve does is seek out the emotions of others and try to take them for herself. But Tilaka doesn't mind or wouldn't mind going back to being Sieve again because she sees it as necessary or required. It's what she's done for a good chunk of her life. What she does want aside from that, however, is pretty simple: to find what sated her and feel that again. And I said before it's tough to give her a lot to do in that respect; she really just hangs around Kohl, but at the least she can stop Ranma. She can take the agony he's felt before and make it ten times worse. In that way, Tilaka's unique: she affects the minds of others, where Kohl and the Guard attack with elemental force.

It's probably apparent that the installment's a bit awkward. Kohl knows Ranma was lying to them, but he makes the decision to attack the Phoenix anyway. I tried to make clear how much he refused to consider having Tilaka reassert her duties as the Sieve, that that issue above all else has clouded his mind. He doesn't consider the consequences to his men. All this is really wearing on Kohl's mind, and it costs him. It will cost him. He's not perfect or implacable.

You might be wondering, after reading this installment, why Keema goes to visit Akane at all. I didn't want to get into too much detail there--it wouldn't have made sense to have Keema explain herself like that--but if you consider the differences between Keema and Akane, I think the idea becomes clear. Akane is almost like Keema's opposite. Keema is ruthless. She mind-controlled Shampoo to get the map to Jusenkyo. She captured all the Amazons and subjected them to more mind control. Akane, quite frankly, doesn't have it in her to do those things, but she does have the courage to admit it, and that impresses Keema, I think. Akane, in her own way, is a very genuine person, and when she makes the point to Keema that maybe Keema shouldn't trust the Amazons but neither should she trust the Sorcerers, Keema takes it to heart. It's logical. It's correct. But most importantly, it comes from Akane, who largely tells things how she sees them. Sometimes her view can be really distorted, especially when it comes to Ranma, but here, it's not, and I think Keema knows that. I think she knows well enough that there's no reason not to test the Sorcerers, and she has the right curse to do it.

Having Keema take Akane's form in the chain gang and find the truth from Kohl was always the end goal of this chapter, and I'm reasonably happy with that scene. There were some things I backed off of--I played around for a while with Keema making the argument that Saffron can't be Sieve because he died (and was reborn, but slight difference), which is certainly what Ranma thought, but to this point, no one else has thought of it or pointed it out. I thought that point would just needlessly complicate things when, in the long run, it may not matter at all. While this would've punctuated Kohl's confusion and despair, it just was too hard to do well. I've backed off that point before, and to bring it back here would've been very, very tough to pull off. It's just not necessary, either.

Anyway, I think that'll do for now. Like I said, I'm still writing this story; it's just going to take some time to get it done. I thank everyone for their patience and hope to see you soon.

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The myriad ways in which life is (and isn't) a story

Let me take a break from the life of a physics grad student, from seven homework assignments and a test to take over nine days (this is day 1, by the by). Let's instead, for the moment, talk about a guy named Eric Show.

You see, aside from writing and World of Warcraft and the physics world, one of the things I like to follow is baseball. And the Braves are just a touch out of first place, so that's good, but I happened upon this article about Eric Show, a name I'd never known before and that I doubt most casual baseball fans like myself know, either. In fact, it may be the only reason people know his name on a national level is because of the hit he gave up to Pete Rose.

Pete Rose is a name more people know. Most people only know that he was the Cincinnati Red and that he bet on baseball. Maybe you know he got banned from baseball for doing so and, in turn, might never be inducted to the Hall of Fame, an honor he'd be otherwise more than deserving of. He was that good.

And it was on September 11, 1985 that Rose was celebrated once again in the annals of baseball history. It was a game against San Diego, and he scored his 4,192nd hit, breaking (what was thought, at the time) Ty Cobb's record for hits by a major leaguer (Cobb actually had 4,181). And Rose hit that ball off of Padre pitcher Eric Show.

The story of Eric Show, which you can read if you like, is one of childhood abuse, of a father living vicariously through his son and making a man who never quite knew what he wanted or how he should be. It's a story about drug abuse and guitars and the phases of the moon.

But is it a story at all? You might say of course it is, but I'd differ in that respect. Writers craft stories, and the odd thing about stories is that everything in them is deliberate on some level. It's put there by the mind of a person, and every detail, no matter how insignificant, has some intended meaning. It can be trivial ("I thought of it on a whim") or it can be deep and insightful.

Does life work that way, too? Perhaps not. The elements don't always add up and come together. Some things just are the way they are. If you were a writer, telling the story of Eric Show, what would your message be? The dangers of a father trying to make his dreams come true through his children? The horrors of drugs and how they affect the mind? Both of these? Something else?

It's tempting to say that we make our own stories as people, and that's what separates us from characters, but I suppose that's the fundamental question: how much do you think Eric Show made his own story? How much of it was made for him? Was he a character, or an author of his own tale? Or is it better to say that he, and all of us, was a little of both?

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Identity 5.4 - "Scars"

The long-awaited (and just...long) fourth act of "Ashes" on Fanfiction.net

Identity now has a thread the Fanfiction Forum, where drafts of new installments will be posted some days ahead of the final release.

I know I'm late, but commentary below.

If I had to encapsulate this act into a nutshell, it'd be this: that we all want something, that we have motivations, and to achieve our goals, it's often times a struggle within ourselves to get them. Sometimes, we struggle against the memories that haunt us, as Cologne does. For others, like Mousse, it's a struggle to seek something when we never have known what it feels like to taste its nearness. For Akane, it's the struggle to do penance while not losing sight of yourself.

I struggled mightily to get this chapter off the ground, not really knowing where to start. I'd wanted the group to jump into the fight with the Phoenix, but that felt like the pacing was off. There was no buildup, just action, and I think the secret to good action is good buildup. I don't know when along the drafting process I came up with the idea of Cologne going to see the Sorcerer prisoner, but I'm glad I did. It gives insight into Cologne's mind, and it sets up things to come. It wasn't enough to say that the Phoenix would be angry that Ranma set the Sorcerers against them. You had to see it in real time to believe it, just as Cologne had to see it to believe it herself. I think it makes the driving conflict of the act that much more believable, even if it doesn't make it any more logical.

Truth be told, it was and is a little sticky. That's how it is when you know you want conflict to be there, but you have to logic it out.

I really didn't know what to call this act until I got to the passage about Akane and scars. That really named it for me (even though I'm afraid I'm abusing title dropping a bit much), and as said in the chapter, the scars we carry on the inside matter as much, if not more, than the ones we bear on our skin. In the context of Akane, I think it can be reasonable to say Akane from the manga isn't that sympathetic a person. She can be genuinely nice, but she can also lash out. She didn't seem to want to change; at most, she seemed afraid of change. I do think she mellowed out some over the course of the series, but like all the other characters, she never really sought to confront those demons.

In a lot of ways, then, I've forced her to do so. Her behavior in chapter one isn't all her fault, but it is ultimately her responsibility, and she takes that to heart. She gains the desire to change. In a real sense, I feel I've made her more sympathetic, but not because I transformed her character overnight. She's flawed and imperfect like the rest of us still; the struggle she faces makes her more like us, more real.

It may be a little strange that, in this chapter, there's much more focus on Akane than there had been earlier, where the spotlight was more equally shared with Ukyo and Shampoo. In truth, their stories kind of stopped with the end of chapter four. Stopped isn't the right word; more like "went dormant." Ukyo and Shampoo have never seriously questioned that they love Ranma and want to fight for him. Akane, on the other hand, is asking if she's deserving. I could've gone into Shampoo's head during the passage with Ryoga, but I felt that, in all honesty, Shampoo isn't going to hesitate to do what needs to be done for Ranma. Her nature is that when she doesn't get what she wants, she pushes harder for it. That can't go on forever, of course, but I don't think what Cologne asks her to do here gives her even a moment's pause. Ukyo, not being in the loop, faces no real struggle, either, except against the Sorcerer. In short, their internal struggles here were uninteresting or nonexistent. That's not to say they're unimportant to the plot; they're not. What they go through here will shape them and set up the next arc where Ukyo and Shampoo return to the stage as major players.

I will admit, though, that it'd be appealing if they had more to do right now.

It's interesting to me how this chapter grew and took form. I didn't plan it to be nearly this long (to date, it's the longest single act of Identity, and even longer with the modified final scene(s)), and structurally, it seems simple. Cologne visits the Sorcerer. She goes to see Akane. Ryoga and Shampoo kill a Sorcerer. Mousse kills another. Keema finds out something's up. Cologne kills the last Sorcerer. Keema captures the Amazons, and we see Akane failed to kill a witness. The end. But it's all about pacing, and, well, maybe so much time spent on pacing slows it down. I'm not sure. It feels right to me, but that's...not exactly good enough to know for sure it's right.

I've spoken before about humor, and I tried to make sure it was still present in a balanced mix here. Keema's breasts are in Korma's line of sight. Ryoga...has a terrible idea about how to ambush a Sorcerer. Mousse is surprisingly a better fighter as a duck. I've been told I have an odd sense of humor. I know I tend to go for the embarrassing or the ridiculous. I'm not much for writing slapstick (but, obviously, reading it in the manga was great). I've thought maybe I should write comedy sometime, just to see how it feels, but I don't know that would really interest me.

As I said at the top, I now have a thread about Identity on the Fanfiction Forum, where I'd posted a draft of this act and intend to keep doing so while updating the story. I didn't get a lot of feedback (not surprising; it's not like I just started the story and someone could follow), but the process of doing so motivated me to rewrite the final confrontation of the chapter, which if you check on there, was very different to begin with. In short, it was a much simpler sort of "Akane stops Cologne from killing the last scout, and Keema confronts them right there" type of thing. It was...dramatic, but it also felt cliched to me, an overly blunt show of self-righteousness that didn't really put any emphasis on internal struggle. Hence, I rewrote it, and I gave Akane the personal choice--should she kill to save Ranma? Can she bring herself to do it? I think the new ending as written is much better in the sense that, if only for a moment, you think she might really have done it. Maybe not for very long, but I'd hoped to write it that way. I think it's totally in character that she doesn't, though.

Anyway, as long as this act was, as much more there could be to say, I think I'll stop here. I'm already late with this commentary, and on the whole, I think the act really speaks for itself. Keema is no friend to the Amazons now. We'll have to see how she reacts in the final act.

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Identity 05 drafted

I wrapped up "Ashes" last night, about two months and two weeks since the end of "Monsters and Demons." That's a little slower than the pace I'd set for the last few chapters, but on the whole, not so bad. I spent two weeks or so writing chapter three of "Before and After," so it's still a decent clip, and if I hadn't done that, I'd have finished this chapter two weeks ago and not had to push some things back. I don't regret doing that, though--at the time, I was really stumped and needed a change of writing scenery.

In other news, the draft of act four, "Scars," is on the Fanfiction Forum, where if you like, you can give some feedback on the chapter before I revise it for the final posting. I've been looking for a more collaborative writing environment for a while, and TFF has a reasonably populated Ranma section, so we'll see how that works.

Of course, no rest for the weary--the next chapter of Identity, "The Battle of Phoenix Mountain," demands to be written, and at the pace I've been writing, I spose I expect book one to be finished sometime in January. Then I'll have to take a break and do some restructuring of book two. So that's the plan. See everybody Friday for "Scars."

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Translation and connotation

For those of us who write fanfiction based on anime and manga, there's a continual task of deciding how to convert Japanese words and concepts into English, even if we're not dealing with a direct source. I use the word converting here because, while not all of us can read Japanese or make sense of it (I know I can't), the concepts still exist and, if they're foreign enough to the culture we come from, they demand to be presented in a fashion that makes sense.

The history of dubs and translations (whether official or otherwise) has been one of increasing tolerance and presentation of Japanese concepts as they are, rather than trying to force them to fit more familiar Western constructs. More and more these days, manga is sold in the original right-to-left format, honorifics are largely left intact, and so on. In part, I think as anime and manga have become more mainstream (I won't say that they are mainstream, but I think there's a much greater cultural awareness of them than in previous decades), publishers and distributors have been more willing to leave these subtle details--these aspects of Japanese culture--intact. I've said before that writing a piece of fiction means that anything you do, any choice you make, has a statistical chance to turn people off and walk away. I think the same applies to that market (or at least, the belief that it does holds), and it's only when publishers could reasonably think most customers won't be deterred would they do it. It's not about art--at least, not all the way. Money matters, and just like natural selection leaves only the organisms and parasites fit enough to survive, the marketplace leaves only those companies and organizations that are fit enough to sustain their operations, to profit.

Often, translations are caught between capturing the literal sense of what is said and the sense of it instead. Puns are especially difficult--it not almost always impossible--to translate and still carry the humor they would've had in the original language. The same goes for aphorisms and other sayings. Translators have approached this problem in different ways, and you might even say the best approach still depends on audience and context. Fans are more likely to know some of the cultural tidbits that might be present in anime and manga and thus we can handle them being presented intact, but not everyone is like that, hence the effectiveness of the Woolseyism in some contexts.

It's the sense of things, the connotations of words, that I want to focus on more, though. An author must understand how the connotations of words--the ideas and feelings a word conveys aside from what it literally means--affect the overall depiction of what's being portrayed. It means different things to call someone a bold explorer versus a brash adventurer. The latter brings about images of rash, reckless behavior while the former only speaks of courage in the face of adversity. In this way, writing is like painting, and the color and tone of the words we use is like subtle shades of pigment on a canvass. It can change the feel of a work from positive and exuberant to dark and melancholy. It can make a character look like a brave hero or a foolhardy meddler.

This all goes double for dialogue, where you not only have to worry about the connotations of words but sentence structure and vocabulary. That is, what is a character likely to know? How do they speak? Do they call the call the car that just passed by a convertible or a corvette? Do they call it red or crimson? Is the storm coming in making it windy or blustery? The distinction between plain words and fancy words is usually enough to distinguish someone of "education" or high upbringing or what-have-you. Even if you can't translate the Japanese way of honorifics or polite verb conjugations, you can have someone speak formally even in English dialogue and get the idea across. For the Ranma fans out there, Kodachi is a good example. She's a little nuts, and someone like Ranma might have no qualms saying so to her face. How would she respond? "I'm not 'nuts'! I've been to eight doctors, and they've all told me I'm fine!" Or more like, "I assure you I'm perfectly healthy. Several physicians have assured me that my faculties are sharp and intact." Even the exclamation points make a difference.

Now, what motivated this post was just that: the writing of dialogue and how it reflects on the person saying it. In particular, the differences between commercial translations of a source and scanlations, which can of course be of varying quality (both of them). For the moment, I'll confine the discussion to Mahou Sensei Negima, volume 4, chapter 33.

To begin, page 6, panel 1 (top right):

Left: Del Rey version; Right: version currently on Mangafox. I apologize for the crappy scan of the Del Rey version. Clearly the art of scanning manga isn't done by placing the book on an HP scanner and hoping the spine doesn't get in the way, but I digress. This is a case where the intended meaning that comes across is virtually identical, but the construction of the sentence, in my mind, gives the two versions subtly different flavor. In my mind, the Del Rey version comes off more boldly yet also more negative--as if Miyazaki, the character in the panel, expects to be rejected. The scanlation here seems more neutral, but already it seems like a valid question: is this a girl who has a negative conception of herself, or is she merely shy and deferential?

Admittedly, I think the proper interpretation is a little of both, and the different versions simply emphasize it differently. Even so, I think the slight discrepancy in characterization is important. I think what we have next is a much more clear-cut case:

Page 14, panels 5 and 6 - Characters shown: Miyazaki (far right), Kagurazaka (next to her), Sakurazaki (left and leftmost panel)

Scanlation:

Del Rey:

Without pulling any punches, the discrepancy here really bothers me. This is, as I described above, the big difference between formal and informal speech, between an ordinary 15-year-old girl and the very aloof, very stiff character that Sakurazaki is. She's stoic. She's a little strange (well, maybe not so strange if you bring out Negima standards, but she's surely not meant to be normal). Is it a big deal to have her say "no biggie" in response to something? Is it that much worse than "it's ok" or common variations of that? Maybe not. Maybe it doesn't matter that she refers to Springfield as a kid rather than a child, but like I've said, this stuff adds up. And perhaps this was done intentionally, to make these people sound more colloquial and, thus, make them feel more familiar. That's a possibility. But I also think that people have a much greater tolerance for unfamiliar cultures in literature and art than we give them credit. What about Lord of the Rings is immediately familiar to the modern reader? Don't we still accept the vast and myriad ways of the people of Middle-Earth regardless?

It's hard, in this context, to show thoroughly all the things I might nitpick between these two translations, but this is something that broadly applies to fiction--fan-made or original, translated or native English. The words we use matter, and choosing the right word for the person, for the situation, gives an author a great chance to convey complexity and feel without having to outright tell the reader.

And really...

There's just this little nagging part of me that says, "This girl's carrying a sword--why is she even using the word ditching?" Yes, even if it does mirror what Kagurazaka says. You might say it just bugs me.

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