Identity 6.8 - "The Beast within the Human Heart"

The final act of chapter six on FFN.

It's posted. And it's done. To conclude this chapter is very exciting for me, but on to the next.

Commentary below.

So here we are. The end, at last, of the battle for Phoenix Mountain. It is truly the culmination of the five chapters to come before it. Had Saffron been the Sieve all along, it would've truly seemed pointless either way. If Saffron's taken, so be it. Maybe the Amazons keep pushing, but Ranma doesn't really want to have anything to do with it, despite his moments of disgust with the Sorcerers. Maybe he'd be guilted into helping get him back, but I don't know. It makes for an awkward story, I think, and maybe that's come through. If Saffron had truly been the Sieve, I think that feeling would've crystallized in every reader's mind.

But this is a story about Ranma, and it is only fitting that Ranma be the Sieve. Indeed, this has been the plan of mine since I put pen to paper in the summer of 2009. Always, it was Ranma's power that was important, and the bit with Saffron was merely an extended distraction.

Admittedly, much has changed with this story since I conceived it. I didn't think it would be nearly this long. I thought the whole trilogy would be done by now! But I've long since come to terms with the length of the story. I like the episodic nature of positing an installment on a weekly basis. It feels, more or less, the way that manga is published, and it's made me want to help revive the serial novel as an art form. In the Western world, we have comics and we have imported manga. We have television and radio shows. We have magazines, but storytelling in prose as a periodic art form seems underutilized, at least to me.

With a story as long in writing as this one, some things definitely change as you write, and this scene---the meeting between Ranma and Akane---definitely had to fit the boundary conditions, as we physicists say. I'd long imagined this scene as Akane happening across Ranma as he's in battle against Sorcerers, calling out to him as he pushes them back, a brief distraction that he recovers from to finish them off, and she appears beside him when he's not looking for a bit of a surprise. But beyond that, the scene is much the way I originally envisioned it. The only major change is, possibly, the source of Akane's bleeding. I thought she would bleed cleanly from her forehead, but the human body doesn't work that way. Either Ranma would notice it sooner, or it wouldn't bleed at all.

I'd thought long and hard about how to go about the revelation of Saffron not being Sieve, how much detail was needed and whether it would be plausible that everyone missed it. Does it make sense that Tilaka can sense it, now that he's so close? I don't know. Maybe.

But technical issues aside, I'm very happy with the confrontation scene. It is really gratifying to write a scene like that one, where there's a lot going on but it all flows. When I write scenes with break, break, break one after another, it feels choppy, and I'm very wary of choppy, even when it seems like the only way. This battle between Ranma and Wuya seems to go very smoothly, and I'm happy for that. It's hard to balance introspection versus action, and Tilaka and Wuya give me a really easy outlet to look at both. I dare say I'm as proud of the introspective bits in that scene as the flow of conflict.

But one thing that was important to me was to manage Akane well, to have her be important, and just as Akane saves Ranma for a time, her presence costs him too. Bear in mind, without her, Ranma takes the poisoned knife once again (folks should be getting tired of that by now; I know I was) and we're done with it. With her, he has a good chance of succeeding, but it does still cost him. This, I thought, was the only good balance to be struck.

Beyond all that, I'm glad to have this chapter finished. Hopefully, I can get cracking on the next and get that done in short order (hopefully), and wrap up this first book of the trilogy.

Edit: more comments, since I can't seem to get everything I want to say to come out in a timely manner. All along, to keep suspicion off Ranma being the Sieve, I've tried to avoid things that would cast strong doubt on the conventional wisdom. The Sorcerers thought Saffron was Sieve, and Ranma believed them. He followed that conclusion himself when he met Tilaka in the tower back in chapter two, but none of them knew. And you go back, look at what Kohl thought he felt in chapter three, on the mountain, where he could contact Sindoor so easily because he was in the same place where Akane woke up...well, there you are. I hoped to plant seeds, but only seeds. It actually made for quite the extended plot point. Not even Keema questions the notion that Saffron could be Sieve, and that was a point I had to have Tilaka address with his remark about how Saffron still could be, despite being a child. I didn't even want to explore whether a baby could or couldn't be Sieve and bring up that shadow of doubt, yet I have to admit, it would've been logical for Keema to bring it up and try to get the Sorcerers off her back. Or maybe she wouldn't risk telling them Saffron was defeated and killed, lest that embolden them. Who can say.

I might have more comments later, as reviews come in.

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Identity 6.7 - "Flames Extinguished"

The seventh act of chapter six on FFN

Commentary below.

I can't quite remember when I split this act into two. It must've been quite a while ago, because I have separate boards for part seven and part eight, but I'm pretty sure, originally, that I'd intended to have Akane meet Ranma and go from there all in the same act. Things didn't turn out that way, perhaps because I'd wanted to keep the acts a more manageable length. If you put parts seven and eight together, you get something on the order of 10k like the last part of "Monsters and Demons," which though I enjoyed, I didn't want to do again.

So we spend a lot of time with Akane and Ryoga here; I dare say too much time, in the sense that I go with them and then flicker off them then come back a total of three times, so in the back of my mind, I feel like this act isn't very fluid. This may be because they have no clear means of accomplishing their goal. They just have to wander and look and find ways to survive, and while their interactions with Masala and Keema are interesting, what happens in-between kind of isn't. This is something I did want to do better, but even now, I'm at a loss for how.

Interestingly, what Keema tells Akane and Ryoga here is a bit different from what I remembered, and I'm glad for that. She's already explained herself to Ranma. What Akane wants to know from her is subtly different. I see Keema as wanting to give Akane and the others the ultimate finger, and she's accomplished it. It is, in some respects, interesting to see that Keema gets another free pass, however much it's worth; she's still stuck in a block of ice, and if you didn't see or hear from her again, you'd think basically she must've died. Before I started outlining chapter seven, I'd thought I wouldn't revisit Keema to any significant detail. Maybe she would live and forbid all outsiders from walking into Saffron's kingdom. Maybe she'd die, and her death would set off much the same result. But keep an eye on Keema; she'll be back for "The Summit of Potsdam," the second act of chapter seven.

I felt the passage with Ranma was really critical for maintaining a good pace in this installment and to help break up the bits that flicker back to Akane and Ryoga. Ranma's mentality is subtly flawed, of course. He puts the blame on the Sorcerers and Phoenix for making him kill them, yet he actively seeks them out. This is exactly the sort of pathological thinking I enjoy writing. It's how I believe people justify their actions to themselves. And to an outside view, it clearly doesn't make sense, yet in the heat of the moment, who really takes the time to think so critically?

I should get back to Akane and Ryoga of course, for this act had to pick up on the thread I left behind in "Shadow of Madder." It's a good moment for Akane to get a much better perspective on Ryoga. One might realize, from the way I've written things, that I'm more partial to the idea of mutual understanding, and that's what Akane reaches with Ryoga here, however much or little they can say with Sorcerers bearing down on them. There is a time for dramatic declarations, of course, but it didn't feel right here. Not to me.

I do go to the effort of pointing out how Akane's slowly lost all her friends and is left alone. Is it logical for Ryoga to try to draw the Sorcerers away from her? I wonder about this myself. Truthfully, I could see no other way to get Akane alone, and as an author, while I try to stay within the realm of logic for how actions play out, I also know what I want to happen, and that can make it difficult to objectively judge. It suffices to say that, while I can admit having conspired to get Akane alone at this juncture, and while one can justify the circumstances that have driven it as plausible or conceivable by chance, it doesn't sit wholly well with me. I prefer circumstances to be dictated by a character's actions, by deliberate attempts to make things play in one's favor. What gets Akane alone here isn't that. So I see it as a possible weakness, though I'm uncertain.

Something you might notice: Masala refers to Ranma as a devil, and in the last lines of the act, Ranma is referred to by "it" rather than "he." I wanted to emphasize as much that Akane doesn't recognize what she's seeing and that Ranma comes off almost demonic in savagery.

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Identity 07 outlined

The six acts of "The March upon the Sorcerer's Den" are outlined, and I'll start writing up full acts in the next few days. Last time, I had the benefit of winter break and a break from WoW to write parts 3-8 of last chapter in what I'd consider record time. For this, I'm more realistic, and I'd be happy to finish an act each week (though faster is, of course, preferred). After chapter seven concludes the first book of Identity, I'm hoping to return to "Before and After" for a stint. I may even draft a bit of The Color Red, but that's more uncertain.

"Battle" part 7 should be up midnight tomorrow night, on schedule.

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Thoughts on Brian Randall's "Later"

This is, of course, not typical for me. I don't actually read that many stories. In turn, sometimes I don't feel that I should expect others to do the same for me. Nor do I often post anymore outside of commentary for my stories. But today, I have something to figure out: what I think about "Later", a Haruhi story by Brian Randall.

I happened upon it quite innocuously. I keep a few bookmarks at the top of my browswer to FFN pages because Google Reader doesn't seem to handle the RSS feed very well. I've known of Randall for some time as an author that spans a few fandoms. Indeed, Kyon: Big Damn Hero has achieved a certain level of memetic popularity that I could only hope to achieve. And probably won't. But that's neither here nor there. My taste for reading is odd, I suppose. The parodies and the "crack" don't really appeal to me, but this story caught my eye, probably because it promised something a bit more...sedate.

"Later" catches the SOS Brigade many years later. Kyon is a gardener for the Tsuruya estate. Asahina has been missing ever since university entrance exams, presumably having returned to her own time. And after a long separation, Haruhi has at last found Kyon again--the reason for their separate paths not immediately obvious nor revealed fully for a few installments. That's what Randall is good at, I think: building a backstory and revealing it as the story allows, not all at once as can be tempting to do. It's a technique worth learning from. In terms of world-building, "Later" makes the reality of this time period, many years after the SOS Brigade have left their teenage lives behind, truly concrete. And the good technique of slow revelation means that the reader has ample time to develop theories. I've had a few, most of which seem to have been shot down, but that's engaging. That's good, and I give Randall a good deal of credit for it.

But there are a few things that bother me. The writing is mechanically good, though I've thought ellipses might be overused in places (just as I think I may overuse dashes). Technically, for all the detail that is preserved and presented well, I do notice from time small errors in address between persons. Even allowing for how much time has passed, I don't think Haruhi ever called Nagato Yuki-chan. It's invariably just Yuki. That said, the honorifics and forms of address should naturally change based on who else is present and the situation, and Randall usually handles that well.

But what troubles me most, from a reader's perspective, is the lack of a clear driving force. Perhaps what I've found is something that's a bit...too sedate. Or maybe, from this side of the curtain, it's just difficult for me to see what's clear in the author's mind, the direction the story will go. I admit, the latest installment (FFN chapter 6), drops a rather large bombshell, but more often with this story I feel like I'm wondering "now what" instead of "what happens next". My line of thinking is that stories are built on conflict--it need not be violent conflict, but there should be a goal, something someone wants to achieve. Here, Kyon is slowly adapting to Haruhi's reentrance to his life, but as always with Kyon, he can be a bit slow and deliberate, mulling over issues to no satisfaction.

That's not to say the POV character should be the one instigating conflict or driving the story. Far from it, it's probably Haruhi who's set this whole story along its merry way, but for the instigator, she's only been present roughly half the time. Her angle on achieving her ends isn't all that clear either.

But, perhaps it is sufficient, all the same. Nonetheless, I get the feeling the power of future installments of this story will lie as much with revelation about the past as it will with bold steps to the future. And Randall has probably already done his job as a writer when he has a reader, like me, interested in delving further into his story, whatever the reason, whatever the drive.

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Identity 6.6 - "The Descent into Madness"

Chapter six, act six on FFN

Commentary below.

This, you might say, is the act of subtle tweaks. I did a fair bit of restructuring and reordering around the events of this installment, trying to find the right sequence of events to be effective.

Originally, I wanted to lead with Ranma squaring off against Cologne, Shampoo, and Mousse. This isn't a big, drawn out battle. It's something Ranma wants to get under wraps and fast because he knows what's going on up the mountain. Admittedly, Cologne doesn't get to be as impressive as she probably should be, and she harangues Ranma for a bit (a good way to work in a Matrix reference, though). But Cologne, even under Keema's mind control, isn't stupid, and to give up the advantages of having Shampoo and Mousse be involved is significant.

I settled on Ranma letting Cologne finish off the platform and send it crumbling to the ground. Ranma, for his part, can be selfless and can accept that risk if he thinks he can overcome it. He thinks he can fly free and stay under control long enough to get away, and he does.

I said I'd wanted to lead with that passage, ultimately deciding against it, for it felt clunky to have Ranma get to the top of the mountain with Akane and Ryoga gone and have to have, say, Konatsu explain what transpired. A little better in the sense that it allows one to imagine what destruction occurred after Tilaka's bold pronouncement, but having one character tell another over a long passage is something that has to be done carefully, and in the end, I felt I couldn't do that with Konatsu, who to this point has been more comic relief (what little there is) and doesn't have the emotional investment.

So the torture of Tilaka's spell is what we start with, and one may wonder, why should Tilaka and Kohl show them mercy? Is it in the hope that they'll turn these people against the Amazons? Is it simple pity? Something in between? I do think Kohl has a soft spot for Akane, a touch of admiration and respect, but that doesn't go so far as to stop him from striking when she makes a move against Tilaka. What answer one chooses here is, I think, a matter of taste. I do think there are reasons, if only to refrain from killing those who are already crippled and beaten. But I know there will be some who say these Sorcerers should be ruthless and that Akane and the others have just gotten a free pass. Maybe they have.

I mentioned before that I felt I couldn't cut the passage regarding the aviary, and this is partly why. Yeah, Ranma could go into the mountain, discover the egg storeroom destroyed, and have a similar reaction, but this entire space, a huge section of mountain, filled with ice--that's big. That's cataclysmic. It's not just that the eggs being kept are gone. The birds are dead. There won't be anymore. It crystallizes the feeling of loss.

So at last we have Keema, and with her passage I wanted to emphasize the profound complex of her mindset. A bit of what she says here to Ranma about why she did what she did she'll reiterate later, in part 7 (she's not dead after all--not yet), but I wanted this part here because Ranma would demand answers, and Keema, being Keema, would have little to lose by explaining herself. When caught on her scheme, she makes her anger well-known. And I thought Ranma leaving her alive was really the right call on several levels--it helps him draw the line between taking vengeance and doing right by his friends, but that doesn't mean it's not vindictive.

This act and the next couple to follow are a bit shorter than the last few. Not by a lot, but I felt these were the natural spots to break in the action and keep from, say, having a massive finale like with "Journey" or the the fourth part of "Ashes." That's part of why this chapter is in eight parts, but I think they all stand reasonably well on their own, in the sense of providing closure to some elements while introducing the conflict or premise for the next part. Ryoga and Akane are still missing in the mountain. The Sorcerers are making their move to Saffron. And Ranma? What will he do but journey through the tunnels, seeing who might piss him off along the way?

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