(07-02-2021, 01:03 PM)STMPD Wrote:Yeah. I'm stuck. Could you tell?(01-20-2021, 07:58 AM)classicdrogn Wrote: So this hit the top of my reading queue, and it's good fun. Then I ran into this line:
“Starts with an ‘N’, rhymes with ‘congress’. I’ll say that much.”
Waaat? Unless it's supposed to "negress" which doesn't rhyme that well and is at most only an insult by tone and intent, I'm quite sure I have no idea what is supposed to be implied here. Nodoka later thinks it rhymes with "express" so still as good or as poor a match as I can come up with...
It was negress. I’m so sorry.
Anyway! Back after six months. I’ve got a good idea of how I want the rest of this initial story to play out, but not a whole lot of energy. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.
I've got, at best, only the roughest blocking of how these scenes are supposed to go out in my head. Ranma and Makoto go to various, I dunno, things? And then they go back to Peorth's penthouse, or something, I guess that isn't especially mandatory, where the Ranma Liberation Front attacks. Makoto gets super pissed that these Goth Loli Magical Girls are showing up on her turf. Cue a simultaneous fight scene, Mako-chan and Ranma versus the RLF while Urd tries to balance channeling magic to Ranma while fending off attacks by Mara. The situation resolves, Ranma gets his kiss, and then hours later it turns out Keiichi's been kidnapped. Cue jump into Arc 2: Crimes of the Mishima Group Against Good Taste. All very sparse, all very problematic.
Hrm. Okay, so let's say maybe the penthouse fight is Mara versus Urd, while Mako-Ranma and the RLF square off elsewhere. Ueno Park at sunset, or someplace where there's enough water that Ranma's curse can be revealed. (That's key to the dynamic - both characters have these massive boiling secrets that they both fail to hide from their partner. Too cutesy? Not sure.) Urd beats Mara by 'giving her the D, that is, for Demon', but it's revealed that Hild rigged things that way so that Ranma finds out the one thing Urd wants no mortal to ever know, hoping that Ranma will ask to annul the contract and Urd will go along with it in shame. That he is okay with her is unexpected, even for Loli Mom Satan.
I need some meat between where I am now, and that sunset scene, though. Il Duce's is a gelato place themed after Mussolini, it's quite a funny little joke in my opinion, but the non-joke is that Ranma accidentally goes on autopilot and orders the kind of sundae he would only order as a girl. And he sure as shit isn't going to show this fairly cute but also presumably somewhat normal girl his dumbass curse, so he has to bluff his way out of that... but then what? Rule of three, and all that. Also the date needs to go well, or go badly but have a turnaround in the final act that makes Mako-chan decide she genuinely likes him enough to kiss him, not out of pity but out of nascent affectation. How to make these two open up to each other and find good things in each other? Shit, what even is there that's endearing about Ranma when he's in full-on macho-man mode?
The idea of having Ryoga pop in as an unintentional catalyst crossed my mind but I can't think of how to make that work, either. I need help.