The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby frice2000 » Sat Nov 19, 2011 1:05 am

and yet it was all useless to help the one person who had

I'd bring up the possible love bit here. Makes it more powerful, but it's already pretty strong in that way too just another added spice. Something physical she does to the body before she moves on, like closing his eyes or something might add to it too.

This is the way I've chosen to live.

Define way. Say human maybe? Make it about her growing humanity or growing mortality and morality? Just leave that part less up to question make us feel her psyche in that fashion.

Very nice additions. Definitely adds to the piece. Do wish maybe you put one in after the reset too though.
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby Cheb » Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:42 am

"Ryouga!" The scream tore itself from her throat

A nice patch for that weak plot area. Makes the story so much more more complete.
The second piece is even more profound.



After recovering from food poisoning and sleep deprivation, I ran your story again in my head ant here is what I think:

The SM line of events going exactly as it did in canon feels demeaning to the sacrifice made by the the martial artists army. Not that, but ridiculous. Didn't wounding Beryl change anything?

I propose making some change that would alter SM's behavior|attitude so that a reader would start doubting everything would end even remotely close to the canon. Bonus points if that change would imply that the reset will not happen thus additionally scaring readers like me.

An example: Beryl is weakened, so her crystal fails to kill Endymion leaving him wounded but stable. SM goes into the final battle troubled with guilt before her fallen friends who hadn't have a chance to know love -- while her loved one is pretty much alive. Thus her resolve has a crack in it, big enough to make your readers start worrying and gnawing at their nails.

Also, in your story the reset wouldn't happen without Ranma... But you failed to show it, to build a base for it. What's the big deal? Everything up to that point went like in the canon anyway. The scenes with Queen Serenity's ghost do nothing to reinforce this point. They are good and expanding but pull perpendicularly.

I believe in the canon SM made her wish when she was dead. Not dying, but already dead, departing this world. GInzuisho was later shown as a metaphysical object interacting with ghosts with the same ease as it does with living persons.
This is the reason why your scenes with ghost of Serenity failed to convince me. Also I was under the impression that *everything* inside that pink fireball was vaporized, so the scene of SM falling down was more a symbolic image of her dying than anything.
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby Fellow Sufferer » Sat Nov 19, 2011 10:46 am

Cheb wrote:The SM line of events going exactly as it did in canon feels demeaning to the sacrifice made by the the martial artists army. Not that, but ridiculous. Didn't wounding Beryl change anything?


But there very well could be another explanation for this: that exactly thanks to these sacrifices the SM canon was as it was. If there was no martial artists army attacking, Beryl would've sent her own forces to utterly crush the Senshi at the North Pole, and that would be that. Game over.

Serenity even said so to Ranma - that it was only due to him and his allies' efforts Sailor Moon was able to even face Mettalia.
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby claymade » Sat Nov 19, 2011 11:29 am

frice2000 wrote:I'd bring up the possible love bit here. Makes it more powerful, but it's already pretty strong in that way too just another added spice. Something physical she does to the body before she moves on, like closing his eyes or something might add to it too.

Hmm, I'll play around with it, see what I can work in. The tricky bit is that in the state of mind I have her in, any more subdued kind of action like that would have to wait until she'd calmed down a bit more, and "calmer" was a point which I didn't feel I could realistically get her to without spending a disproportionate amount of time there. That was why I went with Tofu having to pull her away, and having her calm down off-screen.

Define way. Say human maybe? Make it about her growing humanity or growing mortality and morality? Just leave that part less up to question make us feel her psyche in that fashion.

The idea I was trying for was basically the way of healing (i.e. what she was doing to the wounded guy) vs. destruction (what Metallia was about to do). I'll try to find a way to associate the ideas more clearly, maybe change up the order to link them tighter. Thanks for pointing that out!

Very nice additions. Definitely adds to the piece. Do wish maybe you put one in after the reset too though.

I know, sorry, it is a nasty place to leave it. But unfortunately just one more scene wouldn't really get us to the point where we'd get the real answers anyway, and it'd open up a can of worms that I think'd feel even more awkward as an ending.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Cheb wrote:The SM line of events going exactly as it did in canon feels demeaning to the sacrifice made by the the martial artists army. Not that, but ridiculous. Didn't wounding Beryl change anything?

Oh, it definitely changed something. It reduced her from the holy-crap-army-obliteration-level magic she was using against the Musk in that fight to being only able to manage the single-crystal-attack-from-a-backstab that we see in canon.

In short... Well... I'd really hoped to make this become clear to the readers in-story... to have the plot events themselves reveal it rather than just calling it out on a meta-level... but I guess I wasn't a good enough writer to pull that off in the end. And after this chapter I've pretty much blown my last chance at revealing it anyway... so I'll just say it flat-out: this fic was, from the very beginning, never intended as an AU. The idea was never "Ranma does a bunch of stuff, but somehow, despite that, everything in canon goes exactly as it did before", but rather "Ranma does a bunch of stuff, which is, in fact, the reason everything in canon ends up going the way it does."

Part One and the interlude are, essentially, interquels. Well, from the Sailor Moon side, anyway. The interlude is, of course, a continuation-fic from the perspective of the Ranmaverse.

Heck (though it wasn't obvious back then) I'd locked myself in as early as chapter seven of the previous fic, when I introduced the Darkmistress as possessing the magical headpiece that we'd expect her subordinate to have... and which she only receives as a result of Mousse killing the previous owner during the events of the fic itself. The scene in chapter 22, where Modra takes the headpiece from the Darkmistress's remains, was my first real attempt at making this all explicit.

When that didn't really work, I tried to throw in another hint in the subsequent chapter: the scene where it's actually Modra who suggests the love-boat plot to Thetis as an oblique way of disgracing Jadeite, to kill him for what he knows about her failure in Nerima. But what I was really pinning my hopes on was the epilogue: having the airport scene play out exactly, word-for-word according to canon... with Ranma's behind-the-scenes intervention being the reason for Tuxedo Kamen's never-quite-explained survival.

And actually, I did get a few "Aha! Now I see how this all fits together!"-type reviews in response to that--which was the exact response I'd been hoping for. So, at the time, I thought I'd pulled it off. At least to an extent. But reaction to the interlude quickly disabused me of any notion I might've had on whether I'd done a good job of communicating the interquel-ness to most people. But I still had one last chance to have it come out in the text itself... which was this chapter.

The martial artists' attack being the reason Beryl only sent five youma after the Senshi, instead of sending the entirety of her army. And also their attack being the reason all those youma we see in her throne room have suddenly vanished by the time Sailor Moon actually makes it there. And Beryl's injury being the reason she just basically sits out the entire fight--except for her one crystal attack--and then gets one-hit-killed by a single rose. And Ranma's intervention being the reason Sailor Moon is able to not quite die, when everything canon had ever said to that point indicated that it would be "final curtains" for her to do that, like it was for her mother.

Anyway, yeah, as I said, my hope was to have this revealed in-story, but looks like I wasn't able to really pull it off very well. That's the gist, though.

Man, it's a relief to finally have that off my chest...

I believe in the canon SM made her wish when she was dead. Not dying, but already dead, departing this world. GInzuisho was later shown as a metaphysical object interacting with ghosts with the same ease as it does with living persons.

Well, just from looking there's no way to canonically say for certain whether she'd completely died at a given point. And while the Ginzuisho is shown as able to bring people back to life, it's clear that while she could send her subjects forward to be reborn, Queen Serenity wasn't able to do so for herself when she gave her life to the Ginzuisho to do so. And it's repeated over and over again as the ending approaches that the same thing will happen to Usagi if she does it.

Having things play out the way they did bought me two things with respect to this story. First, it provides an explanation for why it didn't go the same way as before, namely that Usagi never quite died. And second, it provides something for Ranma to do in the actual endgame, rather than just being a spectator, which just felt a bit awkward to me.

Fellow Sufferer wrote:But there very well could be another explanation for this: that exactly thanks to these sacrifices the SM canon was as it was. If there was no martial artists army attacking, Beryl would've sent her own forces to utterly crush the Senshi at the North Pole, and that would be that. Game over.

Serenity even said so to Ranma - that it was only due to him and his allies' efforts Sailor Moon was able to even face Mettalia.

Yep, that's exactly what I was shooting for. :D
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby frice2000 » Sat Nov 19, 2011 1:18 pm

Well if you don't want to do a Beneda post-reset bit seems that it'd be quite a good idea to see her ultimate fate among the combatants. Was it just her rejecting Metallia or did she die in some fashion like the others? If so time scale should be maybe a little clearer. Maybe she's also going to get turned into a human and lose her youma form from rejecting Metallia? Just wish the scene if thats her last before the reset was longer and more explicit since she had such a interesting arc.

As to the Meta plot that none of this was AU and was quite SM canon don't think that it didn't get across it did and it was quite intriguing, except parts of it were frustrating in the same way since some differences could've been interestingly healthy. Not to say this didn't work though as it was quite different.
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby Cheb » Sat Nov 19, 2011 1:53 pm

I'd really hoped to make this become clear to the readers in-story...

It worked fine -- up to the confrontation between SM and the weakened, barely alive Beryl. At this point any reader expects that something changes... But it doesn't.

but rather "Ranma does a bunch of stuff, which is, in fact, the reason everything in canon ends up going the way it does." // The martial artists' attack being the reason Beryl only sent five youma after the Senshi, instead of

That would be a nice fusion and it would work... If Ranma & Co never interacted with the Senshi directly. Like two halves making one whole, like In and Yang, like Konoha shinobi and ANBU ROOT -- it would work very well. But you completely blew that chance when you allowed Ranma to interact with the Senshi. Nothing you do after that could make anyone believe the further events can resemble the SM canon.

The martial artists' attack being the reason Beryl only sent five youma after the Senshi, instead of sending the entirety of her army.

Yeah. But now anyone expects for things to go differently, the Senshi to react differently to the same stimuli than they did in the canon. Their fight against the dark lords should have been a sobering experience for the sailor girls. So you already send that train off the rails. From that point on any attempt to put it back onto the tracks will look strained and artifical - no matter the amount of skill you put into it.

If that was your reason, then you should now work hard to salvage this fic from a very bad fate.
Or yours would end like Rebecca Heineman's: fascinating at first, then the characters go through hell but... "character growth? What character growth?".

I see only two roads for you: either retconning out all the interaction (ouch. Like cutting parts of your own child with a rusty knife) or researching the SM side characters and building in the necessary changes. For example, you have to write the fight against the DD girls from the scratch and show how and why these altered (significantly or not) Senshi still ended dead. Maybe they haven't trained enough. Maybe DD girls were so much more vicious from the start this time (oh yes, these youma have to have changes too!). Either way you have to show it. Otherwise you are straining the story far past the point of breaking.

Queen Serenity wasn't able to do so for herself when she gave her life to the Ginzuisho to do so.

She wasn't in her right mind when she did it. She was distraught and wasn't thinking straight (this is told us directly in the manga and could be safely assumed in the anime).

there's no way to canonically say for certain whether she'd completely died at a given point.

True, but you must take into account those who would think so. This way the miracle of reset looks more like a miracle. :) It wasn't supposed to happen but still it happened.

First, it provides an explanation for why it didn't go the same way as before, namely that Usagi never quite died. And se

This small part works. I was referring mostly to the skipped battle where the Inners died and to the confrontation between SM and Beryl.
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby Cheb » Sat Nov 19, 2011 2:06 pm

P.S. Why your grand plan would work with DK but never with SM.
DK is perfect in that they are barely defined, ripe for filling with your own meaning and inside details.

The Senshi are the main heroines, described with a lot of detail. The events defining and shaping them are all known to the reader. You cannot hope to say "there was more happening to them behind the scenes" and get away with it so easily.

Though I personally think the chance of everything going as you wrote it is high. :roll: But still.

P.P.S Ah! That's it! Why it felt so fake. It felt like you stopped moving the plot naturally and started justifying your moving the plot onto a pre-planned track. (note to self: stay aware of this trap) I may be wrong of course. :|
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby claymade » Sat Nov 19, 2011 6:54 pm

frice2000 wrote:Well if you don't want to do a Beneda post-reset bit seems that it'd be quite a good idea to see her ultimate fate among the combatants. Was it just her rejecting Metallia or did she die in some fashion like the others?

Well, she wouldn't have died, at least, since she was back with the other medics and by that time all the other threats had been routed far away from that point, what with them having the youma on the run and all. She'd just basically stay there treating wounded like in that scene until the reset hits.

If so time scale should be maybe a little clearer. Maybe she's also going to get turned into a human and lose her youma form from rejecting Metallia? Just wish the scene if thats her last before the reset was longer and more explicit since she had such a interesting arc.

I hear you. Unfortunately, there's a certain way I want to draw out the description of what happens to her, and it won't work, as I said, until a couple scenes into the next chapter.

Guess it's just one of those evil cliffhangers, y'know?

As to the Meta plot that none of this was AU and was quite SM canon don't think that it didn't get across it did and it was quite intriguing, except parts of it were frustrating in the same way since some differences could've been interestingly healthy. Not to say this didn't work though as it was quite different.

Thanks, that's relieving to hear! As for the missed differences, yeah, there were definitely some that would have been interesting. But doing it that way would also have closed the door on some of the larger stuff I really wanted to do in Part Two. Sometimes, the hard thing about writing is that you've got to "kill your darlings"--cut out parts and opportunities that are awesome in and of themselves, in order to make the story as a whole the best it can be.

In this case, what it fundamentally came down to was that (while there might have been a lot of interesting differences along the way that I could have followed up on delving more into an AU Dark Kingdom arc) delving more in-depth into that time period just... doesn't give me the right levers to really push the conflict into all that I really want to make out of it.

Not the least of which that there really aren't the proper plot-levers (yet) that I'd need to keep up the fundamental misunderstanding between the Senshi and the "Dark Lords" going. Not without resorting to making one side or the other very stupidly antagonistic--something I told myself I had to avoid. And if I lose the "Dark Lords" misunderstanding, I've really lost a huge chunk of the core of the fic.

Cheb wrote:It worked fine -- up to the confrontation between SM and the weakened, barely alive Beryl. At this point any reader expects that something changes... But it doesn't.

Cheb wrote:That would be a nice fusion and it would work... If Ranma & Co never interacted with the Senshi directly. Like two halves making one whole, like In and Yang, like Konoha shinobi and ANBU ROOT -- it would work very well. But you completely blew that chance when you allowed Ranma to interact with the Senshi. Nothing you do after that could make anyone believe the further events can resemble the SM canon.

Cheb wrote:Though I personally think the chance of everything going as you wrote it is high. :roll: But still.

Please have patience with me, 'cause between the above three statements I'm a little lost as to where exactly you're taking the issue. Is the place where you can't buy the progression only at the confrontation between SM and the weakened Beryl, but everything I've got before that is fine? Or is it from the moment Ranma & co. first meet the Senshi? Or is everything fine after all? I'm a bit confused.

Cheb wrote:The Senshi are the main heroines, described with a lot of detail. The events defining and shaping them are all known to the reader. You cannot hope to say "there was more happening to them behind the scenes" and get away with it so easily.

Why not? Actually, the highly episodic nature of the series seems downright ideal for fitting things like that in. Even just in the first season, by the time they reach the final battle with the Dark Kingdom, they've stared death in the face, then managed to muster their courage and Save the Day, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, like, forty-four times over, in canon. Hypothesizing that there was, in fact, a forty-fifth such adventure in there doesn't seem like a stretch to me in the slightest.
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby Cheb » Sun Nov 20, 2011 1:07 pm

Hypothesizing that there was, in fact, a forty-fifth such adventure in there doesn't seem like a stretch to me in the slightest.

What you did wasn't some 45-th adventure. It was more intense that any of their battles except a select few.

Is the place where you can't buy the progression only at the confrontation between SM and the weakened Beryl, but everything I've got before that is fine? Or is it from the moment Ranma & co. first meet the Senshi? Or is everything fine after all? I'm a bit confused.

Oh my. :( My comment was a mess. It seems switching mental gears back and forth between myself and the emulation of a raging fan-dumb I use for nitpicking purposes... was an epic fail.

The root of all evils: your premise fails in some non-obvious ways. While that would be Ok for a lesser fic, the amount of elaborate detail you built so far calls for some really fierce nitpicking.
So, let it begin! (I skipped across several chapters backwards refreshing my memory and re-reading all the scenes involving the Senshi)

Note: these quotes are but labels to their respective cans of worms I point out in an attempt to prove that what you got cannot be the canon-compatible Senshi.

The moon cat barely even heard him. It's all my fault... she realized. I was the one who made them into warriors... and for what? To just throw them under the wheels of some insane plan of conquest, without even slowing it down? I... I never thought it would end like this...

And thus Luna got a very good scare I don't remember her getting in the Season 1 anywhere except ep. 44-46. Looking the death in the face, that they did. But Luna believing they are all dead?

Sailor Moon had thought she had felt despair before, but now the bottom dropped out of her heart. These were the ones that her friends had been fighting. But... if they were here, then that meant...That meant...A sob broke free of her lips, and she began to cry, uncaring of who saw it. No, no, this couldn't be happening. It had to all be some kind of horrible nightmare...

And thus SM got a good dose of reality I don't remember her getting in the Season 1 anywhere except ep.45. You could, of course, say she's too childish to be affected, but for Usagi losing friends is Serious Business. It had to leave traces if not mental scarring.

And with that, the DD Girls attacked. It was fast, green tentacles exploding out of each of their arms simultaneously,

And so the Senshi (Ami at least) had a very good idea of these foes' abilities. Not only that but they had an idea that they may have to fight a hopeless battle against a lot of youma, each one stronger than them. While nothing special in itself, it happens *early*. In the canon, AFAIR, most of their confrontations were against a single youma, maybe a youma and a general. It rarely got that desperate, and never so early.
Thus your idea to pretend the Senshi's final battle against the DD girls went as it did in canon because of the events you described... It has *some* credibility. But not much. In the canon, the Senshi were clearly surprised by the DD girls' speed and tactics. They acted like they didn't know what to expect from these foes.
At the very least you have to write that battle, even if briefly, to show how it went and why Mercury's foreknowledge of enemy abilities was/wasn't useless.
While I-me understand your reasons and feel that your lack of focus on the SM side is acceptable if unsatisfactory, I-the-raging-fandumb is... well, raging. The emulated personality raises annoyed cries and generates flames.

At the very least you set us up for a final battle between the Senshi and the DDG, a battle that would be very personal, with more going between the two groups that in the canon... And poof, nothing. Da ragin' fan feels cheated!
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby claymade » Mon Nov 21, 2011 11:24 am

And thus Luna got a very good scare I don't remember her getting in the Season 1 anywhere except ep. 44-46. Looking the death in the face, that they did. But Luna believing they are all dead?

Oh, definitely, she got a scare. But which actions/behaviors that Luna takes later on in the series are incompatible with that scare?

I mean, sure, it's a terrifying thing to have happen in the moment, to think that you screwed up and sent your team on a pointless suicide mission... but then subsequent events reveal that yes, it was exactly the right choice for her to have made. That because she did so, the evil plan was stopped by Sailor Moon, and the earth remained unconquered. In fact, if she hadn't done so, that would have been what would actually have resulted in the Senshi's deaths for real, as Ranma and Ryouga would have been able to summon their unstoppable army from the alternate dimension and kill them all with it.

Except, y'know, not. But you know what I mean.

In any case, the take-home lesson for Luna from all of this is "yes, the path you're on can have horrifying moments of self-doubt when you're in the thick of things, but if you stick it through regardless, it is possible to come out the other end even when it all seems utterly hopeless."

And thus SM got a good dose of reality I don't remember her getting in the Season 1 anywhere except ep.45. You could, of course, say she's too childish to be affected, but for Usagi losing friends is Serious Business. It had to leave traces if not mental scarring.

Well, first and foremost, an important thing to note is that where the chapter break happened to fall in this sequence (as well as all the flashing back and forth between other plotlines going on elsewhere) creates a somewhat artificial sense of timing for this scene with respect to the point you're raising. If you actually stitch the scene together with the one immediately following it, from Akane's perspective, you'll note that upon seeing Sailor Moon start to cry, Akane figures out what she must be thinking, and immediately contrives to "let slip" that the other Senshi are still alive. So, yes, this is an instance of Sailor Moon thinking the other Senshi might be dead... for all of about ten seconds.

And there are other similar situations they run into: Usagi thinking something happened to Ami in episode eleven when she's taken down by the youma of that episode, or that Tuxedo Kamen died in episode thirteen--both of which were drawn out for significantly longer (if I'm recalling them correctly; can't get at them to confirm at the moment). And, of course, there's the point where the Senshi actually do die, which we just visited.

Really, if she's emotionally resilient enough watch all her friends slaughtered one by one--right in front of her very eyes!--and bounce back from that to anything resembling her normal self (let alone what we actually see in the R season and beyond) then the idea that she'd get long-term "mental scaring" from suspecting that they're dead for ten whole seconds just... doesn't seem very plausible, to me.

In the canon, the Senshi were clearly surprised by the DD girls' speed and tactics. They acted like they didn't know what to expect from these foes.

Actually, if you watch closely, the speed they were mostly able to deal with. The Senshi always managed to dodge any straight-up tentacle attacks; the DD Girls never managed to hit them without something else thrown into the mix. One thing that did throw them very much for a loop, however, was their illusions--the exact power that the DD Girls didn't possess yet back during their fight at Nerima, and so none of the Senshi ever once saw from them.

(The one other tactic that did work pretty well against them was the tactic of getting a surprise attack in by attacking the Senshi up from underneath the ground, from where they couldn't be seen. And actually, there's a particular reason they didn't employ that particular tactic in the battle at Nerima either. This bit wasn't something I ended up making particularly explicit, just more of a personal little easter egg... but if you recall how the fight agianst Ranma ended for the DD Girls... ask yourself just who it was that might have given them the idea to attack like that. :wink: )

At the very least you have to write that battle, even if briefly, to show how it went and why Mercury's foreknowledge of enemy abilities was/wasn't useless.

This is something I actually really wanted to do; it was very much in my original outline for the chapter. The scene included Mercury's thought process on the new illusion powers they had, and her suspicion that the new powers might be connected to the new headpiece that the DD Girl hadn't been wearing the last time they met, and her decision that she needed to scan the headpiece more carefully with her computer, etc, leading up into her canonical announcement that she was heading off.

The problem was... there just really isn't a good place to INSERT IGNORE a cut into that battle that A) begins and ends on a note I felt worked for a solid scene entrance/exit, and B) didn't involve massive amounts of recap of canon material. And the real final nail in the coffin of my plans for that scene was where it would have had to have gone--right smack in the middle of Herb's fight. No matter what I tried, the result felt either rushed, or a lead weight on the surrounding scenes.

Hmmm... One thing that I might be able to do is put some more exposition on such matters in Modra's internal monologue as she's heading off to fight, maybe reflecting on the Senshi not having seen the illusion powers before, and maybe reflecting on additional training they've done to prepare for this fight. Might that help the issues you're having?
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Re: The Dark Lords Strike Back, Chapter 4/3b [R/SM cross]

Postby Cheb » Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:47 pm

No matter what I tried, the result felt either rushed, or a lead weight on the surrounding scenes.

(sigh) Damn. What a shame. :cry:
But... Maybe in some later flashback?
On the other hand, are you really chained to be linear? When describing two parallel but independent lines of events there's often no other way than writing them sequentially.

I mean, the Senshi's fight could be squeezed in somewhere between Beryl getting wounded and her summoning SM. The very beginning of chapter 4/3b is a good place. It doesn't have to be long, right? Even if it is just Mercury's part, that would be enough.

Might that help the issues you're having?

That would be much, much better than nothing. But still, without that fight the entire epic feels incomplete.

but if you stick it through regardless, it is possible to come out the other end even when it all seems utterly hopeless

That, and give the poor kitty even more gray hair in her struggle to keep her charge focused. :roll:
Honestly, she's the most sympathetic character of entire series.
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