Better to Forget draft[Ranma/Wuxia], a backup thread.

[Jason_Miao]

My two year Ranma/Wuxia fic; this had more done, but a recent hard drive crashed wiped out everything.  Luckily, Midnight ("Meow MS!") had an old copy of it lying around on his hard drive.  Although I've lost a few sections written in the past few months (Kasumi showing more signs of memory, Nabiki glomping Ranma, and some of the final battle scene sequence), most has been saved.  I've decided that it's probably better to incrementally update somewhere besides my laptop, and thus this thread.



As always, C&C is welcome, but keep in mind that this is very much a first generation draft.  Entire scenes or planned sequences may be wiped out in subsequent revisions to cover plot holes or just because I feel like it.  Scene description notes tend to be more wrong than not.  In fact, the rambling outline in the beginning is mostly deprecated; I just keep around for historical purposes.

Basically, the only constants are that historical-like Wuxia setting is used, and Kasumi gets to beat someone up.

[Dracos]

Wow, notey indeed. =)

Dracos

[Jason_Miao]

HD recovery service recovered a later version, so I'll throw it up here for backup before my replacement HD dies.  Haven't worked on anything new since then, since I've been busy with Bar review.  

And no, I wouldn't add the last Nabiki scene, since it strays too far from my core focus (although if anyone wants a weird lemon plot...).  Actually, weird tangential ideas like this are why I write so slowly; write, erase, write more, erase more...

Drac: Yes, notey.  About 50%.  Probably my commenting habit I picked up in my coding days coming to the fore, and like I said, VERY much draft-form.

[Jason_Miao]

Backing up a few more changes.  Still need more classic training scene ideas though.

[Jason_Miao]

Backing up some more.


I hope the training trip helps to mitigate what previously seemed like a rapid increase in power, and at least gives Akane's condition some lead up.

Still trying to think of something to fill the time between Niujiezu honoring the deal and another attack by the past.

[Jason_Miao]

Note to self: MS was not a fan of "Akane" portions during training trip part, due to emphasis of a character who has been effectively sidelined by this point.  The two ways to deal with this would be either to increase Akane's visibility earlier, or to eliminate those parts entirely - I'm tempted to do the first, since most of the story has dealt with temporal jumps by "switch-switchback" scenes, but I'm wondering how much more of Akane I can add that's reasonable - elimination of the scenes themselves may be the best option.

[Jason_Miao]

Very little new added - mostly wording changes, finishing scenes and such.  Computer is being sent in for service, so it makes sense to backup the story rather than risk anything being lost.

[Muphrid]

An understatement, of course.  Ranma's earlier battle had been with another self-proclaimed Prince wielding a precious sword Trembling Reed.  Ranma's right leg had been messed up when Akane's attempt to help him by tossing him a sheathed naginata went astray.  Ranma would recover by the next day - he healed unusually quickly - but performing kata would only stress the injury, and with his lifestyle, taking too long to return to top shape would be dangerous.

I'm uncertain what the underlined should mean.  A sword that trembles reeds?  A sword named Trembling Reed?

"I'd heard."  Kasumi gave a slight shake of her head, in clear disapproval.  "If you didn't fight so much, Ranma, you wouldn't get hurt so often."

This line starts a series of several lines in which neither Ranma nor Kasumi can resist saying each other's name at some point.  Personally, I would cut down on that, but you can decide how much or little is warranted.

Ranma slowly walked around still form. [...]

What does this mean?

I laughed a bit when Akane considered that Kasumi might've been seeing Tofu and that was the reason her gait had changed.  Also nice: Akane using a prop mallet, not a genuine hyperspace one.  Still, Akane as a member of Drama Club?  That's new, isn't it?

After the photoshoot, Ranma doesn't seem to explicitly change back from being a girl, yet right before the next scene, the pronouns work back to "he, him, his".

The day after the photo shoot, Kasumi was already waiting for Ranma at an abandoned building.  They had decided not to hold practices at the Tendo Dojo, since that would draw unwanted attention.  It would be difficult for Ranma to teach anything while distracted by random attacks and amorous girls, and

And...what?  Maybe put a dash here if the thought really isn't going to be completed?

"Our school specializes in midair combat," Ranma explained.  "To jump higher, to stay airborne longer, and to move faster are not abilities you can learn through any sort of martial arts.  They are almost a set of special technique themselves, and our school is the best at it.  I can't do stuff the really advanced stuff like run across the water on the ripples yet, but I can get to school by running over buildings faster than someone could by driving there, and the few times I have had to resort to the awesome mobility used by the Saotome Final Technique, no one ever caught me.  It is always a useful skill, even for someone who has studied martial arts for his entire life, and since your internal strength is high, I think you should be able to learn this."

A bit of unintentional repetition.

Kasumi had an odd looking twist to her lips, as if she were trying to taste an elusive taste.  After a moment of this, she asked "Why don't you use any corriander here?"

Coriander is apparently common in Chinese cuisine (though Ranma not knowing of it is excusable).  Also known as Chinese parsley or cilantro.

As Kasumi bent her thoughts towards her own dish, Ranma snapped back to attention.  Kasumi's stirring had changed dramatically.  Ranma realized that although her precise movements had shifted to something more abrupt, Kasumi's movements still conformed with certain principles.  She manipulated the pan in synch with her arm movements, shifting where the heat from the stove met the pan constantly.  Did his diciple control the pan?  Did she react to the where the heat was?  He recalled when they had been chopping and slicing ingredients, Kasumi's knife had been as swift and precise as one would expect from a master chef.  Ranma had looked on in awe, surprised that he had not understood just the depths of her skill. He had never really looked.  Did the Kasumi dictate the placement of the ingredients, or did the the ingredients determine how she should make each cut?  Slowly, Ranma began to understand that such distinctions did not matter.

Unintentional repetition.

"A training trip?!" shouted Akane, banging on the dining room table with her right fist.  "That's ridiculous!  Of course I can't go, father.  The school festival coming up, and we barely have any time to prepare."

Probably "Father", capitalized, and elsewhere.

Soun cried, as usual.  "But Akane, you must go." he burbled.  "How will your fiancee feed himself if you aren't there to take care of him?"

Fiance.

Ranma abruptly stood, stopping the discussion.  "Mr. Tendo.  Pop.  Nabiki.  I thank you for all you have done, and all you will do.  Your sacrifice for the sake of my Art and Kasumi will be remembered."  he clapped his hands twice, and bowed.

Some capitalization problem here.

The intercutting scenes between Akane and the class trying to figure out what to do and Ranma and Kasumi on their trip seem...needlessly intercut, honestly.

Ranma had trained for many days by sitting under a waterfall, and he'd hoped to provide Kasumi the same experience.  Unfortunately, although this area was relatively isolated from other people and quite peaceful, there was no waterfall.  However, he did know about a toy supplier in [?] that catered to job recruiters

Lack of punctuation at the end of this paragraph.

The entire class waited a dramatic moment, looking at the classroom door and windows.  The moment seemed to stretch, and the class graudally began to .

To what?

[meow] turned white.  "Genma.  Here.  Who would have thought."  With a quick step, he snatched Kasumi by the waist and fled from the yard.  "Tell Soun that if he wants his daughter Akane back and in one piece, he'd better meet me ten miles north of Yokohama in two days."  Ranma quickly pursued the fleeing assassin.  Akane started to follow, eager to rescue her sister, but she as she started to run, her entire body seemed to catch fire.  With a wordless shriek, she lost conciousness, and fell to the ground in a boneless heap.

Not knowing that Akane was poisoned when she was scratched by Kodachi, this sudden effect seems...sudden.  It is explained later, yes, but I think it needs a little more focus (there's a lot going on in this scene).

The scene with Ranma, Kasumi, and the paintball guns could be constructed differently--most directly, so that we see Kasumi surprised by the second set of paintball guns instead of going into a cold open in which we have no idea what she's talking about.

For the amount of time to have passed in setup for the "Ranma ate [Snow Lotus] back in the day" gag, it seems like other than the arrival of Cologne's people, things have nearly stood still.  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding--we're to think Ranma and Kasumi trained for weeks without regard to what was happening at home?  The impression given to me is that Ranma and Kasumi are away somewhere while Nabiki and Genma figure out that Akane has been poisoned.

Cologne's reasoning about how to go about protecting the Tendo family seems quite sound.

At this point, it goes more into notes that I have some difficulty following, so I think I'll stop here.

[Jason_Miao]

I'd mainly posted this to keep a copy of it in case the repairmen wipe my drive, and wasn't expecting C&C.  Lucky bonus!

Some of the cut-off sentences are the result of notepad.  Resizing the application sometimes screws up what's shown on screen and what's actually stored in the file - so editing can inadvertently delete phrases.   And some of it is because I have a mind that jumps around quite a bit, and I just missed typing a word or phrase.

An understatement, of course.  Ranma's earlier battle had been with another self-proclaimed Prince wielding a precious sword Trembling Reed.  Ranma's right leg had been messed up when Akane's attempt to help him by tossing him a sheathed naginata went astray.  Ranma would recover by the next day - he healed unusually quickly - but performing kata would only stress the injury, and with his lifestyle, taking too long to return to top shape would be dangerous.

I'm uncertain what the underlined should mean.  A sword that trembles reeds?  A sword named Trembling Reed?

The name of the sword.  I'd thought the caps would have shown it was a proper noun, and denotes the name of the sword.  But if it's confusing, I could write "the precious sword named Trembling Reed".

This line starts a series of several lines in which neither Ranma nor Kasumi can resist saying each other's name at some point.  Personally, I would cut down on that, but you can decide how much or little is warranted.

An artifact of earlier times - I need to change that. 

When I first started writing this, I had the idea of trying to write more evocative dialogue by trying to write entire scenes as if they were in script.  Almost everything was described in spoken dialogue, or not at all.  Also, I've been told that Japanese doesn't have a form of "you" except for intimate forms, and I'd been trying to phrase things with a minimal amount of English artifacts.

Ranma slowly walked around still form. [...]

What does this mean?

This is "punch me" scene, right?  Probably meant to say "her" not-moving form.  As in, Kasumi was standing still in a ready position (or whatever it's called in martial arts - I need to find if there's a standard term for this as well) and Ranma is critiquing it.

I laughed a bit when Akane considered that Kasumi might've been seeing Tofu and that was the reason her gait had changed.  Also nice: Akane using a prop mallet, not a genuine hyperspace one.  Still, Akane as a member of Drama Club?  That's new, isn't it?

Much modern Wuxia is very soap-opera like.  It seems really easy to frame famous and legendarily righteous people, and everyone jumps to conclusions and assumes the worst of other people at the drop of a hat.  Unless I was trying to write a very different story, I can't have Akane assume that Kasumi murdered the rest of the family because she'd accidentally squirted herself w/ketchup.  So having a romance-related misunderstanding seemed to be the best modern equivalent.

In the manga, everyone uses conveniently placed mallets.  Akane isn't even the most frequent user of them (I remember that someone once counted the number of occurences of mallet use per person, and it turned out that *Ranma* used them the most).  I'm not really sure why the fannon-Akane-mallet concept took hold - I remember her dropkicking Ranma more often than not.  Originally, I was going to play with the fannon perception by having everyone use mallets - Kasumi would be making mochi, Ranma would be repairing damage from a fight, etc.

In the manga, Akane played Juliet in a badly-altered school play of Romeo and Juliet.  At one point during the arc, Kasumi mentioned to Ranma that it was Akane's childhood dream to play that role (as a child, she was cast as Romeo since she was so boyish).  Given that background, having Akane as a Drama Club member seemed to be a reasonable stretch.  It also serves as a brief indication that Akane has interests outside of martial arts.

After the photoshoot, Ranma doesn't seem to explicitly change back from being a girl, yet right before the next scene, the pronouns work back to "he, him, his".

Oops.  Must fix this.

The day after the photo shoot, Kasumi was already waiting for Ranma at an abandoned building.  They had decided not to hold practices at the Tendo Dojo, since that would draw unwanted attention.  It would be difficult for Ranma to teach anything while distracted by random attacks and amorous girls, and

And...what?  Maybe put a dash here if the thought really isn't going to be completed?

I'd originally had something to the effect of "and no one cared if they were smashing up an abandoned house", but notepad evidently ate that part.

stuff the really advanced stuff

A bit of unintentional repetition.

Must fix.  Thanks!

Coriander is apparently common in Chinese cuisine (though Ranma not knowing of it is excusable).  Also known as Chinese parsley or cilantro.

Which explains why when I was trying to come up with the name of some random spice, that name was the first one my mind latched onto.  (Actually, I think I'd thought of saffron first, but given that this is a Ranma fic, that would translate to cooking the Phoenix King).

Did the Kasumi dictate the placement of the ingredients, or did the the ingredients determine how she should make each cut?

Unintentional repetition.

"A training trip?!" shouted Akane, banging on the dining room table with her right fist.  "That's ridiculous!  Of course I can't go, father.  The school festival coming up, and we barely have any time to prepare."

Probably "Father", capitalized, and elsewhere.

Soun cried, as usual.  "But Akane, you must go." he burbled.  "How will your fiancee feed himself if you aren't there to take care of him?"

Fiance.

Will fix.  Thanks!

Ranma abruptly stood, stopping the discussion.  "Mr. Tendo.  Pop.  Nabiki.  I thank you for all you have done, and all you will do.  Your sacrifice for the sake of my Art and Kasumi will be remembered."  he clapped his hands twice, and bowed.

Some capitalization problem here.

Maybe, maybe not.  I tend to go back and forth as to whether The Art should be considered capitalized or not.  Right now, I'm leaning towards "no" since it seems like a cheap trick for emphasis - but ask me during another month, and I may have convinced myself otherwise.

The intercutting scenes between Akane and the class trying to figure out what to do and Ranma and Kasumi on their trip seem...needlessly intercut, honestly.

Midnight (MS) mentioned that as well. 

And I'm still not really sure what to do about it  - I do want to have Akane show a slight bit of resentment that she's been overshadowed by Ranma (but nothing excessive - she's not ungrateful for her various rescues, but she is a bit miffed that she's not taken seriously as a martial artist), and give some small indications that she's feeling more energetic and powerful than before.  When the fire deviation hits, the reader should have an immediate "where the hell did this come from" later followed by "oh yeah, she was exhibiting those symptoms, wasn't she?".

I could take out the Akane-intercut scenes, but I'd need to figure out how to work those aspects in.  Somehow.  Somewhere.

However, he did know about a toy supplier in [?] that catered to job recruiters

Lack of punctuation at the end of this paragraph.

The entire class waited a dramatic moment, looking at the classroom door and windows.  The moment seemed to stretch, and the class graudally began to .

To what?

fidget.

With a wordless shriek, she lost conciousness, and fell to the ground in a boneless heap.

Not knowing that Akane was poisoned when she was scratched by Kodachi, this sudden effect seems...sudden.  It is explained later, yes, but I think it needs a little more focus (there's a lot going on in this scene).

It's supposed to be like that initially - and with the later explanation, Akane's newfound confidence and energy aluded to in earlier scenes is explained.

The scene with Ranma, Kasumi, and the paintball guns could be constructed differently--most directly, so that we see Kasumi surprised by the second set of paintball guns instead of going into a cold open in which we have no idea what she's talking about.

That scene may not even remain.  It was planned fairly early on, when the premise of the fic was different.

Originally, this story was going to be a really quick writing exercise, where Kasumi learns martial arts from Ranma and was a hidden prodigy, everyone else is resentful either because she's no longer cooking or fiancees think she's trying to be another fiancee, everything blows up, and Ranma and Kasumi run off together in the chaos.  Silly fluff taking no longer than a week of writing, tops, just to get back into the habit of writing fiction.

And then, I kept thinking "Well, this aspect makes no sense.  I should think of a scenario where it does.  Preferably with some reason that can be tied back to something from the manga."  Repeat ad infinitum.

The motel storyline was initially going to result in Nabiki, who thought the "sister" for whose sake that Ranma suffered the photo shoot was Akane, suddenly realizing that Ranma was spending time with Kasumi instead.  Which led her to believe that Ranma is "cheating" on one sister with another.   Nabiki would have then taken action: either leaking it Akane, or confronting Ranma and getting counter-blackmailed in turn (I actually did write the later scene, before MS mentioned that it was pointless and distracting.  I think it's still in the list of excised scenes.)

The way things are, Akane can't learn (and misunderstand) about this until the very end, because otherwise she'd die.  There really isn't room to develop Nabiki into a major romantic or adversarial interest.  And since Shampoo is going to follow Ranma around everywhere, it's much more straightforward to trigger all the misconceptions crash down on Ranma and Kasumi by having Shampoo report her findings in broken Japanese to Cologne, and having whatever-appropriate-characters eavesdrop and completely misunderstand what Ranma is doing to Kasumi.

For the amount of time to have passed in setup for the "Ranma ate [Snow Lotus] back in the day" gag, it seems like other than the arrival of Cologne's people, things have nearly stood still.  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding--we're to think Ranma and Kasumi trained for weeks without regard to what was happening at home?

During the intercut?  One week, and no one knew Akane was poisoned.

The concept is that Kodachi is crazy - no one sane would use a rare and powerful chi-enhancing herb to poison someone else, when it could be used to make yourself powerful.  But that's what Kodachi does.  So, no one realizes Akane could be poisoned - in fact, she's acting in a healthy manner.

The impression given to me is that Ranma and Kasumi are away somewhere while Nabiki and Genma figure out that Akane has been poisoned.

Kasumi was still being kidnapped by the assassin whose notecards were mixed up, and so who thought that Kasumi is Akane.  Ranma ran off to rescue Kasumi, so he's not around to take care of Akane.  Akane had intended to follow Ranma to also rescue Kasumi, but the excitement of the situation caused her chi, which developed incorrectly, to fire-deviate.

Timeline is supposed to look like this:
-before-
*Akane wins fight with Kodachi but gets poisoned early on, when trying to track down what (or who) Kasumi is doing.
*Kasumi shows herself to be a prodigy, so Ranma has to step up training.
*Training trip occurs.  Meanwhile, Akane is exhibiting symptoms of overabundant chi - nominally a good thing, so she's exhibiting healthy symptoms.  Since she has no idea that she's been poisoned.
-now-
*Tendo household attacked. 
*Kasumi is mistaken for Akane by forgetful assassin, and kidnapped.  Ranma pursues.  Akane tries to follow, but exerting herself in a stressful situation, with her abnormally developed chi, causes her to fire-deviate.
*Genma, being a preeminent martial artist, realizes what has happened, and acts to mitigate the poison as best he can, while Kasumi's rescue is ongoing.

Any ideas on what led to the confusion?

Cologne's reasoning about how to go about protecting the Tendo family seems quite sound.

Good!  I was worried that I'd missing something.

[Muphrid]

The name of the sword.  I'd thought the caps would have shown it was a proper noun, and denotes the name of the sword.  But if it's confusing, I could write "the precious sword named Trembling Reed".

I would settle for "the precious sword Trembling Reed" as opposed to what's written, which is "a precious sword ...".

When I first started writing this, I had the idea of trying to write more evocative dialogue by trying to write entire scenes as if they were in script.  Almost everything was described in spoken dialogue, or not at all.  Also, I've been told that Japanese doesn't have a form of "you" except for intimate forms, and I'd been trying to phrase things with a minimal amount of English artifacts.

As I understand it (and any real expert, feel free to correct me), they do consider using names more polite and respectful, but just as often they can get away with not using pronouns at all.

In the manga, Akane played Juliet in a badly-altered school play of Romeo and Juliet.  At one point during the arc, Kasumi mentioned to Ranma that it was Akane's childhood dream to play that role (as a child, she was cast as Romeo since she was so boyish).  Given that background, having Akane as a Drama Club member seemed to be a reasonable stretch.  It also serves as a brief indication that Akane has interests outside of martial arts.

Indeed.  Akane not exactly "normal" but she fits in fine, and one would expect someone like her to be involved in some club, so out of all the choices, Drama works well for me, too.

I could take out the Akane-intercut scenes, but I'd need to figure out how to work those aspects in.  Somehow.  Somewhere.

Well, I guess the pressing question is why they need to be intercut versus presented sequentially.

Kasumi was still being kidnapped by the assassin whose notecards were mixed up, and so who thought that Kasumi is Akane.  Ranma ran off to rescue Kasumi, so he's not around to take care of Akane.  Akane had intended to follow Ranma to also rescue Kasumi, but the excitement of the situation caused her chi, which developed incorrectly, to fire-deviate.

Timeline is supposed to look like this:
-before-
*Akane wins fight with Kodachi but gets poisoned early on, when trying to track down what (or who) Kasumi is doing.
*Kasumi shows herself to be a prodigy, so Ranma has to step up training.
*Training trip occurs.  Meanwhile, Akane is exhibiting symptoms of overabundant chi - nominally a good thing, so she's exhibiting healthy symptoms.  Since she has no idea that she's been poisoned.
-now-
*Tendo household attacked. 
*Kasumi is mistaken for Akane by forgetful assassin, and kidnapped.  Ranma pursues.  Akane tries to follow, but exerting herself in a stressful situation, with her abnormally developed chi, causes her to fire-deviate.
*Genma, being a preeminent martial artist, realizes what has happened, and acts to mitigate the poison as best he can, while Kasumi's rescue is ongoing.

Any ideas on what led to the confusion?

The way I'm looking at it right now, the progression of events is this:

The kidnapper is foiled
Genma and Nabiki figure out that Akane's been poisoned
Paintball training scene with Ranma and Kasumi
Cut back to Nabiki and Genma realizing Happosai may be involved
Ranma and Kasumi at the motel after paintball
Nabiki and Genma again, with Nabiki resolving to talk to Cologne
Nabiki strikes a deal with Cologne
And here, Ranma and Kasumi are back with Shampoo as a bodyguard as a result of Nabiki's deal

The way these scenes are intercut gives the impression Genma and Nabiki are realizing Akane's been poisoned and striking this deal not while Ranma's saving Kasumi, but while he's training her.  So, the impression given is that Ranma saves Kasumi and immediately they go off to train without even going back home.  I'm thinking this isn't what you intended; there's just not the logical glue in between the scenes yet to work out all the kinks.

[Jason_Miao]

I would settle for "the precious sword Trembling Reed"

Gah.  Worse, I know exactly how that happened - Chinese doesn't have indefinite articles, so if I'm thinking about how something would be said in Chinese..

I'll have to keep it in mind when I start writing dialogue for Shampoo, because I do plan on changing her speech patterns to sound less idiotic and will be considering how sentences are constructed in Chinese.


Re: fast switching and timeline
Hmm...I think there's two issues:

The first is that with the express aim of writing in this style and throughout the story, I've been trying to switch back and forth between viewpoints while scenes are "ongoing", to give a sense of passed time.  When it works, it should be transparent and serve to reduce the amount of explicit narration.  When it doesn't work, it's horribly confusing.  Because the training trip scenes are very short, the switching is very much not-transparent, and annoying.

I'm a little leery of presenting the scenes sequentially since then you'd get a very disjointed scene of Akane helping to plan a school festival event, when that isn't the focus of the fic ("Why are we reading a long scene that isn't wuxia-related?").  Akane's theme in the story at large is supposed to evoke a similar situation as in Power (and I wish I had a link to that fic), but unlike Power, Ranma's relationship  with Akane isn't the focus of the story. 

Although, now that I'm typing this, it occurs to me that I might be able to throw in an obligatory Father-driven dating plan and have a very short Ranma-Akane dialogue, and change the intercuts from an Akane-focus to the remaining Tendo family at large, each of them rumiating on what Ranma or Kasumi is doing at the moment.  That still runs the risk of scene switching being annoying, but scene switching always runs that risk.  I'll have to give it a try (once I get my laptop back from repairs).

Second is this being a rough draft in text file.  I've generally used '=' breaks usually denote the end of a chapter.  So while the timeline you've posted is correct, there's supposed to be a logical divide between Nabiki's realization of what happened and the paintball scene.  The "painball and later parts" don't have a "chapter title" yet because I'm still writing it.  They're not even really chapter titles per se (just mental reference units that I doubt would make sense to anyone except me), and would have to be changed before any final release.

[Muphrid]

I don't have any objection to the style you're trying to capture in and of itself.  I mean, I expected that juxtaposing and intercutting the festival planning scene with the other scene going on in the middle of that would get something across just by having the two of them together.  I just wasn't really sure what exactly that idea should be.

As far as the kidnapping/Akane's been poisoned scene, it strikes me that that's something that could stand to be more intercut.  Again, just because Ranma and Kasumi defeating the kidnapper before we see Nabiki and Genma figure out Akane's been poisoned, Nabiki and Genma's scenes there just keep begging the question of why Ranma and Kasumi aren't back yet, at least in my mind.  And since we skip over whenever they do get back, it seems to me like making the relevant scenes clearly come before they'd even defeated the kidnapper might make it all work out.

[Jason_Miao]

I mean, I expected that juxtaposing and intercutting the festival planning scene with the other scene going on in the middle of that would get something across just by having the two of them together.  I just wasn't really sure what exactly that idea should be.

You're right.  The intercutting ought to be used to stress a contrast to emphasize a point, not to introduce the point in the first place.  This also explains why I haven't been able to figure out how to make it work- the purpose I had for using it is fundamentally unsound.  I've been trying to find some clever fix, but it looks like there isn't one.

Offhand, I guess I have two choices: Take it out, write up a wholly separate character arc for Akane hanging out with friends instead of training, integrate that into previous chapters, and only then consider whether the intercut is actually necessary.  Or take it out, and demote Akane to minor character to source-material-required plot obstacle.  I really hate the thought of the later, but I doubt my ability to pull off the former.

Again, just because Ranma and Kasumi defeating the kidnapper before we see Nabiki and Genma figure out Akane's been poisoned, Nabiki and Genma's scenes there just keep begging the question of why Ranma and Kasumi aren't back yet, at least in my mind.

How does the reordering in the following attachment strike you?

[Muphrid]

I think that reordering is promising; I don't see a need to shunt the conclusion of the chase to the very end (i.e. to take the stuff from "Point A" and move it to "Point B"); it's already intercut enough to get across that this is all going on in real time, and I definitely feel a lot better about the sequencing of things.