Author's notes

on

Technical Virginity

The story behind the creation of this little piece is pretty long and interesting. It began (I am told) with Webdragon, who wrote the side story _Building Bridges_ that is meant to take place between _Thy Outward Part_ and _The Nature of Love_. Apparently he approached Richard again after _TNoL_ and offered him a lemon story with Ranma and Kentaro. Richard found the idea interesting and tried himself at writing such a lemon, only to find that the result didn't really meet his standards.

In conversation about an unrelated fic he let slip the fact that such a lemon existed and it took only a small bit of arm-twisting to get him to show me the thing. I saw what he meant when he described it as an "awful waste of disk space", although I didn't hate it as much as he did. I commented a bit on it and mentioned another idea I had about a future Ranma & Kentaro story (which he took and transformed into his wonderful fic _Those Tears are Pearl_), but somehow the idea took root in my brain.

Some time later I approached Richard and asked him for permission to re-write that lemon and try to get across what I percieved as his central point in a different context. He was so nice as to let me go ahead and when I was finished, this is what he wrote for an introduction:

Sebastian has always been one of my greatest sources of inspiration. "The Dying of the Rose", one of my personal favorites, would never have been written without him. I also wrote an awful lemon, and it was Sebastian's suggestion about how that lemon might fit into a serious story that became the basis for "Those Tears are Pearl".

Now, it is my honor to say that I inspired Sebastian. :) He took my original, awful lemon and turned it into a moving, powerful story. It is my honor to include this in the "Thy Outward Part" continuum, along with "Building Bridges", "The Nature of Love", and "Those Tears are Pearl".

When I read his first draft of the lemon, I found the central motive - Ranma's doubts and inhibitions and her struggle to overcome them - very intriguing, but agreed with him that he had somehow gone about it the wrong way.

Thus, when I went and wrote this, I lifted quite a few pieces out of his first draft and integrated them in this story. The pivotal scene (Note the clever avoidance of the word "climactic") wherein Ranma's internal struggle culminates is one such example. It's almost entirely Richard's, as are a lot more scenes and sentences towards the end.

He and Zen helped me a lot in getting the bugs outta this text. I owe both of them lots of thanks for their help and their friendship.

Sebastian


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