Comments: Tenchi is written beautifully — his role as an Unwanted Harem protagonist has begun to cause him significant stress, which is expressed extraordinarily well; even when the character appears alone, he seems to exude weariness without it have been written straight-out. It's almost a sort of deconstruction — how would the sudden arrival of a large group of eccentric, flashy individuals affect someone whose personality was relatively normal? The final epiphany is surprising, yet in the end makes sense in a sort of neat and simple way.
Night: Meanwhile, over here, I'm going to disagree with basically everything said. This fic is ostentatious, dragging the reader through mountains of Purple Prose and subjecting you to some particularly bad metaphors and analogies along the way. Tenchi does seem to be weary, very weary, of all the goings-on, but everything starts to fall apart when you read the confrontation between Ryoko and Washu. The author tries very hard to play up Washu's side of the story and paint Ryoko as irrational, but the basic strangeness of the setup (Ryoko has traditionally responded to very comprehensible motives, Washu has always been rather madcap) and the fact that in spite of the author both sides are correct destroy the scene. The story never recovers from this realization that the author cannot be trusted to present a fair treatment of his characters.
Original Comments