While you knew where this was heading from the start with the end being her becoming Alice Margatroid you never actually lead up to it. While that works for a oneshot it doesn't work for an actual novel. The whole point of the fic was Ran taking the identity of Alice at the end but it comes out of nowhere and not in a good way. You have her fake her death and abandon Karin, which I still say feels really off, just so she can become Alice then you follow that up with the thing about her mother. And while the ending could work you just didn't make it work.
The overriding question, the one that has ultimately been the focus of the entire story ever since Big Boss made his ultimatum to Ran in Chapter 20, has been: Why does Ran feel she needs to fake her own death, and not both herself and Karin's? Why does she feel that Karin will be safe from the wrath of Kusa behind the walls of Konoha, but Ran herself is not? The only answer that ever satisfied me was that Ran felt that Karin was not considered important enough for Kusa to make a big deal over, but Ran, the heir and last of the Shimada clan, was. And, in fact, we saw that was indeed the correct calculation from the Big Boss's interlude.
So yeah, I am just not happy at all with the Secret Agent Momo-chan reveal, as I kind of liked the bitter, tragic, and proud Shimada Momoko and wasn't happy to find out her character was a really long, involved bit of method-acting the whole time. I was rather expecting this final omake to be about how Shimada Momoko knew about Ran's super-secret plan the whole time, and allowed it to happen because her love for her daughter came into conflict with her duty as a kunoichi, and, at least for the moment, she allowed her love to win out. If I can find the time and proper inspiration maybe I'll write out what I was hoping to see here, but I'm a terribly slow writer so I doubt it'll be done soon, if ever.
There was the bit when she (not Ran) brought up the Superman Dilemma, which someone quoted somewhere on the last page. Pretty sure there was at least one other case along the same lines I'm not directly remembering right now. At least a couple other places where she reacted to pop culture references and idioms from Earth that Ran used as if she knew exactly what she meant. I don't fully remember the details on those either. Most of them were pretty easy to miss, because that same lack of reaction led to Ran (our narrator) not noticing her slipup.
Well yes, there were even more indicators like that, but a couple of them like the Superman Dilemma conversation go a lot farther than that.
Not exactly? Kind of a mix of explaining some odd things about the mother, hooking into another story (about the mother) that the author intends to write at some point, tying off some of the loose ends in this one and adding more hooks for this one's sequel.
As I have said multiple times: Ran did not bring up the Superman Dilemma in that scene. Shimama brought it up. By that name. The only way she would know that name for it was if she was familiar with Earth's pop culture, since the term was coined as such in reference to the superhero in question.
But she is super devoted to working a dangerous job and when she went on vacation, as expected of a Shimada, she just got another job for the duration. Combined with the hereditary mindset/madness, it makes enough sense to me.
Head Start in particular is the one I was thinking about.
I mean if it was the Green Lantern Dilemma then sure you'd have a point here. But Superman is literally as generic as you can get. Calling a sufficiently powerful person a superman is an obvious application of language. Much like Nietzsche's use of the German equvilant "Ubermensch" in his works to describe a similar idea, if different in application.
It's only an obvious application of language because we're familiar with the term "superman" from the superhero. Moreover, even then it's only obvious in English, which they were not speaking. Your rejection of the foreshadowing is a rejection of reality. You just weren't paying attention. For Pete's sake, this has been her portrayal from the very start of the story! How did you come up with this cloud-cuckoo-land vision of her personality?!
I don't remember. XD
How I remember reacting to Shimama bringing up the Superman Dilemma:
That's more than fair. As mentioned before, the proper story ends with chapter 039, and the epilogues are extras. Karin's tie up directly into the story and will be relevant going forward, Mother's is not.
For now I want to take a break of the Queen of Puppets storyline, but there's vague plans of continuing her story with another book or two. The next one, tentatively titled 'Alice's Rondo' would pick up during the events of The Stone of Gelel movie. As I said, I have no hard plans for it right now, but I'm toying with the idea of focusing on the less terrible movies and filler episodes while
Yeah, there was a lot of hopping around in this version. The novelization is a definite improvement on the original; I'm glad you expanded on it.
Okay, in order then:
I'm still not sure about her reasoning for why Momo-chan didn't take a few minutes and clear up the misconceptions that led to Ran deciding to fake her death, change her identity, and run away from Karin and Konoha, but this seems to be the closest that Momo-chan's interlude actually comes to explaining it. It does explain why Momo-chan didn't just sweep in and start killing people until the Big Boss decided to leave Ran alone or face the wrath of the Dragon Sleeping in the Grass, but not why she denied Ran the tools to save herself.
And yet, what Ran does during the timeskip will be relevant and necessary for the later story, I don't know why you assumed she spent years planning her disappearance only to stumble around like a vagabond when the time finally arrives.
Because there are no misconceptions. That solution would take Mother's help, that Ran rejected. Ran only misjudged how far she would need to go to leave Grass, in a true Shimada way.
Yes, I deleted those lines because people were taking the wrong message out of them. They were supposed to remark fondly on Ran's overzeal, something Momo is quite familiar with and it's not intrinsically bad. Just more effort than strictly required. As mentioned above, the true Shimada way.
Eh... Ran misread Mother's priorities once, years ago, which led her to become unsure on what Mother would choose between the Village and her daughter. That misunderstanding has been cleared, in a very emotional way if I remember correctly. And there's been various roundabout offers on Momo's part to take Ran's side ever since.
I think the reveal makes that a lot less satisfying than it was originally. Throughout most of the story, she had two major concerns: Orochimaru, and the wrath of her village. Asking the mom Ran thought she had for help with the former would be asking her to kill herself, and asking for help with the latter would force her to divide her loyalties. Sure she might know what the answer would be, but it's still cruel.
