"Peace on Earth and good tall women"

[larryhammer]

Scattered Ninja Replacement Score reports:

The Song of Hiawatha - Replace the two women who fade away without a whimper (mother Wononah, wife Minnehaha) with fighting ninjas, and you might generate some excitement. Grandmother Nonokis, the fallen moon maiden, isn't in a position to do anything interesting as a ninja except fight with her granddaughter-in-law, which is meh. Himself, as a trickster figure is, of course, immune to ninja replacement, and as someone who fights the West Wind (his father) and a Corn Spirit, already is one. NRS = 2.

(BTW, how come no one ever warns about the casual father-daughter incest in Hiawatha? Stubbed my mental toe, when I tripped over that. Between that and the needed ninjas, I wonder where's the manga adaptation.)

Evangeline - It would be totally awesome if the Acadians were a ninja clan. Ninjas in Nova Scotia. (Work with me here.) And no, it doesn't work replacing just Evangeline and Gabriel -- gotta be everyone in Grand-Pré, if not all Acadia. We get their battle with Redcoats, which they lose, and still have the wandering. 'Course, that means Cajuns are ninjas, or descended from them, which hurts my brain. NRS = between 5000 to 12,000, depending on which figures you believe.

---L.

Comments

[sharonskinner.livejournal.com]

Bess in Noyes' The Highwayman should have been a ninja!
(Or maybe an amazon.)
Either way, the ending would have been much more satisfying. Bloodier, too.

[larryhammer]

Oh yeah -- Bess totally should be a ninja. NRS = 1, which is darned high for such a short work.

---L.

[sharonskinner.livejournal.com]

Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening would have been vastly improved by the addition of ninjas, as shown by this visual aid:

[larryhammer]

Yes, but which character(s) would you replace with ninja(s)? The horse?

---L.

[sharonskinner.livejournal.com]

I think that replacing several of the trees with ninjas, since true ninjas hide well in plain sight and can disguise themselves as anything, would make the woods really come alive for me (pun intended).

And all the quiet language of the poem about snow and sleep ties well with their stealth and ability to dole out silent death.

[larryhammer]

Sounds like you're arguing that the trees already are ninjas.

Story of my writing life -- everything I do is already anticpated by Frost.

---L.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

No to Evangeline. Sorry, if you have to make the ninja count more than 10 then the whole thing fails. OTOH, if you're into ninjaising Eastern Canada, why not the ninja version of Anne of Green Gables?

[larryhammer]

For something that length, a NRS over about five is doing pretty weak. It's about a novella of story.

I haven't read Anne of Green Gables since I was a kid, and don't remember enough. I'll have to reread to score that. And possibly get past the second book this time.

---L.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

Ninja-reading should help with that :).

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

:: blink, blink::

There's incest in Hiawatha?

Oh my...I haven't read all of it since I was ten or eleven. Holy things sailing right over my head, Batman. I guess I should read it again.

[larryhammer]

It's the sort of thing where if you blink, you'll miss it. And it takes place in the land of the Evening Star, so maybe divine mores are supposed to apply. But still.

---L.