On Fri, Dec 12, 1997 at 05:01:15PM -0500, Drakkus wrote:

Hiho, folks. 

I have decided to join the horde of Ranma fic writers living in our dark
little corners of the 'net. This is a sort of personal ascension for me as
well as an exploration and exercise of my meager creative talents.

Now that you know where I'm coming from, I have a few questions. Rest
assured that I have researched these to the best of my ability with the
resources I have, and that I am only asking because I couldn't find the
answers anywhere else.

1. What is Cologne's real name? I already know Xian Pu and Mu Tsu, but for
the life of me, I can't find or deduce Cologne.

I don't think there's any real consensus on this.  
 

2. The fic involves a heavy Western influence because of the basic premise.
I intend to include several Western conventions like the drug culture,
Slack, counterculture and excessive violent crime in the story. Is this a
sin against the basic idea of the Ranmaverse, which is mostly humorous?

No matter what you're planning on doing, somebody's probably done worse
before...
 

3. I've noticed that Ranma seems to have, in general, a morning theme.
Everything happens in the morning, and evenings are marked mostly by
everybody going to bed. If I switch that theme to evenings and nights, will
Ranma be so drastically altered that I might as well be using some other
universe?

I doubt it - I never noticed this before.

4. What are the standard objections to the self-insertion? I already know
about the general low quality that characterizes the sub-genre; I want
objections to the very idea.

Some people object to the "self-gratification" element, although I've never
seen a problem with this.  I do find it annoying, however, when a self
insertion character shows up, beats the crap out of Ranma and Ryouga without
even breaking a sweat, solves all of the cast's problems, and immediately
has the entire female cast fawning over him, all before lunch.  In other 
words, don't insert yourself as a god.
 
(One thing I never could figure out, though.  Why do so many of these
self-insertion characters go after Nabiki?  Myself, I'd go for Cologne
before I'd think about going after Nabs. :P)

-- 

- Sean Connor (sec@frodo.com)

        "It jams." - Intel TV ad, referring to the Pentium chip.