Hiya,

This was originally sent to me privately, but I've included the FFML in the reply (with Dave's permission) since I believe it's on-topic and relevant, and well within the range of what the FFML is for.  An essential part of any real criticism involves taking into account how the characters are presented, how consistant they are, how 'real' they seem... and in the case of fanfiction, involves issues of being 'in character'--and I'd like to think this can be done without devolving into another pointless 'Best Babe' discussion.

Why bother to bring it back to a public audience?  My opinion is that public C&C is always better than private; public discussion (unless it degenerates into squibbling) can only serve to enhance a fic, and at the very least give an author insight into what his or her readers are thinking--hell, let the writer know that people are actually _reading_ the damn thing (something I know I've wondered more than once!)

> This scene, however, quite flatly states that physical urges are
>far more important than any mental component, and that love and
> morality can take a flying leap in the face of a hard-on.  <shrug>
>  Well, maybe, though I don't think that that's reality in the
> least; and more importantly, the consequence of his (in)action is
> that Ranma suddenly becomes a far less interesting character... and
> an unsympathetic one as well.

    Firstly, (and this could just be a matter of us reading the same
scene differently, I suppose) from what I saw, the love/morality vs. > hard-on (or female equivalent) issue was resolved in exactly the
opposite way that you suggest. Ranma, who for the past 14 chapters
(give or take) has been lusting after Nabiki, turns away from
following through on those urges because of his commitments,
emotional as well as honorable, to Akane. He/she is tempted, and not
just with sex, but an emotional appeal as well; I saw Nabiki's
declaration that "You'll get me" as saying that she wanted a
realtionship with Ranma herself, not just sex. Yet he/she doesn't
succumb.

Fair enough, and I can understand how the scene can be interpreted different--but I can't really buy into it, and even if I did, still don't find it salvages Ranma as a sympathetic character.  True, Ranma has been lusting after Nabiki for most of the story--he's been lusting after every semi-attractive thing with genitals.  The difference is that most of the other characters held back--even the fiancee squad, out of understandable concern for their freaking-out obsession; and Akane, for neurotic but believable (and believably written) reasons.  Nabiki, unhindered by such concerns, played the field a bit more and was able to secure the scenes under discussion.

There's other issues to deal with here, concerning Nabiki: if there's something burgeoning between her and... um, that quiet girl with the nasty parents, I question what our favourite mercenary is up to.  The monopoly game makes perfect sense to me: scorned by the girl she's growing attracted to, she chooses to toy with Ranma out of vengeful spite--and to get at her sister, for whatever reason.  But why the second time, when whatshername is actually _at_ the party--could even interrupt at any moment?  Heck, Nabiki _does_ take off with her afterwards, and even stays the night, which may or may not imply certain naughtiness.  These aren't criticsms of the story--they're fantastic possibilities for character drama that I hope, as you mention below, get picked up.

It does raise an important issue: if Nabiki's declaration of "You'll get me," actually means that Ranma can have his fiancee's older sister, then it puts a lot of the abovementioned possible motivations into question.  Then again, Nabiki might just be really horny. <shrug>  Personally, I don't think she wants Ranma.  I do hope we find out what she's up to at some point--at this point, I'm reading more for the Nabiki subplot than I am for the titular 'new Ranma'.

Anyway, back to Ranma.  So Ranma has been lusting after Nabiki.  Her every touch sets him on fire, every view of her slightest curve makes him hot-and-bothered.  Then again, so does everyone else, so I don't think it's a very strong bond, there; or it is, being powerfully physical, but it could just as easily have been anybody else--which he says himself to Akane, after almost getting himself raped (an exaggeration?  I don't think so) by Kunou.  The fact that he's succumbing to these physical urges independant of his own reason--and more importantly, emotions--sugggests to me that what happened between him and Nabiki in the bathroom was purely bump-and-grind.  There may have been, as you suggest, an emotional appeal on the part of Nabiki; but Ranma is the protagonist, and it seems clear enough to me that he's thinking with an entirely different head than what he should be (er, inverted as it may be at the moment).

Still, fair enough, at this point Ranma's so starving for physical attention that maybe it's well nigh impossible to resist.  Independant of dramatic concerns (which still serve to make him unsympathetic, in my opinion), I admit that it may be a realistic series of events--except that it still conflicts with some of the 'reality' as established previously, that _does_ bring the emotional element into play.  It's frustrating that other characters are allowed an emotional/sexual growth that is thusfar mostly absent in Ranma--the guys is still freezing up the way he used to before the operation, except that now he's getting some easy thrills out of it too.

Which ultimately returns to my biggest complaint with the story--Ranma's passivity.  Where you see:

Ranma, who for the past 14 chapters
(give or take) has been lusting after Nabiki, turns away from
following through on those urges because of his commitments,
emotional as well as honorable, to Akane. He/she is tempted, and not
just with sex, but an emotional appeal as well; I saw Nabiki's
declaration that "You'll get me" as saying that she wanted a
realtionship with Ranma herself, not just sex. Yet he/she doesn't
succumb.

True, he doesn't succumb, but he resists in the most passive way that the necessity of plot (I'm assuming here that the plot requires he sticks with Akane) will allow.  What if Nabiki hadn't been wearing polka-dot panties?  Ranma didn't conjure up the memories of his fiancee from within; he needed an external stimulus to trigger his resistance... and it remained a very soft defence.  His desperate,

"Please... please don't do this to me, Nabiki."

shows that Nabiki remained totally in control at that moment.  In a pivotal scene such as this, I'd expect the protagonist to stand up to bat and show, well, some balls (to use a wildly inapropriate term); but Nabiki firmly remains the stronger (and more interesting) character here.

Maybe (okay, _definitely_) things went further with Nabs
than they should have, and I'm hoping that Chris will address the
consequences of this in later chapters, but they didn't go past the
point of no return, and that, to me, is what's important.

As do I: I really hope Chris addresses these issues.  Not so much to resolve my problems with the story, because ultimately what I think is pretty irrelevant--rather, I think they're fascinating possibilities that he's already proven he's skilled enough to make something great out of.

Mind you, I do think they went too far... I won't harp on some kind of 'betrayal in mind is a betrayal in action' mentality, because we're all fallable--but there's also a difference between a kiss guiltily stolen in the heat of a moment, and having fingers up your crotch (or close equivalent--insert presidential jokes here, if you wish).  This is pretty tenuous ground though, so I won't belabour the point.

    Secondly, you mention that Akane hasn't really played a part in >recent chapters, and that's true, as far as it goes. Thing is, since >this is a continuation fic, we already _know_ how Ranma feels about >Akane, their history, etc. For me, Ranma exploring his/her feeling for >the rest of the cast is what's interesting here.

Oh, I agree, Ranma exploring his feelings for the rest of the cast is interesting, and probably necessary considering what the guy's been through--but the thing is, that very same operation forces a reconsideration of how he feels for Akane, too.  I know what he thought of her up to the end of volume 38--but I don't know what he thinks after his operation, and I expect Chris to tell me.  He does, too, with skill, right up until the Monopoly game--possibly the most important scene up to that point in the fic--and then Akane drops out, right when her reaction and thoughts are most important.  Most of the fic up till then has been struggling with an interesting theme, as to whether Akane could lose Ranma due to sexual reasons, and her inability to come to terms with her own sexuality.  It seems to me that the chapters that follow after part 13 really needed to resolve some of this, and it's at that point that Akane pretty much drops from view.  She remains essentially gone even up to the point where Ranma finally turns back to a boy.  Hell, we're given a scene of what _Kuno_ thinks about the change back, but not Akane?  Exploring the possibilities with other members of the cast is good; but dropping major characters to do so isn't, in my opinion.

For a while there, it was looking like Ranma and Nabs were going to
hook up seriously, and I for one was looking forward to seeing it.
Not that I'm a Nab/Ran shipper, but that I was looking forward to
seeing a choice of someone other than Akane played out to its full
extent, emotional hell and all. I honestly can't think of any non
alterniverse fics where Ranma has chosen one of the other girls over
Akane where the writer refuses to back away, showing how that choice
wreaks havoc on the cast interrelationships. That, to me, would be a
true exploration of Ranma's emerging maturity; living with the
consequences of taking the road not travelled.

I agree.  A fic relentlessly following one of those possibilities to its ultimate end regardless of the emotional hell involved in getting there would be great--and damn hard to write convincingly, especially being set after the end of the manga.  This fic could very well have done it as well--hell, may be in the process of doing it--but at this point I'm not sure I'd fine such a plot turn... satisfying.  Not that I really care if Ranma does or doesn't get together with Akane--my opinion is that the manga makes it pretty clear that they're a couple, but if a writer can convincingly pry them apart, then feel free--but with the way the story has developed, I think it would feel forced.  When a character disappears during the very chapters needed to offer up a defence, then any loss is going to feel forced, like an authorial decree independant of logical plot development.

But, heck, that's conjecture.  I don't know where the story's headed.  It's Chris', not mine, and it's certainly not my place to say how I'd write the thing.  I've got my own stories on the go, and I'm happy to bang my head against those instead.

Thirdly, about Ranma being a slave to his/her sexual urges. I won't >argue with you about the parental rape dreams. (That seemed a little
odd to me, too, but I just chalked it up to Makuna-sensei being a
Freudian ~_^) However, while reading this fic I've been struck again
and again by how _well_ Chris captures being a hormonal sixteen-year
old. Lord only knows that I remember being that awkward and nervous
during The Teen Years. Maybe not as prone to being turned on at the
drop of a hat, but pretty darned close.

Well, okay, they are teens, there's hormones in the air, and Ranma's dealing with long-suppressed urges that are understandably difficult to control.  And you're right--some of the teen party scenes strike me as very real.  They conjure up some funny (in retrospect, anyway) memories.  But I still think it often falls prey--especially in the case of Ranma--to fanfiction cliched exaggeration.  The homepage tagline says, "Ranma's about to find out what it means to be an adult... in mind and in body"... Ranma 1/2 is about to grow up, and I'd hope that some of the fanservice would get left behind with the kiddie years.  I mean, c'mon, yeah, I was pretty, um, excitable as a kid (hell, I still am), so I can relate to Hiroshi and the gang.  I've never been a teenaged girl so I can't quite say, but if I were to believe the world as portayed by fanfiction, then I'd pity the parents of teenage daughters.  These girls must be carrying six-packs of panties to school everyday and changing at every break, 'cus they soak through them faster than I soak through kleenex (ew, unpleasant image, but I've been sick lately).  I'd hate to have to do the laundry....

And as to Ranma succumbing to
hormones and kissing Nabiki and/or Kuno... Don't you ever remember
letting your genitalia do the thinking and doing something massively
stupid, like kissing the wrong girl (or guy, if that's your bag. I
ain't judging) when you _knew_ no good would come of it?  Doing
stupid, hormone-driven stuff it the stock-in-trade of teenagers. God
knows i've done dumb stuff like that in the past and lived to regret
it, but I don't think it's made me into a bad or maladjusted person. I think. ~_^

Yup, done the dumb stuff.  Still do--I'm a slow learner, I guess.  It's normal, and real--though again I maintain a stolen kiss is somewhat different from what Nabiki did to Ranma in the shower.  But the big difference is: I'm just some ordinary dude from a shit north-Ontario town who's lived a very normal life.  I've never killed a god to save a woman I love, nor cried to the heavens when I thought her dead, nor felt the debilitating joy as despair is unexpectedly transformed to relief... maybe a tight ass and the smell of perfume can overcome all that, but I can't bring myself to believe it.  I remain far too much the romantic, and maybe that's colouring my view of the entire story--it's a conceit I'm willing to admit.

Anyway, just my ten yen, no big deal. Take it or leave it, as ya >please. I'm just glad that i'm not the only one who enjoy this series >enough to think hard on it.

Certainly!  And take my response for what it's worth (er, probably not all that much).  Again, if newRanma was a crap story, there's no way I'd have dumped the hours into C&C as I just have--I'd much rather be toiling away on my own stuff.

Dave Menard

-Mike Noakes

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