On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Caroline Ann Seawright wrote:

	Wow... Cool!  I just _love_ the truth, particularly as espoused 
by the Book of Ranma.

	What if _I_ see Kasumi as being a latent psychopath?  We've _all_ 

Then that's what you see, not what Takahashi says.

	I'm still not at all clear what the distinction says.  Without 
getting _too_ deeply into sophistry, all I know (and, idneed, perhaps all 
I *can* know) is what I see, and what I intuit from what I see.  

read things in Ranma, after all.  That's why we have lemons.  Ranma and 
Akane _certainly_ never screw like rabbits in the manga, and yet we seem 
to have dozens of fanfics depicting same.  The whole point of fanfic, it 
seems to me, is to pursue our perceptions of our favorite characters 
through new and different situations.

But if your faviourite characters are nothing like the characters, then
they are *your* characters, not Takahashi's characters... you may as well
say they are your characters, because people expect the characters they
see to be similar to what they know.

	And perhaps there are people out there who might _see_ precisely 
the same things that I do?  Perhaps not everyone in the world sees Ranma 
as you do.  Maybe I have an entirely different viewpoint on what's going 
on in the series. 
	Shall I view Ranma as a simple, formulaic love story?  I suspect 
you might agree.  Shall I view it as a light-hearted, farcical lampooning 
of gender-based values?  Many would probably agree with me here, as 
well.  Maybe Ranma is actually a sort of Jackie-Chan esque martial arts 
comedy?  Maybe it's actually a spoof of violent movies everywhere.  Hell 
-- maybe I can write up why I think the entire Ranma series is an 
allegory for Fermat's last theorem.
	A great many people read Carroll's _Through_the_Looking_Glass_ as 
a simple fairy tale and yet, as it turns out, it can also (quite 
legitimately) be read as a mathematical proof.  Authors provide us with 
raw materials -- not finished products.  
	The beauty of metaphor and authorship is that we, as *individuals*, 
fill in the blanks ... and, quite frankly, give the story life.  Most of 
the time this happens only in our heads.  Some times we set what we're 
thinking to words.

your writings stand as a seamless continuation of Rumiko Takahashi's 
work?  Somehow I _seriously_ doubt it.

At least my works have been In Character, from all the comments that I have
recieved... I haven't had one person tell me that they are OOC.

	Then I'll be the first to call you on it.  I don't think Ranma 
and Akane would have actually gone through with consumating their 
marriage.  I think you pulled most of what I've seen out of thin air -- 
starting with the general premise of Ranma.  Moreover, I'm glad you did.

	So -- let's get this straight.  My options are either to write 
stories that conform strictly to the Ranma universe ... (as judged by 
you, I presume) or to write a story whose characters are "mutilated and 
wrong?"  

They should start off as they are in the manga. If they don't, they are not
Takahashi's Ranma characters. They are your own creation, with only the
physical attributes of Ranma characters. Takahashi designed the characters
for a reason... Putting your own characters into Ranma characters' bodies
just totally negates what Takahashi wrote.

	You still haven't answered my question: _HOW_ did they start 
out?  I know what she draws, and writes, them as _saying_ and _doing_ ... 
but is this really what they _ARE_ ?  Does this necessarily, 
deterministically, tell me what makes them *TICK*?  I happen to like to 
imagine a Ranmaverse with characters in three dimensions -- with subtle 
<almost> hidden motives in addition to the traits demonstrated in the 
series.  

	It wouldn't hurt to leave a bit more lattitude.  We aren't making 
sausage here, you know...

And it wouldn't hurt to explain the reasons behind obvious character changes,
too.

	Why?  Does it somehow _upset_ you that I wrote a snippet-story 
from Ranma that chronicled something _other_ than the same damned 
saccharine ending that seems to appear in such profusion on this list?  I 
think it's a _good_ thing if people imagine how it could have been that 
Ranma and Akane got that point.  If nothing else, it breaks out of the 
same fan-synthesized formula we seem to be all too familiar with.

CHL