From:        Paul Corrigan, budgie@insomnia3.dorms.utoledo.edu

On Wed, 23 Oct 1996, Edward Becerra wrote:

	As far as a working definition of love goes, the best I've ever
encontered was something the great Robert Anson Heinlein once wrote.

	"Love is that condition where the happiness and well-being of
another person is essential to your own." 

	What more can you say?

  Not much.
  To relate this to the subject at hand before the maintainer gets too 
upset at us: this is more what I had in mind as to how we could expect 
Ranma to act towards Akane if he truly loves her (and he does). Could 
Ranma's not only being advanced upon by Ukyo but apparently responding do 
anything but break poor Akane's heart in two? i doubt it. So, he won't do 
it. Period.

Please don't take this personally, but this statement is almost as much 
fantasy (read: out of touch with reality) as your previous one. I agree 
this is one of the best definitions of love that I've found... but having 
a definition, and living up to it all-day-every-day, are two completely 
different things.

I admit, I've never been in a relationship myself. But I have had several 
friends get married, and even lived with a relationship when a roommate's 
girlfriend moved in with us for a while. And from what I've seen... while 
this definition is often held as an ideal, even people deeply in love can 
do things that hurt their partner's happiness. 

>From the general to the specific... Ranma *does* have a history of doing 
things that hurt Akane, though they're often unintentional. Moreover, 
this forms a major part of the series' action. Let's look at a couple of 
things:

* No matter what subconscious devotion Ranma and Akane share, they 
consistently avoid a conscious acknowledgement of this devotion. When 
Ranma won't admit publicly -- or even to himself -- that he loves Akane, 
it works against any kind of conscious decision along the lines you think 
he should have.

* And when it comes to unconscious reaction... well, let's just say 
Ranma's reactions have never been that thoughtful. Ranma has a tendency 
to react instinctively, which is good in a fight; his martial arts 
training works for him. However, where Akane is concerned, this is very 
*bad*; he *hasn't* had much training in getting along with people, and 
there's a good chance his instinctive reaction will be the *wrong* 
reaction. That's one of the things I like about Richard's _Thy Inward 
Love_; he made Ranma face that and deal with it.

* Finally, Ranma has a history of of confusion and flustered reactions 
when a woman makes a move on him, and his resistance has weakened when 
confronted with determined pressure. Look at when he first tried to 
convince Shampoo that the Amazon law was wrong -- he went from "Look, 
some law that says you marry the man who beats you is centuries out of 
date!" to "Um... er..." to "Um, well, maybe... uh, we should get to know 
each other better." 

Taking all these in combination... I don't have any trouble accepting 
that Ranma would ask to stay at Ucchan's on impulse, or that he would get 
confused and flustered when Ukyou starts pushing him, and that his 
resistance starts breaking down under that assult.



Travis Butler
(The Professor, formerly of Myth and Magick!, Lawrence, KS;
 tbutler@tfs.net, now from the Wandering Powerbook;
 <http://www.tfs.net/personal/tbutler/>;
 Mac page <http://www.tfs.net/business/tbutler/>)

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.