At 05:52 PM 11/1/96 -0500, you wrote:
     This is exactly what I was trying to say. Eventually, the character

will develop into a character different from the original. It becomes,
in essence, *your* character, no longer RT's original (in this case). This
doesn't mean the character is OOC. Rather, it has grown and evolved into
a new character.

Er... EXACTLY.  THEREFORE, the character is *not* OOC.  He's just IC 
for an altered reality.  In fact, trying to fit the Takahashi IC-ness
into a non-Takahashi reality would constitute making the character OOC.
ie, Ranma acting like the Ranma who wasn't raped, in the below example,
would be making him OOC.

    For example, back to the rape story. Ranma is raped, and then reverts
to thinking that he's an female much younger than he is physically. From
the past discussions on this ML, it was quite an applicable reaction given
everything which had happened in his life. This character acted in ways
very OOC to the manga, but then again, RT's Ranma never got raped, and
she probably never would have him get raped, therefore we would never have
any idea of what happened to him.

I find it helps to explain why the character is OOC (in your story).  

    I'd rather let the story speak for me, but sometimes you do need to
do that (especially if your story starts out with a character acting
"OOC").

Once again, the character is NOT OOC, if you're adapting him to a changed
situation.  Having him NOT change with the altered situation is OOC (in 
general; no flames, please, I realise that there are very good stories
out there whose whole point is that so-and-so wouldn't change this-and-that
part of his/her personality, even if the rest of the world went to heck).

A case in point are the characters in Jeff Hosmer's 'Lies'.  They're
perfectly IC for the situation in which they're placed; to revert them
to Takahashi ICness would have made them dreadfully OOC.

I guess i just want to point out that having a character DEVELOP due to
a changed situation is NOT making him OOC.   Being OOC constitutes writing
reactions which are not consistent with the characters in the 
environment/history in which they're placed.

Just to get my point across, another example - Ryouga and Ukyou in 
Mademoiselle Seawright's Nibun no Ichi lemon series.  Once the existence
of Passion Spice and its application is over and done with, the... Er...
Interesting bits are perfectly IC for the two, BECAUSE of the changed
reality.

So, Stormy's absolutely right, but he's unfairly calling OOC something that 
is perfectly IC.

-Chris Willmore




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