At 08:19 PM 02/11/96 +1100, you wrote:

If they were going to fall out of love, they would have done so a long
time ago ... besides, their fights mean that they still have passion
in their relationship. ;p

Passion applies equally to hate as well as love. ;} Besides which, time is a
relative thing. RT may have taken what eight, nine years to write the stories,
but that much time does *not* pass in the series. 

So, Zen asks "What if..." - a LOT

And 'what if' stories are generally elseworld stories ... like "What if
Ranma fell for Shampoo in China" is a what if ... as is "What if Ranma
was gay and loved Ryouga" ... so is "What if Ranma fell in love with
Ukyou" ... They "what if" makes the story an alternative universe to
the original Takahashi one ...

But if the story continues on from the manga, then it's considered, by
me, to be in the same 'world' ... they can be developed, but if they
don't go on from the nine years of work that Takahashi put into making
the manga - ie. establishing Ranma and Akane's relationship ... keeping
the characters with the same characteristics ... etc - then I think it's
like you're telling Takahashi-sensei that she wasn't good enough, and
you think you're better ... *shrug* But that's just what it seems like
to me.

Not really. The stories that continue on from the manga can be also seen as
elseworld stories. It just that they parallel RT's storyline up to a point
and then go off in a different direction because the author asked "What if
x happend instead of y?".  RT wrote the main line of the story and these
stories 
explore the what-ifs that could occur at some point on that line.

male writers.  They ask questions.

And we all "ask questions" to either make a fanfic that is "for" or
"against" Takahashi-sensei's work. I think if it's against, then why 
not just make up an original story with your own characters. It seems
bad form to throw Takahashi-sensei's work away like it was worth
nothing, and you think you can do a better job than her.

Not true. Your making it sound like people are activly trying to rewrite RT's
work. The thing is that the "question" that gets asked is such that RT's work
doesn't apply. Ask yourself what would happen if Ranma had fallen for
Kodachi when he first saved her. Doing such a story would mean throwing away
most of
what came after because RT's work was partially based on the premise that
a)Ranma loved Akane and only her, and b) Ranma wanted nothing to do with
Kodachi. Since RT never considered the possibility, anyone writing that story
would be on their own. Her work gets tossed because there is no way to fit
it in.


  Rui M.
         Rui D. Madeira  =-=  sirlock@io.org  =-=  IRC/FFMux: Hoki
     Rui's FF links from Hell - http://www.io.org/~sirlock/fanfic.html    
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