I'm going to add my opinion here, and I do hope I don't regret
it....

	I have two beefs with this gay Ranma fanfiction which has been
posted lately. I'll first give the more objective one, so you don't pound
me into a pulp immediately.

	The first problem is the OOCness. Generally, I don't like OOC
stuff (which is why darkfics turn me off just about right away). Yet, I
have been writing quite a bit of OOC pieces, like "Mousse, Version 2.0"
and "Life and Manhood". However, for those, I had a specific point in mind
or some sort of justification for the OOC parts. For the first, I was
intentionally trying to create a Mousse with whom Shampoo could fall in
love with. For the second, I had Ranma have such a bad day that s/he got
drunk, and since I've never really seen an example of a drunk, depressed
Ranma, I was free to experiment there. Now, with some of these gay fics, I
can't really see the justification in the OOCness. First of all, there is
no real indication of any of the characters being homosexual in the series
(well, there's always that bit about Akane, but that doesn't hold up when
you remember how she felt about Toufu-sensei). Extrapolation can only go
so far; I don't see it working in these cases. Secondly, I'm not really
sure as to what...well, for lack of a better word, "point" there is to
these suddenly-turned gay characters. That doesn't sound right, I know.

	My second argument is the personal one. I just don't like the idea
of the characters being gay. In part, it's attributable to my religion--
I'm a Christian, and I do not approve of the gay lifestyle. Now, BEFORE
YOU FLAME THE CRAP OUT OF ME, LISTEN: I am not a homophobe; I do have gay
friends. Besides, I'm in the middle of Cambridge, if I were homophobic,
I'd be pounded into the ground by now. But I just don't like the idea. As
I said, this is really more personal to myself than anything.

	I can, however, separate this from the quality of writing.
Lawson's "Thy Outward Part" stories are excellently written, I have to say
that. His style lives on through those stories. Also, he does justify
Ranma's mixed orientation quite nicely, which satisfies my first argument.
However, due to my second argument, I have to say I don't like the
stories. Nothing personal, Lawson-san...well, maybe it is in a way...argh.
What I mean is, it's not anything personal against Lawson-san. Is that
better?

	Wrapup: This list exists for the purpose of spreading around our
fanfics. Whether or not there's some twisted stuff in it, it's here. The
people on this list have the right to do that.... If you don't want to see
it, then don't read it. (I skipped over "Surrogate" after the intro; from
what I hear, it was a good thing for me to do.) As someone suggested
earlier (hmm, don't remember who it was), perhaps there should be an
additional header subject for these...ah, "bizarre" stories (prime
examples would be "Surrogate" and whatever else--I've tried very hard to
forget them, and have succeeded, I guess). Would that be fair?

>From Andrew Huang, Taiwanese-American-German-Scot Harvard Student :P
Brought to you by his computer, Oddzilla
Oddzilla says, "Ryouga and Ukyou! Ukyou and Ryouga!"
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~alhuang
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