On Wed, 5 Feb 1997, Andrew Huang wrote:

	Due to a bit of recent mentioning, I finally relented and, against
my better judgement, looked at "Paint It Black".
	Can you say...OOC?

Hmm, well, the author goes to my anime club, and we had chatted about his
fanfic before he released it (and before I had read it, so I sort of knew
what it was about, but it was even darker than I expected when I read it,
of the "It's a cold, dark world" variety), the grounds for taking the
characters majorly OOC are because of where he is going (i.e. the
situation he needs to get them to is one that is very difficult, well,
impossible with Ranma as he is normally, so its necessary for Ranma to
change, to undergo a radical personality change, its the only way he could
see what he wanted to explore in a fanfic happening).

Not that there is any comparison, but it's like Richard Lawson's fanfics
that explore Ranma falling in love with a guy.  He has to push some OOC
edges to make it work, because with an IC Ranma, it just wouldn't happen
(IMHO).  So he alters Ranma to make/justify/explain how it would happen. 
I usually don't mind serious OOC if it is well justified.  (Yeah, right,
everytime it isn't Ranma and Akane getting together or one of them dying I
get really angry, but in theory I don't mind, at least :). 

Charles K. Hurst - ImageNation Corp. Wage Slave/Employee - RPI graduate-MechE
Chocolate and Anime Forever!  1 year, 9 months a fan and counting.
MI = eps. 96  MB = eps. 76 - 0/0 episodes each to utter boredom or Fushigi!
FY = eps. 32  Escaflowne = eps. 26 - 24/0 to my next bout of depression. ^ ^