Hmm. Major spoilers ahead, if you haven't "The Bitter End" yet, do so.
Warning, it is a "Dark" fic, and the only dark fic I have ever told
anyone to read.

The good stuff.

This was really well done, I wasn't sure where it was headed in the 
first half, then the support group kicked in, and a lot of it
started to make sense. It was good in that there was a real message there
that might soak in and save someone one day. It was also a pretty good
read, and held together well for a long story. I'm always in awe of people
who can write really long fics that work, "Bitter End" is probably 4 times longer than all of my works combined.

The bad stuff.

Once again, violent death is visited upon the Tendou Doujo. I find it
disheartening when my favorite characters are painted into such a story.
I read a few if the dark fics when they first came out, and I just
didn't understand why the Ranmaverse had to be infected with the virus
of the worst parts of the real world.

I suppose that I am just a romantic, but I sort of like the Ranmaverse
the way it is, or more to the point, I like the characters the way they
are. This has never gotten in he way of my enjoying some rather strong
stories (Ranma Goes to War, Nabiki new Horizons, TIL, TMTC and others)
because in those stories the characters may be put through war or hell or
whatever, but the characters remain true, both to the original spirit and to each other.

I've probably spent too much time and money on Ranma, I have all the manga, and
all the laser disks, and I can speak a little Japanese, and I have been to Tokyo and Nerima, and I see the characters a little differently than others do on the list.

Many of the stories are like a classic Chuck Jones Buggs Bunny episode, i.e. Ranma and Akane are getting on with their lives when someone shows up to mess with them. (Read "Chuck Amuck" by Chuck Jones to get the whole Buggs Bunny formula.) Takahashi has let Ranma pick on Ryouga from time to time, but in gerneral that's because he shows up to pick up on Akane.
If you really look through the manga you will find episode after episode 
Ranma and Akane are getting along, punctuated by an comic "punt" through
the roof. In the whole of the manga the hit that really hurt Ranma the most was when Akane slapped him to keep him from hurting Shinosuke in a fight. 
Other than that the "punts" have been single frame gags, not part
of the story.

Look closer and you will see that there are far more cases of
Ranma punting Happosai or his father compared to Akane punting Ranma.
You'll also see that many story arcs end in a bit of domestic humor,
with Ranma and Akane together. 

I've noticed a lot of people on the list have a "Violent Akane" 
opinion, I wonder if some of that comes from the VIZ dubs where
the only emotion that seems to come through Akane's voice is
anger. In the original Japanese there is a sweetness and strength
that comes through in the in-between scenes that is missing in
the dub.

Okay, I don't know if any of this made any sense, "The Bitter End" 
did have at it's core a message, which made it easyer for me to read
it, even if at times it fell into a sort of "Movie of the Week"
storyline. That's OK. I used to watch preachy TV shows like MASH
and Quincy, and "Tragedy of the Week" movies, so message is something
I'm used to, and that did take most of the edge off the use of the
Ranmaverse, but...


I feel a loss to the Ranmaverse whenever an author writes something where the characters hurt each other.


In my opinion.

J.

________________________________________________________________________
Joseph Palmer                      "Never join a titanic battle unless
CEO, VideoS2                        you get to be the iceberg." --- J.
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