As I see it, making a reasonable Ranma/Shampoo match would require 
several steps, essentially adding up to "Shampoo grows up":

* She is, at the very least, going to have to tone down her heavy-handed 
attempts to snare him. The in-your-face attitude she frequently adopts 
seems to drive him away more than it attracts him.

* She has to learn to respect his opinions and wishes. I'm not saying she 
has to slavishly bend her will to his -- but I am saying she has to give 
him the same respect, and right now she spends most of her time trying to 
get him to follow her will instead of compromising.

* Her actions have frequently bordered on coercion, and have gone over 
that line at least twice that I can think of (the Instant Naniichuan and 
especially the mushroom episode that Viz recently translated). This is no 
basis for building a stable, happy relationship, and she has to learn 
that and respect it.

I'd say the 'Red Thread' story, as well as the magic eggs in Volume 
38 cross that line too.  Not to mention the fact that in the first 
Pantyhose Tarou story, (Manga 18) she tries to kill Akane in such a 
way as to stick Tarou with the blame.
 

* Finally, and most importantly, she *must* get rid of her 
ends-justify-the-means mentality, believing her love excuses her actions. 
It's a corrosive and dangerous attitude (which was the point of the 
personal story, really).

The question is how this can be done reasonably, without a massive 
discontinuity with her portrayal in the manga. And this is where I think 

This is fanfiction here, and you can expect that different authors 
will have different goals and motives in writing their stories.  
Continuity of portrayal may not necessarily be the point.

it's going to take a lot of fancy footwork, if you're not going to 
violate suspension of disbelief. Note above that I say Richard made me 
"respect her *again*." In her first appearance, I had quite a bit of 
sympathy for her; her violent actions in trying to kill onna-Ranma I 
could excuse as cultural differences. She was aggressive in acting on her 
feelings, but also open and sincere about them -- and was not 
manipulative or deceitful. However, as the manga has continued, she has 
grown *more* deceitful and manipulative, not less -- from her crocodile 
tears in the Martial-Arts Takeout Contest (the scene on the watertower) 
to the Instant Naniichuan 'date' to the mushroom incident. Thus, meeting 
the criteria above would mean reversing a trend, not simply changing a 
static problem. IMHO, to make a story believable, an author would have to 
provide a credible reason for reversing the trend, probably including an 
explanation for how the trend started in the first place.

Agreed.  It might be easier to just blame changes in the phase of the 
moon. :)

However, as far as credibility goes, I'm not sure that I've read any 
'fics that deal with the Ranma-gets-Akane situation in a way I find 
believable.  The differences that Ranma and Akane still have at the 
end of the manga are either ignored ("Hey, they just started getting 
along fine.  Don't ask how it happened, it just happened!"), or are 
resolved, but rather lamely.  

I'm sorry, but the "They love each other; everything will work out 
fine" line just doesn't wash with me.  I guess I've just seen too 
many people I know rush into marriage despite their differences.  
After all, they love each other, right? That's all you need, right?

WRONG!

In my experience, I have _NEVER_ seen this type of marriage work 
without both people finding some way to bridge the gap.  I've _NEVER_ 
seen the solution come as easily as it does in most fanfics that deal 
with the subject.  I have _RARELY_ seen such a marriage work at all.
This point was _piledriven_ home in "Bitter End".

I'm not saying that it can't work.  I'm just saying that I find the 
whole situation to be just a bit hard to swallow.  And if we're 
going to wield the "believability" axe over a Ranma-Shampoo pairing, 
isn't it only fair to do the same to the Ranma-Akane pairing as well?
  
Of course, believablility might not be the whole point of the fic, in 
which case the above rant doesn't apply.  I have read stories that 
work fine despite, or even because of, a distinct lack of believability.

It can happen and it
does happen.  These characters are dynamic, they can change either
for the better or, unfortunately, for the worse.  All too often
in fanfics authors seem to do the latter (and not just to Shampoo, they
do it to Mousse [who is teeter-tootering on pond scum as is], Kodachi
[she's already over the edge], Ranma [no comment], Akane, Ukyo, Kuno,
Ryoga... shall I go on?) Is it that writers are afraid for some reason
to have a person become better?  Well, they shouldn't.  It's a
possibility and should be explored.  

Just remember, conflict is an important part of the story, and most of 
the time that conflict is going to come from the characters. You can make 
the conflict internal -- a character fighting with a bad tendency within 
themselves, as Richard did with his Kodachi story... but it still needs 
to be there.

Just because a character 'improves' doesn't necessarily mean that 
the causes of the conflict are removed - indeed, entirely new 
conflicts may arise because of it.

If they're afraid of the label of
OOCism then here's my answer to that:  Yeah, it's OOC, that's the whole
f__king point!  

Um, no it isn't. The point is to take a character and use her without 
blowing a hole in the reader's suspension of disbelief. If you take a 

Um, no it isn't.  The point is whatever you want it to be.  When you 
sit down to write a fanfic, it's your story - you are free to do 
whatever you want with it.  Some may not like it as a result, but 
that's not your problem.

character that is recognizably from the original story, change her to 
something different, and *develop that change in a believable fashion*, 
then you're not OOC. If you take a character and show her at the start in 
a way that does *not* match the original source in the reader's opinion, 
you've blown suspension of disbelief and probably your story. Likewise, 

I guess this means that "alternaverse" stories are bad, ne? :)

if you change her in the story, but don't develop the change in a way the 
reader can accept, you've again blown your suspension of disbelief. Take 
"Bitter End": IMHO, the Akane at the beginning matches the manga pretty 
well. The Akane at the end obviously doesn't. The arguments have mostly 
been over whether the change was developed believably, I think.

- Sean Connor (connor@meena.cc.uregina.ca)

        "It jams." - Intel TV ad, referring to the Pentium chip.