On 4/16/97 11:39 AM, Wade Tritschler at tritschl@malun1.mala.bc.ca wrote:

Travis Butler wrote:

<snip personal story>

What does this have to do with Shampoo? The more I see of her behavior
patterns, the more they remind me of this... person. As far as either of
us could tell, she sincerely believed that her "love" for my roommate
excused and even justified all of her manipulations (and even her lies
and deceits). Sound familiar? Shampoo isn't quite that bad... but as the
most aggressive/least scrupulous of the 'real' fiancees (Kodachi is in a
class by herself... <g>), she comes uncomfortably close.

No, love does *not* excuse everything.

No, it's not, and Mousse is even worse, that's the main reason
I say he's an absolutely useless match for Shampoo.  A similar
thing happened to me with someone who comes uncomfortably close
to Ukyo...  But, let me not get off topic.

Good. :) I admit, I hesitated posting this, since I didn't want to feed 
another Shampoo flamewar; the last one was pretty bad. <Sigh> I'm going 
to try and keep my comments related specifically to using her in fanfics, 
and ask that everyone here try to do the same.

Shampoo is a fictional character and being so can be changed.  Even
if you downright louve her you do so because of her methods and
attitude that does sometimes go to these extremes.  However, this
doesn't mean she can't be changed.  That's half the challenge of
making such of fanfic, making it believable.  Put her in a new
situation that will change her for the better.  

Possible, certainly. I'm not sure how likely/reasonable it is, though; 
it'd probably take some fancy shuffling to pull it off. Richard did a 
reasonably good job of making me respect her again in the main "Thy 
Inward Love" sequence, but he had to do some handwaving/"take it on 
faith" bits in the process. 

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.

* 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 
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.

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.

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 
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, 
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.

(As a friendly-meant side note: here, and later, you sound a little like 
you've got a chip on your shoulder. That's not going to win you any 
arguments.)

So, my challenge stands, and if you missed it here it is:
I challenge any Ranma 1/2 fanfic writer to write a believable fic where
Shampoo, or Kodachi, gets Ranma for legit reasons (no dead rivals, love
potions, etc) and the other characters don't end up miserable (maybe
temporarily, it's almost unavoidable, but not in the long term).  I

For now, I'll pass. I've got too much else on my plate right now. 

I did use Shampoo in my Ranma/Prisoner fusion, pretty much as I see her 
now, because she was a near-perfect fit for a role in the story I was 
parodying.



Travis Butler
(The Professor, formerly of Myth and Magick!, Lawrence, KS;
 tbutler@tfs.net, now from the Wandering Powerbook;
 <http://www.tfs.net/personal/tbutler/>;
 Mac page <http://www.tfs.net/business/tbutler/>)

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