On Wed, 16 Apr 1997, Travis Butler wrote:
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.
Good, I too don't want a flame war. Let's avoid that please. If you
dislike her, hate her, louve her, fine, that's your opinion. If you
like her the same applies.
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.
With these characters we always have to take a bit on faith. You either
give them a benifit of some doubt or you don't. I tend to give that
doubt. I'd just like to see more writers do that. It's been done just
not too often with Shampoo or Kodachi.
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).
Agreed on every point.
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.
Well I see a lot of Shampoo's problem being she's socially disfunctional,
not only culturally but within her own culture as well. I liked to lay
blame on certain parties but I shan't here. In any case it's not totally
true anyway. They may be partially to blame but not fully.
A good trigger mechanism for a positive change may be a functional
friendship with someone or maybe having her become dependant on another.
There's probably others too.
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.
Yes, without conflict there isn't much of a story.
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.
Sorry to articulate myself not quite right but this is what I meant. It's
not OOC to have a character change if it's for a reasonable reason, not
just out of the blue.
(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.)
Chip? On my shoulder? <looks on shoulder to see large log> Nahhh!
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.
Keeping her as is totally valid and reasonable and I in no way hold that
against you. I can like fics that depict her as is. It when they make
her worse... okay, I'll stop right here before this turns into nuclear
fire. Anyway, I'd just like to see some people do the opposite a bit
more often. Nuff said.
Wade