That's John Biles, Stefan 'Twoflower' Gagne, Joseph Palmer, 
Richard Lawson, Chris Davies, etc etc etc.... 
That's talent.

Agreed.  The year one of my works even reaches one of theirs in quality
would be a truly happy day for me.

You know, no one was more suprised at the reaction that hack work got
than me.  

(How can you tell Siblings is NOT one of my favorite works?)

Siblings was never intended to be "real" life, or in other words...it
wasn't patterned to anyone's own view of the Ranmaverse.  So why

force > it?

It's also having everyone behave out of character with not much
justification for it.

Heh.  I'll admit that one right there.  Re-reading it with a more citical
eye, I have to admit some of my reasoning was a little weak.

OK, a LOT weak.

the 'hey, I just met this guy and beat him, can we keep him?' thing
just doesn't cut it, not for me. 

*shrug*  I thought THAT part I explained rather well.  Ranma & Co's
version of honor seems a little...well...fluid, for lack of a better
term.  As far as I understood their usage, an ancient pact like the one
described WOULDN'T be that wierd.  

And hell, their other choice was killing the poor guy.

That he was adopted into the Saotome family and accepted as a member
immediately, even though his family had a feud with the Saotome, he
was able to put aside the feud almost _immediately_? And Ranma can
treat him as a brother *snap* like that? _This_ is what Mike meant...
if you're going t' make it believable, evovlve the relationship,
not jump to where you want it to be.

EXCUSE ME?  This is Ranma 1/2 we're talking about, right?  Where Ukyou
tossed aside a feud that ruled her entire life because Ranma said she was
cute?  Where Ryoga started a feud with Ranma over BREAD?  You have GOT to
be kidding me.

As for Ranma...well, give me a break.  The guy has like NO friendly
relationships with any male character aside from H&D.  Mousse hates him.
Ryoga hates him.  Konatsu doesn't think much of him.  It was a wild guess
on my part.
 

Where are you getting this 'real life' thing?
Nobody's mentioning that.  We're talking about
what's been established as what Ranma & co. would
be likely and not likely to do.

And as it's been established, ANYTHING is possible with these people.

*sigh*

You know, no one was more suprised at the reaction that hack work got
than me.

What I WAS trying to illustrate with my original response, and I don't
think it was really worth the reaction it got, was that New Character
fics CAN be just as entertaining and fun as ones using the original
characters.  Siblings was a poor example of this, I'd be the first to
say.

Let's be honest here people, a good chunk of Ranma 1/2 has story arcs
which revolve around new characters.  True, they leave Nerima in the same
state it was in when they got there...


 --
Christopher "God-boy" Angel
cja124@mail.usask.ca      http://www.engr.usask.ca/~cja124
"The Man.  The Myth.  The Legend.
The Action Figure from Bandai!"