arromdee@inetnow.net wrote:

On Sat, 20 Dec 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:

When reading TIL, we're supposed
to shove aside any thoughts about what hitting one's partner means in
real life, because this is Ranma 1/2 and it just isn't all that big a
deal in Ranma 1/2.

TIL toned down the slapstick violence quite a bit and gave it serious
consequences.

While violence in TIL is treated seriously, the series is still part of the
story's past, and TIL assumes that the violence in the series wasn't serious.
(In fact, the entire nature of violence in the characters' world has changed
under their noses, and they notice that violence is bad _now_, but they never
notice that anything changed.)  If it assumed that the violence in the series
was serious, then Akane would have already been mentally ill at the start of
TIL even if she didn't swing another hammer in the story itself.

I don't think that matters.  Almost nobody can do a serious Ranma story 
without to some extent filtering out some of the sight-gags, one-shot 
jokes, and cartoony physics which were in the actual series.  

The Bitter End is no different in that regard as it ignores equally
abusive not to say psychotic behaviors from virtually all the regulars 
in favour of making a comment on Ranma and Akane's relationship.  

The TIL universe is not, in my view, in my view, one in which Akane
used comical cartoon hammers to pound Ranma like a tent pole.  But
neither, for that matter, is The Bitter End one where that happened,
or where Ukyo hit Ranma on the head so hard she bent her spatula, or
Shampoo regularly slammed Ranma's face into the ground by riding her 
bicycle up his back, or where Kasumi once amused herself by hanging
cats on an ailurophobe.  Fact is, I see no reason to assume that TIL 
and The Bitter End share exactly the same backstory, or that either 
of them have the actual series as their precise back story.  Given 
that they aren't Original Flavour fics, it seems hardly possible.