I agree with Richard on this one.

Frankly, IMO, there's been an underlying message throughout this whole
series telling us that femininity is good. Ranma's comment about men
having fuzz in their minds is only the most blatant example. There's
been nothing that I can think of so far to balance things by suggesting
that masculinity might have advantages of its own.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics

Draxon steps boldly forth and prepares to defend a fellow author's writing, *ACK!* (Damn dress... How do those things always appear at the most inappropriate time anyway?)

Anywayz, this fanfic is about Ranma, so anything positive about masculinity would have to be expressed *by* Ranma.  Be it natural strength, emotional endurance, or the self enjoyment of being a big awesome martial artist - *Ranma* would have to be thinking of those things to make them show through well in the series.

If someone, IRL even, becomes as obsessed as Ranma does in this fanfic with exploring femininity they don't *care* about masculine values or they are prepared to lose some of them in exchange for their "true self", and they would be too pre-occupied with their gains (if accepted immediately like Ranma was) to notice the loss until after they'd already adapted to femme likings. That's about where Ranma seems to be at the end of Chapter 7, and for someone who's gone through as much as he/she has you could easily slap her with about 50 titles of deviant sexual/gender behavior.  I would *expect* someone like Ranma to become a crossdresser eventually if he didn't continuously reinforce what he liked about his masculinity and why he didn't want to bother with femme stuff, and this weird form of transsexualism is what happens after the crossdressing stage if he believes that being feminine is working out better.  Always having to be tough, standing up for yourself and others, and dealing with other generally stressful conditions for your entire life could make anyone want to see what the other side is like - and if they like it they can easily forget what they liked about being masculine.

You speak as if a balance between masculinity and femininity has to exist somewhere... It doesn't.  People are born with certain tolerances for each and what they learn in life reinforces or counteracts those tolerances.  I know guys that might as well walk around in lace all the time at school from the way they talk, what they like, and who their friends are.  I also know women who think that wearing a dress is a *sick* thing to do, so that balance is way off on at least some people. I also know a few guys that wouldn't think twice about wearing a dress, but their personalities remain totally masculine and they gain an aura of, well, I guess arrogance is an OK description when en femme.  (Yes, I know weird people.  It is very useful when brainstorming fic ideas)

Note: If you bother reading below please withold any gut reactions until you are done.  Also, flames will be deflected and returned ten-fold (in private mail, of course)  I am using my past to demonstrate that it is quite possible to stress people into totally different 'frames of mind' and I am doing so with trust that my fellow denizens of the FFML will not try to use what I consider ancient history against me.

As for me?  I've been on both sides of the line before.  I don't guess this is necessary for the purposes of discussion, but lets go back in time about 5 1/2 years or so.  First lets set up the history - I was in the sixth grade, and during that year I was absent *1* out of *2* days because of injuries sustained in fights.  No, I never really started one - I was just a bit too weak emotionally in the beginning of that particular year and I let people run over me for a few weeks.  No big deal, but after I suffered a concussion to the head I decided that the next person to lay his hands on me was going to become one with the concrete walls of the school.  Well, the next person that pulled something was one of those big popular types - a total prep.  To the surprise of about 30 people, I plastered him and was stopped from seriously injuring him only by a few teachers that had one hell of a time getting me to calm down.  He'd hit me, and I'd *destroyed* him.  I felt like god himself.  Masculinity - 10+ Femininity? You must be joking.

The next day three of his good friends scheduled fights that neatly handled the rest of my week.  I plastered them one at a time every day and went home to enjoy the weekend, feeling damn good about myself for standing up to the jerks.  Next week *their* friends wanted me, and every time someone started a fight I *destroyed* them.  I'm not exaggerating here, I was going to a prep school when I was most definitely not the prep type.  I also noticed that I was becoming stronger, and that too an extent people were beginning to respect me if for nothing else than the fact that attacking me was unhealthy.  My strict policy of never hitting anyone first kept me out of major trouble, but they had discovered an equally powerful ally - lying to the principal to make it seem like I agitated them into hitting me...

(The text below will sound very-biased but you have my total assurances that it is totally true to history)

That's when the school staff turned against me.  Since I was 'agitating' people into fighting me they started having meetings with my mom.  Within 2 weeks they had her blaming me for defending myself.  I guess that could have been seen as a changing point - since I couldn't trust my family I began to feel pretty bad.  I was still kicking the crap out of everyone who so much as dared to touch me, even though I disliked fighting - the fact that I was continuing to get stronger and better skilled made me proud of at least one thing in life even as my grades sank to rock bottom and my self confidence in every area other than fighting began to deteriorate.  My ability to have relations with my peers began to crumble with my self respect when my few friends turned on me (and one of them pulled one of his - fight my friend deals)  Masculinity - still 10+  Femininity - Hmm, maybe 1 or 2... I did feel a little weak and I wanted some kind of release.

Quick attendance scorecard - 6th grade year

Total number of school weeks - 36   
Total number of fights I got in  - 47 (can be as low as 44, may be higher than stated.)
Total number of *weeks* absent from school - 18

Then I got hurt for the first real time since I had started fighting back... The fight had been a draw, but oh man it hurt.  I came back the next day - some guy starts something.  This time I barely managed to hold out.  After a while I was getting the crap beat out of me almost every other day - I never had time to recover from the last fight and it all piled on and on and on.  I guess after a few weeks of that you could say my masculinity was pretty far in the gutter.  Masculinity - 2 Fem - 1 or 2  I literally had almost no personality - it had been torn out of me by a crooked school system and a parent who believed in it.  Then I began to notice the other gender... always so nice to each other, laughing and messing with each other's hair in lunch while the guys were busy beating the crap out of each other.  Needless to say I took a liking to that stuff more than the fighting.  I started trying to get to know a few girls and slowly something began to click in my head that being one of them would be SOOOO much better than my pretty pitiful existance.  Once I started to realize I couldn't have any way out I became suicidal - all while still getting into a damn fight at least once every 3 days...  my physical endurance reached a point so high that it became nearly impossible to hurt me for more than a day (Sound like Ranma?) and I resumed my path of war.  My mom had finally joined up on my side, and if I refused to let that school hurt me for only a few more weeks I was going to be transferring.  Thing was - I didn't feel so good when I won a fight or when the other person hadn't been able to hurt me like he'd threatened... I still wanted to be sitting in the corner somewhere fixing someone's hair or doing other generally peaceful things.

I'd survived that year with my body intact, but my personality was *shattered* and I had this secret liking for femme stuff that I actually tried to deny.  Seems odd now that I was so worried about it - I guess at the time it was just another thing for people to dislike about me.  I managed to dig myself further into this pit by fighting my own emotions, and that descended me into the *very* dangerous (in my opinion) area of transexualism.  Yup, I hadn't even gone into the 7th grade and I already wanted to be a damned girl.  Not that I told anyone... I was already under counseling and group therapy to help me with what had happened in the sixth grade and if I let that little tidbit spill out I had a feeling that my family would finally turn on me.  Masculinity - maybe 3 Femininity - 6 or 7  - I was losing a war against my own emotions and I was losing it *badly*... If jusenkyou curses existed and I could turn into a girl I would have gladly done it and I would have loved it - but the person that speaks to you all on the ML today would be dead, because *just like Ranma in the story we were talking about several paragraphs above I would have blindly delved in to start exploring, and I would have gotten lost in femme things *just* like he did*

Well, for anyone wanting to know how weird I am these days, I've improved much in the past few years.  My masculinity came back kicking and screaming about 6 months after the 6th grade deal and I was able to pull myself from the so-called 'transexualism' (It was a weird form - stress-induced TS isn't *real* if you can get past what stressed you in the first place - in my case it wasn't, anyway) but I still had that nagging liking for things feminine and it had fully entrenched itself.  I decided I could live with myself, and proceeded to work on rebuilding my personality, etc...  I'm now a sophomore with (finally) all high passing grades and I haven't gotten into a fight in about 2 years, even with my "one (attempted) hit-return fire" policy.  I've got more friends than I can count (They all know my past - and I hide nothing from them) and I'm actually pretty content with life now.  I guess that's where bordom comes into play, and *THAT* is why I have a sudden urge to go work on my fanfic.

Somehow I thought that saying just why I feel versed in this topic might help to either resolve it or at least see where everyone stands and why.  I stand on personal experience, and I can confirm that being emotionally unstable will cause people to explore themselves, and I can also confirm that 'exploration' can have unexpected results when undertaken under stressful situations.  Therefore I stand on Nick & Katrina's side of this issue.  As far as I'm concerned Ranma is in character if you accepted the original dressing up stuff in chapter one. The character of Ranma has *FAR* more reason than I to be a bit confused about himself, and if I could change as much as previously described in a little over 18 months think of what could be happening in Ranma's mind since he got the jusenkyou curse... 

Once again, flames will be repelled mercilessly, although I don't really expect any.  I hope you all found a real-life example of confusion at the wrong time to be helpful in assessing your views on this fanfic and in future fanfics.  For the record, I've been awake 39 or so hours and even though my mind is turning to mush I *know* that when I wake up tomorrow I'm going to immediately freak out and wonder how I could have allowed this slip of my past to make it's way to the FFML.

Oh well, acute insomnia is proving to be quite a pain in the - well, you know.  Don't make me die of a heart attack when I wake up now - it would be most unhealthy for the continuation of my fanfics... 

P.S. I've forgotten how to compose a message without sending it.