On 24 Feb 98 -itlon at 23:29 -itlon, Richard Lawson said-itlon:
This chapter disturbed me a lot. It took me a while to put my finger on
it. Here it is:
"Do you know what it's like to change, Kodachi?"
This *really* bothered me, enough to throw the whole chapter out of whack
for me.
Okay, maybe Ranma could choose to stay a woman. Maybe Ranma could decide
that he liked being female better than being male. But at *no* time do I
see Ranma deciding that being male was *bad*. And not just bad, but
*horrible*, *terrifying*. And Kodachi, evidently, agrees.
Being a male myself, I don't see anything bad about it. :) And I don't
think Ranma would, either, not to *this* extent. Ranma *liked* being a
guy for sixteen years. He just likes being a woman now, and that's fine
and good for the purposes of this story. But he should never (in my
opinion) think that being male is an evil, terrible thing. I liked the
bits in the previous chapter, where Ranma waxed poetic about the good
things about being female, and why he preferred it. Similar to, let's
say, the Sailor Moon dubs and subs. I *like* the dubs, but I *prefer* the
subs. The subs are better, but (to me at least) that doesn't make the
dubs *bad*.
I'd like to see Ranma retain that attitude (male's okay, but female's
*better*) rather than the other (male is *evil*, female is *good*).
Enjoyed the fic, but I have to disagree on the your male=evil assertation,
Richard. I've followed the thread through so far, but I wanted to reserve my
comments until I had completely analyzed the chapter in question.
I presume this is the offending segment, right?
Ranma was almost growling now, the seething
frustration of a year's worth of impotent refusals
hard in her mind. "Then...only then, after
everything's changed, do you notice the fuzz in your
mind. All of a sudden, you're seeing the world with
different eyes, acting with a different body, and
thinking with a different mind. You notice things...
feel things...emotions and thoughts that make you
want to throw up once you change back to a girl.
At first, I leaned towards your argument; reading through it a second time,
however, I found it far more difficult to reconcile any anti-male agenda with
this chapter. Notice Leifker's deliberate use of the qualifier "once you
change back to a girl." To equate this statement with an alleged point that
"male equals evil" seems to understate Leifker's apparant aims to further
separate Ranma's male and female characters. Leifker is also suggesting that
Ranma experiences shifts in modes of thought (and, thereby, personalities) as
s/he transition betweens sexes, In this case, we're experiencing
the transformation and the experiences of Ranma-male from the viewpoint of
Ranma female. Whose to say that the male perspective in Leifker's
sub-universe is any less negative? How would any man feel while watching his
body systematically transform into a female?
Now the argument shifts to "what is Leifker trying to say?" If he's
suggesting that Ranma's personality DOES change as he changes sexes, then the
idea of Ranma "prefering" one mode of gender over the other is colored by his
preferences DEPENDING on his CURRENT sex. While it is clear that
thoughts transition intact, Leifker clearly indicates that there
is an emotional divergence between Ranma-male and Ranma-female and thereby
those personalities react differently to certain thoughts and emotional
states.
-The Reverend Prez
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-----The Representative of the Everlasting Funk-----
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"The Badass Reverend Prez" | Author of Robotech:
NROTC Candidate and | The Odysseus Epic and
Boy's State Representative | other AMDG fanfics
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