Mina-san, Ohayou!
On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Guy Under The Bridge wrote:
: >This is silly. There is not *one* act that defines sanity or insanity.
: >Rather, a series of actions suggests a trends. I can name many, many
: >actions by Kodachi that suggest a trend of mental instability.
:
: Anyone can come up with any number of actions to suggest a plethora of
: trends that can be used to color every character in the series with
: every bizarre characterization under the sun.
Nope. You can come up with some single instances that will
support relatively arbitrary interpretations, but on the whole the
characterization is quite constant. In the current example,
Kodachi's obsessiveness, her excentric behavior, and the gross
unproportionality of her means in relation to the situation are a
constant factor in all of her appearances, and all of them suggest
an at least imbalanced mind.
: >And you're still dodging the issue - I challenged *you* to come up with
: >things in the manga that support a "very" sane Kodachi, and then
: explain
: >away her many instances of erratic behavior.
:
: The onus is on *you* to prove your bizarre view of Kodachi, not for me
: to disprove it.
Can you give *any* reason for that other than the fact that you'd
like it to be so? *You* started out by stating that Richard's
interpretations of Kodachi and Nabiki are "bizarre" without giving
any justification for it, and now you claim that it's Richard's
duty to *disprove* it. It just doesn't work this way. Unless you
learn to back up your claims, you will find that your opinions are
quickly disregarded.
: >Also, I have yet to hear from you why an interpretation of Kodachi as
: >mentally unbalanced is "bizarre".
:
: Because there is simply no direct evidence to support that view of her.
Can you define what exactly would be "direct evidence" to you, if
the examples that were cited here and elsewhere are not? Is there
*anything at all* that you'd accept as proof against your pet
theory? I'm starting to believe there isn't.
: >>>Why is Nabiki's characterization of someone interested
: >>>in money "bizarre"?
: >
: >I noticed that you didn't answer this question either. Care to try, or
: will
: >you ignore it yet again?
:
: My problem was not with Nabiki being interested in money, but with this
: bizarre 'huntress' Nabiki that feeds off of terror.
That is in fact, a position that I share, but not one that became
obvious from your previous claims.
: >You're misremembering the story. Ranma did not try to fight Nabiki;
: Nabiki
: >deliberately did things, a series of actions that left Ranma a mental
: wreck.
: >It was done with malice aforethought. He was harmed. Not physically -
: not
: >*much* - but emotionally.
:
: Nabiki can't control how far Ranma will fly off the handle. If he had
: simply swallowed his pride, nothing would have happened to him;
He did swallow his pride several times (Apologizing, cooking for
her, serving her, posing for her photos), but Nabiki wouldn't let
up until he lost his temper, whereupon she would use that to
torment him even more. Furthermore she revealed at that point
that she *consciously* goaded him to do that and had even foreseen
the manner of his eruption. Obviously she knew very well how and
how far Ranma would "fly off the handle".
Sebastian