Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 02:03:17 -0400
To: ffml@fanfic.com
From: Matthew Lewis <maybeso@ican.net>
Subject: Re: [FFML] [Fanfic][R1/2] Ill Met By Starlight, Chapter 13
Time for yet another ramble on IMBS by the rambling man himself!
(I can see you're almost as enthused as I am...) ^_^
At 08:55 PM 10/8/98 PDT, Freemage . wrote:
I think the double arrows, the >> are from Mike Noakes, but an identity
wasn't given in the message, so i'm not absolutely sure....
<sigh> I mention the very same argument earlier, and nothing, nada....
Mike says something and....
But am I bitter about it? No! I say! I'm much to busy being bitter at
a whole host of _other_ things! ^_^
(just had ta slip that in folks, I really did....)
Heh. Actually, I started to reply to yours last night, but I fell
asleep part way through. I would have finished that message, but when I
saw Mike's in today's mail, I just clicked reply and mentioned some of
your arguments, as well.
So fear not, your words were noted! ~_*
I do feel that Akane, as an enabler and a passive reacter in this
drama,
ultimately contributed to the final body count. Was she the only
person
bearing that blame? No. But she should receive her fair share of it.
I guess the reason I pushed it so hard in my original argument was
because of all the folks blaming the Hibikis for practically
everything.
The question is what is Akane's fair share of the blame? How much of it
can we attribute to her for her lack of insight, for her unclear
vision?
Ranma did, after all, manipulate her magnificently, playing her like a
violin.
In many ways, though, it seemed to me that Akane _wanted_ to be
manipulated. She always, _always_, takes Ranma's word over anyone
else's. In particular, she fails to even consider why Shan/Tsen is
wearing an eyepatch--given what she knew, even by Ranma's account, of
the situation with Ryouga, it would have been a vital question.
Ultimately, her faith in Ranma is based on a very simple precept: Ranma
got there first.
That would have been me, I believe. Should it though? Should we apply
intent to the Hibikis? Very well then. They intended to kill Ranma in
a painful fashion, the more pain the better. This they decided to do
years before they had met Akane, or even conceived of her existence.
OK, but there are several points where they make it clear they believe
that he is going to kill _somebody_. Their experience with him is such
that they truly believe he will readily kill even those who care about
him.
Their argument that Ranma would kill Akane when he tired of her smacks
of rationalisation to me; of trying to vilify Ranma even further, to
make any actions or tactics they use to get him more palatable.
And Akane doesn't do the same in her defense of Ranma, ignoring or
explaining away events and testimony that contradicts her worldview?
A very human reaction, I'm afraid; something we have a tendency
to do, to make the enemy evil, because that means we are good. Don't
believe me? Take a look at some war-time propaganda. You see, when you
hate someone, you make them less than human, they become not-a-person
and any action you do against them becomes justified. At least, so far
as I've observed, so far as I can comprehend hate.
There's a similar occurance when dealing with the sins of an
ally--consider the U.S.'s tolerance of the regimes of: Iraq, El
Salvador and Panama--for as long as they were useful to the
anti-Communist movement.
Or, for a more localized level (and I know a _lot_ about this one, from
experience and hearsay), consider the case of a date-rapist or Lothario.
Often, the girl will refuse to believe warnings from past girlfriends
and victims, until it is far too late. Why? Because considering that
this person who's saying all this stuff might be right is to acknowledge
that you might have been horribly, completely wrong. And many people
find that impossible to do.
That's hubris, and it's as human and understandable as the tendency to
demonize your enemies.
That Ranma had contemplated killing Akane is not relevant to this
argument, whether they were right or wrong is not the point here, we
(well, I, at least) are not talking about such terms, we are talking
about intent. At the very most, this fear of the Hibikis, what Ranma
Except that it does show that they were probably justified in their view
of Ranma's behavior. Ultimately, they knew what he was capable of
doing, with or without their interference (OTOH, we really shouldn't be
refering to the two as a monolithic enemy--they had their differences,
too.)
might do to Akane, might serve as a further spur to their actions-- but
their main intent was not to help Akane, only to kill Ranma. Helping
Akane would have been considered an added benefit, a nice side-effect,
if you will, but not the main point.
In the beginning this was true (witness the gun incident in the first
fight--Mariko was willing to kill an innocent bystander just to get at
Ranma). However, as time went on, they became more and more concerned
with trying to get Ranma _without_ a body count. Frequently, they took
steps to keep those whom they considered misguided away from the battle
as much as possible. For instance, had not the machinery started (by a
fluke accident, caused, I'm perfectly willing to admit, by Koji's
carelessness), Ukyou would have been kept totally out of harm's way for
the entire confrontation.
Side note, here. On the "honor" discussion, it is worth noting that
partway through the story, Koji reveals to Mariko that one of the
reasons he wants an "honorable" kill is that such is likely to be
overlooked by the Japanese police as a legitimate vendetta. There's
been complaints about the use of death-traps as dishonorable. However,
the first such "trap" was actually set by Shan Pu--remember, she's the
one that kidnapped Akane.
The second one was set by Nabiki, at the Temple. Only the final
scenario was set up by the Hibikis, after they believed that sticking to
"honorable" confrontations had simply allowed Ranma the time to kill
Nabiki.
For Akane and Ukyo, helping was their main intent. To see the
situation resolved peacefully and to help Ranma were their main
purposes.
The Hibikis viewed Ranma as a rabid dog--incapable of being "safe"
around other people, in part because he was able to slip past most
people's perceptions until it was too late.
You mentioned before how well Ranma manipulated Akane. Well, there's
every indication that something similar happened with the Hibikis.
Thus, they didn't feel it was safe to leave him running around--and they
_knew_ that they would be unable to simply capture him. Even if they
did, they felt it would be futile--Ranma had already beaten the rap once
for Ryouga's murder.
On one hand we have two people trying their best to help Ranma overcome
his problems, and on the other hand we have two people who are actually
part of his problems, would you not say? Did they ever consider any
other
option beyond death? No, they did not. For the Hibikis, it was not
about
removing a danger, it was not about the safety of others or justice, it
was about vengeance. There was no altruism in their actions.
I would say that is more true of Mariko than Koji, who is far more
concerned, right from the beginning, that no innocents get hurt. IIRC,
he even threatens to bail on her if she fails to toe the line. Of
course, he does the same thing I've accused Akane of doing--overlooking
the faults of somone he loves. By the way, they did consider one other
option--they originally let the police handle it. This, of course, led
to the whole business being swept under the table.
Now, if we take a look on Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral
development,
we find that Akane and Ukyo are most likely acting under conventional
morality, specifically, stage 3 (wherein reasoning is based upon
pleasing
others and being a good person).
One more analogy. The same thing could be said about the appeasement of
Hitler by the Allied Forces prior to the invasion of Poland. The
problem stems from the fact that the two goals identified above are not,
in fact, perfectly compatible. In order for them to be compatible,
everyone has to agree on what constitutes a "good" person. When one
person chooses not to play by those rules, the system breaks down.
The Hibikis? I'd have to say that in this case they're operating
at a preconventional stage, I'd hazard a guess and say stage 2
(reasoning
is based upon self-interest-- and it's in their own interests that
Ranma die because it will slake their thirst for vengeance, and lay to
rest the memory of Ryoga's demise).
Again, I'll grant that in the case of Mariko. Koji is more concerned
with the larger picture--he wants to ensure that Ranma is incapable of
hurting anyone. I guess I'm saying that Koji will happily take revenge
while protecting others, while Mariko is perfectly willing to protect
others in the course of seeking revenge. It's a subtle difference, but
it's there.
Why would it not have been an option? The actions of Mariko, Koji, and
Tsen Wu/Shampoo brought matters to a head quicker. Who knows what might
have happened if they left Ranma alone-- it is possible that in a more
peaceful environment, one without all the stress and combat, that Akane
and Ukyo might have been able to convince Ranma that he needed
professional treatment.
Or, everyone in the Tendo household might have been murdered in their
sleep when he got tired of them.
But if Akane hadn't witnessed Shampoo's murder?
The thing about a conspiracy is that it is difficult to disprove,
because
any act to discredit or disprove it can always be seen as an attempt to
cover it up, to keep the conspiracy going.
The reason it looked like an accident might have actually been
because it was an accident, but according to the logic of Nabiki's
tape, this
only lends credence to her arguments.
Ahh. But Ranma wasn't trying to convince Akane that Nabiki was wrong in
error, the way most anti-conspriacy theorists argue--he had been
implying that Nabiki had a personal, profit-based motive for
deliberately lying about him. And so, the tape. After she was "dead",
she had no profit motive, and since the tape was accurate in teh facts
that were known, it gave credence to Nabiki's claims. Remember, she
also described Ranma's threats in detail.
Say Akane had listened to the tape when she first got it. She would
have been forced into one of three conclusions:
1) Nabiki was lying about the whole thing, and this tape was something
she whipped up, just in case something did happen to her, which would
ensure that she got the last laugh. This is extremely improbable, at
best. It assumes that she would be prescient enough to forsee her own
demise in the near future as a probable event. Furthermore, she takes
credit for the Temple trap. By confessing to attempted murder, she
shows that she was dead serious about the threat she saw in Ranma.
2) Nabiki is still lying, and, in order to make the lie convincing,
throws herself in front of a moving car. But again, this would be a
motiveless deed, if she was supposedly lying to Akane just so she could
use Ranma.
3) Nabiki was telling the truth about everything that had happened
prior to the making of the tape. In that case, at the very least, Ranma
is guilty of sexual assault (look up the definition--it covers
molestation).
Now, we do know that Ranma did push her, but we also know that he
jumped out after her as well. So, in a way it was both not an accident
(since he did push her) and an accident (because he tried to rescue her
but failed).
Nope. If I shove you off a cliff, then try to grab you back because I
change my mind, but miss, I'm just a murderer with a slow conscience.
What you may be forgetting about the tape is, that while Nabiki may
have been accurate, it is still just supposition. She could not
actually
know these events would unfold as they did at that time, only after the
incident and then it was too late. Like this argument, Nabiki's tape is
an extrapolation, an interpretation, an exercise in logic, and not
necessarily reality.
Ah, but the making of the tape indicates that Ranma's been lying to
Akane all along. He's portrayed Nabiki as interested in him as a
financial and sexual resource--how does that jibe with her confession of
attempted murder?
You know, I think I'm beginning to say the same thing over and over
again.
I think I'll stop now before I start shouting and ranting and raving
about
how I'm right and everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong; nothing
is
served if we do that, other than to accumulate spam and hack other
people
off (and that's a bad thing... or so I've been told). ^_^
Agreed.
I'm still willing to hear other arguments and other points of view;
I'm willing to change my opinion, but I find myself needing something a
little more concrete to base it upon than only speculation. I need a
reference point or two in the text with which the speculation is based
upon. Exact quotes are not necessary, I haven't used them and I don't
expect others to either, paraphrasings are fine. Which events, which
conversations is it that give you your conclusions though? This is what
I need, so that I can form my own conclusions from the same bits you
formed yours out of.
OK, I've tried to mention specific events--Nabiki's confession, Koji's
arguments with Mariko, Akane ignoring the obvious clue of Shan and
Tsen's eyes. As further evidence that the two Hibikis were not as
unified as some of the arguments have made them seem, look at how they
handle the aftermath: Mariko simply switches targets to a new sort of
"revenge", where her opponent is still there, so that there can be no
loss of pressure; but Koji actually tries to move onto a new phase in
life, one that resembles your "third stage" of morality--he simply wants
to be there for Nabiki.
Often, the only true indicator of motive is how people handle the
aftermath of success, or at least closure. If two men marry beautiful
and intelligent women, then we can see if the marriages are actually
based on love by how the men act after they are married, not by the
courtship, which may conceal all kinds of motives.
Well, that's my last rant on this, unless, of course, there's even more
of this kind of intelligent SPAM posted that I feel drawn into.
--Freemage
Intelligent SPAM. Now that's a scary concept.
Matthew "Maybeso" Lewis is:
That guy with "Maybe" and/or "Definitely" in his name on IRC
See him on FFIRC! [bachman.newberry.edu fanfic]
Sojiro_Seta on Kawaiimuck
maybeso@ican.net
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