On Mon, Jan 11, 1999 at 12:10:36AM -0700, David Johnston wrote:

You need to go through this and iron out your tense confusion problems.

Now this is interesting.  Ranma realises all his problems are caused by 
running away.  Then he decides to run away.  

Thing to remember here is that Ranma is astoundingly bad at planning
things out.  Chances are that he wouldn't even notice this contradiction
at all.

Maybe instead he should decide that all his problems are caused by
letting other people push him around?

The author stated that this fic was about straightening up Ranma's
fiancee mess -- or at least starting to.  "Letting the others push
him around" sounds to me like a convenient way of pushing the blame
for his situation onto others, which would tend to make him less
willing to solve his problems -- ie.  "It's their fault, not mine,
they should fix it."  (Not that this is OOC -- Ranma says pretty 
much the same thing to Genma shortly after Ukyou arrives.  However,
he'll have to lose that attitude before he can solve his problems,
and this conclusion would only tend to make it stronger.)

But still, the original problem remains.  He's run away from his
problems in the past; it's only made them worse.  Why should this
time be any different?

IMHO, what Ranma will have to do is _TAKE RESPONSIBILITY_.  That's
exactly the opposite of what he's doing here.  At least the 'problems
caused by running away' realization somewhat acknowledges his 
culpability in the situation.  It's still insufficient, though, as
he has quite actively caused some of his problems -- they haven't
all arisen from intransigence.

-- 
  -Sean Connor  (sec@konatsu.ml.org)
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