Now... I have nothing against casting her in a different light (it's YOUR
 story after all), but things like Akane grabbing a mallet out of

nowhere at

 the slightest provocation and Shampoo always poisoning Ranma are pretty
 much fanfic cliches and are not canon.

Funny....  And here I thought it was always Akane trying to poison him
(unintentionaly of course) by forcing Ranma to eat her cooking..... But I

<snicker> 

thought I remembered Akane malleting Ranma frequently in the few episodes

of R

1/2 I was able to watch.  Geesh, looks like its time to dust off the TV and
VCR and do 'research' again...

Heh.

She does try to clobber him in the movie "Big trouble in Nekonron China"
with a mallet, but never gets him. In the battle music video, she clocks
him once there (but neither of these were created of approved of by miss
Takahashi). The anime is "loosely" based on her manga... and therefore is
"loosely" canon. 

Anyway, I don't want this to degenerate into a character debate (which will
get me launched off the list). I'm just saying that authors should careful
not to base their characters too heavily on the stereotypes created here on
the FFML (unless that's your objective, of course), because it leads to
mediocre fanfics that rehash and recycle the same, boring, old and tired
jokes.

Do something original, create cliches of your own.

  ___________
 / Here lies:\  First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
|   Andrew    |    Machines that piss people off get murdered.
|             | 
|   I think   | 
| he's hungry | The shortest distance between two points is 
|             | under construction.            -- Noelie Alito