Initially, this was going to be the announcement of my retirement as an anime fanfiction author. But since I'm not going to be retiring (YET), I thought I might as well put these thoughts to good use.


    It's foolish, I know, to decide to quit as a protest. In the most likely scenario, all that happens is that the people whose actions you're protesting just get a little stronger by your absence. It's better to stay, and "fight" (figuratively) than to quit the field in disgust. But I [was] not quitting because of disgust, so much as because of exhaustion with the fight.

    The source of my exhaustion: Ranma fanfics.

    Now, before anyone starts chanting the usual screed about how "you don't have to read them if you don't like them", let me point out that I *do* have to delete them, and that *does* take time that I could be putting to better use. Moreover, I'm not so biased as to claim that all Ranma fanfics are lousy -- there are those by a few authors that I like quite a bit. If I were to set up my filters so that all mail with [Ranma] in the subject line went in the trash, I'd lose their stories too, and that's not acceptible.

    I don't want people to stop writing Ranma fanfics. I won't claim that I wouldn't be thrilled if the number of Ranma fanfics produced daily dropped by about, say, ninety per cent, but even if I had the right to ask such a thing, there is still that ten per cent which are likeable and interesting to my view. But even so, I don't have the right to demand such a development.

    The universal creed of the fanfiction author is "we write this because this is what we want to write". I'm certainly not going to argue with that. What I want is for the authors to take a moment for a bit of self-reflection.

    What made the original "Ranma Nibunnoichi" series so interesting to its original, intended audience, was a further examination of gender roles in contemporary Japanese culture, continuing the examination that Takahashi Rumiko had started in "Urusei Yatsura" with the character of Ryuunosuke. In Ranma, we have a boy who becomes a girl, a girl who is rather boyish while still being feminine, another girl who has lived as a boy, a boy who views himself as a girl, and sundry other subversions of the traditional Japanese gender roles. In other words, it is a Martial Arts Sex Farce, just as the Viz advertising claimed.

    What I'd like for authors to do *before* they begin working on new works using these characters is to consider why they want to use them to tell the stories they want to tell -- why they want to turn a Martial Arts Sex Farce into a Martial Arts Melodrama or a Martial Arts Fantasy Epic or what have you.

    When they start to write works that further explore the characters psychologies, I'd like them to realize that Takahashi created them to have as many dimensions or as few as she needed to tell the stories she wanted to tell. This is a good thing! It means that you can use them however you want, but it also means that you're never going to be able to convince anyone who disagrees with you -- because they'll have examples that prove *their* hypotheses with as much validity as yours.

    When they start to write works that take the characters out of their usual environs, whether to different places and times or to encounters with characters from other series, I'd like them to realize that removing them from the specific environs that they inhabit will change them so much that they'll become unrecognizable.

    I'm not going to talk about "new character" or "self-insertion" fics. They've been argued to death long ago. In my opinion, all fanfic is self-insertion -- if you're not putting something of yourself in your work, why do you bother?

    Whenever I write about Ikari Gendou, I am always projecting a certain amount of my troubled relationship with my own father onto the story. That's not fair to my father; whatever his faults, he's not a murdering, child-abusing louse. But the only way that I can come to terms with that part of myself is to examine it in print.

    "We write this because this is what we want to write." Fine. But examine *why* you want to write it. What part of your writing skills are you exercising? What part of your personal background are you exorcising?

    Ultimately, if you come to an understanding of your own motives, your writing will improve. Self-knowledge, self-awareness, is a vital part of personal growth.

    If you can't come up with a good, personal reason to use Ranma to tell your stories, then *don't*. Use some other characters. There are lots of Martial Arts Melodramas that you can draw from, there are plenty of Martial Arts Fantasy Epics that don't get written about at all. Or use original characters. Then, wonder of wonders, you might be able to send it to a publisher and eventually get paid for it. This is what *I* sure as hell hope to do.

    But if you stay in that eternal circle -- "We write this because we want to write this because we want to write this etc" -- then to be completely blunt, you're just wanking yourself.


    There. Rant over. In my original plan for the retirement speech, I would have named names of authors who *do* manage to tell good stories with the Ranma cast, and listed writers of great Martial Arts Melodramas that don't use Ranma. But since I've changed my mind about qutting quitting, I don't feel inclined to jinx these people.

    If you'd like to discuss the points I raised in the foregoing article, then talk to me privately. The Mods will probably drop kick me off the list for this ... no reason everyone else should get hit.

Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part Time Champion of Light
Fanfics: http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/banks/277/
Fanfic Revolution: http://come.to/hauthor
"As a collection of pretty pictures, the Utena movie is sure to be a great success. As a film, it appears to suck." -- me.

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