Utmost diesel sales ltd. co. writes:

My two cents on the matter,

I think whether the pairing will work or not will depend on the skill of the writer and not the characters he or she is working on.  The author might tweak a few things but as long as the person can make the circumstances that result from that tweak believable then it's good.  Truthfully, only Takahashi-sensei can tell what Ranma's true level of maturity is and only Fujishima-sensei can decide what Bell likes in a guy.  Which brings me back to my earlier point, the fact that Ranma and Bell are too different in maturity is moot.  As long as the author could make it work it'll work out.

    True, but missing a point. Yes, an author could match up Happosai and
Belldandy, say, and perhaps make it work. But it's a hell of a lot of
work, and some people are simply not going to buy it no matter what.
Part of the problem is, to make something like that convincing, you
are going to have to show us, in a great deal of detail, how those two
changed enough to get them even close to compatible, or do an AU version
of one or both to start with. In that case, you hit the problem I have
with so many AUs and fusions - the characters are so changed they cease
to be recognizable, and you lose one of the big reasons people read
fanfiction.

    Ranma/Belldandy could work, I suppose, but I've never seen it
done in any halfway convincing manner - the usual tack is to change
Ranma's personality by auctorial fiat, without any rationalization or
justification, which causes me to lose interest pretty quickly. (For
that manner, I've never seen a Ranma/Kasumi pairing I found at all
believable, except for Vince Seifert's "A Man Among Women".)

    This is, of course, entirely my own opinion, as are most of my
comments on stories (except for grammar and internal story consistency).
and I do not encourage any author to change his story simply to please
me - change it if you think I've made a valid point - which, of course,
I always do :-).

Reid Carson
rcarson@rcarson.com
 

             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'