Well... _that_ went well...

I certainly didn't expect to wake up to all this mail.  Well, I had the 
sneaking suspicion it would happen anyway, but still...

To clear up the air, this fanfic is certainly _not_ meant to be taken 
seriously, even though it does address a very real problem in the world.  
And, yes, it does exist, no matter how much you sugarcoat it, even in the 
anime world.  Two examples off the top of my head are Sukebe Deka and Legend 
of Black Heaven, where the black people present are "mean, badass 
mutherfuckers."  8 Man After kind of plays with both sides of the stereotype 
fence, both supporting and breaking it.

Some of you all did take offense, though, which is partly my fault; I should 
have wrote it better, but didn't really know how I could have done that at 
the time without stepping on still more toes than I've already have and will 
do so with this spamfic.  Some even went so far as to insult me with varying 
degrees of comments.  Insulting the work is fine; I think I did a shoddy job 
myself, and I'd take a couple of cracks at it myself.  But I don't appreciate 
some of the comments directed to me, particularly the whole "racist" thing, 
which, in my opinion, gets used way too often when it shouldn't and the 
out-of-the-blue, irrelevant comment about putting Gary Kleppe's name in the 
comments section (even though he was the one(?) that mentioned it to Kaydee 
on the list).

A couple of things out of the way: I am black, plus Native American, Irish, 
English, Philipino, and a whole lot of other things that I haven't quite 
nailed down yet.  I live in the South, North Carolina to be exact, for almost 
all my life.  Do I eat fried chicken?  Yes.  Is it my favorite food?  No; 
niku donburi is actually one of my favorites.  Does this make an expert on 
black cultures?  Not at all.  Do all blacks eat fried chicken?  Not really.  
And this leads up to the issue of stereotyping.

A stereotype is "a stadardized picture that [...] represents an 
oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgement" of a 
group of people.  There is a basis of truth involved in this, however, it is 
not law for all people.  Black people in the South do eat fried chicken in 
general, as anyone can see, but not all of them, and it's not suggested that 
they all like eating it.  Some do, some don't.  It's just like most other 
stereotypes.  I don't dance very well, and I've not about to claim myself as 
a god in bed.  If you want to think that, though, I'm certainly not going to 
ruin your illusions. ^_^

Yet in Japan, there is evidence that they take a lot of stereotypes for law 
(all black people rap, all foreigners are loud and violent when they drink), 
which reinforces their xenophobia.  I mean, the "darker skin = bad person" 
thing shocked me when I read about it.  But talking with more people that 
have more experience with the Japanese (read: have been to Japan), I realize 
just how insular and private they are as a society.  Pretty eye-opening stuff.

That being said, yes, Ranma demonstrates some prejudiced viewpoints about 
being half-black.  Of course, he raised hell about being a full-time girl 
half the time, too, so it's not that much of a difference to me.  Either way, 
the curse isn't his natural form, so why should he accept it at all?  The 
stereotype itself was just frosting to his view of the curse, which molded 
the spamfic Ranma's preconception of how people reacted to him.

Of course, the chicken did kind of push it now that I think about it... Gotta 
learn to stick with the first response... first response, stick with the 
first response, dammit...

Anyway, I thank those that did find it somewhat humorous, if pushing it a 
little, as well as defending me against the critics while I was dead asleep 
for the last 12 hours.  Still, I won't be doing this kind of spamfic anytime 
soon, if ever again.  Let Adrian Thymes handle those; Spring of the Drowned 
Idea is far funnier anyway. ^_^  I'll just stick with K 1/2, ATF, OMMW, and 
what else I create.

Hope that helps some...



Adrian D. Rainman

I dreamt I was a butterfly.  I couldn't tell if I was dreaming.  But when I 
woke, I was I and not a butterfly.  Was I dreaming that I was the butterfly, 
or was the butterfly dreaming that it was me?  Even if there's a difference 
between the butterfly and I, the distinction isn't absolute.  And there is no 
relationship of cause and effect.


-Soshi



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