----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Draqensis@aol.com>
To: <ffml@anifics.com>; <gaijin@sfcmd.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 3:35 AM
Subject: [FFML] Re: [Fanfic][Ranma/SM] Relatively Absent: Chapter 5
(part 1 of 2) ...

Just my two cents.

An a closely related note: who the hell are these girls? We're

given

names, but they're just faceless and annoying ANCs. "I know, let's
make up a bunch of new characters to alternately feel sorry for

Ranma

and hate for everybody else! What a cool idea!" The Ranma manga
doesn't do shit for character depth or plot or anything related to
thought at all, really, but every character, especially the

characters

that are around for more than a single story, is firmly

established.

Yet this story, which is supposed to be drama in some twisted and
ineffectual fashion, doesn't even have that. All we get is a horde

of

idiots prancing around and parotting the author's opinions without
even getting a bare lipservice of individual personalities. Not

cool.

I found these characters have been pretty well differentiated

through the

chapters thus far. Given the plot using original characters makes

sense and

having them sympathetic to Ranma makes sense in that context.

Oh, sure, I agree, having them sympathetic to Ranma is perfectly fine.
That's not really the problem--the problem is that the author jumps up
and down to have all the characters constantly raving about how bad
everybody else is.  This makes the author's biases very clear and
impossible to ignore, since Ranma isn't really better than the
characters that are being bashed so heavily.  There's no sense of a
balanced perception.  It reads like a character rant from
AnimeAddiction, and that just makes the story a lot harder to take
seriously.

For the differentiation...well, I've been reading the chapters as they
come out, and so they've been spaced apart quite a bit.  Maybe reading
them one after the other would give a stronger sense of who the
characters are, but in this chapter there certainly wasn't anything to
help keep them seperate.

*She was just about to put the maroon slacks back on when the full
realization of what she had just done hit her squarely between the
eyes.*

What? Did she fart?

This does need to be explained better. Whether or not it's

in-character for

Ranma doesn't bother me much but *what* Ranma's concerned by doing

isn't

adequately explained.

Right.  Like I said, I paged down quite a bit looking for a more
specific description of what was being addressed there.

Okay, while it's fine to make out like Ranma is such a poor

pathetic

little creature who is so put upon that it would make even the

darkest

gods weep, it really doesn't work here. The story makes out like

Ranma

is experiencing extreme trauma, yet tries to make out like this is

the

exact same Ranma we all know and love from the first 24 volumes of

the

manga--the Ranma who would blow all this new 'trauma' off as

nothing.

Well, which is it? He's a pathetic, emotional wreck, or he's the
character from the manga? You can't use both. If he's a pathetic,
emotional wreck, well, why the hell is the backstory the same as

for

the original Ranma?

I disagree. My interpretation only of course, but IIRC Ranma's

ability to

deal with failure has never been developed beyond going after an

obvious

solution. (admittedly I ahven't read all the manga so there may be

an example I am

unaware of) Here he doesn't have a clear target to chase to solve

the problem so

there reaction might be lesss positive. Granted it's a bit cliche in
fanfiction for this sort of thing to hit Ranma hard but that's not

to say it can't be

used again.

Hm.  I'm not really sure what the failure you're referring to is.  He
won the fight against Herb, didn't he?  The fic cites physical and
emotional trauma as being Ranma's problem, but he's been close to
dying a number of times before.  For emotional trauma, he's been stuck
as a girl before, and Eiko has a cure coming right up, so that's not
really an issue, either.

*The situation was quickly becoming intolerable, yet there was

almost

nothing more Eiko could do at the moment. It was really quite
irritating.*

Yeah, it is. if Eiko was so pissy about the stuff Pluto was doing,

why

didn't she tell Pluto that? But no, Eiko sits in silence for a few
THOUSAND YEARS and then gets pissed and goes to talk to somebody
completely different. Yeah, that's the way to go. Eiko doesn't

have a

single reason to bitch.

Why Eiko couldn't get Pluto to acknowledge her - by shouting into

her ear for

a month or so non-stop perhaps? - needs to be explained. I can think

of a

couple of possibilities but it is a plot hole that needs to be

addressed.

Hell, Eiko probably could have been able to make big letters appear in
the surface of the Gates, or something.  Regardless, Eiko has no right
to bitch about Pluto not doing what Eiko wanted her to do if Eiko just
sat around and did nothing for so long.  At the very least, Eiko could
have searched for a new guardian any time after her old guardian died.

*And there was certainly *nothing* subtle about Ranma's body
language.*

I'm reading this as Ranma putting her panties on backwards, or
something. Maybe she put on a pair with a sextoy attached and it's
vibrating the hell out of her composure. It's hard to tell.

There's so

many ways to interpret this.

Emoting being really miserable was how I interpreted this - it

seemed fairly

clear to me.

Right.  This was just a bit of sarcasm on my part about the "Oh, woe
is me!" thing.

[many words and sentences and paragraphs of Ranma's modified

family

history.]

Umm...does this stuff matter? It's not interesting. I don't CARE.
Unless the family history and great samurai lineage nonsense is

going

to make a difference in the fic (so far there are no indications

of

this being the case) there is no reason for it to be here.

I rather liked that part. It explains a certain amount about the

family

relationships and does so in character voice rather than author

voice.

Hm.  While that may be true, it doesn't contribue anything to the
plot.  Actually, all those ANCs don't really contribute anything,
either.  Unless the girls are going to end up as Ranma's knights or
something after Eiko decides to give him some, there's no need for so
many of them running around.

*--- Juuban ---*

This should read as:

MEANWHILE, somewhere in JUUBAN, in an UNSPECIFIED PLACE without

WALLS

or FLOORS or a CEILING or ANY OTHER SETTING CLUES... THINGS ARE
HAPPENING to UNSPECIFIED PEOPLE.

Maybe which part of Juuban it is doesn't matter. It's the bit with

Usagi, Ami

and Makoto in it.

Um.  You didn't get the point.  They could have been in school.  They
could have been outside.  They could have been on the moon eating
green eggs and ham.  There's no way for the reader to know where they
are, what they're doing, or who all is there.  It's the fictional
equivalent of putting the reader in a dark room and then having
speakers' faces light up as they announce their presence by talking.
It's very bad writing.

[scene with lots of personality-less ANCs fighting each other for

no

apparent plot or character-related reason. Ranma becomes Sensei

God of

the Cliche Alignment.]

...Why?

Um, they're being assessed? By their teachers? And Ranma's opinion

is asked

because he's quite a good martial artist?

They're ninja girls, not martial arts girls.  They should go bug
Konatsu for lessons, wherever he is.  Anyway, the problem isn't so
much that as that it adds nothing to the story to have Ranma teaching
them.  It's just an extremly overused, and in this case quite
gratiutous bit of nonsense.

[scene of Ranma reflecting over how nice it felt to be masturbated

by

Tofu.]

Oh, god, please stop pounding me with these cliches. Is there a

reason

for this crap? Unless gender conflict is a large aspect of the

story,

this is unneeded and annoying. If it IS a large aspect of the

story,

it's not being given enough attention and it's only being given
attention in the obvious ways that have been addressed a million

times

already. Regardless of the gender issue, the sexual nerves being
damaged angle has also been done a thousand times. It's stupid to

even

bother and it doesn't add anything at all. "Gee, lets make Ranma a
sexual idiot! what a great idea!" ...

That bit did seem a little gratuitous.

[scene of author interjection in the form of Ranma laughing at
Chibiusa.]

My, how creative. You know, E'd never seen anybody make fun of
Chibiusa before. How refreshing, in a stagnant kind of way. And on
that note, who the hell is Midori? It's hard to keep all these
personality-less ANCs straight for more than one sentence at a

time.

They just bleed together like my eyes upon seeing a nude beach

during

a retirees convention.

To restate - I had no probelm at all with that scene or telling the

four

kunoichi apart.

*Incorrect. Sailor Pluto was attempting to bring about a certain
sequence of events which would have killed nearly the entire
population, but a select few would have been protected and

preserved.*

Oooh! I've never seen THAT before! I mean, wow, Pluto as being the
creator of Crystal Tokyo! I never knew that was in the manga or

anime!

I never knew it was her fault! Let's all blame Pluto!

That notion is indeed non-canon. OTOH, so is pretty much all

fanfiction. It's

cliche but so are a lot of otherwise very good fics.

Oh, I have no problem with cliches.  I don't really consider something
cliche unless it's tossed into a fic without any attempt to back it
up.  He doesn't even try to characterize Pluto or make her drive to
create CT real.  All the fic has is tons of Pluto bashing because
she's so obviously wrong obsessed and evil etc.  It's just a ripoff of
every other fic out there that uses the idea.  Hell, the whole fight
scene (Key's effects included) feels ripped straight out of Destiny's
Child.

*"My HUSBAND would not have engaged my son and daughter to a

violent

maniac from an honorless family of eta."*

Hm. This part has been done before, though not as often as with

having

Ranma be eta. The idea itself is as cliche as it gets, but at

least

it's used in a not-quite-overused way. It's an interesting thing

to

throw in the fic at this point, though, when the story is clearly

not

about the Tendous or Ranma's relationship with them. So,

basically,

the Tendous are being bashed for no reason except to bash them.

The

story does not revolve around the conflict introduced with this
comment. It's a waste of electric ink.

I think Nodoka's being insulting here (very insulting IIRC) rather

than

actualy saying something about the Tendo's actual family status.

Yeah.  Somebody else told me that's how they read it, too.  It could
be either one--I don't have any trouble believing that he decided to
make them burakumin just for the hell of it.

*The continual failures were wearing her down as well; she

required

more and more time between each attempt to recover even a small

part

of her strength. Unfortunately, there was little else she could do
except to keep trying - without control of the gates she could

neither

communicate nor leave the space-time warp the Gates currently
occupied.*

Hah! So Eiko was not only being a bitch about Pluto trying to

regain

control, she was being a bitch AND locking Pluto out beyond time

for

millinea, and complaining that Pluto wanted out?

Good point, which does need to be addressed. Again, plenty of ways

to deal

with it but having Pluto trapped at the Gate doesn't make sense in

the context

of her losing her powers. And  I agree that her assumption that only

a member

of Serenity's court could be the guardian doesn't make a great deal

of sense.

I look forward to more of the fic and to seeing how you address the

issues

raised.

So do I.  ^_^


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