At 02:54 AM 5/27/2004, The Eternal Lost Lurker wrote:

At 11:34 PM 5/26/2004, David Johnston wrote:
[snip a whole truck's worth of crap & drivel]

*cough*
Mark?

Speaking as one of the bigger fans of your story here...
You're being an ass.

I do that on occasion, if you hadn't already noticed. Usually when replying 
late at night after a hard day at work.

David has a very valid point--a LOT of what's going on DOES read like
blatant hatefic. You can sit there and call the comments of those pointing
it out "crap" and "drivel" all you want, but all that does is make you look
more defensive--and if they're totally off-base by saying something like
that, then what do you have to be defensive about in the first place? Just
shrug it off. Publically flailing your arms against this kind of C&C is
accomplishing nothing except making you look shifty.

You're right, I should have followed my initial impulse and just tossed 
DJ's post, along with his address, into my killfile.

The most effective way to negate this kind of criticism is to prove the
critics wrong through the writing. Sitting around calling their criticism
crap and drivel or decrying the devotion of your readers to research (and
quite frankly, that comment offended the HELL out of me, but I held my
tongue) is accomplishing nothing, and is actually more damaging to YOU than
it is to THEM.

ELL, for offending *you* - I apologize.

David, if all you can see is that the portrayal of Ranma in Relatively
Absent is as a "helpless and pitiful victim", and that all of the King's
horses and all of the King's men are rallying behind the victim to Smite
Evil, then do us all a favor and stop reading it. You are SO far from
understanding *ANYTHING* it's comical.

And you're so far from offering any proof to the contrary it's comical.

Sorry, but the proof is there, both in the writing style and embedded in 
scenes of chapter 9.

 From the scene after Ucchan's where the two agents are talking:

         "Why do you think we�re now handling this?� Hiroyoshi growled.
         "I really wish we could have stuck to the original plan for that
          crew � it would have been nice to see the brat get a nice big fat
          real life wake up call for once in her life. Just having the porn
          queen arrested, and arrested *nicely* at that, seems more than a
          bit parsimonious to me."

Original plan?
Nabiki only, arrested nicely?
The brat get a nice big fat real life wake up call for once in her life?

Doesn't that sound *exactly* like what is actually going on at Tendo-ke?

Sure, some of us get where you're going with this, but that doesn't mean
everyone will see it that way, and if you took a moment to step outside
yourself and look at things from the perspective of the average reader,
you'd probably understand where some of this criticism is coming from.

You just hit the key point - I don't write for the average reader. 
Something I have made no bones about from the very beginning.

You have to admit, having the cops suddenly swoop in and rape Akane and
Nabiki while giving Ukyou a small fortune seems a BIT amiss.

I would certainly *hope* that it seems amiss, and anyone who thinks Lt. 
Hiyashi will survive the story is kidding themselves.

============================================================
Mark Shurtleff
   email: gaijin@sfcmd.com
   irc alias: Gaijin -or- togashi_gaijin
   fanfiction homepage: http://www.sfcmd.com/fanfic
============================================================ 


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