Anyway, my rants...

and mine.  hrreh.

From:

-David Tai

How about a new challenge:

Write a fic where the characters from an anime series ARE THE FOCUS
of the story, and any new characters stay in supporting roles at the
very most. And those characters _ARE IN CHARACTER_.

Response:

Why would we bother?  You're asking us to write a story according to
someone else's point of view of characters, situations, characterization,
etc... Fanfics have a bit of freedom in them somewhere for authors to put
in their own creative ideas, not get someone's Ranma, or another's Ukyou
and blend them together.  Fanfics was never a medium to tell only a story,
but to portray a character, or characters as deem from the POV of the
author.

Why bother?  *sigh*

I don't know about you, but when I see an author that's able
to stay loyal to the original formula to a fair extent, stay
within the bounds of the anime, and STILL manages to write
an entertaining story, that's talent.

That shows a large understanding of the show AND it takes effort.

Take J.A. Wilde's fics.  While it does in fact expand on the
Ranma universe quite a bit, its roots are firmly planted
in cannon.

That's John Biles, Stefan 'Twoflower' Gagne, Joseph Palmer, 
Richard Lawson, Chris Davies, etc etc etc.... 

That's talent.

From:

Yes, there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief required,
but the more you have to suspend, well... maybe it's time to ask
yourself: _How_ much suspension of disbelief is required? Is it a
lot? If so, you may have a problem

Response:

Siblings was never intended to be "real" life, or in other words...it
wasn't patterned to anyone's own view of the Ranmaverse.  So why force it?

It's also having everyone behave out of character with not much
justification for it.

There's lots of fics where they are out of character, but the good
ones give sufficient reason why.  Again, I point to J.A.Wilde's
work.  The change in character is given lots of explanation.

the 'hey, I just met this guy and beat him, can we keep him?' thing
just doesn't cut it, not for me. 

From:

That he was adopted into the Saotome family and accepted as a member
immediately, even though his family had a feud with the Saotome, he
was able to put aside the feud almost _immediately_? And Ranma can
treat him as a brother *snap* like that? _This_ is what Mike meant...
if you're going t' make it believable, evovlve the relationship,
not jump to where you want it to be.

Response:

True.  Got into a debate with HK on that point.  People, I recommend the
KISS principle in everyone's fics. (Keep it Simple, BAKA!)  Nothing comes
from nothing...you know.  But, then again, who am I to push into one's
writing.  ^_^  But I'd also point out, Ranma would not be considered a
believable anime, or any other anime out there...its their entertainment
value that makes it special, not its 'real life' reflection.

Where are you getting this 'real life' thing?
Nobody's mentioning that.  We're talking about
what's been established as what Ranma & co. would
be likely and not likely to do.

From:

Mike Loader

Hardly. I figure that she'll dive in front of a bus after about a week of
Ranma's death. Hey, suicidal Ukyous are practically canon. ;)

Response:

Hmm...where did that come from?

check the wink. ;)

Seriously, tho, it's far more believable to think
that Ukyou would kill herself when she finds out
the boy she's deeply in love with dies than it is
to believe the adoption process that occurred in
'Siblings'.

-rod,

descendent of the mighty warlord
'Bubba' Tokigawa, founder of imperial Japan.  ;)