"Chris Tendo" <ayiekie@hotmail.com> wrote:

Alright.  There's more than a few people who I am addressing this to, so 
I'll send it to the group.  All replies will kindly be directed to 
personal e-mail.

In other words, YOU want your say on the list, but no one else should
have theirs. Sorry, don't think so.

answer: you can, just fine.  There is room for intrepetation, yes, but 
within a certain scope, the characterisation of every notable character 
in Ranma is FIRM.  Ranma is a martial artist who upholds the value of 
life, is insensitive and awkward in dealing with the opposite sex, who 
has a big ego, etc, etc.  No amount of screwing with the story will 
change those basic FACTS, and a fanfic which does not recognize them is 
OOC.  There are no ifs, ands or buts.  Nobody needs to be the creator of 
the series to know what characters are like, they just need to look at 
the source material and use their heads to piece together the 
information given.

I agree with this up to a point, but there's gray areas in most of the
characters that are bigger than you and GUBby seem to think. Fanfiction,
to a certain extent, is all about putting the characters into situations
that they never encountered in the source material. In such a case, we
need to extrapolate to figure out what they'd do, and that's not as
simple as you make it sound. Would Nabiki sell her family into slavery
for a billion yen? We don't know. Would Ukyo settle down and become
Ranma's friend if she found out for certain that he wasn't going to
marry her? We don't really know. (Personally, I'd give this one a big
'no,' but that's just me, and others obviously differ.)

Obviously there are a few exceptions, notably parody works.  And 
obviously some characters will change over the course of the 
story...hell, that happens in the original!  But for the most part, if a 
fanfic isn't IC, then it's not a fanfic.  It's an original work with 
stolen names and gimmicks.  Some may not care about that.  But I think 
that if you're going to take the ideas other people worked to implement, 
then by god you should use it to BUILD on what they did, make their 
universe richer and fuller...not just steal their ideas for yourself.

As you say, this is your opinion. I largely agree with it, but others
differ.

                                                 
Alright, that being said, I might as well address another, somewhat 
problem that's been bothering me.  Guy Under The Bridge, AKA Mark David, 
possibly also known as the Critic.  

You know, I looked up and down the FAQ of this mailing list, but try as 
I might, I never -did- find the section that says it's a capital crime 
to give negative C&C on this mailing list.  Therefore, I'm afraid I'm 
going to have to proceed with the assumption that no such section 
exists.  With that in mind, there's just one thing that I think needs to 
be said...


GROW UP.

You first. :-P

Or maybe he has another reason.  But whatever it is, there is nobody on 
this list that currently has a reason to complain about what GutB is 
doing.  You can disagree with his reasoning or his characterisation, 
yes...and I disagree with some of it myself.  But his criticisms are 
just that...they address certain points in the story and point out what 
he thinks is wrong, and they also occasionally point out things he 
considers were done right.  They are not just flames.

I have nothing against negative criticism. But I can understand quite
well why people dislike the Critic Under the Bridge. He seems incapable
of stating his opinions as *opinions* rather than gospel truth. He's
constantly starting RAAF-style character debates on the FFML. He seems
to expect newbies to all write at the level of the older, established
writers. Basically, he's unwilling to observe the most basic social
courtesies on a forum that is, for the most part, a friendly and civil
gathering.

Now, personally I find Gubby more laughably pathetic than infuriating,
but I can't blame people for being pissed at him.

Furthermore, after his old identity was (I presume) banned, he's back
with a new one. That means he's crashing the list when the owner doesn't
want him on it. WHY the owner doesn't want him here doesn't matter; it's
a privately owned list and if White Wolf doesn't want him here, he
shouldn't be here.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics