Zen <databank@mindspring.com> wrote:

At 15:04 +0000 8/21/98, Gary Kleppe wrote:

Sean Connor <sec@softhome.net> wrote:

Now, in Sydney Kyle's fic, "Akane and Ranma", Mr. Kyle portrays Ukyou
as Ranma's best friend.  Again, there's no real proof either way.
(But again, however, there are reasons why she might be, or might not
be.)

There's strong indirect evidence that she's not, and I know of
absolutely no evidence that she is (I've challenged people to come up
with some).

Ara?  Strong evidence that she's not his friend?  Like what?

Um, no. Bzzzzt! Wrong. That's NOT what I said. No strawmen allowed here,
please. :-p

I didn't say that they weren't friends at all. I said that she wasn't
his BEST friend. Not in the way that this fic portrayed it. Evidence
being that there were many times when Ranma would have gone running for
a heart-to-heart talk with Ucchan if he had had that kind of
relationship with her.

Well... as for the Ranma/Ukyou friendship, you have yet to prove to Zen's
satisfaction that Ukyou is any less a friend to Ranma than anyone else...
most notably the hammer happy harridan you're so enamoured of.  Certainly
there's a stronger case for Ukyou being Ranma's friend than there is for
Ryouga being his friend... but no one ever seems to have a problem with
THAT interpretation.

If anybody's story suggests that Ranma had gone to have heart-to-heart
talks with Ryoga a bunch of times during the manga, I bloody well *will*
have a problem with it.

What Zen will say, is that character issues aside, Zen tends to enjoy most
the stories that have a lot of the AUTHOR in them.  No, Zen does NOT,
repeat NOT mean the dreaded 'Self Insertion' fics.  Zen means a fic where
the author put a piece of his or her heart and soul into what they wrote
because they CARED about it... and the characters in it.

I agree with Zen on this (provided we're talking about a drama and not a
comedy or some such). But the pitfall with this is that when putting
himself/herself into the story, the author can end up completely
crowding out Takahashi. When the story gets to the point that it's about
some stranger who happens to have a pig-tail and wear a red shirt, I
think it's really lost something. I care about these characters as a
READER, too.

I'm not saying that we authors shouldn't put ourselves into our stories.
We should. But we should do so with care. In one person's highly biased
opinion, anyway.

THAT is what makes a good fic... what makes a character believable in Zen's
eyes, even if the extrapolation from canon seems a little far fetched.
It's what Zen loves about Nick's stories, and others, like Perry-san's
'Hearts of Ice', and your stories too, Gary.  Without some measure of that,
no matter how true tot he manga characters a story may be, it will be flat,
and lifeless.

I'm glad Zen enjoys my work, and I enjoy Zen's too... but I'd enjoy it
more if he could do a story where Ukyo got Ranma *in spite* of her
faults.


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