Subject: Re: [FFML][Fanfic][Ranma/SM] Watering of a Horse- Act One (Heavily Revised)
From: Angus MacSpon
Date: 7/10/1999, 2:36 AM
To: AlphSailor@AOL.COM
CC: ffml@fanfic.com

My first draft, I'll admit, was horribly flawed and OCC. It was unusual
seeing half of responses I received complaining about how OCC Ami was,
and yet almost all of them encouraged me to go on.
But if there's one thing I was grateful for- it was for you guys
knocking the sense into me about OCCness of Ami. So I went back to the
writing board and rewrote almost the whole thing. This time should prove
to be better than the previous version.


I've been thinking about this for a little.  A martial-arts version of
Ami is interesting -- she comes out rather like an Akane who thinks first,
_then_ acts.

However ...

However, that's _all_ that seems different.  The story would be no
different if you left her name as "Akane" and simply called this a "What
if Akane was smarter and a bit less impulsive?" story.

It's not that Ami is out of character.  Given her completely different
background in this story, there's no way we could expect her to be _in_
character.  This is quite possibly the way Ami would have turned out if
she'd been brought up as a Tendo.

But the only thing that connects her to "Ami Mizuno" is the name.  The
Sailor Moon connection is so tenuous that it might as well not exist; and
that being the case, as a fusion I don't think it's worth doing.

As a purely Ranma story, on the other hand, it's an interesting alternate
world, and it might be worth continuing it on that basis.

So, I'd suggest two possible ways forward:

-- Drop the Sailor Moon element, and change Ami's name back to Akane.
   A "genius Akane" story isn't one that I recall seeing, and could be
   interesting.
-- Alternatively, bring the SM element back full-force.  Make this
   martial-arts version of Ami into a very different Sailor Mercury
   (who, when transformed, can probably beat Ranma one-handed).

Cheers,
Angus

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Angus MacSpon                                                Allen Gainsford
http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/          http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/