"D.F. Roeder" <droeder@houston.rr.com> wrote:

Your suggestions for improvement would be appropriate, I think, if
I ever intended to do anything with this other than just toss it
out for those who might enjoy it, but what you've outlined
encompasses a substantially longer and more developed work, which
I'm not interested in pursuing in the case of AWC. The idea of
Akane as a talking bird *is* rather interesting, and if someone
else wants to run with it, be my guest. As it is, it inspired me
only this far.

Okay, fair enough.

As far as Akane being cursed character treated as cursed
character, I'm forced to assume that you are speaking of Kasumi
wondering if she should put down newspaper, Nabiki trying to get
Akane to say 'Pieces of Eight', Soun's worry that his
grandchildren will be in eggs, and Shampoo's offer to have Akane
for lunch -- these reactions all seem in-character to me, if a bit
unwittingly or obliquely cruel. Well, Nabiki's was knowingly
cruel, but that's IC, too. :)

I'll explain what I meant, because obviously I was unclear. (This is
what happens when you toss off a quick comment at 6:30 before heading
off to work, I suppose. ^_^) The "treatment" I was talking about didn't
really have to do with IC/OOC, but rather with humor value.

A lot of the comedy in the manga, especially when it deals with the
curses, comes from a sort of "X treated as Y" situation. With Ranma you
frequently have "boy treated as girl," e.g. him getting flowers and a
declaration of love from Kuno. You also have "girl (body) treated as
boy," whereby Ranma thinks nothing of walking around the house
bare-chested. Then there's Akane treating P-chan as her pet despite all
the obvious clues to his real identity, and Nodoka treating Genma as
"Ranko's" pet panda even though it does things an actual dumb animal
would never be able to do. As cursed characters become a staple of the
series, you begin to see "uncursed treated as cursed" -- Ranma pouring
hot water on Ukyo, or nearly marrying the duck he thought was Akane.

So the problem I had with the characters' reactions in this fic wasn't
with plausibility, but rather that they *were* pretty much how you'd
expect those people to react to a cursed Akane. To be fair, the lines of
dialog you mention above *were* a case of "Akane-bird treated as real
bird" -- they just weren't enough by themselves to carry the whole story
for me. Though as you said, it may just be that my expectations are out
of line with the intended scope of your fic. Greedy bast'd, I am. :P

That criticism reminds me of Kasumi and Nabiki cornering Ranma and
making 'her' wear girl's clothing simply because all of hers was
in the wash or dirty (I forget which). Why couldn't they have just
put Akane's yellow gi on Ranma until the wash was done? Does Soun
have only one gi, himself? Ranma could have rolled up the sleeves.
It wasn't necessary for the two sisters to take advantage of
Ranma's curse and wound her pride (sorta) by stuffing her into
girl's clothing, even if said girl's clothing was handier than the
other options... or *was* it? I suppose Takahashi had her
reasons... ^_^

Good question. I'd guess that Kasumi and Nabby were curious to see how
female Ranma would look dressed up in cute girl's clothes, and that
Takahashi wanted an excuse to draw him that way in the actual story
rather than on a cover or splash page. ^_^  The scene does seem to fit
into the pattern I was talking about above, though.

As always, thoughtful commentary. Many thanks, Gary.

Thanks to you for listening to my opinionated ramblings. :)


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