Sunday, October 4, 2009

Things I would like to see more of in Ranma fan fiction

First off I will state that if I want to see more of these things in fan fiction, I should stop being lazy/insecure in my writing and write the damn stories myself. If I do so well enough it may inspire others to do so. That said I am insecure in my writing and lazy, so hence this list (there is some small hope that this list itself will inspire someone to use them).

Second thing I want to say, before I get to the list, is something I have made mention to before; I really do not understand why some things become so common in fan fiction, many thing which blatantly contradict the source material, and other things actually seen in the source material, repeatedly even, do not.

1. Ranma reading.
2. Konatsu - He is an interesting character with some pretty cool techniques and I would like to see more fics with him in it.
3. Ranma attempting to be a matchmaker. Ranma tried to hook Happosai and Cologne up, he did hook up Akari and Ryoga, and he started to teach a clone of himself how to pick up guys.
4. Ghosts, Oni and miscellaneous other Kami. There are quite a few arcs that have supernatural creatures in them and they don't appear very often in fan fics.
5. Ranma being money savvy. Ranma does display knowledge on money. I mostly want to see more of this to counter all the fan fics in which Ranma borrows money from Nabiki (which Ranma never does in the manga), fics in which he gets tutored by Nabiki on how to use money (which doesn't make sense to me since he knows she would cheat him, she will recklessly use other peoples money without worrying, and will sell people out) and considering that he was on a life long trip in which he likely had to make do with very little money fairly often and probably had to deal with people trying to cheat him; it just makes more sense for him to be money savvy (he does barter with Nabiki, cons people for discounts, expressed sadness at having to spend money, expressed worry about money, has taken jobs - once explicitly for money, etc., in the manga).
6. I would like to see more fics with healing things like Ranma doing first aid or cpr (both of which he did do in the manga), physical therapy, meditation (also seen in manga both in the form of prayer and while sitting upside down), massages (again seen in the manga multiple times; once even during a battle), pressure points/shiatsu/Moxibustion for their more common healing purposes, teaching (very important to prevent causing harm), etc.
7. Ranma being sarcastic and pointing out the stupidity/hypocrisy of the people around him. Ranmas fanfiction incarnations generally are not very sarcastic whereas he is pretty sarcastic in the manga.
8. Ranma with black hair like in the manga, or black with red in it like some Japanese people really have but isn't readably noticeable unless backlite, and having different hair styles on occasion such as hanging loose or a ponytail (like Ranma had his hair pre-dragon whisker).

I am likely to add more to or revise this list at a future date.

2 comments:

mknopp said...

I am not really going to add to your list of what you want to see.

However, I do want to list some of the things that I don't understand how they became so common in fanfiction, to the point of people thinking they are canon. Some of these might very well come from the anime, which I have only watch through season 6 over a decade ago.

1)Akane thinks all boys, Ranma in particular, are perverts and will kill any boy who even tries to touch her. This is not supported at all in the manga. In fact, in the first eight chapters Akane is willing to kiss Ranma twice and rarely calls him a pervert unless he does something perverted or shortly after.

2)The Tendos are poor and only managed to survive because of Nabiki's schemes. I have never found any evidence of this in any of the manga. In fact, the manga seems to indicate that the Tendos are rather well off. I think that much of this comes from people needing to represent Nabiki in a favorable light, and thus they have to make her schemes as altruistic. While I don't have a problem with it every once in a while it seems to have become almost universally accepted in fanon.

3)Kasumi is completely clueless or incapable of disagreeing with anyone. While I will admit that Kasumi is one of the characters thta suffered from regression as the series went on, she is shown early on to be very observant and controversial. She yells at Genma for taking them to Jusenkyo. She practically brow beats Ranma into doing what she wants several times early in the series. This isn't universal, but I once wrote a fanfic in which Kasumi was observant and take an active role in shaping an event and I had more than a few reviewers complaining that Kasumi was out of character because she never notices anything, and even if she did she would never do anything about it.

4)That Ranma doesn't tell Akane about Ryoga's curse because he promised not to and as an extension of this Ryoga is taking advantage of that promise. This is a biggie, and personally the issue that I have the hardest time explaining in Ranma's behavior. A reread of the arc in which P-Chan is introduced shows that Ranma promised the neighbor's dog that he wouldn't tell anyone about the curse, not Ryoga. Thus Ryoga never knows about the promise. Also, Ranma was well on his way to telling Akane that P-Chan was Ryoga when Akane kissed P-Chan and Ranma got jealous and angry. Ranma was ready and willing to break the promise that he gave a dog not to reveal Ryoga's curse. Ranma not telling Akane about P-Chan is a purely story driven element that I have a terrible time explaining in fanfictions. However, I get tired of seeing the same thing over and over about how it was a promise that was never given.

antimatterenergy said...

If you are interested in fanon vs canon for the Ranmaverse I have compiled a partial list on that; fanon vs canon.

As for your fourth point, I have been led to believe that there are Japanese cultural reasons that do explain that but I myself can not.