Ranma ½ Breaking the Mould

[Ezit Meti]

So there are problems that are quite clearly strangling Ranma 1/2 fanfiction in a slow and methodical manner. Fanon. Cliches. People that quite clearly can't write worth a damn. What we need is a way to break free from these chains that bind us. We need a way to stride onwards, climb higher, and write a better fanfic.

I would never say that such a task would be easy. I'm not going to say I know how to do it. Maybe none of us will figure out the answer. Maybe there is no answer at all. But if there is, I urge that we do our damndest to find it! I urge that you pour your souls into this fight, this eternal struggle with mediocrity. Will you join me, will you fight? Or will you flee to the comfort of those self same cliches and fanon that so bind us all?!

I say we fight on! But first, could someone turn the switch away from melodrama? It's making me sound silly. Silly as those cliches and fannon, which betray our very - please help - Our very sense of enjoyment!

 

[zeebee1]

People have broken from the mold. It's done every year.

 

[Ezit Meti]

Once a year? That's hardly a good ratio for shaking things up surely. And it's quite clearly not sticking, is it?

 

[PCHeintz72]

Hmmm...

I happen to disagree with some of the observations and agree with others. This is a most complex issue, with multiple aspects...

FANDOM TYPES
------------
These days, for those series that actually have much of a fandom at all (not all do, sadly for some, not so sadly for others) I see a couple different tracks that they are following, none overly great.

1. There is/was a huge community, but it is petering out or dead. Ranma has been slowly following this for years, Tenchi died out long ago. In this authors have either stopped, given up, or moved fandoms.

2. A community never formed, or is in its infancy or small... These have some decent writers, some moved from existing communities, or are isolated to writing just for that community... Black Lagoon and Full Metal Panic IMHO strike me as being in this category.

3. We have militant communities whom have radical foaming at the mouth fans and commentators that are ready to rip off the heads of anyone mentioning anything remotely off or try anything unique and refreshing in those fandoms, turning off a lot of the normal readers... for me, I see fans of Type Moon and more specifically Fate/Stay Night as being that way, among others.

4. The few super communities, as I will call them here, just to differentiate them, are even more bloated and fragmented and some argue so much as to make them agreeing on anything nearly pointless, I would include Naruto and HP in this.

CLICHES/FANNON/CANON
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Despite what many think... cliches are not inherently bad, Shipping is not inherently bad (writing solely for the sake of Shipping is generally bad though), and in fact most did not start out as such but merely became such over time as more and more stories have been written.

Ranma, Naruto, Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, Dragonball and many other communities with a very large numbers of stories have seen so much written over the years not much has not already been written before.

Take Ranma, just to name a few angles:

- Female centric or lock stories,
- Canon fiance stories,
- Crossover fiancee stories,
- Psycho-bitch Akane,
- Angel Akane,
- Angel Ranma,
- Honorable Ranma,
- Crazy Kodachi,
- Obsessive Ryoga,
- Bimbo Shampoo,
- Character bash,
- Ship stories

All of the above have been written plenty of times... all have *to some* been written to death. Some cliche, some fannon cliche, some canon.

The problem... remove *all* cliches, what are you left with to write with? Whom can Ranma be paired with that has not become a cliche or has at least not been done X times before? Very few stories would be written.

Additionally, part of the problem with Cliches is people look at a story, and say... I dislike it because it contains item X from above list and I hate item X in a story. When really, they should be ignoring it and saying, what about this story appeals to me... if the answer is 'nothing', then it is time to move on. Instead many focus on the hateed aspect, and even if do not want to read it any more will comment on it again, and comment on it again ad infinitum, causing long drawn out debates that quite simply are not needed past the initial I do not like it for X reason and stop.

READING QUALITY STANDARDS
-------------------------
Another aspect of the issue is the quality level of grammar, spelling, formatting, and punctuation. If the story is not clear enough to be read without inducing headaches, that is a issue.

Sadly... I do not really see an easy cure for this... the Internet is a far different place now from 10-15 years ago... nearly anyone can get on easily, with little to no knowledge, research, or understanding, and posting stuff is easier as well, with fragmented communities, lack of beta, free general mass posting sites like FanFiction.NET, MediaMiner.ORG, and FicWad.COM.

Most attempts to fix this are little more than bandaids on the issue. FanFiction.NET for example has a beta program, a for the most part ignored one. Forum commentary only goes so far, and some authors post preview and final versions of a story at the same time. Others ignore commentary and corrections.

FANDOM SUPPORT
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Oddly... what drew me originally to the Ranma, NGE, and Tenchi fan fiction communities way back in 1999 or so (I've certainly expanded since then, but those were the primary ones I started with) was the fact they were so much better organized and self supported than most of the others... fan support, wide range of stories, some well written ones, grouped web sites, early adopters of forums, internal awards. contests, etc...

In the case of at least Ranma, NGE, and Tenchi (again, the original 3 for me), most of the support infrastructure that used to be in place is gone, here are some examples:

- Anifics forums is a shadow of its former self, though still there.
- EvaFics is gone,
- Fandorium died years ago,
- TMFFA has been killed,
- Darkscribes forums barely there,
- Geocities is gone,
- Many of the shrines are dead and buried RandK, RandN, RandKK, Washu, etc...
- FanFic.NET is all but unavailable except though Archive.ORG,
- FFML and various subgroups are still there but not really as open as they used to be and not even known to most of the newer writers,
- Archive sites of the older stuff are mostly gone, such as Anifics Hosted sites
- Many of the best writers are gone or moved on in life.
- Link Rot in general is a very real issue.
- etc...

In the end, I cannot see any possible effective solutions that would cover all of the above on anything approaching a broad base.

 

[The Ero-Sennin]

There is a solution, adapting to the times. Thanks to things like Abridged series on Youtube, some of old stuff (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, for one) is coming out of the cold of obscurity and finding a new fanbase.

What we need to do, as fans, is repackage the good here and sell it to a new audience.

 

[FinalMax]

There is a solution, adapting to the times. Thanks to things like Abridged series on Youtube, some of old stuff (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, for one) is coming out of the cold of obscurity and finding a new fanbase.

What we need to do, as fans, is repackage the good here and sell it to a new audience.

Abridged series? Surely you jest. I've taken a look at a few, and they aren't something to get people interested in a series. An abridged series is just a mouthpiece for the dubber's brand of humor; it's practically a poorly written, self-insert fanfic. These things only have any real appeal to those who were already watching the show to begin with, maybe to the "closer-to-hardcore" parody fans.

I'd rather suggest people get back to the roots of storytelling. Look at the characters, try to figure out why they do things a certain way. Explore how you could make in character changes that make sense. Take individual scenes and break them apart. Find ways to change a scene using the canon materials in interesting ways.

 

[Muphrid]

Something should be said in "defense" of cliches. With a fandom so well-weathered as this one, it's a tall order to demand original plots. As PCHeintz said, you're left with nothing if you eliminate everything that's been done before. The good new works vary or twist the common premises in some way. The bad ones just use them straight.

I know I speak as a relative newcomer on the scene; I only got involved in writing fanfiction and watching anime within the last couple years, but I think if one could muster the credibility and authority to something like the awards that used to be done by various groups, perhaps that would foster a drive for quality. Maybe not across the whole fandom, but at least those fics considered could comprise a selection of good new material.

 

[PCHeintz72]

There is a solution, adapting to the times. Thanks to things like Abridged series on Youtube, some of old stuff (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, for one) is coming out of the cold of obscurity and finding a new fanbase.

What we need to do, as fans, is repackage the good here and sell it to a new audience.

Huh... I have to agree with FinalMax on that one...

I have yet to see an abridged anything that even remotely appealed to me at all...

And I've yet to see one that actually keeps the story and plot lines intact in any remotely sensible way, thus making them all but worthless as reference material.

 

[nuclear death frog]

I refuse to believe that there aren't any possible new ideas waiting to be explored, but I readily admit they seem to show up less and less, if at all. :unsure:

 

[PCHeintz72]

I refuse to believe that there aren't any possible new ideas waiting to be explored, but I readily admit they seem to show up less and less, if at all. :unsure:

If referring to my post, I did not mean that there are no new ideas or no new story concepts... merely that a huge number of them have already been done, and the potential for at least one cliche, fannon or canon, is exceedingly high in any one story.

For Ranma there is a lot of potential still in crossovers for example, as I've never heard of Ranma/Murder Princess, or Ranma/Princess Lover, or some only have a few in existance that still have a large number of unexplored possibilities like Ranma/TMOHS.

For non-crossovers, one example would be very few Ranma/other Tendo sisters stories exist. And one of the few better ones completely jumped shark since the authors changed their minds about it without telling readers for a number of chapters.

 

[Crusader]

In how many fics has Ranma unsealed the Umisenken even though he sealed it in canon and never used it any more?

 

[Muphrid]

He talks about sealing it in one panel as part of a gag. I think that gives some latitude in how to treat it.

 

[Crusader]

He talks about sealing it in one panel as part of a gag. I think that gives some latitude in how to treat it.

And yet he didn't use it against Saffron and his many winged goons.

 

[Ezit Meti]

Part of the problem with the umisenken keeps getting ignored, as it happens. It depends on the person being able to control their emotions, and given what was going on throughout pretty much that entire arc and especially the Saffron fight, Ranma was probably not gonna be able to maintain that level of control for very long at all.

Besides which, he's already very good at stealth without using those techniques.

 

[nuclear death frog]

He talks about sealing it in one panel as part of a gag.? I think that gives some latitude in how to treat it.

And yet he didn't use it against Saffron and his many winged goons.

What good would it have done against Saffron? None at all by my estimation. And all his underlings were physically weak, making it overkill. The only technique either school has that might have been useful against the phoenix king was the Kijin Raishuu Dan itself (and its variants), and Saffron could just regenerate from that repeatedly. Saffron was too hax for the thief schools to be useful, and the Hiryuu Shouten Ha was really much closer to a signature technique.

 

[Anonguy]

Let's not forget Akane spotted Ranma sneaking around in the Umisenken so it isn't like he just threw away the Invisibility Cloak from Harry Potter.

Besides, I find it ironic how people give Genma shit for being a worthless liar who never keeps his word, but everyone is lining up for Ranma to go back on his word. Hilarious

 

[Crusader]

Let's not forget Akane spotted Ranma sneaking around in the Umisenken so it isn't like he just threw away the Invisibility Cloak from Harry Potter.

Besides, I find it ironic how people give Genma shit for being a worthless liar who never keeps his word, but everyone is lining up for Ranma to go back on his word. Hilarious

For some reason it makes me chuckle because it reminds me of the apologists for the Umisenken and that they asspull it out as some kind of key to all solutions even though both Genma and Ranma have sealed it away along with Genma sealing the Yamasenken.

 

[Muphrid]

Let's not forget Akane spotted Ranma sneaking around in the Umisenken so it isn't like he just threw away the Invisibility Cloak from Harry Potter.

Does she? I mean, there's the time he was sneaking around her room late at night, but he actually calls out to her before she even knows he was there.

 

[Anonguy]

I will admit my memory sucks on things, as Ranma 1/2 runs together after a while.

 

[nuclear death frog]

Let's not forget Akane spotted Ranma sneaking around in the Umisenken so it isn't like he just threw away the Invisibility Cloak from Harry Potter.

Does she? I mean, there's the time he was sneaking around her room late at night, but he actually calls out to her before she even knows he was there.

Yeah, it happened. Akane spotted or sensed him on the wall, threw a table at him, and knocked him through the window. It was just after she found vegetables in her dresser.

 

[Reimu]

he was still perfecting it he did not have complete control. She caught him the first time going through her drawers, but later on did not see them at night and had to call out to him to see him stop using the technique.

 

[Muphrid]

I will admit my memory sucks on things, as Ranma 1/2 runs together after a while.

Granted. When a more obscure canon question comes up, I usually go look it up and see, which is a good exercise in itself. And I admit, like I said in the canon questions thread, I forgot Ranma sealed Umisenken. It's a one-panel gag (unlike getting Ryu Kumon to seal Yamasenken, which was wagered as part of the battle).

As far as Ranma goes, I think he would use Umisenken if he wanted to, if there was no one to call him out on it (and, perhaps, even if there were spectators who could). But the lack of its use outside of that arc probably makes it no more than a minor, minor part of Ranma's arsenal of tricks. You know, outside of the fact that Takahashi just rarely carried over continuity unless it suited her.

 

[Crusader]

As far as Ranma goes, I think he would use Umisenken if he wanted to, if there was no one to call him out on it (and, perhaps, even if there were spectators who could).? But the lack of its use outside of that arc probably makes it no more than a minor, minor part of Ranma's arsenal of tricks.? You know, outside of the fact that Takahashi just rarely carried over continuity unless it suited her.

But wouldn't that give Genma the green card to use the Yamasenken and the Umisenken again without any reprisal for unsealing it permanently. :sisi:

 

[KCKitsune]

Why the bloody hell would Genma Seal ANYTHING?

It is the Saotome School of Indiscriminate Grappling. The school pretty much says "If this shit works for you, then go for it. Nothing is barred."

Now I can see Genma wanting to keep it for himself, but Seal it away... :no:

 

[PCHeintz72]

Why the bloody hell would Genma Seal ANYTHING?

It is the Saotome School of Indiscriminate Grappling.? The school pretty much says "If this shit works for you, then go for it.? Nothing is barred."

Now I can see Genma wanting to keep it for himself, but Seal it away...? :no:

I'm personally of the opinion it was stated it was 'sealed' merely as an excuse to Ranma so not only would he not know of it, and not be taught it, but as a trump card and a hold over.

It should be noted this whole off topic part on the sealed techniques is more for the thread talking on canon/fannon, or even its own thread, not here.