Hi there! I generally read and write Ranma 1/2 fanfiction. I'm neither for nor against any particular romantic match-up, and have been known to bash a character in one fic, only to treat him or her with respect in another. I love comments and constructive criticism (or what Fanfiction.net refures to as "read and review"), but flames will be used to roast marshmallows.

The homepage link goes to my page on devientART, but anyone who goes there should be warned that they may see spoiler pics for some of my stories, and some of the pics aren't suitable for younger viewers, although the worst are blocked off by a rating warning. And no, not all of those pictures have anything to do with any of my stories, only some of them.

NOTE: Well, it's been a few years, but I'm starting up my old stories again, starting with Magical Guardian Ranma. Unfortunately, the forgotteninnocence site which was hosting the individual links provided as occasional treats at the ends of some of the MGR chapters has gone down. On the other hand, my deviantArt page is still up if you want to see all the girls in their battle regalia. And I do mean all the girls - including the ones that haven't shown up yet in the story.

Tangent

P.S: Checking on my collected reviews, I notice that some of my favorite fanfiction authors are reading my stories! How cool is that? :D

NOTES:

Character Portrayals:

While I am a fan of Ranma 1/2 and other series, I do hold the view that Rumiko Takahashi was overly fond of including Shakespearian fatal flaws in almost all of her characters that, while good from a comedy series standpoint, would otherwise make many of them either horrible people to know personally, generally miserable, or not likely to live long if they had to survive on their own in society, assuming nobody had them incarcerated or put into a mental assylum.

However, the thing is most of these fatal flaws crop up over time, after the character had been introduced, or start as small flaws that get exadurated to rediculous levels. These flaws then frequently overshadow whatever positive traits Rumiko had put in the characters when they were first introduced. Kasumi Tendo did not start the series in a nearly perpetual state of serine obliviousness, and if Nabiki was as greedy and self serving at the begining of Ranma 1/2 as she ended up near the end, Genma would have ended up sold to a zoo or circus within the first week, assuming she didn't know about any outstanding rewards for turning him over to various people for things he had done over the years.

Hell, Ranma himself, who is one of the two core protagonists of the series fluctuates between being a nice and somewhat niave guy and a total jerk. Granted, to be fair, he was raised on the road and Genma didn't really bother to promote much of any of the traditional japanese social values while training him, so the poor kid is due a lot of slack. He has few friends simply because he doesn't know how to actually make them, and even fewer of the people he thinks are his friends actually are (either being hangers on, like Daisuke and Hiroshi, or obsessed with their particular view of him true or not, like Ukyo). And the few who probably could respect him as a peer won't due to his relationship to other people that they are obsessed with.

And, to cap it all off, the entire jumble of collective fatal flaws and unresolved events just builds up throughout the series. Okay, so many of these were intended as one-off gags or excuses for running gags, but Ranma is literally set up so that if events reach their natural conclusion, he will either be dead or percieves as being without honor by the time he's legally an adult. And much of that is due to problems that not only are not his fault, they aren't even problems he's capable of fixing because they were caused by other people who foisted their responsibility off onto him even though they shouldn't have been able to in the first place.

Take Ranma's multiple "fiancee's" (Ukyo Kuonji, any one of Soun Tendo's daughters, and Kodachi Kuno - the late becoming official only after Genma accepted money from her) for example: Ranma has been told, repeatedly, to resolve his multiple engagements himself, and he is constantly berated because he doesn't. The problem with this is, he doesn't actually have the authority to break any of the engagements! That's Genma's responsibility, and cannot be foisted off onto Ranma while either of his parents are still alive, no matter what they or anyone else has to say about it! Can the engagements be broken or delayed honorably? Yes, but the only person with the authority and actual responsibility to do so is Genma himself, followed by Nodoka if he dies. And even if they both die, many of the issues involved still can't be resoved by Ranma. The best he can do at that point is try to pass the engagements down to the next generation and then hope he manages to father enough kids to fulfill them all. And given the level of obsessive/compulsive dissorder running rampant in that series, the most likely result will be three fueding families assuming that the Amazons don't kill them all...

Another character to suffer from severe fatal flaw creep is Nabiki Tendo. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, early on in bot the manga and the anime, she exhibits several positive character traits to go along with her flaws. She has been noted to be observant, curious, resourceful, witty, cool under pressure, and to have a work-out ethic to maintain her figure. As far as her flaws go, she does start out being somewhat self centered, manipulative, sarcastic, and selfish, but not overly so for her age. Taken together, this combination isn't really too bad. However, these flaws not only quickly grow for comedic emphasis, she accumulates even more of them such as sadism, amorality, narcessism, lack of compassion, and a derth in conscience. By the middle of the series, Nabiki is a borderline sociopath, and if the trend of her flaw expansion continues as set in the series, then she is likely to end up either dead, incarcerated, or on the run from both the yakuza and the law because despite being manipulative enough to set up schemes and pull them off, she rarely shows enough sense to actually cover up her involvement in much of any of them.

However, Nabiki is an eminently "fixable" character, and is fully capable of doing so herself if properly motivated at the right times. Naturally, my prefered time to do this in my stories is near the beginning of the series, before the flaws become unwieldly, but she does have the willpower to fix them later assuming something happens to break through her shell of apathy. this become progressively more difficult at later points during the series, and by the time of the Ten Yen Bet, she's pretty much a sociopath with little hope of ever redeeming herself.

Mind you, those are only two of the characters in Ranma 1/2. Almost all of them are a collection of few (if any) positive traits and at least one fatal flaw. Even Akane Tendo, who is arguably Rumiko's most favored character in the entire series. Nice girl, but once she forms an opinion she's likely to hold on to it regardless of any later evidence to the contrary, and that temper is going to get her arrested some day...

On Hidden Inventory Space (A.K.A.: Hammer Space; Hidden Weapon Space)

Okay, this is a fun concept to play with, and many anime characters have this trait to some extent or other.

However, contrary to what seems to be popular belief, Akane Tendo is not actually one of them. Does she hit people who irritate her with hammers and/or mallets? Unfortunately yes, along with stone ornaments, tables, or just about anything else that is large and handily nearby. And that's just it - Akane very rarely actually summons anything! the Kuno siblings do (Kodachi more so than Tatewaki), Genma does, Ranma has been known to do so from time to time, and Mousse is the undisputed king of this trope, but if Akane Tendo has ever been shown to actually summon an object or weapon in either the manga or the anime, I don't recall ever actually seeing her do it. The closest plausible case I remember where she might have done so is during the Super Soba incident, but Rumiko's Nerima is full of oddities, and the oversized props that Akane was using may have actually been there as tournament decorations.

Mainly I put this down to Akane being a practical practitioner of the "Anything Goes" concept of her family's martial arts school, and simply choosing to use whatever happens to be at hand if she needs an actual weapon, rather than devoting the time needed to learn how to summon "theme" related items.

Granted, I also largely blame this inclination to utilise whatever is at hand for her carelessness and tendency towards being innapropriately creative when cooking and decorating. Yes, her spunk and enthusiasm is adorable, but it's likely to hospitalize someone and may actually kill someone eventually.

On my fanfics:

Each of my fanfics essentially takes place in its own Alternate Continuity, and many of them in their own Alternate Universe as well. I consider this to be a common trait of any fanfic, actually, with only a few exceptions. Thos actually labled as AU continuities are just notably more so than others. There's nothing actually wrong with this. It's just how I perceive to be the case.

A lot of my early Ranma fics are loaded with angst. This is largely why they stalled, as I don't seem to be able to maintain the proper mood to actually write a prolonged angst-fic. Sure, I can set them up, apparently, but then I seem to reach a point where I have either written myself into a corner, am not sure where to go next with the story, or am too damn depressed about the events in the story to continue it.

Will I ever get back to any of them?

Well, I'd like to, but there's no guarantee that I ever will. In fact, I've lost critical files containing story notes and outlines for several of my stories, most notably Misshapen Destiny and Ryo Three Quarters. Both of which had actually been fully plotted out to about sixty chapters or so at one time. The loss of these notes and outlines has largely killed both stories, even if i do hope to eventually get back to them some day.

NOTICE: In an effort to get certain troublesome impulses out of my system, or at least under control, these problematic idea worms have been channeled into a new fic, Quests of Chaos, for the express purpous of providing an outlet for them while also keeping their influence on my other fics to a minimum. That Quests seems to have turned into a valid parody story in it's own right is as much a surprize to me as to anyone else, And I will probably continue to write additional chapters as that particular muse strikes me. It's not a fic for everyone, and certainly isn't family friendly, but it does serve a purpose. And it is working.

What this means is that a particular idea worm that had worked it's way into an otherwise promicing fic, Magical Guardian Ranma: Beta Edition, specifically the Geasa of R'hule story arc that derailed the fic near the end of chapter five and corupted chapters six and seven is undergoing a major rewrite as the effects are to be either altered or toned down (or failing that, removed entirely), until MGR:Beta is once again up to snuff. However, none of these changes will be posted until chapter eight itself is ready to be introduced (As opposed to starting over again and calling the new version MGR: Gamma as I was orriginally inclined towards doing).

Both Magical Guardian Ranma and its heir, Magical Guardian Ranma: Beta Edition, are both primarily multi genre parodies and deconstructions. MGR: Beta came about due to the first version begining to lose coherency and my deciding to follow someone's suggestion to tighten the story up a bit. Quests of Chaos is also a parody of it's genre, and despite becoming a story in it's own right, wil retain it's original purpose as an outlet for the less appropriate impulses that I desire to keep out of my other works.