On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, WebDragon wrote:

        Well, what is the term for alcohol with 'additives' in it?  :)

If you want to be quaint you could say you had slipped them a "Mickey
Finn."

        !DOH!  (sounds of slapping forehead)

        That's right, I forgot.  'Mickey Finn'!

        "They had been drinking alcohol that had been, in the words of the
gaijin, `Mickey Finn-ed'."

        There, is that better?

Frankly, no.

The ending of "Building Bridges" was not the worst of the story, but the 
way you portray events there is laughable.  Alcohol does not act in the 
fashion you would have it, at least in my experience.

There are 3 ways the final bit could realistically have been expected to 
go: 
1>	Ranma and Kentaro "Go all the way" and wake up together next 
morning with hangovers, and other problems.
2>	Ranma & Kentaro pass out after a little bit of playing and wake 
up next morning with hangovers.
3>	They don't lose control in the first place, eliminate scene and 
come up with something else.

Enough Alcohol to "seriously" undermine your inhibitions also builds in a 
time limit, since it knocks you out - doesn't matter if it's spiked or 
not since that merely decreases the volume of liquid you need to drink to 
get a given effect.  If the drinks were "spiked" that simply makes option 
#2 the most likely.

On other aspects of "Building Bridges":

I loved the smarmy, self-satisfied Ryouga you portrayed.  Him I could 
believe in, I just wondered how long until Akane found out about P-CHan 
and killed him.

The way you showed Ranma losing control and lashing out in rage was 
utterly unbelieveable.  

The Ranma-Akane confrontation... sucked (IMHO), I 
can believe that you could get the desired result (A serious Ranma-Akane 
breakup) but not like that - you had two characters I've never deen 
before interacting there - they merely happened to have the tags "Akane" and 
"Ranma" attached to them, and I say this in terms of "Outward Part" and 
"Nature of Love" as well as more 'mainstream' Ranma.

The Ranma-Kentaro situation was well handled, although I think Kentaro 
got away with far too much on the first date.

The other thing "Building Bridges" did that I thought useful was it 
pointed out a lack in the whole sequence that I hadn't really thought 
about, Ukyou.  Ukyou has built her life around Ranma and has forsaken her 
gender once for his sake - that she would just fade away the way the 
authors would have her do (for the sake of simplicity) is totally OOC.  
Of all of Ranma's iinazuke, Ukyou is the one who strikes me as being 
perfectly willing to stay with Ranma no matter what - even if it means 
loving another girl.

Enough for now...

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"The Major"                     |  "Funny Games, Strange Cartoons, Confusing
David Bateson                   |     Computers and too many Books!  No 
                                |     wonder you're weird."
major@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au     |       - My Sister.
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