From: Paul M. Arezina
Date: Sunday, May 10, 1998 8:01 PM

He turned and smiled at her, drawing strength from her presence
and for a moment forgetting all about the past.

The only light at the end of "The Bitter End". 'Tis faint, but
'tis there.

What few people realize is that mixed within the Ranma/Akane darkness is a

nice, WAFFy story of Ryoga and Akari.  I liked those bits ot "The Bitter

End".  Well, I liked *all* of TBE, but I liked the Ryoga/Akari stuff

especially.

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,

The past is Kuno? :>

Hehehehehehe.

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

You like taking your titles from Shakespeare, don't you?

Me?  No, not me.  I just fake it.

-William Shakespeare
Sonnet CXI

How long did it take you to find this, by the way?

Not long.  Did a hypertext search for "bitter" in Shakespeare and came

across this sonnet, which seemed almost tailor-made for the story.

She threw the blanket off of her and scrambled to her feet. The room was
quite small and covered with dull gray cushions.

Ladies and gentlemen, the archetypal "padded cell". This is when I began
thinking that this involved TIL and TBE. I have a weird aptitude for
crossovers...

Heh.  I shoulda put the disclaimers in front to avoid confusion.

She cursed, then stormed over to the door, only then realizing that it
didn't have a handle. She grit her teeth and began pounding on it. "Hey!
Let me out!"

We've secretly transferred a sane Tendo Akane to an insane asylum and
haven't informed the guards of the switch. Let's see if they can tell the
difference...

Hehehehehehehehe.

"Medication?" Akane looked down at herself, seeing that she was
physically unhurt. "What medication? What's going on?"

Of course, she would react the same way if she had forcibly repressed the
memories of her trauma.

<nod>  That's part of the hell she goes through later - is the life she

remembers a hallucination?

He looked in the door as he passed the bedroom and stopped. Akane wasn't
there. Ranma shrugged mentally

Because, y'know, shrugging physically would kinda upset the baby.

Heh.  I added the "mentally" part after realizing this.  :)

She stopped and brought the pillow close to her face, speaking in a
whisper Ranma could barely hear. "You know what, P-chan? I hate the
candy. I hate it."

Why you take somebody with a slight chemical imbalance and give them a
massive chemical imbalance is beyond me.

<snort>  :)

Actually, drugs can be quite useful if properly administered.  While doing

the research for "Roses of Shadow", I came across several first-person

accounts of people with Bipolar Disorder who began taking various drugs.

Most of those accounts went along the lines of "One day I woke up, and

suddenly everything was okay."  They could function more-or-less

"normally".  Of course it's not *quite* that easy; they still have

problems to work out with their psychotherapist, and the medication tends

to produce unpleasant side effects.  But as for the mental illness itself

- it became emminently manageable with medication.

A large part of the problem, though, is getting the right drugs and the

right diagnosis together.  Get it wrong and the patient can actually get

worse.  As an example, if you give a person with Bipolar Disorder the

drugs to deal solely with depression, you drive them into a literal manic

frenzy.

Ranma's head was buzzing slightly. This was so... weird. Even more so
than usual.

Considering everything Ranma's seen, that's pretty darn weird.

Right.  :)

She'd found a barred window and had attempted to rip it open. That had
proven much harder than she'd thought; for some reasons, her muscles
hadn't responded with the brute strength she was used to.

Let's review: A woman has been admitted for slicing her husband and

former

best friend open with a katana. She tears a door off on the way in. Are

YOU

going to allow her access to the weight room?

Hehehehehe.

Ranma had his son on one shoulder and his wife slung over the other.

He'd

tried, but he had not been able to come up with a better alternative.

Let's see... juggling... no... footbag... no... balance them both on my
head... no... wait for her to come around, scream, and pass out again...
no... teach the kid to walk... I don't have THAT long...

Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe  :D

Akane was getting very angry. The world was conspiring against her,
trying to find ways to make things as difficult for her as possible. It
had been a long time since she'd last felt this way, and she'd forgotten
how much she hated it.

This is "Bitter End"-ish. Perhaps Akane is the same in TIL, but the first
domino never falls. Something for us to think about...

Well, yeah, that was kind of the point of that passage.  TILkane gets

angry, too.  TILkane had the same tantrums and rages in the manga that

BEkane had.  TILkane just had more control because she wasn't suffering

from IED.  But she is still a person who can get very angry.

That left her one choice, as she
saw it. Ranma. She had to find Ranma. No matter what was going on, he
would stand by her. He always had.

Continue ominous background music. Lady, just take my advice and give up
NOW. It's a world better than the alternative. Of course, coming from a
universe where you and Ranma are nigh-inseperable, yin and yang, so to
speak, you probably don't think that he could be dead.

<nod>  In her world, it's not just her, it's her-and-Ranma dealing with

everything.

Tofu immediately bent over her. "Akane? Are you all right?"

Akane focused on him, her face confused. "Sensei?"

And back we go, to the strange dance of sanity and insanity. The previous
few paragraphs were pure you, Lawson. Now, it's back to the strange
crossover...

Hehe.  True.  WAFFy exposition done with, time to move along...

"S-Saotome Akane."

Ranma blinked. Saotome? Why did she think her name was Saotome?

Yeah, him taking her name is a MINOR plot point at best. Everyone who

reads

"The Bitter End" will walk away knowing that Akane killed Ranma and Ukyo
and was committed. Tack on "He had taken HER name when they married." and
you've cleared up a lot of confusion.

Good point.

Ranma smiled. "I'd like that a lot. Thanks, Kasumi."

Very similar to the scene where Kasumi talks Ukyo into coming
to the beach.

Heh.  True.

The Saotome home was quite small. Ranma's family was by no means
rich, and sustained itself on the commissions Nodoka earned in
her work. Still, it did well enough for Nodoka to support herself
and her husband.

Right. You're going to need to come out with that side story or
whatever it is at some point, since Genma and Nodoka are the only
ones you haven't given the full treatment to.

Heh.  Funny you should mention it.  In my "Unfinished Business" folder is

the first two parts of "Genma & Nodoka:  A Love Story", to take place in

the TIL universe.

She was about to knock again when there was a cry from inside. A
shout of anguish and anger. It was followed by the sound of
something being smashed. Akane wondered if she should rush inside
to see what was wrong.

Is this Brave Sir Genma running away, perhaps through a window? Or
is it just him trying to control his rage? Or is it him at all?

It's supposed to be Genma smashing stuff.

anger. "You took my future! The future of the Saotome clan! And now
you come back to... to torment my husband, to further ruin my family!"

Well, YOU gave her the sword. Oh. Ohhhhhh boy. Nodoka probably has
more than one reason to hate herself as well as hate Akane.

Heh.  Good point.  Other than Ranma, Nodoka had the most active hand in

making the tragedy come about.  Never mind the sword; she also kept

counselling Ranma to further enable Akane's behavior.  Blind eye indeed.

There was something different about this denial. While the others had
seemed slightly forced, this one seemed to be pure puzzlement. Ranma
tried to think why that should be.

Well, it's 'cause she's from a parallel universe where you two married
but then she killed you because she thought you were fooling around
with Ukyo.  But what are the odds of you figuring THAT out?

Hehehehehehehe.  Quite right.  :)

"ADULTERER! YOU HATE ME, YOU'VE ALWAYS HATED ME, YOU NEVER TOLD
ME THE TRUTH! DIE, RANMA!" She reached her hand back to slap him
again.

Hmm... odd thing here. Your TIL Ranma thinks he had a one-night
stand with Ukyo and runs away from Akane for it... after they've
had a fight and she kicks him out. The exact same thing happens
in TBE, except it's AKANE who does the thinking and imagines
Ranma running away.

Food for thought.

Heh.  Forgot about that.  I had two different endings for that story, too.

In one, Ukyo and Ranma *do* consummate their one-nighter.  I eventually

abandoned that and pursued the other.

Akane glared at her. Akari paled slightly and Ryoga put his
arm out to cover her. This only made Akane angrier, but she
attempted to control it.  "The last thing I remember is going
to bed, of course. What does that have to do with anything?"

This is probably the most protracted mistaken identity in the
history of fanfic. Akane is acting almost exactly as her cracked
counterpart would.

Yup.  That's the scary part.  Also, I wanted the exchange to occur without

anyone ever realizing that universe-switching was occuring.  Fortunately,

it was quite easy to do, especially TILkane in the BEverse.

"That's a lie!" Akane found a bit of relief in her anger.
"He's six months old, and beautiful, and his name is Nouma..."

But are you a maniac dreaming you're a mother, or a mother
dreaming you're a maniac?

Heh.  Not a question that gets asked often.  :)

Ugh. I'm going to need to read TIL again, or maybe some
Joseph Palmer.  This is getting me wayyyy too down for
my own good.

Heh. :)

Akane shoved him away. She looked up into his face, anger
coloring her features. "If it's not my fault, then whose
fault is it! It has to be somebody's fault!"

And this is what she would say. Odd... I think Ranma
confronts her with it in TBE and she denies it.

The line that depressed me the most in "The Bitter End" was when Akane

says, while beating Ranma into unconsciousness, "If it's not *my* fault,

then it must be *yours*!"  It was a very good line, encapsulating exactly

what the disease was doing to Akane.  This bit is a tribute to that line.

And then she rolled her eyes up and collapsed back onto the bed.

Cue the deus ex machina!

Hehehehe.

Ryoga felt a strange kind of hope.

Hope. Yes, hope is good. Especially after TBE, hope is good.

Yeah... that was a major part of the reason I wrote this... to add some

hope.  Personally, I don't think Akane deserves to be punished for all

eternity.

"I never want to hit him, Ranma. Never. Promise me
you'll stop me before I do."

This, perhaps, as a result of seeing what could have been.

Yup.  Hard lesson.

They separated in a rush. Akane smiled a promise to him.

Ranma smiled it right back.

We'll save this one for Kun-chan.

Hehehehehehe.  Or Lara Bartram.

--G. Falconar

Thanks eversomuch for the commentary.  This was great to read.  :)

-Richard