Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 18:57:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mike Loader <mike@thekeep.org>
To: fanfic@fanfic.com
Subject: [FFML] re: Ill Met By Starlight, Assorted responces

Sorry for any delays. :) All C&C will get personally responded to; I'm
just in the middle of a test cycle and a nasty cough, and Suasn's
practically cut off from the net. We're slow, but we do write back,
honest. ;)

Anyhow, general answers to comments:

OK, now that I know it's done, I'll finally break down and comment.

* Ukyou didn't deserve to get killed like that, I was disappointed - 

Ukyou

certainly didn't deserve what she got. In fact, she got shafted pretty
bad; a nasty death for trying to help out a friend and get some closure 

on

her love/hate relationship with Ranma. People don't always get what 

they

deserve, and dramatic necessity is a bitch.

I've gotta admit, this was probably the roughest part of the fic for me, 
for the reasons you put up above.  I _almost_ bailed, right then and 
there.  I guess, in that respect, it was a good thing that I had just 
thrown an entire storyline to Hell, sans handbasket, by having Genma 
commit seppuku with one of Ukyou's throwing spatulas.  I guess I'm 
saying, "Damn, I wish it hadn't been so... right.  Storywise, I mean."

* The Hibikis deserved worse than they got, especially considering what
happened to Shan and Ukyou - Maybe. Again, people don't always get what
they deserve, and who appointed you God? Part of life is that rewards
don't always fit deeds, and this can be a good thing. Don't decide what
other people should have got unless you want someone to look pretty
critically at what YOU deserve. Considering the amount of the world 

living

in poverty, and our own high-tech, adequately-fed state... are you SURE
you deserve all this? 

I am _far_ more tolerant of the Hibikis' fates than some of the other 
commentators.  One important thing to keep in mind is that they, too, 
finally reached the point where they could make a final choice, and they 
turned from the precipice.  Redemption is usually a very messy business.

And I think Ep #2 shows that things are not going to be easy for them, 
even if they did "get off".  Mariko, in particular, is quite clearly 
showing signs of being unable to return to anything resembling a 
"normal" life--she's been in the pressure cooker too long, and, like 
some deep-sea fish, can't survive _without_ that constant stress.  Place 
her in a calm, restive environment, and watch her blow up.

Of course, in a way, Mariko's survival let Akane off the hook, too.  Had 
the younger Hibiki really perished in their fight, even accidentally, it 
would have haunted her to the end of her days, possibly even destroyed 
her.

And it would have been her own fault.

  I know I'm going to get ripped, at least in people's minds, for that 
one.  Tough.  I can hear her defenders now.  "But she was just trying to 
do the best she could for someone she loved."  "She didn't do anything 
wrong."  Bull.

  Inaction _is_ action.  The term "enabler", from the drug/alcohol-abuse 
recovery community is pertinent here.  Ranma gets away with so much 
because Akane is so passive when it comes to dealing with him.  She lets 
her love so blind her to what's going on that it makes it easy for him 
to get at the others.  And, until the end, when she finally is forced to 
confront what Ranma really is, she fails to try to force him to get 
help, or even ask others for help in helping him herself.

  She seems to believe that she can handle his psychic scars, even when 
she has plenty of evidence that she's way out of her depth.  That's 
pride--or more specifically, that's hubris.  As Madeline L'Engle once 
wrote, "There's a kind of pride in thinking we can save the world.  
There's even a kind of pride in doing good."  Does that mean we 
shouldn't try to do good?  No.  It means we must be brutally honest with 
ourselves in our capacity to do good.

  And it is this that Akane fails to do.  Her attempts at creating a 
"safe" environment for Ranma, one where he can recover, are akin to the 
"good Samaritan" who pulls an accident victim out of a car to make them 
more comfortable, and aggravates a spinal injury instead.

  Flames off the list, please.

* Ranma gets off awfully easy - Ranma spends the better part of the 

next

few years being ripped to pieces by imaginary cats. I suppose you could
call that easy.

Nope.  Uh-uh.  I had one _week_ of moderately bad nightmares that had me 
afraid to go to sleep.  Several years of much, much worse than that, and 
I would currently be typing this from inside the bell tower, with a 
rifle across my lap.

* Was Ranma evil? - Yes and no. Calling anyone 'evil' is hard, just as
hard as calling anyone 'good'. People themselves are not good or evil;
they're people. The actions they do, the thoughts they think, the 

things

they cause; all those can be good or evil.

OK.  I'm going to disagree with this, to an extent.  I have, in very 
rare cases, encountered what I would call an "evil person"--one with no 
redeeming qualities.  They are rare, but they do occur.  I've also been 
fortunate to meet one or two people who are "good" to the same 
extent--no malice, or even carelessness.  Just agape.  Of course, the 
vast majority of us are just a blend of both, as Akane's aura-reading 
indicates.

He commits acts which are undenyably evil, and the fact that he is 

insane

does not offer total absolvement. There is a dark, cruel, sadistic 

streak

in him that enjoys causing people pain. He pushes Nabiki, he tortures 

Shan

to death.

The latter is certainly one of the more graphic-yet-realistic scenes of 
violence I've seen on the list.  That image will haunt me for a long, 
long time.

At the end, he has a choice between killing Akane or dropping his 

control,

letting the madness take him completely. It's what he fears most. He 

can't

just surrender, any more than you could take a needle and slowly stick 

it

into your eye. After 8 years, he's too far gone to do it.

Ranma has a lot of evil to answer for, and the road to atoning for it 

is

going to be rough. But he did take the first step, finally finding
something in him that was stronger than fear and hate and need for
control, and every beginning is a beginning.

You know, this reminded me of a story arc in one of the titles I 
collected as a kid--Batman and the Outsiders, I believe.   It was one of 
those ultra-cheesy "Hitler's Clone" storylines (honestly, has any man 
other than Bill Clinton left so much genetic material lying around?).  
Interspersed with the usual scenes--the heroes learning of the plot, 
finding the base, fighting through the base and confronting the evil 
plotters--were scenes of the newly formed Hitler clone, being shown 
movies of the Nazi movement, movies of himself, movies of the camps.  
And of him being served by a young Jewish girl that they had captured as 
a slave.

And, as the heroes are closing in, Hitler looks at the young girl who 
has shown him so much kindness, and looks at the black & white movie 
footage, and then at her, and at the insignia on his armband, at at the 
Star of David tattoo on her forehead.

And then, as the arc's villain shouts in triumph, the clone takes the 
gun he has just been offered, loads it...

...And blows his own brains out.

* I liked how we didn't know whether Ranma was good ove evil, and that 

got

spoiled in Chapter 13 - We've said all along that we'd answer all
questions by the final epilogue. It would be rather unfair, after 

keeping

people in suspence over questions for 13 chapters, to just leave them
unanswered. Uncertainty and suspence is fine for the body of a story, 

but

endings require closure and answers.

And those were some hellacious answers.  Of course, you could write 
Epilogues until the end of the Millenium with the number of threads 
still dangling....

--Freemage

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