Heya,

At the
risk of being accused of taking this "too seriously", I

<grin>  What, take a light-hearted comedic Japanese cartoon too seriously?  
Nahhh... ;)

would like to engage everyone to consider that when Ranma
changes to female, his entire body changes to female.
This includes, among other things, brain functions and
feminine hormones.

Having said this, isn't it at least more than remotely
possible to think that IF Ranma gets stuck as a girl,
eventually, he will start to think and behave like a girl?

Well, this is where it all gets kinda difficult, isn't it?--and why, of 
course, it makes such fruitful grounds for some potentially really 
interesting--and some sadly boneheaded--fanfiction.  I personally think it's 
a fascinating issue, and flirt with it slightly in the story I'm working on 
myself right now.

But it's a _way_ difficult topic--impossibly so, I suspect.  For instance: 
what does "he will start to think and behave like a girl," actually _mean_?  
This was one of the issues I had (well, I think I had) in critiquing 
otherwise great stories like 'newRanma' and 'Genma's Daughter' previously.  
Gender roles are tricky things, and bringing them up in a story forces the 
writer to start thinking about tired (but nonetheless fascinating) 
nature/nurture arguments.

Where it gets easier with Ranma is that it's obviously pure fantasy: all the 
tea in China won't buy you a gender transformation as thorough as Jusenkyo.  
So what happens when a character with the intense gender role conditioning 
of Ranma ("be a man among men!") gets slammed with the impossible 
physicality of a sudden female body?  To what extent is anyone a slave to 
those funky little chemicals floating in their blood?

Of course, fanfiction would have us believe that Ranma, in any case, is a 
total slave to his female hormones; but then again, fandom has a thing for 
Ranma lesbian orgies, so who knows how well thought out _that_ is.  But 
there's just so many possibilities for story-writing and character 
development, with so many avenues still unexplored.  Maybe Ranma is too much 
a man to adopt a heterosexual female role; but if he's so conditioned into 
believing these rigid definitions of how men/women should act, would he 
start slipping into a female role himself if stuck in a female body?  After 
all, if woman should do A, and he's suddenly stuck as a woman, than should 
he too conform to his own beliefs?  Then throw in the whole relationship 
thing--Akane and Shampoo and the lot--and stir in some profound emotions, 
and who knows what'll happen.

I'm just blabbing on here, taking a long-winded route to say, hey, 
_anything_ is plausible with the whole Ranma-as-a-girl scenario, as long as 
the author takes the time to craft it properly.  I'm thinking Ranma's pretty 
rigidly cast in his 'I think girls are purty' mindset, and he's not gonna be 
doinking guys anytime soon; but if a writer takes the time to craft a 
believable story, I'll even accept Ranma as the next great female porn 
queen... err, though _that_ one would take some serious work.

Or a koi fishing rod.  Magic does a great job of cutting through all this 
plausible plotting crap, no? ^_-

-Mike

noakes_m@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/noakes_m

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