If I hadn't done this myself, I might not believe it....

Sometimes, a Ryouga and Ukyou fic actually annoys me, on that basis of the fic. Why? Well, I sent this when someone asked about annoying things about Ranma fanfiction in raaf.

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Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime.fandom
Subject: Re: Most annoying and interesting things in Ranma 1/2 fanfiction
From: alhuang@hcs.harvard.edu (Andrew Huang)
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 17:16:33 GMT

  Anyways...one thing that does irk me...even though I _am_ the
proprietor of the Ryouga and Ukyou page (shameless plug! ^_^), one of
the stupid things out there is when Ryouga and Ukyou start liking each
other for apparently no reason at all. From the anime and manga, there
really isn't all that much immediate basis for a relationship. So fics
which automatically pair the two up without substantial character
development are just...wrong. But I LOVE fics which give them a lot of
interaction and development and, therefore _with_ adequate reason, put
the two together. Prime examples of this well-thought-out matching are
Marisa Price's _A Lesson in Love_ and RpM's _The More Things Change_/
_The Pursuit of Happiness_ fics (more plugging!). Boy, I love them....

From Andrew Huang, Taiwanese-American-German-Scot Harvard Student :P
Brought to you by his computer, Oddzilla
Oddzilla says, "Ryouga and Ukyou! Ukyou and Ryouga!"
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~alhuang/
Kurimoto Shiro's manager, DBTFH; Harvard Anime Society, Secretary

And guess what? Of all people who agreed with me--Sean Gaffney, champion of Akari, concurred completely:

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Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime.fandom
Subject: Re: Most annoying and interesting things in Ranma 1/2 fanfiction
From: gaffney@iconn.net (Sean Gaffney)
Date: 7 Mar 1997 20:57:57 GMT

>   alhuang@hcs.harvard.edu (Andrew Huang) writes:

<the above article snipped>

Dear God, I agree with Andrew.  What are the chances of that happening?

The Ryouga/Ukyou relationship can be done very well...when it's given
a history.  The More Things Change, Cheisai, a few others...all of these
pair Ryouga and Ukyou up very nicely.  It's when we get the reasoning
of "well, if Ranma and Akane pair up, then Ukyou and Ryouga must do
so by default" that I get annoyed.  They've had very little screen time/
manga scenes together. A history must be invented.  Don't assume.

I also liked A Lesson in Love, but it had to do a major wrenching to get
its protagonists together.  In universes where Akari isn't in it at all,
or where Ryouga falls for Ukyou before he meets her, fine.  I like those
just as much. But please tell us why.  Hell,tell us why for Ryouga and
Akari, too.  This is why there's so many Ranma fanfics dealing with
pairings, because it's fun to imply the emotional tugs that were mostly
passive in the series itself.

Ahem.  Now that I've agreed with Andrew, pigs will fly, Satan will skate to
work,and I'll agree with Blade. :-)

--Sean Gaffney
--Protector of Akari, Church of Ryouga

Scary, isn't it?

Sometimes, though, it's kind of a pity about those unreasonable fics...they have some pretty nice moments between Ryouga and Ukyou.

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