Haigeki Discussion

[Anastasia]

I'd lean towards no.  In his profile he mentions how he's several chapters ahead and has them in beta. He releases once every two months to keep a decent pace while making steady progress.

I see what you're getting at, but it doesn't really match the author's MO.

[Brian]

Hanlon's razor, I guess.

[Jason_Miao]

The weird thing is that other story (Seven Village Stomp) is a Ranma/Naruto xover was explicitly branch off pre-Jusenkyo, and was supposed to be Ranma and Genma wandering tooling around the Naruto-verse being Ranma and Genma.  So, it doesn't seem as if the writer is a OMGMAGICGIRLHOODYAYS writer.  The writer's MO does seem to be action/adventure.

What the hell happened?

[Anastasia]

I'm guessing her underestimated how dark things were going to skew, perhaps? Sometimes you misjudge what your audience will accept.

[Anastasia]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6892672/8/Haigeki

Update. I'm not following this story anymore, but I figure it's worth posting here.

Also the new FFnet design blows.

[Anastasia]

In the interests of posting it anyway.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6892672/9/Haigeki

[Dracos]

No, I'm not going to ECB this.

[Anastasia]

Dammit Drac!

[Anastasia]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6892672/13/Haigeki

So this finished in case anyone still cares. I reread parts of this and figured out why it flops so terribly. So bear with me as I work through this. I'm going to be comparing it to Her War, another fic that uses extremely dark themes.

I've read both Haigeki and Her War. Both fanfics involve disturbing, dark and downright unpleasant things happening to Ranma during the course of the story. Yet I like Her War while I consider Haigeki misformed trash. Why's that? It's all about how the story deals with and frames the darkness. Her War does a masterful job at balancing the darkness to bolster the story while Haigeki's darkness derails an entertaining yarn.

It's all about how the story integrates the dark elements. With Her War, you have a narrative frame that quickly asserts that Ranma survives her torment and comes out far greater to it. Mythical even, like a character from an old Chinese epic. You meet post-story Ranma fairly soon and he serves as a hook. How does Ranma survive the horrible things that are happening to him? It defines the miserable events into a direct struggle that Ranma will overcome, so you want to see how. The story's structure supports the disturbing events and uses them to make a greater whole.

Conversely, Haigeki sets Ranma up as a hero from the beginning. It builds a story of fighting against the odds and overcoming them. This is typical Ranma 1/2 stuff for Ranma, right? This supports the story not going dark. By relying on this established pattern, you're priming the audience for a story that sticks to Ranma 1/2's basic themes and storytelling. This means the frame does not support long torture interludes mixed with breaking down Ranma's psyche.

Simply put, the structure of Her War supports a darkfic. Haigeki's structure supports a more traditional Ranma 1/2 story. It violates the reader's expectations and causes the foundation of interest the story's build up to collapse under the weight of bad things happening. It's only natural that this causes the reader to be drawn out of the story with cries of bullshit. Haigeki doesn't craft a story that can adequately support what happens to Ranma. That's all there is to it.

I think Haigeki could have worked with a reworked premise. The author's talented and clearly has a knack at worldbuilding. The problem is there's a subtle but critical mistake made in the story structure that ruins the entire effort. It's too bad. I'd have greatly enjoyed a story that kept the style and tone of the pre-capture chapters up and avoided being derailed.

Another take is that it is channeling Nietzsche, except replace the word 'monster' with 'magical girl.'

Jason Miao nailed this. The title of the last chapter all but says it.

[Dracos]

What you say is correct, but there's something more simplistic being missed.

I'll answer on a slightly more simplistic angle really.

In Her War, the terrible monsters who use brainwashing and torture largely fail.  It still is atrocious and generally drives people off.  Sure, there are terrible events that render a The Protagonist Is Changed Forever, but usually the torturer dies terribly or is framed as a horrible challenge that the hero is overcoming.

In Time Braid and Haigeki, they don't fail.  They succeed with horrifying consequences and the story continues from there.  Not only that is for both (assuming in Haigeki's case since I stopped reading), the ability for the hero to resist is largely a token affair as it moves on to how life is life now that the villain has succeeded.  Haigeki does worse here by drawing out how the villain succeeds, when that's both the least pleasant and most frustrating part.

In Time Braid, the follow up to these scenes is the Heroine aggressively trying to reverse the victory by the villain.  The brainwashing, torture, etc is something that's again posed as a challenge to be overcome.

In Haigeiki, glancing at the last chapter, it is not overcome.  Sure the villain is killed, but the hero's life is destroyed and something else takes its place.  This is the measure that's taken at each point early on too.  There's no recovery, just continuing on fighting the villain and taking their place in being a horrible monster.

Because at least glancing at the end there's no question that Ranma isn't a horrible monster at the end, and also generally a screwed up non-hero at the end of most of the brainwash sections too.  A significant difference from either Her War or Time Braid.

[Anastasia]

Good points, Drac. That ties in nicely to the premise of how the fics support or fail to support what they're doing.

What strikes me with Haigeki is how unneeded the darkest elements are. The author had more than enough grist to make Ranma girly based on the tenki and shuken mechanics he established. Sharp writing could even place her in charge of the PPI when the smoke clears.

I keep chewing on this fic since the writer's so good and it had so much potential. It still enjoy reading the first few chapters and wondering about what could have been.

[Brian]

"Darker and edgier is EZ-mode cool."

               -Hipster Brian (like, three years ago)

And probably people before me, too.  Some people want to wallow in grimdark and angst.  Most people don't.

[Dracos]

Also, having not read the lead in, but having glanced at the last chapter for my write back:

What the fuck is wrong where it's having Ranma who's somehow overcome such super powered reality altering characters and potentially a thousand year lifespan getting pushed around by political leaders of the day?  "Oh no, you have to arrest all these girls or we'll shut you down!"  Seriously?  That seems remarkably stupid.

I admit some curiousity to what bullshit let Ranma ever have a chance, but also...not enough to subject myself to more of that.

[Jason_Miao]

Also, having not read the lead in, but having glanced at the last chapter for my write back:

What the fuck is wrong where it's having Ranma who's somehow overcome such super powered reality altering characters and potentially a thousand year lifespan getting pushed around by political leaders of the day?  "Oh no, you have to arrest all these girls or we'll shut you down!"  Seriously?  That seems remarkably stupid.

Also not having read the fic, end or otherwise, after I'd said I'd stop those months ago...

This sort of setup works if the political opponent holds something valued as hostage.  People the protagonist loves, some obligation the protagonist has which is under the politician's direct control, some resource that can only be granted by the politician, etc. 

Of course, that usually makes for a good obstacle in the middle of a fic, rather than an appropriate end.  Ending on that note?  I guess it could work if you're clearly planning a sequel or you're writing under a "The more things change" theme.  I'd think that it'd make for a fairly crappy ending otherwise, so I'm probably glad I didn't continue reading this fic.