Hybrid Theory

[Valles]

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Yup, it's me, Mr. Aardly Slacker. I'm not so fond of darkfic, so I probably won't read HT judging by what's been said - well, not until its complete and the darkest bits resolved, at least - but know enoguh about both of your writing to know I'm missing out by doing so.

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*points*
What he said, and that makes at least three former GMCA types floating around these parts...
Ja, -n
(used to use lobsters as a running joke)

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"Puri puri puri puri... Bang!"

[Bob Schroeck]

I just want to note that I am still here, but I don't have the time I think I might need to properly reply. I don't want you guys thinking I'm ignoring you now!

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Vincent Ursus]

I once offered to serve as Jonatan's manager in the GMCA, but nothing ever came of it.

[Bob Schroeck]

Gah. I'm way too brain dead to try to write the replies I've promised. This was a total burnout of a weekend for me... Soon, I promise. Maybe tomorrow, after I get another night's sleep...

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Ayiekie]

Hey, no worries. It's not like you're obligated to give us your views, although I'm flattered you want to.
In other good news, I can report Aaron's read through the first few chapters of DW... it's nice that he can do this at work. ;p

[CattyNebulart]

ok so I just finished reading this thing (well up to chapter 21 anyway) and must say I really enjoy it. Esspecially like the new character Angel, though I can't place what series he is from.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, now I have the processing cycles to answer, but not the time. Maybe at lunch...

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Ayiekie]

Glad you enjoyed it, CattyNebulart. Angel, for the record, is from King of Fighters.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, it's taken me 11 days, six nasty headaches and several hundred thousand XP on CoH, but I'm finally going to get at least one reply off today.

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I must admit, I'm totally tickled pink that you read the fanfic, Bob, as all the members of my gaming group read yours. Now I can tell them: "the Drunkard's Walk guy reads Hybrid Theory: clearly you all should too!".

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You make me sound like some kind of oracle. I'm pleased that they've read it.

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(from another message)
I can report Aaron's read through the first few chapters of DW... it's nice that he can do this at work. ;p

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It's nice that I can write it at work (most of the time); there's an appealing symmetry there. I'm looking forward to his opinions (and yours, when/if you get a chance).

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In response to your comment, Bob, that you're aghast at what's actually happening, I'll merely say only that Hybrid Theory is a trilogy, and the darkest part of a trilogy is always the middle book/movie/story.

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Oh, certainly. And the fact that I was aghast at everything that was happening -- including the deaths, which is not something that normally happens in the wake of an SI -- is in fact a tribute to how well you made it all work. I don't have familiarity with at least a third of the series you're incorporating, or only minimal familiarity -- but you made me feel for these characters, even some of the villains, and worry about them, and mourn for them. And that is high praise indeed.

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It was the plan all along to include a lot of deconstructionist themes and metatextual commentary on fanfiction in HT, based on our ten years of writing and reading it.

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And you may well be doing a far better job at a far more ambitious task than I dared try in Drunkard's Walk II.

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Even something as simple as the answer to "What was the entire martial artist population of Tokyo doing when Jadeite appeared in the sky to the entire city and threatened to destroy it and told everybody exactly where he was?" is often not given if the setting is post-series (as it frequently is).

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Hell, it's not explained in Sailor Moon what the rest of the damned city was doing. It's things like that which made me write up the Invisible To Normals entry over on the TVTropes Wiki.

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Ranma and friends are completely helpless against even the weakest (comparatively) sort of magics that the Dark Generals wield, which then probably needs to be reflected in the fanfic proper, and so on.

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And if we're talking post-Jusendo Ranma, then that means the Generals are an order of magnitude or greater more powerful than Saffron, so why are the Senshi so successful when they're so weak? It turns into a nasty loopback.

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When it becomes a multicrossover like Hybrid Theory, the suspension of disbelief becomes hard to support with a serious look at everything involved.

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Which does appear to me at least to be one of the core themes which you're exploring -- the crossover itself revealing the fundamentally fictional (and arbitrary) nature of the world to its own inhabitants, and how they deal with that. And I might be grasping at straws, but it seems to me that the Senshi hiding in Ohtori, dealing with its fundamentally illusionary nature and slowly going mad as a result, is the entire thing in microcosm.

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I'm sure there's a thousand other ways to do it: one of course is simply not for it to be a shared universe ala Hybrid Theory, but a multiverse setup (as I believe Drunkard's Walk has) where the universes all exist simultaneously but separately.

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DW does have a multiverse setup, but it doesn't exclude self-contained crossover worlds. DW5, which Chris and I are writing right now, is a hybrid world, albeit two settings which are at least theoretically compatible (O!MG and the game "In Nomine"); and I've made no secret of the fact that Doug is travelling through the same multiverse as Ed Becerra's "Legion" and Twister's SI avatar do -- and Legion's hit a couple crossover worlds already. Doug is not likely to do so, but they're theoretically out there.

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I guess you can say it's our response to the classic criticism of bitching about a problem: "Well, I'd like to see you do better." Whether we did better isn't our place to decide, but we did try to do something. ;p

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"Better"? I dunno, guys, I don't think your goal was "better". I think it was "different", with a side of "surprise!" Either way, though, I think it works.
And that's all I have time for today.

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Epsilon]

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Oh, certainly. And the fact that I was aghast at everything that was happening -- including the deaths, which is not something that normally happens in the wake of an SI -- is in fact a tribute to how well you made it all work. I don't have familiarity with at least a third of the series you're incorporating, or only minimal familiarity -- but you made me feel for these characters, even some of the villains, and worry about them, and mourn for them. And that is high praise indeed.

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Oh yes. And I very much appreciate it. About the worst reaction an author can ever get to a story is apathy. This is why Chris and I have co-opted a term from professional wrestling for most of our fanfics called "heat". In essence a character has "heat" if the audience cares about what happens to them. Characters can generally have "good guy heat" or "bad guy heat". Good guy heat is when the audience wants the character to succeed. Bad guy heat is when the audience wants horrible things to happen to the character, to see their dreams and plans foiled.
One of my favorite examples of this from actually pretty early in our career was a character from The Kyoto Chronicles called Chagi. Chagi was a despicable little villain in the series and the audience HATED him so much they frequently wrote and asked us to have him horribly murdered. He was one of our most successful villians ever.

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And if we're talking post-Jusendo Ranma, then that means the Generals are an order of magnitude or greater more powerful than Saffron, so why are the Senshi so successful when they're so weak? It turns into a nasty loopback.

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Not neccesarily. You can view the careful balance of powers in a crossover fanfic as a rock/paper/scissors style effect. Just because Character X can beat Character Y and Character Z can beat Character X it does not neccesarily follow that Character Z can beat Character Y.
One of my favorite examples of this was somethign I pointed out in a recent discussion of Harry Potter versus Ranma (the series in both respect). Generally speaking Ranma could cream a Harry Potter style wizard in a straight fight. He moves too fast for them to target spells at him and most of their combat spells require obvious aiming with their wands and a ray attack. Plus Ranma could hit them hard enough to put them down easily.
But a Harry Potter style wizard with a little time coud easily defeat Ranma. How? Portkey spell cast on Ranma's desk with the effect of teleporting him into the center of the sun. In Ranma the characters have the "no saving throw" against magic. That is, if you get hit by a magical effect you are effected. There is no Will Save to rsist falling in love with Cologne or hugging the nearest person when they sneeze and so on. So if you used a spell like that on Ranma he would have no defence.
This is reflected in Hybrid Theory by the fact that power level (in the collateral property damage sense) isn't as important as it is in, say, Dragonball Z. It is totally possible for Akane to defeat people much above her power level by being clever and using resources she can steal from other series, for instance.

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Which does appear to me at least to be one of the core themes which you're exploring -- the crossover itself revealing the fundamentally fictional (and arbitrary) nature of the world to its own inhabitants, and how they deal with that. And I might be grasping at straws, but it seems to me that the Senshi hiding in Ohtori, dealing with its fundamentally illusionary nature and slowly going mad as a result, is the entire thing in microcosm.

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An interesting observation. ^^;;;
---------------
Epsilon

[VladimirTherin]

I would like to comment that I like the way the HT world is slowly getting darker and darker, but you avoid the "angst-wank" that is so common in everything-goes-to-hell stories.

[HoagieOfDoom]

I'll throw my own two cents in as well and say that, though I've only read up to chapter 14 so far, HT has become one of my favorite current fics. When I finally get around to finishing what's available (which could take a while due to obligations), I'll post my thoughts.*********
Touched By His Noodly Appendage
www.venganza.org

[classicdrogn]

Wait wait WAIT, a dark story without wangsting? I might just have to give this a go after all!
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Necratoid]

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Hell, it's not explained in Sailor Moon what the rest of the damned city was doing. It's things like that which made me write up the Invisible To Normals entry over on the TVTropes Wiki.

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I have to disagree here. Its a matter of directorial timing. Its like the transformation sequences... they probably take 2-4 seconds max... its just that they use them as filler so they can make the episode 22 minutes or so each week, with less character interaction.
Its like a Transformer transforming... only stretched out to show all the details in slow motion, so it looks like 45 seconds and not 2. The same with most attacks they take a second or two but are stretched out stock footage... this even happens with attacks that are cast symotaniously, usually the multi-element balls of energy, that looks like one is cast then the other. If three or more are involved its time to get a drink.
Most of the time between the initial confrontation and the end of the fight 5 minutes or less have past... so by the time the call to the cops is made and the cops get to the sight its all over but the paperwork. It doesn't help that with Beryl and minions if youre close enough to be a witness, your already being drained. The others are into killing the witnesses and/or ripping out random physical manifestations of chnks of the victium(s) soul(s). Youve stated before Bob Doug hasnt got to finish a song in game, because the battles last 30 seconds.
The normals do notice Sailor Moon and Co they Sailor Senshi have fans. This is, because people notice they are being saved. Part of the issue is that we dont have a companion story arc. Say the Tokyo edition of COPS, where the police are always getting there after the fact, just in time for paperwork and clean up. Ive heard that the Sailor V manga actually contains interaction with law enforcement officers. In the Sailor Moon manga Beryl gets skewered on Sailor Venus sword, instead of plot deviced to death. Its more directorial focus warping things.
Also, by the time things are both taking long enough for the cops to get there and noticeable enough to attract a swarm of cops Whatever the Senshi are fighting is going to require more than the clubs and the few firearms available to the cops. At that point its time to call in an air strike and send in the marines (JSDF whatever) which means at least 30-45 minutes have past. Lack of an armed populace is apparently a factor in determining where baddies show up in SM.
Which leaves us with where are the MADMs and other magical girl groups during these dragged out fights. If its not a universe with only one group of abnormals there may be territories that each particular group of abnormals handle the weirdness in. If not turf wars result in the marines (JSDF) and air strikes getting involved, which attracts media vultures and looks bad for politicians. The Japanese like to sweep things they dont want to deal with under the carpet. Having various zoned sections for each group to exist in mean that avoiding that section or directing the tourists elsewhere effecting solves the problem by ignoring it until spreads out. Hence all the weird dojos in Nerima they cant get zoned anywhere else not rural.
Yes, Im ignoring bad writing as a reason its not covered. I think we covered that eariler.

[Ayiekie]

Umm, that explanation doesn't answer the question at all, since Jadeite made his appearence in the sky over the city hours before the Senshi went to confront him.
Although, from my recollection, the airport was deserted of civilians and swarming with police officers (knocked unconscious and later mind-controlled), which would sort of explain what the city was doing. Doesn't give any explanation for what Ranma, Ryouga, Akane, Kunou, Kodachi, Ukyou, Shampoo, Cologne, Mousse, Happousai, Mikado, Azusa, Mariko, Sentarou, Satsuki, Hayato, Konatsu, Hinako, Soun, Genma, et al are doing, though.
And as far as your zoning concerns go, Necrotoid, I must ask the question: "Who, precisely, enforces this zoning?" Ranma martial artists are effectively above the law; they do whatever they want and the law conforms to them. This is seen in many ways in the series, and it's also notable that when a martial artist or monster makes trouble, the legitimate authorities (like the police) go to martial artists to solve the problem (like Soun Tendo). So too, can Ranma wear whatever uniform he wants at school, fight with the teachers, have a non-standard haircut and take off whenever he feels like it; Kunou gets the same priviliges, and martial artists can cheat outrageously at sporting events without repurcussions. Who's going to tell Ryuu Kumon he can't build his new dojo whereever the hell he wants? The Chinese Communist government stays silent when two giant monsters, one throwing lightning and fireballs, fight each other over Shanghai; neither they nor the Japanese SDF have a military response to mountains getting destroyed in the course of battles by the gods that walk among men... you think some random Japanese cop is going to push a guy around who could punch down a building? And these people aren't that rare - there's apparently one or two in every high school, and nobody's that shocked over the feats they can do. That says nothing, of course, about the fact that in Ranma 1/2 Shinto is undeniably real, because the gods can show up and fuck around with you if you piss them off. Magic is real, and there's people out there with power that more than rivals nuclear weapons. You want to fight a martial artist? Don't get a gun, you silly norm - they'll hit you six times before you pull the trigger. Buy one of our battlesuits that feeds off their chi and makes you an ubermensch too! But be careful, that technology is unstable!
If the world's technology and governance is similar to our own (and every indication is that it is, with a few exceptions), then law and order and government by non-superpowered people exists only at the sufference of the demigods who stride the earth fighting their private little battles and pursuing their personal goals. And that's JUST Ranma 1/2. When you add more things to the mix, regular folks get inevitably more and more impotent. It's the inevitable consequence of a pyramid - the higher the spire reaches, the more bricks must be at the bottom and the deeper they're pushed into the mud.
(Edit: Oh, and it's worse than that. Shinto isn't the only religion with real gods - there is a god Asura, and that god has real power. The Asuras, demon/Hades-analogues from Hindusim, came from pre-Hindu myths... if that means all the Hindu deities exist... holy crap. If all the Taoist ones do too... holy CRAP. And then who says the Greco-Roman and Norse and Amerindian and every other mythology's gods aren't real and stomping around? Not to mention there's demons kicking around. One reason martial artists have such complete autonomy might be that for most of existence, they're the only defence anyone had against rampaging gods, demons, and other martial artists.)

[Custos Sophiae]

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... law and order and government by non-superpowered people exists only at the sufference of the demigods who stride the earth fighting their private little battles and pursuing their personal goals

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Not necessarily.
Martial artists are not invulnerable. A little cyanide in the tap water would kill off most of Nerima easily enough, and that is not the most potent poison available, nor is that the only option.
Any attempt to take over, or even merely destroy, mundane society would pit the 'demigods' against the collective intelligence and technological might of the other 6 billion people on the planet, hardly a knockover. The scientific community is considerably smarter than any individual, and modern technology in many ways rivals the ancient gods for sheer power.
I won't say the martial artists couldn't win; I will say it would not be trivial - and afterwards, what would they do with their victory?
Exercising actual control over anything beyond their immediate area runs into formidable organisational challenges, but if they don't do so people in the area beyond their control will find a way to bring them down.
Simply reducing the mundane world to ruins would be easier than siezing control, but afterwards they'd die, when food production collapsed.
(Also, if mortals start acting like gods, the real gods tend to get violently annoyed, where they exist.)
If the martial artists didn't suffer the mundane world, abiding by its rule in most respects, the long term consequences would be at least as disasterous for them as for everyone else.
Even if they weren't, it would be of no consequence, because martial artists are human, part of a larger society. Here, in the real world, the US army could easily depose Bush tomorrow, and crush all opposition. Democracy exists only on the army's sufferance, technically.
In practice, the chances of that happening are too small to be worth considering, just as are the chances of a direct confrontation between the martial artists and the state.
I agree that the formal zoning Necratoid suggests is unlikely, but an unspoken convention whereby the martial artists police themselves is perfectly plausible.
Similarly, Jadeite was challenging the Sailors, not the martial artists. Interfering in someone else's challenge is just not done.
Anyway both parties are known to use magic in combat, not martial artists, which puts the fight outside Ranma's narrow range of interests.
Other crossover conflicts can be similarly explained. The multiple Oriochi are all different avatars of a greater god. Arkanphel predates the silver millenium by a few million years, long enough that all trace of his origin story could reasonably be overlooked. Chaos has been hiding its champions from one another until now.
Setting up the situation at the start of Hybrid Theory, with multiple godlings on a collision course, is certainly the kind of thing Chaos would like to do, especially if it's an avatar of the Crawling Chaos (who, like the inserts, may come from outside everything - may, since it's also possible that all Chris and Aaron's memories of the real world are fake).
Of course, a sufficiently baroque and powerful conspiracy can explain anything, which normally makes it a bad explanation, but not as bad an explanation as Last Tuesday-ism.
(Incidentally, the hybrid world contains at least one time travel device. If someone tried to travel to before the story started, what would they find? Another internal contradiction, or something as real as their present?)
From our outside perspective we can see that Last Tuesday-ism is the real explanation, but from inside I'd expect the characters, especially the more paranoid villains, to plump for conspiracy.
For one-universe crossovers in general, as opposed to those within a multiverse, the stories will fly as long as they don't require implausible levels of conspiracy to explain - not difficult, so long as the core premises of the shows don't directly clash.
I do like Hybrid Theory though.

[Ayiekie]

Martial artists are more invulnerable than you think. Ranma can survive both being frozen solid and having his skin heated to the melting point of iron; are you so sure cyanide's going to bother him that much? Even if it does, how do you deliver it? They don't all gather in a nice little group for you: do you slaughter all of Tokyo to take out its martial artists? Even if you do, what about the ones that inevitably do survive due to not being around or not drinking the water before their family did?
Military technology is relatively impotent against the kind of threat somebody like Ranma poses. He can laugh at guns, you can't bomb a single person (trying to get rid of single specific people in the real world is often hard enough), and they all look exactly like you. There's no way to tell who's a demigod and who's a regular soldier until suddenly one guy in your headquarters flips out and kills everybody.
Should you win despite this, then who fights the gods and demons and remaining rogues? That's a far bigger problem than martial artists worrying about food, since they're a small population of excellent hunter/gatherers.
I won't argue that destroying civilisation would certainly inconvienence martial artists, but not nearly as much as trying to kill every Kunou would to said civilisation. Even if the "norms" won, it would be an utterly pyrrhic victory and new martial artists could arise at any time.
Martial artists are not immune to repurcussions from normal authority for their actions in a technical sense, but in all realistic sense they are: you can't crack down on them with ordinary means, and using extraordinary means like military force is to invite a war that will cost you far more than letting them do what they want. Plus, martial artists and such tend to be heroes to the public - when one of them's out of control, other martial artists handle the problem, not the SDF, and they handle it better than the SDF could.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The organisation of society in a world where some people are demigods that answer to noone but themselves is that the people with the real power also gather as much secular power as they please. So yeah, the unspoken convention is perfectly plausible - indeed, it seems to be what is the case.
"Interfering in someone else's challenge is just not done"? Pshaw. Every main character in Ranma 1/2 does it multiple times. They involve themselves in whatever they feel like and justify it however they wish. Besides, Jadeite threatened to destroy the city. Why would anybody leave their imminent demise up to anyone else? You're saying that if Ranma sees some pretty boy goob ranting about how he'll set the city on fire if his demands aren't met, Ranma will go home and go to bed because the pretty boy was challenging someone else? Not likely.
Off-hand note: the Orochi isn't really a god; it's a legendary monster, like the Hydra. The question of it having multiple avatars (spoiler warning) was addressed in the Ryugenzawa portion of the fic, where Link specifically watched for the reaction of the high priest of the Orochi to seeing the Orochi from Ranma. It has nothing to do with him at all and he dismissed it, which confirms what she suspected: it's a different Orochi. The thing in Ryugenzawa is completely incompatible and has no connection to the thing which wants to incarnate in Chris, which has no connection to the mitamas and Murakumo. Really, it would be unbelievable if this were not the case: the backstories of King of Fighters and Blue Seed are two completely different histories with completely different takes on the Orochi that have no real connection to each other despite being based on the same myth. The Orochi in Ranma is also completely different. But it was still referenced, and observed by Link (as well as little-Chris), how the three different Orochis had nothing to do with each other.
Arkanphel doesn't date nearly as far back as you think, either. He was created shortly before the last Ice Age (which he inadvertantly caused). And the background with Uranus seeding all life on Earth doesn't at all gel with the background of the Silver Millennium and the larger background of the Sailor Wars unless you start kludging considerably and ignoring the fact that in Sailor Moon there's huge amounts of magical items and beings swarming around the galaxy which Arkanphel has never noticed or reacted to in over seven centuries of being awake and active. Plus, of course, Arkanphel and the Zoalords never respond to anything that happens in Sailor Moon, and Sailor Moon (despite her capital-D Destiny) is not told nor hinted nor in any way forced to deal with the fact that she was in a world controlled by Chronos in all but name, where every government and military and police force and media outlet is controlled by monsters loyal to Chronos, who would most certainly be interested in finding out more about a group of magical vigilantes.
None of this is outside Ranma's sphere of interest, either. Wherever did you get the idea he only fights martial artists? He's been tapped to deal with rogue gods and escaped demons and Genma specifically says in the latter case it is a martial artist's responsibility to deal with this sort of thing.
The more series' you involve, the more heavily you have to start asking people to suspend their disbelief and the more kludgy and unbelievable explanations inevitably get. Very few series' can even smoothly crossover with one other series in the same genre without conflicts that require tricky explanations. For instance, a crossover between Ranma and Street Fighter would seem simple, right? Not so fast! Ignoring the many backstory elements in Street Fighter that really ought to come into conflict with Ranma in the year he's in Nerima (in which he and his friends became very well-known), you run up against the harsh fact that in Ranma 1/2, no human being can throw chi blasts. They have sort of projectiles, but they're balls of air held together by emotion chi (and can't go very far), or vacuum blades that require immense powering up, or are relatively small attacks used by old masters of great power (Cologne never uses a "ki blast"; the best she can apparently do is a very short-range compressed air attack; Happousai's got more raw power than that, but only seems to use it in his giant form, which exhausts him). The only characters in Ranma who can use real chi blasts in the Ryu's fireball sense are Miss Hinako, who was mutated to be able to do it, and Herb, who is stated to have an inhuman mastery of chi. But in Street Fighters, chi blasts are so easy to do that people can pick them up with practically no effort, even total losers (like Sean and Dan) or people with no training beyond watching videos (Sakura). It strains credulity to the utmost to say they're working on the same assumptions; how can Herb be more powerful in chi than any human (specifically stated) when his best stuff is no more impressive than Ryu's super attacks?
Of course, this can explained away. Theoretically, any incompatibilities can be. But it's hard to do it smoothly and believably, and becomes exponentially more hard as you add more series'. Eventually the weight of the conspiracies and "Oh, well, these old masters just didn't know anything about these techniques that dozens of people in this series regard as commonplace" and the other kludging adds up.
That being said, few people other than Link think the world is artificial or somehow unreal. Most people probably assume there was a conspiracy, or forces moving that nobody knows about just yet that kept the delicate balance of the world until they abruptly broke down.
As for the time travel device (you mean the Black Moon?), it's an interesting question indeed, which I am unwilling to answer due to spoilers at this time. ;p

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

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you run up against the harsh fact that in Ranma 1/2, no human being can throw chi blasts. They have sort of projectiles, but they're balls of air held together by emotion chi (and can't go very far), or vacuum blades that require immense powering up

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Are we reading the same Ranma?
The Shishi Houkoudan and Mouko Takabisha aren't exactly weak attacks, and I see no reason not to classify them as ki blasts--"ki" means air as well as spirit, you know, and the whole tradition started with the idea that a Shaolin monk could throw a punch that rang a bell across the room with air pressure alone.
And the Perfect S-H is almost incomprehensibly more powerful than anything any Street Fighter character has ever done--Ryouga created a ki-ball that looked to be over THREE HUNDRED YARDS ACROSS, leveling a huge tract of forest and leaving him virtually unharmed (if very tired) in the center of the blast crater. (Manga, Musk arc.) This verges on DBZ power levels.
As for the kamaitachi--Ryuu and, especially, Keema can throw them around with ease. I don't understand what "massive power-up" you're talking about here.
(As a side note, in Guyver canon Archanfel hardly controlled the world prior to X-day--Kronos had spent years infiltrating Zoanoids near positions of power, and had kidnapped and secretly processed many people (including the Prime Minister of Japan!) without their knowledge, but until the big moment came they kept quiet. (Only in the OAVs did they have the power to, say, brainwash everyone at Sho's school in a single night, and that just made no sense at all.)
--Sam
"The world is a dark and lonely place... and you should not have made me unhappy!"

[Epsilon]

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And the Perfect S-H is almost incomprehensibly more powerful than anything any Street Fighter character has ever done

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Akuma sank an island with one punch, chopped a moutain in two and sank a nuclear submarine by accident while training at the bottom of the ocean.
While the ki blasts of Ranma exist they are certainly not the same as the ki blasts of King of Fighters. The ability to throw a true projectile energy burst (which nobody but Herb and Saffron do in the entire series) is a big thing in Ranma 1/2. So big that while people can get close, they can't actually do it in the traditional "Hadoken" sense that every Street Fighter and their dog can do.
And Chronos might not have actually controlled the world, but are you seriously saying that Chronos would fail to notice the Sailor Senshi (and their massive media coverage) and react?
The basic chronology of Sailor Moon and Guyver are incompatible. This doens't mean they can't be crossed over. But it does require that you change certain base assumptions aboutbthe setting.
For instance, if Uranus (the advents that created Arkanphel) are actually a spawn of Chaos and were creating him and his zoanoid army to fight the Sailor Wars this could be acceptable. You then have to set back the Silver Millennium so that it occured before the Sailor Wars and thus before Arkanphel et al were created.
This requires major changes to the timeline of both series however. You can't just put them together raw.
------------
Epsilon

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Akuma sank an island with one punch, chopped a moutain in two and sank a nuclear submarine by accident while training at the bottom of the ocean.
Eek! I stand corrected. x.x;
And Chronos might not have actually controlled the world, but are you seriously saying that Chronos would fail to notice the Sailor Senshi (and their massive media coverage) and react?
Hey, I said it was a side note. I know the problems, I've faced similar while reconciling Guyver with Rifts. (The basic solution: Arky distrusted magic because Uranus did, and he happened to be in hibernation right through the rise and fall of Atlantis. And a number of Rifts critters get replaced by old-bloodline Zoanoids.) My only point here is that a lot of readers and fanfic writers seem to think that canon-Kronos had more influence pre-apocalypse than it really did, and that kinda bugs me. Since you're evidently not actually among those people, never mind.
--Sam
(who has yet to get very far into HT, and apologizes for misunderstandings resulting from this... and who wonders what Moon Healing Escalation would do to an unwilling Zoanoid.)
"If you're so evil... EAT THIS KITTEN!"

[Ayiekie]

The Shishi Hokodan and Moko Takabisha aren't weak attacks in their own series', but as compared to the chi blasts in something like Street Fighter, they are both fairly weak and extremely limited.
If you want to classify them as chi blasts, you'll have to then figure out what's different about Herb's, since they're indicated to be different and beyond human capacity. If you classify any application of compressed air as a chi blast, Kunou can fire them.
Aaron already pointed out that Akuma has done stuff considerably more powerful than the PSSH. In addition, you vastly overestimate how big it was; it glowed brightly for sure, but the impact crater wasn't even ten meters across. Plus, Ryouga was unharmed because unless he's distracted, the Perfect Shishi Hokodan doesn't hurt its wielder.
As for verging on DBZ power levels? Um, dude. Saffron is more powerful than any other Ranma character by several orders of magnitude. Master Roshi, in DBZ, is so weak he doesn't even contribute to any fights. Master Roshi blew up the moon with one shot. That's several orders of magnitude more powerful than Saffron.
Ryuu Kumon needed to stand there glowing and concentrating to power up to use the Kijin Raishuu Dan (Genma screams for everybody to run away while he does so). He does similar powerups when using the move later, and when using the Kijin Dairanbu. As for Kiima, a) there's no evidence her vacuum blades are as powerful, and b) she's not human - she uses her wings to use that attack.
In Guyver canon Chronos owns entire villages, has operatives in every government, every police force, every news agency, they have operatives at Sho's school, they kidnap scientists at will, they can get people into the office of the President of the United States or the UN without any trouble, nobody knows they exist, and they defeat the military forces of the Earth in a day. They CAN brainwash people, because many zoanoids don't even know they're zoanoids and go about their normal lives until it's time to strike. That's "owning the world for all intents and purposes" in my book.
(Edit: No worries, man, healthy discussion. Though, to answer your question? It comes up very directly in the series just what it does.)

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

I really need to stop mouthing off when I'm not in the same town as the manga I'm trying to reference. ^.^ I'll check back on them later, but now that I think about it, you're probably right...
As for Kronos, I think it's a matter of perception... I see them as not so much "owning the world" as "prepared to own the world on 18 hours' notice."
(And the "operatives at Sho's school..." I was going to snark that it was just Agito, who was only there because he had to go to school somewhere, but then I remembered those Ramotiths who may or may not have been legitimate school employees. Come to think of it, they may have been Makishima's bodyguards/minders...)
--Sam (currently on the Jadeite fight of ch. 6)
"Eating kittens is just plain--plain WRONG! And no one should do it EVER!"

[Custos Sophiae]

We've seen Ranma get drugged, by Kodachi, among others; he can certainly be poisoned. If the delivery mechanism kills a few hundred bystanders as well, so be it. Governments are quite willing to tolerate collateral damage.
It would certainly require extreme levels of overkill, but challenge the sovereignty of a state on its home territory and that's what you can expect. In extremis, the state can go to any lengths to win, even if the victory is phyrric.
However, for the same reason as the US is not vulnerable to miltary coups, such a conflict will never arise. Thus, the possibility of it will have no discernable impact on the ficverse. It need not be considered.
Threats by groups outside society - other nations, other dimensions, secret conspiracies - are a different matter,
and should have a significant impact.

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the people with the real power also gather as much secular power as they please.

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Turning physical might into secular power isn't that easy.
Among other problems, how do you control places where you aren't? If you don't, your secular power is limited to a small area. You need leadership and organisational skills, not a standard part of the martial artist toolkit. (You also need to be smart enough not to become a puppet of your grand vizier.)

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"Interfering in someone else's challenge is just not done"? Pshaw. Every main character in Ranma 1/2 does it multiple times.

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True, but not at random. There are extenuating circumstances, typically personal involvement. A line can be drawn that puts canonical Ranma interference on one side and stopping Jadeite on the other.
I won't deny it takes a little handwaving to draw this line, but it's not a show stopper.

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Off-hand note: the Orochi isn't really a god; it's a legendary monster, like the Hydra. T

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A god can have a monster as one of its avatars, or even another god. Nor do the avatars have to be aware of each other. Thus, in some versions of Hinduism, all the gods are avatars of one god, and yet are still independent personalities, with separate minds.
They're transcendent beings, beyond human comprehension; manifesting three mutually inconsistent avatars is a triviality for them.

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Arkanphel doesn't date nearly as far back as you think, either.

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Crossovers can quietly amend canon, when convenient. The current ice age began a few million years ago, when there were already proto-humans around. Putting Arkanphel's origin then won't affect any of the present day events.

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Arkanphel and the Zoalords never respond to anything that happens in Sailor Moon

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Perhaps because Chaos hid them all from him, and vice versa. It's the kind of thing Chaos might well do, to set up a fight. Some slight alteration to Chaos's power and personality may be necessary, but nothing that would outright contradict canon.
Still, it is much better when the writer puts the extra effort in, and shows and the Chronos conspiracy would affect Sailor Moon, and vice versa.
What you're criticising, here and earlier, is bad writing, not an inherent weakness in all crossovers.

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None of this is outside Ranma's sphere of interest, either. Wherever did you get the idea he only fights martial artists? He's been tapped to deal with rogue gods and escaped demons

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Not what I said. He'll watch a martial arts duel (given no reason to interfere or personal interest) to observe the techniques used; he doesn't have that kind of professional interest in a magical duel.
Nor does he normally go looking for magical trouble, before it affects him or his friends, though that might be because trouble finds him first.

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Very few series' can even smoothly crossover with one other series in the same genre without conflicts that require tricky explanations.

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Very true. It would be far easier to cross Ranma with Doctor Who - a very different genre - than with Street Fighter.
Real world programmes can cross over without any trouble - West Wing with ER with Fraisier with Dallas, but more than one same genre series causes problems because of incompatibilities in the ground rules, such as those you describe. (The Cthulhu mythos is an exception, since Elder Gods aren't expected to play by the normal rules.)
Ranma is far enough from Sailor Moon in genre that each of them could exist in the others world. The only problem is why they don't notice each other, a much smaller problem than two incompatible rule sets for vampires.
However, a good enough writer can make almost anything work. You say kludge; I say world-building, when done right.

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As for the time travel device (you mean the Black Moon?)

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Or the Nanban mirror.
There's one story where someone jumps into the Star Trek universe, and warp drive stops working. It turns out that the Trekverse was created when they jumped into it, and is becoming real inside a bubble centred on them, expanding at the speed of light. When the ships tried to go faster than light, they ran into the edge of the universe.
A similar effect with time travel would be moderately strong evidence of a faked past.
Ultimately though, it comes down to what it means to be real. I take the view that if you can worry about if you're real, you are. It doesn't matter that the universe creator, in-story, was a plagiarist - the people in it are no less real.

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

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You need leadership and organisational skills, not a standard part of the martial artist toolkit.

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Very true. Ranma, for one, has an excellent grasp of individual and very-small-unit tactics, but his strategic talents are about as effective as Ryouga's sense of direction. And while he can often get the duck and the pig to follow him into a crisis, he's never once managed to keep them on-mission.
Really, he'd have a hard time ruling a small apartment, let alone anything bigger. Cologne, now, is certainly a leader... but probably too mired in her society's traditions to manage to bring any significant number of outsiders under her heel for very long -- it'd be far too much of a culture clash.
Really, most grandmaster martial artists have better things to do than take over anything. Unless it's a few years after 199X and the world has already gone to hell.
--Sam
"You are already fat!"

[Epsilon]

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We've seen Ranma get drugged, by Kodachi, among others; he can certainly be poisoned. If the delivery mechanism kills a few hundred bystanders as well, so be it. Governments are quite willing to tolerate collateral damage.

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Which government is this you're talking about?
Living in Canada and being quite familiar with an attempt by a few armed people to overthrow the government I can say that in this modern age, Canada would look very poorly on the government that killed one hundred people to kill one criminal. No matter how dangeorus the criminal is. Heck, in this day and age people get pissed when we kill a hundred foreigners in pursuit of peacekeeping.
I can certainly see, say, North Korea being willing to do that, however.
As to whether or not Ranma can be drugged effectively. We don't know, really. He can be drugged but this is by drugs that Kodachi, Pink and Link and other superhuman characters in the series use. Thus, since we have no idea which drugs are used and whether they were enhanced in some fashion we don't know his resistance to normal drugs. We do know he can drink far more saki than a person of his body weight would suggest and be only mildly intoxicated. Plus, there is the very real possiblity that if you tried to drug, say, Kodachi the effect would backfire on you spectacularly.
It should also be noted that Ranma is able to throw off the effects of the drugs he is exposed to a lot quicker than people expected him to. Obviusly he has some resistance to it.
And all it takes is one martial artist surviving to really screw you over.
Imagine a single person with the following power set: Complete invisbility. The ability to move faster than human beings can react. The ability to kill at range without any form of detectable weapon, and kill entire rooms full of people at the same time.
Frankly while Ranma is unlikely to do it, anybody with his powerset and the intelligence (and willingness) to use it properly could cripple a government in a few weeks. How? Assassination. Imagine if the President, Vice-President and every member of congress died all within the space of a week. Then kill every general in the US Armed Forces.
Nothing can stop them. Underground bunkers? Bakusaitenketsu. Bodygaurds? Invisibility, superspeed, perfect disguises.
Did you see the beginning of the second X-Men movie were Nightcrawler almost single-handedly kills the president? Picture that but worse.
Frankly, the best bet for a government to do is to recruit the martial artists. And, I think that in the Ranma 1/2 universe this may not be far from what actually happens.

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Turning physical might into secular power isn't that easy.

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Its amazingly easy, when you reach a certain level of physical power. If I can kill anyone I want, at anytime, and there is no chance of you stopping me I have all the secular power I want. Certainly I can't be everywhere at once, but you know what? I don't have to be. All I have to do is hear about someone not doing what I want and killl them. Fear is a very effective strategy for controlling your underlings.

Re: The idea of gods having multipel avatars etc:
This is not a statement of fact. Since there are neither gods nor monsters in the real world anything you say about them is pure speculation. I could just as easily say that the reason there are three Orochi is because of Plot Rays. Plot Rays are a mysterious energy force in the uinverse that cause there to be three Orochis. How? Plot Rays.
The fact is however that there is no indication in Ranma 1/2 that the Orochi is anything but a giant monster in a lake. Any addition you make to this is beyond the scope of the Ranma series. Not saying you can't make an addition like that when you make a crossover. But the fact is that you HAVE to.
Then you have to think about the consequences. If there really is a Crawling Chaos, a being much like a Great Old One in power that is using the various Orochi as its avatars then you can't just raise this issue as an explanation and abandon it. You have to deal with it.
In many cases you can jump through so many hoops when trying to produce a crossover that the point of the series BECOMES the crossover and how it occured. You want a simple romance story between Ranma and Sakura Kusagano? You have to do a lot of background work explaining how or why the plotliens and physical laws of both series have not interacted until this point. Maybe so much that your little romance plot becomes lost on the way.
Much easier to just create the character Kakura Susagano who has the same personality as the latter and just introduce her into Ranma 1/2 (or vice versa).
I don't mean to say that a crossover is impossible. Far from it. In fact, many of my favorite series have been crossover and my hobby is thinking up ways to combine what would otherwise be completely incompatible series using various justifications and world-building exercises.

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Or the Nanban mirror.

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Since Hybrid Theory uses only the manga for continuity purpose, the Nanban mirror (and all associated baggage) does not exist.
And as to your question...

SPOILERS AHEAD!

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She was in a house owned by a
false identity she had been forced to go back in time thirty years to create.

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This is a quote from Sailor Pluto in chapter seventeen. Apparently she went back in time thirty years, set up a flase identity, pruchased a home and ten went forward thirty years to use that identity to hide from Chronos et al.
Eveidently, time travel to a point in time previous to January-Feburary 1992 is possible. I believe (thought I;m not certain where) I actually had Pluto reference how she has gone back in time and killed Ukyou when she was a baby. However that has had no impact on the CURRENT timeline. Read into that what you will.
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Epsilon