Quote:Potemkin villages and grand viziers. You can get people to tell you what you want to hear, but what they tell you needn't have any connection with the truth, and there's a long history of brain manipulating brawn.
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.
The zoalords get round this by mass mind-control, which would work.
Quote:We're still in an ice age, technically. This is just an interglacial, which started circa 10,000 years ago; while there are permanent polar ice caps the ice age isn't over - but I did say began, not ended
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.
Umm... I'm afraid you're wrong. The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago and modern humans were around long before that.
Certainly canon shouldn't be lightly amended but if, as here, it would have zero impact on the present day action of the series, and if it's done with care and skill, then it needn't be a problem. Perhaps all the characters have miscalculated Arkanphel's age, because they've all made the same plausible false assumption.
Similarly with Jadeite. Ranma already contains a lot of implausible behaviour. A good writer will be able to come up with an explanation no more implausible than normal for the manga, and keep the reader too busy to notice the remaining inconsistencies.
If the writer is really good, the reader will gladly invent explanations for the problems themelves - as demonstrated by the legions of fan sites proposing ret cons for inconsistencies.
Among other things, you're mocking the flaws of badly written crossovers, but the key words there are 'badly written'. Crossovers are hard to do well, for all the reasons listed in this conversation and more, but - as you've both said - done well, they can be great.
There is more to Hybrid Theory than the crossovers though, and all of it is good. Chris has become an excellent self-righteous villain, blinded by the light to the evil he does, to name just one example of the superb character development.
Contrary to what Chris says, in some respects fighting an enemy you can't defeat, as Rei and Akane are doing, is in some ways more heroic than cutting off the serpent's head. Fighting on when you know you have no hope of victory takes rare courage.
The slow unfolding of the consequences of the setup is also good, as is the willingness to go grim.
In the end, I suspect, after destruction comes rebirth, in one form or another. I'm sure you're both too good a writer to do a complete reset, with the characters remembering nothing of what they've learnt, but there are many other options. I'll look forwards to finding out which, if any, actually happens.