Relatively Absent/Trivia

Trivia about Relatively Absent includes:

• Creator Backlash: Shurtleff stopped writing fanfiction in 2009, and enacted a complete purge of Relatively Absent and all his other works from the Net -- even from the Wayback Machine. In one of the last entries on his blog he seemed to regard it as a new Old Shame that he no longer wanted associated with his name after shifting his focus to other projects, nor did he want anyone continuing it or his other incomplete stories. He also refused to answer any questions regarding where the story had been headed or what the ending would have been.

• Dead Fic: Doubly so: Firstly, after a prologue, eleven chapters and a sidestory written (and rewritten) over seven years, the story was abandoned by Shurtleff (along with all his other fan writing). Secondly, he abandoned it in what was obviously still the beginning of the story, as he was putting all his pieces on the board before setting the main plot in motion.

• Keep Circulating the Tapes: This story is a lost classic -- if you can find a complete copy (usually as an archive maintained off-line by a fan), consider yourself incredibly lucky. Ironically, Shurtleff had no problems with this -- he didn't mind individuals sharing his abandoned work person-to-person, he just didn't want to see it back online anywhere.

• Lost Forever:
  • First, the fic itself. It only exists in individual readers' offline archives, because even more than a decade after he yanked his fanwork from the Net, Shurtleff still responds (Kibo-like) to any attempt to repost it with take-down requests.
  • On a smaller level, the Police Brutality Soun, Akane and Nabiki suffer in the Chiyoda-ku police station after their arrest in chapter 9 was originally presented in extreme and disturbing detail in the story proper. After complaints by some readers on the FFML (the anime Fan Fiction Mailing List, where he was posting chapters), Shurtleff reluctantly deleted the offending scenes; they are even more lost than the rest of the fic. There remain, though, references to these events, so they weren't removed from the story outright, just pushed offscreen.

• Shout-Out:
  • There's one to PARAGON by Rob "Kenko" Haynie, another (incomplete) Sailor Moon/Ranma ½ crossover, when the Gate assures Ranma that the magical girl with the talking rabbit mascot does not wear a fancy, frilly outfit.
  • It's strongly hinted that Nodoka's older sister Mai is, or is based on, Mai Shiranui from Fatal Fury and Street Fighter.
  • Early in chapter 7 it's very obvious that Aiko in the middle of reading the comic SF novel Illegal Aliens by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio. She even namechecks Pollotta.
  • In Shurtleff's untitled side story, Cologne recalls meeting Capt. John Yossarian from Catch-22 just before he died in the Amazon village from wounds received in battle. She learned the concept of the "catch-22" from him.
  • In chapter 9, the Australian supers investigating Ranma's damage to the outback make mention of metamorphic invaders called the "Black Morph". What little detail is available makes them sound like the Invaders of Gate Keepers.
  • Agent Hirohisa at the Imperial Palace apparently dates a lot of women, who all have familiar names, like Minako and Mary Jane.
  • Cologne was explicitly doing a John Wayne imitation while riding on Shampoo's pack to Mount Horai.
  • In chapter 11, JNID agent Yumi Yosano is jokingly addressed as Minnie May Hopkins from Gunsmith Cats after she overdoes the breaching charges during an operation and accidentally takes out a structural support column. She plays into it.

Shigeki nodded. "Gotcha." She reached over and grabbed a hold of the blonde's wrist, pulling her up off the sofa. "Come on, 'Minnie May', we've got some innocent yaks to frame."
"But Raaaaally ..."

• What Could Have Been: Well, the entire story, basically. But more specifically...
  • There was at one time among the artwork commissioned for the story a piece depicting Hotaru Tomoe dressed in the same style of guardian uniform as Ranma wears in her Guardian Khronos identity.
  • Whatever was to develop as a direct result of the extreme Police Brutality Shurtleff edited out of the story after reader objections.

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