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Knight In Ribbons (A Sailor Moon Self-Insert)

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by FurikoMaru, Sep 7, 2013.

  1. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Act One

    ... that alarm clock sounds awfully close to my head.

    Not the proudest way to figure out you aren't in your own bedroom, but far from the worst, I guess.

    Blinking my eyes open, I fumbled around in the predawn darkness for the snooze button and almost knocked over the lamp on the bedside table. With more grace than I thought myself capable of I caught it by the neck, cursing, and put it back in its place before turning it on.

    "Morning," said the white cat at my feet, stretching.

    "Morning," I replied.

    ... yeah, I'm usually a little slow before I eat breakfast.

    =

    Well, my name is still Amanda. I learned that when Artemis repeated it several times in an attempt to snap me out of my catatonia.

    "... you're Artemis," I finally said, like it was the observation of the century.

    "Quite," he replied, nodding. "Now hurry up, you mustn't miss your first day of school."

    And then it came back to me. Or, rather, two different sets of memories came back to me.

    One set belonged to the Amanda born in 1989, and the other set - older, but paradoxically the 'new' set - was from an Amanda born in 1978.

    1989 Amanda remembered going to sleep around 3 am last night after finishing up a Cosmos Quest update.

    1978 Amanda remembered walking home from the library, coming across a gross plant-monster-person-thing terrorizing a playground, running back up the street to a phone booth, bumping into 'that ominous cat from earlier'...

    "How are you talking? You don't have the right jaw and throat structure for that to make any-"

    "I'll explain later! Right now you've got to defeat that youma!"

    "With what?"

    "Hold that wand aloft and repeat after me..."

    "Venus Power Make Up," I mumbled in shock.

    -----
    No, Amanda isn't my real name, but I had to keep to the series theme naming with the senshi. Amanda was the first name I could think of meaning 'love' that didn't sound too Sue-y. I would have just gone with Furiko, but hell, I'm probably the least Japanese person who ever lived, so token white girl it is.

    Anime continuity, as those of you who know the dates have probably guessed.
     
  2. Biigoh

    Biigoh Primordial Tanuki Moderator

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  3. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Subbed. I wouldn't sit through dub-Serena again in a non-Ditz-Vader-context for all the vodka in the Kremlin.

    Edit: What the hell, IMDB? Not cool! No one gives a shit when it ran on US TV.

    Dates changed; thank you, Bii-aniki.
     
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  4. shaderic

    shaderic An ordinary cat?

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    Venus, Venus...

    That's the one that started off in London, right? With the laser powers, and the implied PTSD according to Shadowjack?

    This could be very interesting.
     
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  5. Biigoh

    Biigoh Primordial Tanuki Moderator

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  6. Vindictus

    Vindictus Experienced.

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    Huh. Thought this was a SI quest for a moment.

    ... Are those actually things? I think I've seen one or two, but they fell into wank and bullshit pretty quick from what little I read of them.
     
  7. Scia

    Scia Not too sore, are you?

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    Nah she started out in japan and the ntraveld to london where she had waky UNIT adventures before her crush tried to kill her, Manga, or her other crush also tried to kill her, anime.
     
  8. Disminded

    Disminded Versed in the lewd.

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    I am confused. Why is the SI from 1988 instead of 2013?
     
  9. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    They're labelled by birth year.
     
  10. Disminded

    Disminded Versed in the lewd.

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    Makes sense.
     
  11. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Act One, continued

    "You'll find it works better with the wand in your hand," the white cat said, smiling sympathetically. "Let me assure you, though, this is no dream. You are Sailor Venus, Princess of the Golden Planet and personal bodyguard to Her Highness, Princess Serenity of the Moon."

    He squawked in protest as I hurriedly threw off the duvet and leapt for my dressing table's mirror.

    I didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved that I still looked like myself. I was a teenager again, but besides that there was no big change; pale skin, round cheeks, grey eyes, dark circles, brown hair.

    The part of my mind that likes to take life as it comes calmed down first, and began casually enumerating all the different ways that destiny (and, more importantly, my life) was now fucked.

    The rest of my mind tried to deal with the fact that not only was I going to have to go through middle school again, I was going to have to fight bondage-monsters while I did so.

    What the hell happened to Minako? I wondered, anger beginning to simmer. Not at her, but at whatever entity had shunted her into the discard pile just so I could go on an adventure as their little Sue-puppet in her place. Y'know, just swapping out Princess Serenity’s freakin' body double, no big deal.

    ... in all fairness, we do worship a BROB, my head pointed out dryly. We should probably be more surprised something like this didn't happen sooner.

    "Are you well, Amanda?" Artemis asked.

    "Yeah... yeah, I guess I am." I sighed. Bending to touch the floor between my toes, I did a slow spine roll and was rewarded by the sound/feeling of a small pop! between my shoulder blades. "Sorry for shoving you like that, I kind of freaked out."

    "Perfectly understandable," he said graciously.

    Okay, time for a mental stats-review. Name?

    Amanda Davis, both sets of information agreed.

    Age?

    Twenty-three/Thirteen.

    Gender? Never hurts to check.

    Female. The oversensitive thirteen-year-old in me seemed hurt that I'd even ask that question.

    Height?

    168cm/5 feet.

    Wait, what? If I remembered grade seven correctly, I should already have been within a few inches of my normal height.

    As I opened the top drawer of my dresser, I took a surreptitious look around the room, getting an eye for where everything was in relation to my head.

    ... huh. Five-nothing it is. In a way this made me relax a bit; maybe I wouldn't make such a terrible body-double after all.

    You are taking the prospect of dying in Usagi's place entirely too well, part of me said, unnerved.

    Shut up, I told it, doffing my nightshirt. We can stress out on the walk to school.

    I opened my closet, and all thoughts of stress fled my head.

    There, in all its pristine glory, was a Shiba Koen Middle School uniform.

    I didn't tear up, but it was a pretty near thing.

    ... fuck you too, have you seen what real-world Japanese school uniforms are like? 'Cause let me assure you, none of them are this fetching:

    [​IMG]

    Yeah, don't you tell me I wasn't lucky to wear that thing instead of some wool-blend nightmare.

    "So," I asked Artemis, getting dressed, "what kind of hours will I need to work at the whole fighting-evil thing? 'Cause I gotta tell ya, really wish you would have waited until I was at least in high school before you dropped a part-time job in my lap."

    If he had lips, he probably would have pursed them. "It's not a job, Amanda, it's your duty. You must be prepared to engage the enemy wherever they appear. Evil doesn't take weekends off, you know."

    "You do know that legally this counts as endangering a minor," I pointed out, pulling on a pair of black ankle-socks.

    "I'll see you in court, then," he said with such a perfectly proper mix of snark and dignity that I laughed in delight.

    "Right, so, irregular hours, always on-call... is the pay any good?"

    "Pay?!" he asked in disbelief. "This is your destiny! A sacred charge to fight evil in the name of Love and Justice!"

    "So it's a volunteer position. Hm." I pretended to think about it. "I guess I can supplement my income with sidequests and raids and stuff..."

    "No raiding!" Artemis said, horrified.

    "I wasn't gonna hurt humans," I assured him, enjoying myself immensely, "don't be silly. I was talking about in that Dark Kingdom place. Youma've got to have villages or something."

    His eyes bugged, and one of his ears flattened. "Invade... the Dark Kingdom...?" he asked weakly.

    I nodded cheerfully. "Take the fight to them, that's what I say! It'll be just like one of Thor and Loki's road trips to Jötunnheimr!"

    "No!" he nearly wailed. "Amanda, think about what you're saying. Going to the Dark Kingdom alone is suicide!"

    "Hey, I'll have adult supervision!" I smirked. "You're an adult, right?"

    "Well, yes, but..." He growled in frustration. "Even if a single warrior and her advisor could take on the entirety of Beryl's forces, we don't know where they're hiding!"

    "Have you checked the North Pole?" I asked. "I mean, I always thought there was something not quite right about Santa..."

    "AMANDA!"

    "ARTEMIS~!" And another life-goal ticked off my list! Always wanted to have a dramatic name-shouting standoff.

    I guess I kind of ruined it when I started giggling almost immediately afterward, though.

    :( "You shouldn't tease me like that! I was genuinely worried you were serious."

    "Oh, come on!" I waved away his concerns, running a brush through my hair. "A two-person raid on an entire realm that'll be trying to kill us as hard as it can? I'm not an idiot."

    "Glad to hear it."

    "We'll send in a remote-detonation device to do it for us."

    =

    Looking back, I don't know how I got through that first breakfast.

    For one thing, my parents were married. For another I'd never seen either of them before in my life.

    New-me remembered them, sure, but rifling through those memories was like looking at someone else's family album; I absorbed the information that their names were Richard and Linda, that I'd been born in Paris while Richard was working for UNESCO, but the emotions I felt when reviewing these factoids were the emotions of an outsider. I wasn’t embarrassed to have a dad who couldn’t sing but loved karaoke, it just amused me to wonder how much of his decision to accept a job in Tokyo was influenced by his passion.

    I felt, in short, like a writer observing her subjects.

    When I saw how genuinely accepting and nonchalant they were about me being in their house, wearing their daughter’s clothes, eating their food, smiling at their jokes, I wanted to shrivel up and die. It felt like I'd put the mind-whammy on them personally.

    My guilt lasted about as long as it took Ambassador Dad to lecture me about improving my math marks this semester and follow it up with a scolding about my ‘tone’ when I said I’d try. Items one and two on my list of Reasons I Did Not Miss Being A Teenager, all in one speech – with oratorical prowess like that, you can see how he became a cultural attaché.

    The Davises – and wasn’t that a concept that would take getting used to – were perfectly nice people, if a bit overkeen on their new juicer; I’ve definitely had worse roommates. And worse juice, come to think of it. But they weren't my family, and I wasn't exactly inclined to try to make them so.

    Fortunately for me, I was a teenage girl, so they didn't really notice.

    -----
    To spare you some tiresome angst and me a great deal of embarrassment, I've used a version of me who's single. Aside from that and her name, she's still basically me.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2015
  12. Disminded

    Disminded Versed in the lewd.

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    Picture not working for me. Otherwise, I find Sailor Troll highly amusing.
     
  13. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Is it working now?
     
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  14. Disminded

    Disminded Versed in the lewd.

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    Yep! We're good.
     
  15. Hymn of Ragnarok

    Hymn of Ragnarok Well worn.

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    .....Huh. Well it's already better than I expect an SI to be, so that's a good start.

    The whole guilt about slipping into Minako's life, also good, not all puppies and sunshine. Actually, your SI's life is about to suck from what I know. Risking life and limb, all that jazz. Guess you shoved aside the guilt pretty easily? Could write it as you just trying to ignore/repress it. You make it clear you're trying to bottle up the stress for the walk to school, could add a few emotional cues that you're kind of snarky as a coping mechanism? Thinking about how to game the story instead of how it is exceedingly likely you're gonna die and if you're lucky you'll be brought back? Musing on whether you'd be the same person if you're dead and brought back, the nature of the afterlife?

    Okay, that ast one is probably best saved for later.

    Who knows, maybe now Usagi is remodeled to resemble YOU. Or the baddies inexplicably cannot tell you apart. To the point where you could be wearing glasses and a fake bushy mustache and it works.

    Now I am imagining Tuxedo Mask frenching some brunette with glasses and a magnificent mustache. Clearly a portent of my dreams to come. And I thought Supernatural would be haunting those....

    You do seem to rely on emoticons a bit, but eh, I personally am easy going enough that it doesn't break immersion. Others might be.

    Was amused by chatter about what the actual school uniforms are like.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2014
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  16. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    I have a very childish habit of shunting aside unpleasant thoughts of long-term suffering by indulging in momentary pleasures.

    ... come to think of it, I'm lucky I didn't get tossed into Warhammer 40 000; Slaanesh wouldn't even had to've come knocking, I'd just've wandered on in like a yutz. If Khorne didn't get me first.

    It's kind of a bit of both. When you think about it, Usagi's a bad student, but she's not a 'bad girl'; there's no way she'd have blonde hair in a non-anime 1990s setting. So I kinda fudged it, made her a brunette.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2014
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  17. Biigoh

    Biigoh Primordial Tanuki Moderator

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    The greater good has killed this Slaanesh entity. There is no need to fear such things...

    XP
     
  18. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Chief Inspector Frank Butterman: You came to the wrong neighbourhood, boyo. *cha-chak!*
     
  19. Hymn of Ragnarok

    Hymn of Ragnarok Well worn.

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    Lucky you, apparently you're not obsessive enough for it to eat at you indefinitely.

    *snrk*

    Oh that says all sorts of interesting things.

    Well how 'bout that. Was kinda expecting her hair color to be waved off as lolreincarnation, she's born into a stereotype. Lucky you, you can still give your life for female Jesus!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2014
  20. Scia

    Scia Not too sore, are you?

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    At least free resurections are included in the companys health plan, even if the dental one is a bit lacking.
    And something more to angst would be how much of you is you as soon as the Memorys of the last Venus start to rear there ugly head, at least you might get a kickass sword out of it.
     
  21. Vindictus

    Vindictus Experienced.

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    Heh. If me-during-puberty was dropped in the Warhammer Universe, I too would have not so much fallen down the slippery slope towards chaos as parachuted down from the plane of sanity.
    Is that right? [/says the man with the chucklefuck murderbastard as an avatar]
     
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  22. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Act One, continued ii

    When I finally headed out the door, it was raining, which I took as a good sign; summer rain provides the perfect contrast to the heat, I find - it's the payoff for slogging through the humidity.

    I got some stares for not having an umbrella (and probably a few just for being a foreigner), but my navy blue mackintosh was enough to keep my uniform dry, which was all I really cared about. It felt good to get my hair and face wet; a nice gentle reminder that while I wasn't in the real world anymore, I was still in a real world.

    The Davis family had moved to Azabu-Juban in July from Komachi, in Hiroshima, where Richard had initially been hired. Running through a couple of quick grammar drills in my mind, I found to my relief that I was not going to have to depend entirely on my fangirl-vocabulary for the foreseeable future; new-me had spent two years in the Japanese school system and had come out of it officially able to read and speak basic sentences and understand the gist of more complicated ones.

    Unofficially, I was now fluent in the kogal subdialect. Odd, that. I guess the hypothetical-other-Amanda (to this day, I have no proof that she and her history weren't entirely fabricated to more smoothly integrate me into the universe) was more naturally sociable than I am.

    So. Can we dive on in yet?

    Proceed, I thought grimly.

    Can we go kill Pinochet? He’s still in power right now.

    Oh, for fuck’s... how did I know? First of all, where are we supposed to get the money for a ticket to Chile? Second of all, these powers aren’t ours – they’re a sacred trust from on high to be a beacon of hope and merciful justice to mankind. The embodiment of hope and mercy can’t go around killing heads of state and leaving power vacuums to be filled by the next jackoff the CIA thinks is sufficiently not-keen on Communism to be qualified.

    ... okay, then can we go and not kill Pinochet? No matter how nicely he asks? If thoughts had faces, this one would have the brightest, most innocent smile in the world.

    Put. your tortureboner. away. Now. This is not even remotely the appropriate fucking venue for it. If we’re still alive after season 5 we can see about doing more mundane justice work, but in the meantime, we are going to be a rational adult and focus our attention on stopping the interdimensional energy-vampires.

    The others are going to hate us.

    We've fucked over the wheel of transmigration. Possibly permanently.

    We don't have any proof of that. The possibility exists that Amanda Davis was always going to be Sailor Venus in this reality.

    Well thank you, Tokyo correspondent for Pseudo-Scientific Canadian, but if you're terribly attached to your life you'd better pray that that isn't the case, because that would mean this world is non-canon and you don't have a knowledge advantage.

    Pray to who? The cosmology of this world is completely different from back home. Our personal favourite god is effectively in another castle.

    They're going to hate you.

    Oh, fuck, the Sweet Lord’s a chaos god. If we even try to ask for guidance and prayer can't leave the universe then it could get redirected to Chaos which means Chaos has an in to the Sailor Scouts through us!!!

    Senshi.

    Oh, stop, we're in our head, no one can hear us.

    There's a reeeeally simple solution to that problem, guys; it's called 'not praying'. We did it all the time when we were a misotheist, remember? Hell, we do it a lot now, Queen Metallia or not. Remember to breathe, kid.

    They're going to hate you.

    Speaking of Metallia and Chaos in general, if you fuck this up enough, four teenage girls are going to have to sacrifice their lives for effectively nothing, followed shortly by the end of all life on Earth. And it will be partially your fault. Just thought I’d remind you.

    How is it my fault that this reality's Team Chaos are a bag of dicks?

    That's why I said partially.

    You are a bad person and they will be able to tell.

    I took a deep breath. Let's look on the bright side, shall we? I'm a magical girl in a setting where that basically makes me a minor goddess. The school system we're about to enter stresses rote memorization, which we rock at, and all of the information they'll cover short of kanji, Japanese history and math is stuff we already know. I’m back under 128 pounds for the first time in twelve years. If all goes well, I get to basically live forever and be Chief of Staff for the single kindest monarch in the history of humanity. This is a pretty sweet gig.

    Usagi won't mind; she'll stick up for you anyway. Won't she be a nice friend? But Mako will know, and she will hate you, and you will deserve her hatred, because you are not remotely worthy of the power you now wield you worthless shiftless cowardly lazy stupid evil little-

    Summer rain is nice for more than one reason.

    You're going to your death, and you will take it because you deserve it.

    "So what if I do?" I choked out through gritted teeth, quickening my walking pace and rubbing my nose on my sleeve.

    Jesus fuck's sake, Grey, can you hold off until we actually meet the others, at least? Fuck!

    Weakling. Load.

    Oh, don't start in with that shit, Grey, this isn't fucking Berserk and we aren't post-Eclipse Casca. Fucking molten-gold laser-beams, your argument is invalid.

    We wouldn't even be weak in the first place if you didn't insist on reverting whatever fucking progress we make!

    I wouldn't call my depression comforting, exactly, but I was glad I still had it. It made me feel less crazy, as sad as that sounds (especially in light of everything you’ve just read, I’m sure); I knew that if the Wall of Grey was still stabbing me in the heart, it was unlikely I was in a coma or having a schizophrenic episode or something.

    Hey, kiddo, my awkwardly-maternal side said gently, you forgot the most incredible thing about this situation. You're a white girl walking around Tokyo in a seifuku and not looking like a complete fucking idiot.

    Worthless.

    =

    In defiance of cliché I arrived at school twenty minutes early.

    Didn't stop my class rep from pulling me aside.

    She was on gate duty and, seeing me from behind, mistook me for a Japanese girl with a perm (and possibly dyed hair). She was so embarrassed when I turned around that she forgot to write me up for my black ankle socks, which I learned later weren't strictly uniform-compliant either.

    Seriously, if you want to know why anime characters have weird hair, go to a Japanese junior high school sometime. These kids were starved for colour.

    After clearing up that mishap, she ushered me inside to meet Tanigawa-sensei, our homeroom teacher for class 1-C. He didn't speak any English, so our hellos in that language were pretty brief to cover up that fact. He asked me where in Canada I was from, and I stumbled through an explanation of how I was born in Paris and lived in various non-Canadian places for about a minute and a half before I finally figured out he had just been asking to be polite, and blurted out an abrupt summary. Not the best start to the semester.

    Just like in an anime, as the mysterious transfer student I wasn't allowed to just take my desk; I was cut loose and asked to come back when I heard the bell.

    The school was all right, though I have to admit I felt a pang of homesickness seeing the tiny English-language section of the library. I wondered if I could head down to Kinokuniya on the weekend and pick up a little something for myself. The Lensman series, maybe; I kept putting off reading it. Or a Lupin novel.

    I eventually went back up to the classroom and made my introduction. The kids seemed rather curious and confused; I was foreign, but I was transferring from a Japanese school and my accent wasn't terrible. One of them asked me if I was haafu - biracial.

    As class began, I pulled out a spiral-bound notebook and started writing down everything I could remember about the first season of Sailor Moon. I made a note to start reading the paper all the way through every day; most of the early schemes the villains concocted had a decent amount of publicity surrounding them, whether from Jadeite promoting his local business endeavours or Nephrite tracking down small-time celebrities and other people with exceptional qualities. Luckily the law of creator provincialism meant I didn't have to go over every major news story in the world; just Tokyo in general and Minato-ku in particular.

    Though if some bastard tries to make this a Digimon crossover I swear to god...

    Though it was non-canonical for the anime series, I also wrote down all I could recall of the Sailor V manga, the pilot series that eventually convinced Kodansha that Takeuchi was on to something with this schoolgirls-kicking-ass thing. It was a long shot that anything in it would come up, but I thought it was worth reminding myself.

    I made more notes, some of them for my own pleasure and some with the intent to fuck canon so hard it came star seeds, but this is a story, damn it; if you want to know what they were and what happened when I followed up on them, you'll just have to be patient.

    As I wrote, I thought of being a kid, coming home from school and tossing my homework aside to watch that afternoon's episode of Sailor Moon. I remembered marvelling at these graceful girls - almost women, practically! After all, they were in junior high and wore miniskirts! So mature!

    I remembered the violent outbursts I often had back then, my anger boiling over into action time and again over the thousand slights less sensitive children absorbed without complaint. My desire to defend my honour was as fierce as it was ridiculous.

    I remembered teachers telling me I should be ashamed of myself. I remember normal children's television telling me that being an aggressive person made me deeply immature at absolute best and a supervillain at worst. Other people are allowed to be cruel to you, the lesson seemed to be, but if you retaliate, you will be punished. Tell a teacher, and if they do nothing, then shut up.

    And then there was Sailor Moon.

    More specifically, there was Sailor Jupiter.

    Kino Makoto - or Lita, as I knew her then - was beautiful, and kind, and a great cook, and a juvenile delinquent.

    Her first episode began with her stomping the crap out of a gang of street punks harassing Usagi, and by the time she actually transformed she had gone toe-to-toe with a Rainbow Crystal Warrior and a goddamn Dark General.

    I was captivated. There were other badasses on television, sure - I was a fan of Raph from Ninja Turtles and Wolverine on X-Men - but none of them were like Sailor Jupiter. They were all loners, people whose aggression had alienated them from the people around them to a greater or lesser degree; they were the outsiders of their groups. No matter how much their teammates cared for them, it always felt to me like there was something half-jokingly self-congratulatory about it: "You are a difficult person. I am such a good person for putting up with you."

    Lita was just like any of Serena's other friends, as far as I could see. They knew she had a temper, and they liked her anyway.

    That scenario, of friends accepting one another completely, became the dream of my school days.

    Slowly, with a lot of work, I reigned in my anger, and made it work for me. I tried as hard as I could to be the kind of person I would want to be friends with; I learned a lot about art and history and music, I voted NDP in my grade three class' model election, I learned how to be at least passably-funny, and I worked hard in my French courses so I wouldn't miss out on being friends with someone just because they didn't speak English.

    And I punched bullies wherever I found them.

    I'm not sailor scout material. I'm not even sailor senshi material.

    But you know what? Neither is the central figure of the whole goddamn franchise.

    So I don't have to be either. It doesn't matter if I'm sadistic and have a bleak sense of humour and I'm lazy. I'll just do what Usagi does, in the opposite direction: I'll fake it.

    At the top of the page, I wrote carefully, in my sharp and boyish hand, a mission statement of sorts: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." And I underlined it.

    =

    "Ne, Amanda-san, want to eat lunch with us on the roof?"

    No, I didn't. I really didn't. I hate getting to know new people in standard social settings. I sweat profusely and I either get way too excited too fast or I just go monosyllabic; there's no in-between. Most of my memories of first meetings involve desperately wishing I were somewhere else.

    Worst of all, in this situation my only options for friends were teenage girls. Much as I loved the genre I'd found myself in, the natural response to such circumstances as a grown-ass woman is a wholehearted "Fuck no!"

    Thank fucking god for the combined powers of Gaijin Smash and sailor senshi training requirements.

    "Thanks for the offer, but I was gonna head down to the Wacdonalds and get a hamburger. If I don't eat meat at least once a day I can't concentrate in class and my anaemia acts up." Big dumb grin, there you go. A little self-stereotyping never hurts.

    "Oh... well, um... see you later, then."

    Sneaking out of a Japanese high school was a lot less difficult than I had anticipated. Of course, being able to jump the wall in one go didn't hurt; that was certainly a pleasant, if momentarily terrifying, surprise. I wondered what other out-of-henshin powers I might have.

    "What the devil are you doing?" With a rustle, Artemis leapt out of a nearby tree down onto the sidewalk.

    "Just the cat I was looking for!" I whispered, patting him on the head. "I was thinking we could get in a quick training session over lunch."

    Artemis blinked. "Oh. Well... it's good to see you're taking your new responsibilities seriously."

    "Yeah, about that." Scooping him up, I ducked down the first alley I saw and continued in a low voice. "The dream I had last night, and the little visions I kept having this morning, are those something I should be worried about or are they normal?"

    "Visions?" he asked excitedly. "Of what?"

    Mentally I winced. This had been the sticking point of the first phase of my I-laughingly-call-it-a-plan. Artemis had more of his memories of the Silver Millennium intact than basically the entire rest of the cast; hell, even Luna, his oldest friend and future wife, couldn't remember anything more personal than a jumbled version of Queen Serenity's final order. I knew what it might mean to him to have someone else who had even an inkling of the loss he'd suffered... but it was another thing entirely to see him pleading with his eyes like that.

    ... he's all alone.

    I can feel guilty on my own time. This was my only chance to properly make use of what little useful knowledge I had. If it could keep any of us alive, it was worth it.

    "It's hard to explain," I said, frowning. "The dream didn't make any sense. I was skating outside at night, looking at the stars, but this big green and blue planet was sort of hovering on the horizon, like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to go up or down."

    "Earth," Artemis breathed.

    I nodded, still playing dumb. "Yeah, like a second earth hanging in the sky. It was beautiful."

    "Yes," he said quietly, "yes it was." He shook his head. "Can you remember anything else? Was there anyone with you?"

    "A couple of girls," I said. "One of them had this strange hairstyle; two buns with two pigtails falling out of them."

    If a cat can smile, Artemis practically beamed. "That clinches it! Amanda, I believe becoming Sailor Venus has brought back some of your memories of your former life; you just described the favoured formal hair-dressing of highborn ladies in the court of Serenity!"

    Huh. Well, that's one excuse for not noticing Usagi looks exactly like the Princess.

    "Really?" I tried to look excited. "What about the little episodes I've been having today? Are those memories too?"

    "It's possible," Artemis said. "What kind of 'episodes'?"

    "Well I was in literature class, and we were reading a book about people stationed at the front during the Russo-Japanese War, when this short-haired woman dressed as a sailor senshi popped into my head."

    "How odd!" Artemis' tail twitched. "Was her hair blue?"

    "Blue?" I blurted out, confused, until I realized he thought I meant Mercury. "No, not blue, she was blonde. And..."

    I bit my lip. This was a serious gamble.

    "... she asked me to find Kaioh Michiru."

    -----
    Holy fuck this thing is longer than I thought it'd be. >_< I don't blame anyone who drops the story right here.

    I rendered my stream-of-consciousness as a dialogue to make it more comprehensible. Sorry that it's still confusing, what with the pronouns and everything, but my mind is a jumbled place.
     
  23. Hymn of Ragnarok

    Hymn of Ragnarok Well worn.

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    Wow. Uh, you are really baring your heart here and it kinda makes me feel guilty for mentally snarking earlier.

    Impressive length, and you're definitely hitting the "Flawed human being," note. I mean that in the best way. Although all your mental dialogue and talking to yourself spell was confusing cause I feel like I'm supposed to be hearing multiple different voices when I only have one mental 'voice' there.

    Was delighted to see the Gaijin Smash, you read that blog too?

    Huh, well you certainly had a lot of good lines and this was actually quite fun to read. I'm surprised. Nicely done Furiko.
     
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  24. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Oh, don't worry about it. I'm eminently snarkable. Just don't do it in front of me, 's all I ask.

    Part of the reason I wanted to write a self insert is that they never feel like insertions of the actual author into an actual full-bore universe; I never see anyone accurately depict the consequences of having the faults that they do.

    Ugh, don't praise my flaws, please. I can't do concise without also doing flippant, so when I try to be sincere I wax poetic until long after anyone who gives a fuck has gone home.

    Yeah, when my mind organizes itself, it likes to do so in the form of a really complicated conversation between the different emotions and stuff. It's impossible to get that across in a non-wanky-sci-fi sort of way, so I went for the 360p version.

    I'm using it as one of my primary sources for Japanese junior high school lore. ;)

    It may well be an impossible goal, but I hope I can keep this from sucking. I know I can't rehabilitate the self insert genre overnight, but if this one at least doesn't suck, I will feel I've done my duty.
     
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  25. Hymn of Ragnarok

    Hymn of Ragnarok Well worn.

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    Can do.

    You're doing a pretty good job so far.

    Curious though, have you read Reincarnation Roulette? If not, do so. Fantastic SI read. I've also heard the author's other fic Dreaming of Sunshine (I think) is a very good SI, but I also heard it was very slow in pacing and very long, so I never gave it a look myself.

    Heh, know that feeling. And the self-criticism, that seems a common trait amongst authors.

    Surprised you didn't just use different colors.

    Atta girl. Entertaining and educational.

    Once again: you're doing a pretty good job so far.
     
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  26. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    Nah, wouldn't work. They all sound like me. Now if I had full-on multiple personalities who could interact with each other, then I'd use coloured-text.
     
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  27. Hymn of Ragnarok

    Hymn of Ragnarok Well worn.

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    Fair enough.

    Also, surprised playing the stock market hasn't occurred to you yet. Or that you're in the Matrix/a Lotus Eater Machine. :p

    Or do the world's biggest troll and spoil books in advance of their release. Too frivolous, but the funny.....this example occurs to me because my sister spoiled the events of Harry Potter book 6 to my best friend, who had been doing his best to avoid spoilers as he worked his way through the book (much more slowly) than her.

    Man he was pissed.
     
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  28. FurikoMaru

    FurikoMaru Versed in the lewd.

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    I'm more of a write-hit-songs-before-they-were-written kind of girl, honestly. Call Me Maybe is so simple and relatable it could have charted in 1963.

    As for the Matrix thing... it's the same reason I don't assume that about real life, to be honest.

    If I'm in a Lotus Eater Machine, the worst thing that happens if I think it's real is that I live out my life having fun in a simulation designed by necessity to make me want to stay. However short that life may be, I'll probably make something of it and derive satisfaction from participating in it.

    If it's real, the worst thing that happens if I obsess about it being an illusion is that I fuck everything up for myself and the people around me and possibly starve to death.
     
  29. Hymn of Ragnarok

    Hymn of Ragnarok Well worn.

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    You'd unless that sound on the world?

    U evul.

    A fair point indeed. I'd probably be testing the limits of the world and seeing if I can find bugs or flaws to exploit just because....well, curiousity!

    Unless I'm amused or distracted by something else. Like a much less realistic and immersive video game. Lotusception?

    True, although there is the possibility of cracking the illusion.
     
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  30. Guile

    Guile Clothes That Kill Virgins

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    Haven't read through it yet, but you know, Minako-Furikomaru could realize her dream of becoming an idol!

    It's not cheating if it's chronologically impossible to get caught.
    The Venus adventures got an anime adaptation? Bitchin'.

    But yeah, the Dark Agency didn't really pull many punches, compared to Jadeite. They were in it to win it, and make a shitload of money while they were at it.