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iamafanofcartoons · 1 year

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We need to address how media, and media critics, portray female characters poorly. What can be done about it? What are examples of media works that portray complex female characters well? What are writing tips for people trying to write complex female characters? Why do media critics hate on women?

Its just something I noticed.

Male writers drop the ball with female characters all the time. They'll give the men all the good lines but women get weak roles and no sense of humor. When we complain they then make a female character who has too many boyfriends and too much ego and too much power but no resourcefulness, or she's super powerful but still needs a man to save her, and of course they make her complain about everything and fight with everyone who helps her. I could go on and on.

A lot of people are incapable of viewing female characters as anything other than an innocent saint or a portrait of pure evil. Arguably the best characters are morally ambiguous ones who live in the gray area between good and evil, but women are much less often afforded that distinction than their male counterparts.

I'm been having a huge problem connecting to media. The only women around are very young or very old and their main defining feature is usually motherhood. If a woman my age exists who isn't a mom she's usually either obsessed with men or desperate to have a baby (or will be once the right dude comes along).

Fanfiction has great female characters , but you keep running into people who will only write a complex woman who's tied to a male main character.

Michael Burnham from Star Trek: Discovery . POC Female Protagonist. You probably have heard or seen a lot of hatred against.

Korra from The Legend Of Korra. Sequel Series to ATLA. POC Female Protagonist. Despite losing fights and suffering extreme trauma and making mistakes, critics passionately bash the show, calling her a Mary-Sue, and accusing the show of being Protagonist-Centered Morality.

A lot of the time if there is a military high ranking female character or just female leader that is masculine or butch she will be the villain to be defeated by the traditionally feminine or at least more feminine heroine/love interest of the hero. I hate this because it basically implies that a woman can only be good if she’s conventionally attractive or a love interest. It’s saying being butch is bad/evil.

Even movies trying to be feminist, like “Contact” which I had to watch for homework? With Jodie Foster from the 1990s told the brilliant, focused woman scientist to not be so “confrontational” (as two male characters stole credit for her work right after they stole her funding) and to be happy with “small moves.” They continued to pat her on the head and tell her to be quiet through the whole movie. The one time she even spoke to another woman was to ask where she could find a really pretty dress. This was supposed to show growth in her character arc.

If I recall correctly, one of the playable characters in the next release of the grand theft auto series is gonna be a women. People online were flipping out over this saying they are being too "woke", among other things. Its funny to me because there has been 5 gta games with only male protagonists, and now there's 1 female in it and suddenly its a problem. Its like these people think there are only 2 genders in games, male and woke.

Heck, people love basic trope laden protagonists..... until they are women.

People love unreasonably over powered characters that are loved or feared in equal measure by the entire cast..... until its a woman.

Then all of a sudden, she's a Mary-Sue and the show/game/book is "Protagonist-Centered Morality"

Some characters who are torn apart for their initial naïveté like Sansa Stark or Usagi Tsukino (Sailor Moon) are immediately written off as stupid girl characters. Never mind that one becomes a political powerhouse and the other routinely saves the world. People just write their characters off as too “girly” or “annoying” before they even have the chance to redeem themselves in their stories.

Feels like at it's core, people don't like women trying to build self confidence and play out power fantasies. The only difference with the original Mary Sue was that she was imagining being liked by everyone, which was every woman's dream back then and to a certain extent, now. The power was being well liked, and that made her annoyingly boring because there was no struggle for her. Men think struggle is needed, even in fantasies and dreams, but it isn't.

The term Mary-Sue gained a new popularity by shaming female characters (such as Rey, Galadriel, Captain Marvel,…). I am not saying the term is not used towards male characters as well, but it is more rare, and it is rarely as violent as when it is used to characterize a female character.

More importantly it is used against female characters unevenly compared to male characters, its accepted as a genre trope for a male character to be extremely capable or to acrue experience and ability rapidly throughout the narrative. But when it's a woman suddenly "realism" must apply, a real person doesn't simply gain strength and talent through endless perfectly leveled hardship. In simpler terms, Batman can launch a thug across the room with a single punch and it's awesome, Black Widow, however, is breaking the laws of physics when she does her famous around the neck takedown.

Neither are realistic, arguably any grown man launching another grown man bodily through the air with a casual punch is less realistic than a woman pulling off a skilled takedown, but the unequal application of standards says all that needs to be said about the critic.

Writing a "mary sue" to be male often results in a praised character that people don't really worry about. Like Goku or Kirito. People are fine with it. Enjoy it. And there's massive amounts of rather popular fanfiction taking random male characters in series and sue-ifying them, making them the protagonist over the actual main characters, and slapping in poorly developed romance arcs. It's "mary sue" 101, but hardly anyone talks about them in that light.

Meanwhile a woman shows a level of competence similar to another character in the same series (e.g. Rey to Luke or Anakin) and the accusations are everywhere.

Calling these characters one-dimensional is one of the dog-whistles of the modern [whatever]-gate colony creature.

They know that they'll get savaged if they come out and say they're mad because this character is a woman, so they couch everything in these subjective terms. She's one-dimensional. She's flat. She's badly written. She's a mary sue. I just couldn't relate to her.

You can argue with them, you can point out that, say, in Star Wars, that Rey's ability to handle weapons intentionally established in the early scenes of TFA, that we see the setup for the skills she's going to display later in the movie/series, and that her first win is against a badly wounded Sith apprentice. By contrast, Luke successfully fights his way through a huge space station against professional soldiers, then hops into a starfighter he's never flown before, outflies a bunch of experienced pilots, and pulls off a physically impossible shot to save the day.

But sure. Rey is the one who strains credulity.

You can point all that out, but none of it matters. They're not arguing in good faith. They're just mad that there's a girl, and know better than to say that out loud.

He pulls off the shot because he has a throwaway line about murdering animals the size of a camel for fun in his civilian craft that just so happens to have controls similar to the military superiority fighter because they were manufactured by the same company. Because that doesn't strain credibility. Also guess which parts were filled in later by novel writers who were like, "holy **** that makes no sense at all"

Sailor Moon and Sansa Stark are two female characters that start out as whiney cry-baby girlie girls who evolve into political powerhouses and heroes in their own right. But most people write their characters off immediately, because they’re disgusted by their girlish-ness.

While our media gives male characters a chance to grow, female characters are generally written off unless they either show masculine traits, or are used for fan service. It’s why women in movies and TV are usually a kickass tomboy or a girlfriend character.

So anyway, I guess my point is that there are amazing kickass women characters who are well-written and evolve and grow, but their growth tends to be written off as frivolous and not as cool as their dude counterparts.

Imagine an anime where the woman is the main character and she's strong, smart, and not sexualized ?

How about Guardian of the Spirit (seirei no moribito in Japanese)? The MC is a mercenary woman who fights with a spear. She's a complex character, maybe somewhat emotionally stunted because of growing up on the road. She meets a wonderful, compassionate male healer and I love how they break stereotypical gender roles. There's also a complete badass old lady with magical powers and a temper. One of my favourite characters in any genre.

But I'd like to add SuleMio to the list.

Some people did not like that Gundam had its first female protagonist last year, or that she's engaged to another girl, or that they have a romantic moment where Miorine makes Suletta "promise to be with me forever".

It's my first Gundam show and I was nowhere near the fandom, but even I heard the howls of rage from the otakus over that show while it was airing.

“ I highly recommend reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Strong female main character with a supportive cast of male characters. His Skyward series is also good for this. Sanderson is great but there are some female fantasy writers that do this even better IMO. NK Jemisin has tons of great female characters. Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series has a majority female cast and I’d say 4 or 5 of them are in the top ten most interesting and complex female characters I’ve read. “

You heard of The Bechdel test: Two women have to talk about something other than a man. There is no time window. It came up in a 1985 comic Dykes To Watch Out For and although it is not a great indicator of more feminist content, it's a wonder much media fails to pass that test.

Have you seen

Arcane? That is a wild crazy masterpiece with awesomely complex awesome characters. It's animated, yeah, so what? But I mean, to say "it's animated" is a heavy understatement. Have you seen Jinx? Have you seen her portrayal of psychosis and godknows what else was happening in her head? No one in history came even close to that.

Queen's Gambit? Anya Taylor-Joy brought Beth Harmon flawlessly through immense complexity of the character

Mare of Easttown - Kate Winslet there is, I kid you not, the best acting I have ever seen. Her character is going through complex situations and emotions and learning to deal with her human side. Bryan Cranston raised the bar ridiculously high with Walter White, but Kate Winslet pushed it further up, set explosives on it, and walked away like a badass without looking at the explosion. No one is topping that anytime soon.

I'm sure there are more examples. But what I love about these, and a big part of what makes them perfect is that they are their own characters and aren't defined by men around them. Their greatn

I wish female characters were given better in terms of development and characterization. Honestly, I feel like a lot of people hate female characters simply because most male dominated media does such a poor job of writing women, and those characters aren't given the same excuses as poorly written male characters.

Anyway, yeah, sorry for my rant. Having grown up on Anime, Harry Potter, Star Wars, you name it?

I later in life realized what was missing, what is needed, and really needed to hear other people's input on this stuff.

I never understood the need for every main character to be only a cishet white guy. I had already come up with several characters of my own, all of them LGBTQIA+, and half of them women, and several also POC. But my writing and art skills are poor so I can't visualize them properly...

We need more female authors, and we need to promote the ones that are out there more!

(there are plenty of really, really good female authors, in all genres, but often they get less attention, because, well, misogyny)

Edit: If you want an example of how the double-standard towards women and LGBT is applied? Go watch RWBY or Legend of Korra. Both involve a deconstruction of tropes. Both involve women standing up against an authority that demands respect based on being authority, not based on respect. Both shut down the white male savior trope so hard, that men and women who love the patriarchy despise both shows.

But of course, anything that Team RWBY or Korra does is immediately held to a double standard and ripped into for anything that they do NOT because they’re flawed or because of writing decisions. Its because they’re LGBT women that they’re held under a microscope. Or have you noticed that every fixit fanfic for both series involves defending the Patriarchy while supporting toxic masculinity and trying to revive the White Male Savior trope that both shows have tried so hard to bury six feet under?

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caramel-ribbons · 1 year

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Feminist Recs for Anime (For Women’s History Month)

If you want a little more in-depth explanation, then check out my previous post, but this is a project I’ll be dabbling in for women’s history month. Throughout March (we’re already five days in, I know, don’t mention it), I’ll be recommending feminist anime, or at least anime I believe are feminist, for you to add to your list as a celebration for women’s history month.

These anime feature strong female protagonists, fleshed out casts of female characters, little to no fanservice, and some have social and political themes related to womanhood, female friendships, and focus on female-driven narratives.

2. Sailor Moon (Original 90s Anime)

Features a majority female cast with a female lead and a sci-fi fantasy story.

Today, we’re going with a classic. Everyone knows what Sailor Moon is. Even if they don’t know the names of all the senshi, and even if they haven’t picked up a single issue of the manga or watched a single episode of either one of the anime adaptations, they still probably know the words to the English theme song or can attribute the now iconic sailor uniforms to this show. Not to mention this catchphrase. Sailor Moon has become a staple of the magical girl genre and is responsible for its popularity and many of the tropes we now associate with it.

For a run down on the story, Sailor Moon is about Usagi Tsukino; an ordinary teenage girl who is one day assigned a magical destiny to become a sailor senshi (a guardian and monster fighter), find a missing princess, and defeat an evil queen who’s in some way responsible for her disappearance (at least this is the plot of the first season cause the show drifts away from this initial story as we’re exposed to more villains and characters). Along the way, she finds the other senshi and learns more about her duty to not just the Earth, but to her galaxy.

Sailor Moon is well-beloved for a reason. It’s funny (think slapstick and situational humor), and starts off with relatively low stakes, but as the show goes on, the mystery and intrigue surrounding this story is slowly revealed to us. It’s big in terms of the scale of its plot. Since this is a sci-fi focused on planetary themed heroes, the villains and challenges vary between monster of the week to galaxy-level threats, especially in later episodes and seasons. Villains become harder to defeat, and the ensuing battles as you near the end of seasons becomes so gripping it’s hard to resist stopping once you’ve reached the final 5 or 6 episode finales.

Most of the characters aren’t the most deep or unique, but they are all fun and likable, and they’re definitely solid in terms of how diverse they’re portrayals of femininity are. This is one area where Sailor Moon shines. More than most Western animated shows, Sailor Moon managed to offer varied depictions of teenage girls unseen at the time. Some were elegant and artistic like Sailor Neptune, others were hot-headed and ambitious like Sailor Mars. You had the quiet intelligence of Sailor Mercury as well as the determined passion of Sailor Venus.

Makoto, aka. Sailor Jupiter, one of my favorites of the senshi, embodies this femininity concept as she is both feminine (an excellent cook and hopeless romantic), as well as masculine (brave, strong, and an excellent fighter). The anime doesn’t demonize femininity or masculinity, and as a result, the characters are allowed to fall on a scale in terms of their gender expression (which we’ll get to later). While the anime has since been criticized for having characters who feel too rooted in stagnant tropes, I think that, for the most part, the sailor senshi are given enough screen time and development to at least be easy to root for. And, the relationships the girls have with each other really inspires you to love them as you become invested in their friendship.

And, of course, Usagi, our Sailor Moon, is a protagonist who ages well. This is a chosen one story, and I’d argue that it’s one of the better ones because of how it handles Usagi. She famously starts out as a lazy, flighty crybaby but comes into her own as a leader and learns to take her destiny more seriously (…for the most part anyway). The chosen one narrative really lands because, as the series progresses, we see Usagi grapple with her responsibilities. Her kindness is valued as much as her strength, if not more. The thing that makes her question and voice regrets towards her destiny is the same thing that drives her to make good choices, especially in the later seasons.

Beyond the coming of age themes featured heavily in this show, there are themes of fate, love, loneliness, responsibility, and even moral and philosophical questions asked later on in the show when our characters are a little older. Relationships are important in this series whether they be the romantic (think Sailor Uranus and Neptune as well as Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask), or platonic. Friendships, specifically female friendships, are not only seen as important. They’re a superpower. As much as Usagi’s relationship with Mamoru, aka. Tuxedo Mask, is an important relationship throughout the series, it’s the bond Usagi shares with her fellow senshi and friends that helps them save the world, and as cheesy as that sounds, to have something so simple and so beautiful be the solution to end of the world level problems feels comforting in the times we’re in right now.

When it comes to the good, Sailor Moon is a mixture of fun, episodic adventures and serialized, earth-shattering conflicts. Also, there’s the show’s overall aesthetic. While the animation itself is pretty slow and stilted, (particularly in the older seasons), the backgrounds are very pretty to look at and the fashion is objectively magnificent (unless your Tuxedo Mask then rip). There’s a reason you see so many aesthetic boards related to this anime. The pastel, watercolor style is so nice to look at. As for the soundtrack, it’s as magical as the show. Some favorites of mine, besides the theme song, are the ending of season 3, Tuxedo Mirage, Moon Revenge, and We Believe You.

There’s also Sailor Moon’s diversity in terms of gender expression and sexuality. The girls often talk about boys, Usagi even has a relationship with Mamoru (the only recurring male character for a solid four seasons if you don’t count Artemis), but they’re not straight in the slightest. With the entrance of two important characters, Sailor Moon displays it’s first instance of LGBT representation that would set the series a part from other anime of this time:

Sailor Uranus and Neptune.

The same way Sailor Moon earns its status as a mainstay in Shoujo and magical girl anime, Sailor Uranus and Neptune, aka. Haruka and Michiru deserve their status as one of the best examples of LGBT representation not only in Shoujo, not only in anime, but in media itself. Even though we (technically) never see them share a kiss, the relationship between Haruka and Michiru is one of the strongest in the series. They’re given history, they get to express affection. These two are literally meant to be by each other’s side. When they enter the series, suddenly all of our protagonists display some level of attraction towards them, especially towards Haruka, and increasingly it isn’t seen as weird to them where it once was. Best of all, Haruka and Michiru are characters who are allowed to be beautiful and talented as well as morally-questionable, even downright unlikable, and while this makes it hard for some fans to enjoy their 90s portrayal, I really like having one of the earliest examples of queer characters in anime being two women who are admirable and heroic as much as they are unsympathetic and flawed.

But Sailor Moon doesn’t stop at inclusions of LGBT relationships. It also explores gender identity in a way that still feels unfamiliar even now. Haruka is more butch-presenting. The aforementioned Jupiter is both girly and tomboyish, and then there’s the depiction of the Sailor Starlights as gender-fluid. One of the Sailor Starlights, Seiya, even had a (mostly) unrequited crush on Usagi.

Now for the…not so good.

Sailor Moon is long. Like…absurdly long, and like most long-running anime, this is due to massive amounts of filler. I will say that the filler episodes vary. Some have great character moments, some are emotional, and there are some episodes which are just as much must-watches as any plot-drive episode. I’d even argue for some of the filler arcs people like to skip such as the twin alien arc of season 2 and the Nephrite arc which, while creepy and weird and definitely worthy of criticism, offers greater development for a side character and gives us our first glimpse of a sympathetic villain.

That’s not to say there aren’t any bad filler episodes. That’s definitely not the case. Sailor Moon has its fair share of boring, tedious, or otherwise unnecessary episodes which do nothing to develop the characters or flesh out their dynamic. The original anime is 200 episodes long, so it’s up to you to decide if you want to watch all the episodes or if you want to plow through and decide which episodes are worth your time because I can say that not all of them are.

There’s also the divisive nature of Usagi, or rather, how she’s treated. For some, the show is too mean-spirited to her regarding her laziness and immaturity (basically her child-like traits because she’s, y’know, a child). For some, this is particularly egregious with how she’s treated by Luna, Chibi Moon, and Sailor Mars. This is also a good time to mention the…strange diet culture surrounding Sailor Moon. It isn’t unique to this series, sadly, and it isn’t even the worst example of it. Everything from Toradora to Azumanga Daioh to K-On to Lucky Star has dialogue and even certain characters who are the butt of fat jokes or minor, but still present, diet plot lines. Sailor Moon isn’t the worst offender, but it’s still present, particularly with Usagi who, despite being as skinny as all of the other senshi, seems to be the main recipient of weight-related comments.

So, if you want a show with a wide variety of female characters and a greater focus on their friendships and heroism, and if you’re willing to deal with some filler content, minor references to diet culture (as long as you skip episode 4 I’m begging you to skip episode 4 it’s not good), and some minor but persistent humor poking fun at our protagonist, then I think everyone looking for female-centric anime should start here.

(Also if you’re willing to put up with some pretty nonsensical drama between Usagi and Mamoru for two seasons, give this a shot).

#sailor moon #anime #shoujo #feminism #women’s history month

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lesyeuxdefany · 3 years

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Sailor Moon Episode 13

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kanrrapenguin · 6 years

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Sailor Moon

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DevianART: http://kanrrabaskerville.deviantart.com/ Instagram: KanrraPenguin

Twitter : @Kanrrapenguin

#sailor moon #sailor moon fanart #fanart #Illustration #usagi tsukino #luna #cat #feminist #pastel colors #cute #kawaii #print #doodle #grunge

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radicalfemoftheday · 6 years

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radical feminist of the day: sailor moon (usagi tsukino)

#radfem #radical feminism #radical feminist theory #radical feminist #trans exclusionary radical feminism #gender critical #terf #terf safe #terf positivity #character of the day #radfem of the day #sailor moon #usagi tsukino #anime

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havocadoooo · 6 years

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#mine fragile masculinity feminism feminist sailormoon usagi tsukino mamoru chiba sailor moon

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mk-wizard · 3 years

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Future Sailor Moon Reboot: Usagi must NEVER become queen!

Hello

As a huge Sailor Moon fan who firmly believes that even now, it is the best magical girl anime series ever written and still withstands the test of time as being feminist, feminine positive, progressive, LGBT+ positive and promoting the message at how love can make us heroes. And it is safe to say that the Crystal and Eternal reboots will not be the last time this exquisite series will ever be brought back to life because Sailor Moon isn’t just a series, it is a franchise and an icon like Wonder Woman, Batman, Spiderman and more.

However, just because I do think so highly of it doesn’t mean I am blind to its flaws or ideas that could have been better hence why I am open to another Sailor Moon series taking a different route altogether kind of like the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon TV series did. Nobody has to agree with me on what I am about to get off my chest and I warn you now that if you have never read the manga or seen any of the anime, you are in for some spoilers.

I believe it would be best for a modern retelling of Sailor Moon if Usagi Tsukino NEVER becomes queen and instead lives out her life as an ordinary person and I think everyone else should do that too. And here are the following reasons as to why and before you get ideas, Chibi-Usa is one of my favourite characters in the series and I want her to stay as she adds a lot to the story. More about how she still fits in and benefits from Usagi never becoming queen.

1- It is not Usagi’s duty or life purpose to become queen anymore anyway. - The original Queen Serenity didn’t reincarnate everyone to just go back to their old failed lives. She did so because she wanted everyone to live happy peaceful lives which meant being reborn as normal people. She was ok with them never becoming Sailor Guardians ever again or remembering their old lives. All that she wanted was for them to be happy and for her daughter to finally be with the man she loved. The queen even said it herself that the end all be all of Usagi’s life meaning is as a normal girl. She even gave Beryl a second chance at finding happiness in life, but she gave into temptation again which required the gang to rebecome Sailor Guardians and in the case of Usagi, become (the first ever) Sailor Moon. When you stop and think about it, Usagi is not really princess Serenity. She is just the princess reborn. Her life, her personality, her ambitions and even duties are completely different. Usagi’s true obligation in her current life is to be Sailor Moon Earth’s guardian hence why the story is even called “Sailor Moon” not “Princess Moon” or “Princess Serenity”.

2- Usagi and the rest of the Sailor Guardians as well as Mamoru are better this way. - Usagi going back to her old life means everyone else to go back to their old lives too. And while Usagi is living the dream life as a queen with Mamoru as her king at first glance, everyone is actually getting cheated at their second lives especially when it comes to everyone else. For one thing, the rest of the Sailor Guardians cannot find love, have families or be anything else beyond being guardians, and it was established that everyone was on their way to building their lives as normal people including Mamoru. And that’s especially rough for the Outer Guardians who would then have to go back to just being bound to a post for all eternity all alone. This is really sad for Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune who fell in love because it means they are destined to eventually separate for life. Also, nobody has a shorter stick in Usagi becoming Neo Queen Serenity than Sailor Saturn who will literally have to spend her existence being in some enchanted coma and only awaken to destroy worlds. Nothing about this is romantic or beautiful for anyone really. Everyone is actually getting cheated including Usagi and Mamoru. More on this in the next point. As for what Usagi does with her life when she becomes an adult, she simply lives out her life and marriage happily with Mamoru who becomes a doctor just as he was studying for while she becomes a housewife like her mother does which is completely ok while they have kids together. And at that point, retires from being Sailor Moon because all evil has been eliminated for now while all the other Sailor Guardians also retire and live happily ever after doing what they want to do. If you ask me, that doesn’t sound so bad.

3- Usagi already decided she just wanted to be an ordinary person since the end of the Dark Kingdom arc which was the first arc too. - I have reason to believe that Naoko Takuechi herself was open to the idea of Usagi just remaining Usagi hence why in the first anime, Usagi turned back time one year and wiped out her own memories and in the manga as well as Crystal anime, she outright turned down the offer to be crowned queen once the Dark Kingdom was defeated. She did this because she knows what she is and what her limits are. Usagi respects her previous life and appreciates it very much hence why she takes being Sailor Moon seriously, but I since that moment, I go the impression that deep down, she doesn’t see herself as Princess Serenity or as a princess at all and I find that admirable. Accepting that this isn’t who she is anymore is in fact mature and intelligent. Not to mention she also letting go of the tragic past and moving on to the life she was really meant to have. And what I find even better is that Queen Serenity accepted that and considered that as the right choice. Having Usagi still become queen after she made her choice is contradictory and suddenly makes her choice lose all meaning.

4- Chibi-Usa needs a better backstory and reason for being anyway. - As I said before, Chibi-Usa is one of my favourite characters and I like her being related to Sailor Moon, but I must be blunt; I hate her backstory especially the manga version. I love her, but I don’t like her being 900 years old yet still a kid, a powerless princess, having a crush on her own dad and putting the moves on him as Black Lady, and being the direct daughter of Usagi and Mamoru yet looking nothing like either of them. Dropping the whole Usagi-becomes-queen idea would in fact benefit Chibi-Usa most of all because she has the opportunity to be given a much better backstory and reason for staying in the past that makes sense. I even have an idea for one;

Chibi-Usa is a very distant descendent of Usagi and Mamoru making her their very great granddaughter. Every single person in her family has powers in them, but remain dormant because since the last Sailor Moon (who was their ancestor Usagi, but that fact remains lost to the family), there has been no need for someone else to take up being Sailor Moon or Tuxedo Mask. The Silver Crystal is a secret family heirloom that gets passed down from mother to daughter to be kept safe and secret. By the 30th century, Earth has become a Utopia where Chibi-Usa’s mother is the ambassador of Japan making her a modern day queen in a way. The Ambassador is a sophisticated lady which Chibi-Usa aspires to be, but falls short because she is only a little girl and is very different from her. When the Black Moon Clan invades Earth, the Ambassador tries to get the Silver Crystal to save the day, but her daughter has stolen it not knowing would happen. Once everything is in ruin, Chibi-Usa cannot activate the Silver Crystal because she doesn’t know how, so she goes to the past to find the legendary Sailor Moon using the time key which is one of the many other relics her ancestor Sailor Moon had. Everything would go down the same way except now it makes sense; Chibi-Usa wouldn’t know that Usagi is Sailor Moon because the true identity of Sailor Moon was lost to history even in their family. Also, her having a crush on a teen Mamoru while having more of a sisterly relationship with Usagi makes sense because they have never met before and their relation is very distant at this point. Heck, even her outfit makes sense! She dresses like an average girl because she really is one and that’s ok! After Chibi-Usa rejects the Black Malefic Crystal, her Silver Crystal activates and he becomes the new Sailor Moon of her time. Once all is well and Chibi-Usa (not her mother) repairs all the damage done to the Earth, she makes peace with her mother and stays for a while in the past to be trained because there are no Sailor Guardians in the 30th century.

Now that I got my idea out of the way, back to the list...

5- Usagi not being queen doesn’t change anything important. - Everything that happens in the story of Sailor Moon happens while she is Usagi Tsukino not as a queen and even the Black Moon Arc can still work with some rewriting as I have suggested. So is it really such a huge loss for her to never become queen? Even with the Dead Moon Circus arc, that was not Usagi ascending to the throne because at the end of it, she just went back to being Usagi. Even at the end of the Stars Arc which is the final arc of the story, she doesn’t become queen. In the manga and in the live action TV show, she just marries Mamoru and even then, as Usagi. Dead Moon Circus arc was more like a story that showed Chibi-Usa’s growth as a Sailor Guardian as well as putting the last bit of the Sailor Guardians tragic previous lives to rest.

So that’s my argument. I say let’s not add frosting to an already iced cake. What do you all think and what is your input on this subject or perhaps your counter arguments? I would love to hear them.

Thank you for listening and as always, stay safe and have a great day.

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raebirdart · 7 years

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Redid ya girl 🌙✨❤♀

#sailor moon #sailor moon fanart #sailor moon art #usagi tsukino #rosie the riveter #feminist art

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animenu · 5 years

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it’s her!!!

my literal first-ever fan art is of feminist icon tsukino usagi

click for better quality

#sailor moon #bishojo senshi sera mun #bishojo senshi sailor moon #usagi tsukino #fanart #sailor moon fanart

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spooky-sensei · 7 years

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🌙moon child

#sailor moon #usagi tsukino #feminism #feminist #mine

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brazenautomaton · 5 years

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also forget everything about marvel’s sailor moon

how could I have been so blind

lame starter villain? no, I was too held down to the previous forms

the first movie is about Usagi meeting the team one by one

the first villain is not Jaedite, it’s Fiore

because Usagi’s whole thing is “I am such an unmitigated human disaster how can I be a superhero”

and the climax of the movie that cements Who She Is and What She Is About is in fact the climax of Promise of the Rose: Usagi fucks up, she fails, Fiore has her by the collar and his slapping the shit out of her, screaming “You don’t know what it’s like! To be alone! To be hated! To have no friends! Nobody who cares if you live or die!” as we flash back to Usagi balming the miserable loneliness of the other four Sailors, in scenes we saw earlier extended to give them new and darker context

Mamoru don’t show up until the second movie so he’s instead chastely obsessed with Naru. we can let the feminists think that the villain is an incel so they’ll think we’re on their side, but actually his portrayal is very sympathetic because empathy is the whole fucking point here

we also create a multi-movie arc where at the beginning Usagi is unable to rise to the power of Sailor Moon to defeat evil but it’s okay because her power is literally friendship and how she brought people together. then she rises to her role as Sailor Moon, and then finally against Galaxia, just like in the anime, this is a problem that cannot be solved by Sailor Moon and must be solved by Usagi Tsukino.

#fanfic #marvel's sailor moon

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solarsystemjedi · 7 years

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Punk Sailor Moon

Been trying out digital painting techniques

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packitandgo · 5 years

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Tag yourself as three fictional characters + tag 5 friends !!!

tagged by @boudiscanon

1. Usagi Tsukino

--> bi - LOUD - loves food - clumsy - Struggling - oblivious - easily Confused - SLEEPY

2. Jake Peralta

--> bi - Disaster - MAIL TUB - cool cool cool cool cool - “im uncomfortable with emotion” - ADHD to the MAX - obsessed with certain movies and loves quoting things - Not Quite an Adult

3. Beatrice Duke

--> Dramatic - holds a grudge like WHOA - hurt my friends and DIE FUCKFACE - feminist - awkward - hides feelings Badly - SUPER CUDDLY and physically affectionate - laughs super hard at own jokes

tagging!! @sadesucc @acesiren @maryalittlelamb @drdone @grassepi @jamthedingus @sakura-daydream anndd YOU!! if u wanna do it!! (pls tag me i love seeing things)

#tag game #ask memes for ts #answered!#this was super fun once i thought of characters lmao!! (who am i!! i dont even know!!)

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readingsweetblueflowers · 5 years

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All Japanese

Before I get to the main attraction (i.e., Rokumeikan) it’s worth taking a moment to consider the other plays presented at the Fujigaya drama festival. The first point worth noting (as Kazusa does while reading the flyer) is that all the plays are Japanese in origin and on Japanese themes.

This contrasts with the previous year, when the plays seemed “designed to avoid as much as possible anything that hints of transgression .... through productions that are isolated in time and place from modern Japan, and thus avoid direct commentary on contemporary Japanese society.” None of this year’s plays take place in modern Japan, but a play like Rokumeikan is certainly more relevant to contemporary Japanese society than Wuthering Heights.

What about the other two? The Bamboo Cutter is based on a thousand-year-old Japanese folktale (竹取物語 Taketori Monogatari), also known as The Tale of Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語 Kaguya-hime no Monogatari), about an old childless couple who discover a baby in a stalk of bamboo and raise her as their own. As she grows to become a young woman she is beset by suitors, including the Emperor, but refuses them all, and is eventually carried away to the moon to rejoin her people.

This seems simply a charming tale fit for elementary school students, but as Caroline Cao points out in an Anime Feminist article, it can be interpreted as implicitly criticizing a father driven by “patriarchal obsessions” to seek social status for himself through his daughter’s marriage: “Had Kaguya’s father not been oblivious to her evident pain and so presumptuous of her welfare, perhaps Kaguya would have lived happily in an earthly life ... away from the greed of men seeking to make a wife out of her.”

The Izu Dancer is a more modern tale, based on a 1926 short story by the famous Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. Better known in the West as The Dancing Girl of Izu (伊豆の踊子 Izu no odoriko), the story was an early highlight in a career that eventually saw Kawabata win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. (Incidentally, that award apparently was a severe blow to Yukio Mishima, as he had also been considered a candidate and thought the Nobel committee would not soon give the award again to a Japanese writer.)

The Dancing Girl of Izu has been translated into English at least twice, by Edward Seidensticker and later by J. Martin Holman. (The Holman translation is apparently more faithful to the Japanese, but I think the Seidensticker translation reads better as English.) Wikipedia calls it “a lyrical and elegiac memory of early love”, but to my Western eye it’s also more than a bit creepy.

Why might I think that? Let’s look at a summary of the plot (from Answers.com): “The nineteen year old narrator, an introspective student on a holiday from an upper class school in Tokyo, ... meets and becomes infatuated with a young dancer in a traveling family of entertainers. At first he feels a vague erotic attraction to her. But when he sees her in the nude in a public bath, he realizes that she is still a [thirteen year old] child, still pure and innocent. This changes his feelings for her to a loving brother-like protector. He is accepted by and becomes close to the family. ... At the end the narrator and the little dancer part with the promise that they will meet again. Yet we understand, as the narrator seems to realize, that this will never happen; this sweet tender moment in life has passed, and the love they feel is impossible.”

(The Seidensticker version gives the student’s and the girl’s ages as 19 and 13 respectively, the Holman version as 20 and 14. I’m guessing that this is because Holman is translating literally ages originally written according to the older Japanese system in which a child is considered to be one year old at birth and their age increases by one year at every New Year.)

On the one hand one could agree with critic Mark Morris that this is a story “about cleansing, purification ... [a] narrative vision that ... generates impulses of release, near jouissance, by means of an effacement of adult female sexuality and its replacement by an impossible white void of virginity ...”, and see it as a worthy literary accomplishment. On the other hand, if one has nearly drowned in the great wave of anime and manga featuring prepubescent “waifus” worshiped for their purity and innocence then the story can be a bit harder to take.

So how has The Dancing Girl of Izu been able to inspire at least six films, three television dramas, and (in Sweet Blue Flowers) an adaptation for the stage deemed suitable for a production by middle schoolers in a stodgy girl’s academy? Some adaptations side-step the implications of the plot by aging the dancing girl up, as in the 1933 silent film version in which the girl’s age goes unmentioned and the 24 year old star Kinuyo Tanaka is hard to mistake for a minor. Others age the student down, as the Fujigaya production presumably does. And some may not care, just as lots of people don’t seem to care that thirteen year old Usagi Tsukino has a boyfriend who’s a university student.

The more interesting question is, does Takako Shimura care? I have no way of knowing. But I will repeat what I have written multiple times now, that Sweet Blue Flowers seems to implicitly endorse relationships between equals (Akira and Fumi, Orie and Hinako) relative to relationships between those unequal in age or other aspects (Chizu and Fumi, Yasuko and Fumi, and Ko and Kyoko). From that point of view I hope you’ll forgive me if I interpret Shimura’s reference to The Izu Dancer as a subtle hint that contemporary Japanese society still has some issues when it comes to young girls and older guys.

#Sweet Blue Flowers #Aoi Hana #Takako Shimura #yuri #manga #Yasunari Kawabata

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