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This... uh. Hrm.

So, AUs. I enjoy making them, as well as seeking them out to see what new spins people put on familiar material. Very early this year, I came across one Sailor Moon AU that, to its credit, devised a clever way to introduce male Sailor Guardians and clearly had a lot of passion put into it. To its demerit--Jesus Christ, where do I start.

Lan and I picked this AU apart several times over the course of ‘22; eventually (by which I mean “today”), all the fixes and edits we made, along with the fact that nudging the AU even slightly towards canon compliance breaks it irreparably, accumulated into “Just Fork This Thing Already”. These images, made with good ‘ol Senshi Maker v3, are very rough drafts of what I’m calling the B-Team (i.e. the Solars) and C-Team; sometime soon, I hope to draw more refined concepts.

A not-so-brief rundown of what I liked about the original AU, what PISSED ME THE FUCK OFF, and what my intentions are for my own version. (I will not name the artist, in case someone with a wild hair up their ass tries to track them down.)

The Good: The Solar/Lunar system itself, which forms the AU’s basis. Every major planet has a Lunar (female) and Solar (male) Sailor Guardian, both using the same title; the exceptions are Sailors Moon and Sun, who are essentially each other’s opposite attributes, and the Starlights, who have both. Definitely feels like a more natural expansion to the setting than some other attempts to integrate male Sailor Guardians or knights that are pretty much the same thing.

The Bad: [insert protracted noise of frustration here]

* RAMPANT (INTERNALIZED) MISOGYNY. In brief, it’s the Solars who are all the true heirs of their planets--and because they all get OC girlfriends, the canon Lunars seem to be pretty much locked out of succession. (It’s not even clear what Usagi and Mamoru are meant to do come the Crystal Millennium, since another pair of OCs become the future rulers of Earth) Said OC girlfriends largely exist only to be love interests, some of them literally prancing in out of nowhere to declare themselves such. Special mention to Solar Uranus being of the highest caste (Uranus-the-planet’s culture is modeled on India here) and canon Uranus being classless pond scum who’s forbidden from wearing the official planet colours.

Oh yeah, everyone gets sorted into neat little heterosexual rows. This is important to note, because--

* Equally rampant heteronormalcy, which dips into outright homophobia. Only M/F relationships are taken seriously; Solar Sailor Venus, who is bisexual, is the victim of a shitty running gag wherein he expresses his attraction to Sailor Sun and gets assaulted for it. In fact, Solar Venus is punished for interacting with any guy, period, and the AU only stops kicking him around when he hooks up with a lady, Sailor Cupid.

And the Outers... let’s see if I can explain this with minimal profanity.

* Some people make Shitennou equivalents for the outer planets. Some people have them be all-male like the canon Shitennou and then pair them up with all four Outers, because they’re twats. And then [redacted] took this a step further and established that not only did Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto sell the Moon Kingdom out to Beryl, but Uranus and Neptune’s relationship was the result of Beryl’s influence. And all three of them did a dying face-turn, asked their fiances for forgiveness, and hooked up with them in the present (or maybe the Crystal Millennium).

There’s other shitty things piled onto Uranus and Neptune here, but this is the most rage-inducing.

* As for Pluto, she betrayed the Moon Kingdom because she got betrothed to a General and not a fellow Sailor Guardian. (Which Sailor Guardian, if any? Who knows, chump) Then she changes her mind for no apparent reason. But the demonization doesn’t end there: not only did the AU feel the need to “explain” why Pluto’s and Saturn’s powers were swapped (they weren’t), but Pluto, under Beryl’s direction, poisoned Saturn in order to facilitate this, by making Saturn too weak to invoke the power of time. All that bullshit, and the artist barely drew her in comparison to the other Outers.

* One of the antagonists is Hotaru’s (and Serenity’s) past-life cousin. His plan involves brainwashing and seducing Hotaru in the present day. When she is still twelve. And he’s a grown-ass adult. While it’s not fetishized, the gross aspects are not acknowledged, either.

I have other criticisms, such as a lack of cultural consistency with names, but these are the most important ones.

So What Am I Doing Here: Fixing shit, mostly.

* Cutting the cast down to (for the most part) the canon Sailor Guardians, the B-team, the C-team, and expies of the Outer Shitennou.

* The Lunars are back in charge; their Solar counterparts are lords at best--certainly not the “true” heirs.

* Those expies of the Outer Shitennou? I have plans for them. Sapphic plans.

* The Outers sure as fuck did not betray the Moon Kingdom. One set of counterparts may have, though...

* You might wonder why Sailor Sol (not “Sailor Sun”; I already have a character with that title) is absent. Well, who in canon SM was heavily associated with the Sun?

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