Chapter Two is up

[DHBirr]

(I also have yet to figure out why Serenity was cloistered in her palace when she was as powerful a sorceress as she was.  What was she doing that was more important than personally blowing away battalions of youma?)

The Doylist perspective is that Serenity is a princess archetype, the symbol of the purity of the empire, and should not be seen doing anything to dirty her hands.  Possibly that was the Watsonian perspective as well, that anything like combat was beneath the Queen's dignity.  There's a historical double standard where kings are expected to lead armies, but female monarchs are supposed to let other people fight for them.
...
It's possible that by the time the battle came to the Moon, the war was already lost.  Possibly as a result of the above attitude, if it existed.  I mean seriously, it was all a bit like Berlin in April 1945.  It's possible that Serenity was casting the spells to send her descendants into the next age, or to create the spell that sealed Metaria.  She was cloistered so that she could do the work to send a light into the future.  After all, if you use the Ginzuishou without a plan first, who knows what sort of problems you could cause?

A possibility that occurs to me is that, depending on how her magic worked, "cloistered in her palace" might in fact be the most effective place she could be for "blowing away battalions of youma...." I mean, suppose she had her best-prepared pentacle, or whatever she used, at a the lunar equivalent of a node within the palace, and when standing within that magic circle her spells were amplified so she could drop pinpoint annihilation on enemies thousands or millions of kilometers away? Her advisers wouldn't, then, want her to be anywhere in a battle that gave her less targeting range or precision than that.  It needn't work exactly on those terms, but anyway following the concept that from inside the palace she was able to use her magic more powerfully than when out on the front lines.

Edit: In short, she was the heavy artillery. You don't put that in front of the infantry.

[Labster]

So true about the artillery. But it's hard to square the circle of the Silver Millennium seeming like romantic fiction and having the hero cowardly cast spells from inside her tower. Compare, from two ages prior, Gandalf who charged into battles and Saruman who stayed in his tower.

[Isodecan]

I don't post much on any of the sites I am on, and I am fairly sure this is my first time posting on this one.  When I first saw this section in DWS-2

Safely out of sight between featureless concrete on one side and a brick wall with only a couple windows on the other, I murmured, "System. Load song, 'I'm A Pioneer'. Play song." As the first few piano notes sounded my metagift engaged, and I took off. I accelerated to a couple hundred kph almost immediately, but waited until I was at least two kilometers up before flooring it. I was in hard vacuum within a minute. I aimed myself at the full moon overhead, then blinked in and out of FTL.

Using FTL to get to something as close as the moon would normally be overkill, but I only had five minutes and seven seconds of flight and — more importantly — life support. I'd already used a minute of both just getting into space. Trying to fly to the moon at my atmospheric maximum of Mach 6 would have left me stranded somewhere in LEO when the song ran out. But outside of the atmosphere, I could "shift gears" and instead of Mach 6, I could hit 6c. And at 6c, the moon was easily reachable.

Besides, this was far from my first rodeo; I'd perfected the quarter-second FTL hop to the moon back when Homeline had been threatened by an alien invasion staging there. I'd gotten into the habit of dropping by once a day to fuck their shit up until we finally blew the hell out of them. (Hyperflight plus several big bags of ball bearings can make for one nasty anti-personnel and anti-materiel weapon.)

I just wondered which song Doug used at that point for FTL flight, since I find it inconceivable that "I'm A Pioneer" (or at least Tenchi Muyo) could have even been conceived of by the Japanese of Doug's Homeline.  But then:

Bob Schroeck

Ya know, I kind of hope he goes back to the old palace, with or without the Senshi. Give the soldiers, nobles, and subjects there their long overdue burials/pyres somehow. Maybe shortly before the Battle of D-Point.

Well, now that he's actually been there, he can teleport there and not have to use his one out-of-atmosphere flight song to get there and back.  So it's entirely possible.  And as you've seen in DW8, he has at least one song which creates a teleport gate.

And there's a bit in canon where the Senshi go to the moon and interact with a recording of the Queen (which she made when in between everything else going on in those last fifteen to thirty minutes?); I will be doing a version of that if unexpected plot developments don't obviate it.

So, I was wondering if he did actually have another FTL flight song, one that would be more apropos of the culture shown in Homeline?  Or is this a case of parralel development where "I'm a Pioneer" was written by someone else for some other purpose.  Or for that matter, I suppose I could be mistaken about the origin of the song.

[Bob Schroeck]

(I also have yet to figure out why Serenity was cloistered in her palace when she was as powerful a sorceress as she was.  What was she doing that was more important than personally blowing away battalions of youma?)

The Doylist perspective is that Serenity is a princess archetype, the symbol of the purity of the empire, and should not be seen doing anything to dirty her hands.  Possibly that was the Watsonian perspective as well, that anything like combat was beneath the Queen's dignity.  There's a historical double standard where kings are expected to lead armies, but female monarchs are supposed to let other people fight for them.
...
It's possible that by the time the battle came to the Moon, the war was already lost. Possibly as a result of the above attitude, if it existed. I mean seriously, it was all a bit like Berlin in April 1945. It's possible that Serenity was casting the spells to send her descendants into the next age, or to create the spell that sealed Metaria. She was cloistered so that she could do the work to send a light into the future. After all, if you use the Ginzuishou without a plan first, who knows what sort of problems you could cause?

Good points. I am too strongly influenced, I suspect, by the very lead-from-the-front-lines Serenity in Ozzallos' Heir to the Empire. But I also have a fairly clear memory of a sequence from one of the animes of Serenity, by herself, utterly surrounded by youma -- and blowing them all to hell.

(The entry on Boudica had this, which is probably more relevant to a different step of the Walk: "There is a belief that she was buried between platforms 9 and 10 in King's Cross station in London, England.")

Heh. I seem to recall a couple Potter fics that make reference to that, but I can't bring titles to mind right now.

Is there any fic out there written that takes place during the Silver Millennium?

I cannot recall any set entirely in the Silver M, but Ozzallos's Heir to the Empire has extensive flashbacks to Serenity's life, and another story of his, A Time Apart, has a sequence where Sailor Pluto sends Ranma Saotome back to watch the fall of the Moon Kingdom (it makes sense in context), only for Ranma to bust out of the time bubble that's supposed to make it a "watch only" experience and change the course of events.

[Bob Schroeck]

I don't post much on any of the sites I am on, and I am fairly sure this is my first time posting on this one.

It is indeed -- your post count is 1. Thank you for joining the conversation!

When I first saw this section in DWS-2

<snip>"System. Load song, 'I'm A Pioneer'. Play song." <snip>

I just wondered which song Doug used at that point for FTL flight, since I find it inconceivable that "I'm A Pioneer" (or at least Tenchi Muyo) could have even been conceived of by the Japanese of Doug's Homeline.

Actually, it is. I first used it way back in Chapter 6 of Drunkard's Walk II, written in 2001. Therein, Doug says:

Gotta hand it to that fan club of mine back home. They do find me the damnedest songs. That one, for instance, was the English translation of the theme to some Japanese TV show, and I liked it. Not only did it give me multi-Mach flight, but complete spaceworthiness and hyperflight as well.

I have no idea what form Tenchi Muyo took in Warriors' World, but it was there. I do know that I discussed the form Slayers (I think it was) took in WW, and it was more like a Jidai Geki-like story set in the Heian period than the pseudo-medieval fantasy it is in OTL. Honestly? Tenchi has a strong subcurrent celebrating the specialness of the Japanese (they're clearly much closer to the Juraians than other Earthers, if not actually descended from them), and I could easily see it being mostly unchanged.

(And you know, that's the only time I ever mentioned Doug's fan club, to the best of my recollection. I should do something about that.)

[robkelk]

Mm.  I should probably link to that from the DW-S page.

That can wait until Minako's joined up with Usagi in the main story.

[chibipoe]

Checking my copy of the manga and Sailormoon Crystal, I think that the Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber acts more like an overcharged Hadoken than a hail of +5 blessed roses, but the later sounds more appropriate for the original anime.

I recall Tuxboy using it a time or 2 in the old anime, the one that comes to mind is the first big brawl between the Sailors and Dark Moon/Uncanny Sisters in season 2.  Tuxy was using the rose swarms to intercept Rubius' attacks.

Correct. You can observe it here. (First one I found on a youtube search, so it is the original dub)

[hazard]

The reason the men are supposed to fight and women are supposed to stay back in a supportive role has a lot to do with how much effort a man and woman relatively have to put into new children. A guy can put in less than a week of effort, a woman will be occupied with the new child for at least nine months, and then will need to recover from the strain.

The labour cost of raising the kid can be more evenly divided, but in that case there's still, historically, a greater burden imposed on women.

As children are a massive resource investment that pay off tremendously for the tribe there's a strong incentive to keep the people most involved with raising them away from combat if possible, to keep the children themselves from involving themselves, to keep them calm and quiet and thus most likely from being found in case the battle goes poorly. Meanwhile the people who are not involved with the tribe's future and/or ready and equipped to deal with threats and are threats themselves to those intending harm can deal with any hostiles.

[Labster]

Nice try hazard, but this is all socially constructed. All of these rules apply to women who are not pregnant, or who are infertile, or past menopause, or have no children. I've heard all of these arguments before, usually around "marriage is between a man and a woman" or "women shouldn't be in combat".

It's about the usual things: power over sex, controlling women, and likely women not wanting to participate in combat. And then that becomes tradition. All you have to do with start with some good ideas about keeping pregnant women and child caregivers away from combat, extrapolate and stereotype, and suddenly you have a patriarchy.

Looping back around, before I become an SJW: I keep thinking about this comic by Shadowjack, "Promises". And then drawing the line forward to Chibi Chibi. Maybe each era becomes progressively brighter.

> A guy can put in less than a week of effort
A week! Holy Tantras, Batman!

[Bob Schroeck]

And this is moving into political territory. If anyone wants to take it further, take it there.

[SilverFang01]

The Silver Crystal, from what is shown in the movies and original series, seems to use the lifeforce of the wielder for the bigger incantations. The only two times it didn't happen, the other senshi were lending their power to Usagi. So maybe the reason the queen didn't use the crystal immediately had in part to do with that.

[Labster]

Believe it or not, I had my teaching sociology hat on there, not my political one. I was a T.A. for a sociology course in grad school, so it comes out occasionally.

[Bob Schroeck]

So... it's been over a week and the one thing I thought I'd see at least a little discussion about hasn't appeared at all in this thread. Was "Reimei Midori"'s true identity that obvious? (I mean, other than to the few who already know from being prereaders, or were clued in a long time ago because of a passage written for a Fenspace Alternate.) Or did my concerns about the ending of the chapter end up focusing everyone's attention there and make people essentially forget the first scene of the chapter?

[DHBirr]

So... it's been over a week and the one thing I thought I'd see at least a little discussion about hasn't appeared at all in this thread.  Was "Reimei Midori"'s true identity that obvious?  

I just figured it referred to something I'm not familiar with — there's a lot of manga,  anime, and of course fanfiction, to which that description applies — so I didn't bother seriously speculating.  Although I also figured her green blouse and the green light as she appears were somehow connected with the name "Midori."   What that might mean, however ... as I said, I drew such a total blank that I didn't even try.

[ECSNorway]

Another theory on Serenity's role in the battle is that she was busy keeping Beryl-and-or-Metallia from flat-out lolnuking the Palace region. Sort of the "Anti-Artillery".

As for stories set in the Silver Millennium, John Biles & Jeff Hosmer's "Sailor Moon Z" has some extensive flashbacks as well. And is generally a very well-written story.

[Labster]

I haven't read Sailor Moon Z, but I have read Dance of Shiva, so I had thought about some of the flashbacks there. It gives at least much Silver Millennium history as canon does, so it's a good start.

As for Reimei Midori, no idea. A basic translation, "Green Alliance", doesn't mean anything to me either.

[Bob Schroeck]

"Alliance"? Isn't that "renmei", not "reimei"? Here, this might help: 緑 黎明

[robkelk]

...  Here, this might help:  緑 黎明

So, she's a punk rocker?

No, wait - that's Green Day.

[DHBirr]

A tad off-topic: 
Although Bob's question makes clear it's NOT a case of this, a thought crossed my mind of someone turning up in much the same manner Midori did, but revealing that she (or he) wouldn't exist except for changes the Loon has already made from the canon. 
"What he's taught you in just the last week — two years from now, those lessons will save my father's life. If you hadn't learned [technique X], you wouldn't have been able to save Daddy ... and since he'll only be twelve then, I would never have been born."

[SilverFang01]

Just re-read that part again and knowing the kanji now, I think I know who she is.

Spoiler

Buffy's sister, Dawn?

[robkelk]

Just re-read that part again and knowing the kanji now, I think I know who she is.

Spoiler

Buffy's sister, Dawn?

You aren't saying that just because Ms. Hiding-behind-the-spoiler-tag has already appeared in one of the published chapters of one of the canon Steps, are you?

[SilverFang01]

Just re-read that part again and knowing the kanji now, I think I know who she is.

Spoiler

Buffy's sister, Dawn?

You aren't saying that just because Ms. Hiding-behind-the-spoiler-tag has already appeared in one of the published chapters of one of the canon Steps, are you?

There are several clues in the text itself that point to my conclusion, and I know that one of Doug's stops is in that universe, but I have only read that step once, last year, so I cannot discard the possibility that it was floating somewhere inside my brain until I put the pieces together.

ETA: As a matter of fact, until I saw the kanji I thought it might be:

Spoiler

one of the Norns in disguise

due to another clue mentioned in the scene.

[jonathanlennox]

Clearly she's involved in the Reddit project to place green plastic army men in random locations.

(Okay, this was just the first interesting-looking Google hit for "Green Dawn".)

[Bob Schroeck]

Heh. Let me just say you should not take her alias completely literally.

[Labster]

I should not look up those things so late at night. Still meaningless to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ All I can think of is the traghetto company Green Dream from the Aria fic Traghetto Girls, and I know that that's entirely wrong.