----- Original Message -----
From: "Thermopyle" <thermopyle@tds.net>
To: "Alan" <chibipoe@mindspring.com>; <ffml@anifics.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: [FFML] [Sailor Moon] [AU] Alternate Views 01

Phase 1 - New Moon

Hm.  Well, I figured right off that this would be Sailor Moon.  So far
you're doing okay, as far as keeping her identity a "secret" goes.  It
only works at this point because you're in the intro, though.
Carrying it further doesn't work well--the audience knows what's going
on, and so the reader gets annoyed at seeing constant convolutions
that try to leap around revealing the character's identity.

Stylistic choice, that's all. Mostly to stress that this isn't the
standard Sailor Moon, who makes a lot of pretty speeches
and only rarely shows any sort of competence at what she does.

Jaedite's inner thoughts don't work very well, in my opinion, with
respect to what has happened in the past.  The description of Usagi
crashing to the floor long ago in a clumsy mess makes it seem, to me,
as though he had run into her BEFORE the divergence point, in which
case some of the other Senshi would be awake.  This made me think that
they had been killed somehow early in their careers, although my
previous guess was that Usagi's family had been attacked and
slaughtered.

Even with her altered view of things due to the incident, competence at any
given task does not come automatically.

I really don't buy Usagi's personality here.  She doesn't read as
though she's in pain.  She reads more as a witty, sarcastic superhero
out of a generic fanfic.  I don't see how she evolved from being Usagi
to being like this at all.  That's a big problem, since I like the
original Usagi.  I don't like this one.

That is, of course, your choice. Fanfic can't please everyone. :) But four
years would dull the pain of such an incident. She copes, mostly. Though she
does have her moments.

Hm.  You have a problem with speech tags.  Speech tags should be used
either to indicate the speaker or to make important modifications to
the delivery.  When using speech tags simply to identify the speaker,
you should use "said" unless, as I said before, the delivery REALLY
matters.  Said is small and neutral and it won't stand out when people
are reading your fic.  Trying to come up with unique tags for every
line of dialogue quickly becomes ridiculous and distracting--the
reader should be concentrating on the dialogue and the action that is
occuring, not on the speech tags.

One thing you really need to watch out for with respect to speech tags
is that a lot of things aren't.  Smiled is not a speech tag.  Neither
is nodded.  You can say nod your head in affirmation and say something
agreeable, but you cannot speak simply by nodding, and thus it is not
a speech tag on its own.  Smile is the same way.  It is physically
impossible to say something by smiling.  Yes, your facial expressions
can indicate certain things, but smiling is not related to speech in
any way.  Mistakes of this type are fairly common and can be found
even in published works.  They are still mistakes.

Noted, and thanks for the advice.

I've only watched up to episode sixteen of Sailor Moon, but I'm
already quite sure that Beryl is not a patient woman.  Letting Jaedite
run around on his own for years while suffering constant defeats at
the hands of Sailor Moon simply isn't believable.  She would either
have done the same thing she did in the anime--that freezing thing,
whatever it was--or she would have let her other generals go to work.
Years of patient waiting is something I just can't believe.

Eternal Sleep.
Mostly, as Lurker said, despite losing youma, he has had more successes than
defeats and kept up the energy gathering. I don't think Beryl has ever
really been concerned with how many youma are wasted, which, as I've thought
about, bears on something later in the comments here.

Tags are everywhere.  Try cutting them all out, then go through from
the top to read when the speaker is unclear.  At those points, add a
tag.  Otherwise, leave them out.

*nods* Noted again.

The plot progression isn't really believable.  Things developing the
way they are now, after years of Usagi being on her own like
this...well, I have trouble with that.  There doesn't seem to be any
reason for it.  Since I haven't seen Minako's introduction I can't say
whether her introduction at this point works, but it feels wrong to
me--it feels like she should have shown up ages earlier.

Usagi's saying that Minako is hot is only an omen of bad things to
come.

She never said Minako is hot. Or was hot. She said, and I quote.
"They're all boring, Luna," Usagi rolled her eyes, as if the answer was
obvious. "Aino Minako is not."
But I won't make too much of an issue for it, as it could easily be mistaken
for that.

The lack of progress on this story element over the years is also hard
to go along with.

Patience, grasshoppah. That's all I can really say on that. Other than the
standard 'This is not quite the same' answer, which won't really do anything
but seem patronizing or some such, so I won't.

This really doesn't feel like Usagi.  By this point I really want to
know how old Usagi is supposed to be.  The introduction for her job
made me think she was some kind of cop, too, which isn't good.

If memory serves, Usagi is 14 initially. This takes places 4 years after she
became Sailor Moon. So she is now 18.
It is funny that you should mention that it made you think she was a cop.
Since, after I wrote that scene, I briefly considered having her as a cop of
some sort. But decided against it. She's a photojournalist in her spare time
while studying for university and being Sailor Moon.

Okay.  A quick note: there is nothing wrong with making a character in
a fanfic gay.  Nothing wrong with it at all.  Hell, just to make sure
the character ends up happy, it's okay to make TWO characters gay.
More than that, however, and you start running into problems.  One
problem is that it insults the reader's intelligence.  There are gay
people in the world, yes, but they are not a majority, and so making a
majority of the characters in your story gay is a statistical problem
that the reader will find impossible to ignore.  The next problem,
which follows logically from the last, is that the reader is then
likely to assume that the author is a gay fanboy/fangirl who cares
nothing about believability and instead forges ahead on their gay
fixation as though everybody else is or should be blind to reality.
The THIRD problem, and this is a big one, is that if everybody is gay
then nobody is going to have children and humanity will die out when
the last old man croaks while humping the overused and rotting corpse
of his dearly beloved.

So, quit with the gay people.  It's gay.

I'm not making everyone in the fic gay. As a matter of fact, it will just be
these two. (Of course, that doesn't apply to characters who may appear much
later and are already canonically lesbians.

*

I don't get this.  Where did this scene come from?  Nothing triggered
Beryl's abrupt decision to cut Jaedite out of the youma loop.  It
doesn't make any sense.  The first scene should have had a "this is
your second-to-last chance" speech, then after that Jaedite should
have messed up and gotten trashed by Sailor Moon somehow, and THEN
this scene should take place.  As it is, I ended up feeling like there
was some big fight scene that I missed somehow.

You're right. This scene is out of place. So snip it shall go. I have a
better place in mind for it now.

I didn't really get much of an impression from the scene between him
and Sailor Moon to indicate that they were very close as honorable
enemies, so this feels a bit weak.  Also, the whole mystery of her
rage thing seems off.  When Sailor Moon showed up the Dark Kingdom
(and Jaedite, as being in charge during this period) had just started
the attacks.  It wouldn't be that difficult for Jaedite to look into
possible causes for Sailor Moon to be after revenge.  Granted, the
characters in the original story aren't smart enough for that, but
this isn't the original story.

They weren't. Jadeite is the one who thinks that way. And he is not, you
will admit, the best source for views on what constitutes an honorable
enemy.
As for possible causes. They have never displayed, here or in original
source material, a particularly stable grasp on how society works. The only
one who seemed to have any sort of comprehension of human society was
Nephrite. The others were just running around doing their thing, and be
damned to whether they had a clue or not. (I point to Kunzite's schemes to
get the Crystal, which were, if anything, even more ignorant than anything
Jadeite ever did.

Lesbians everywhere....

Nope. Just there with those two.

This made no sense to me.  Why would Tuxedo Mask jump in and haul her
out like that?  His assumption here--that she's being attacked, or
something--makes no sense.  Especially not with the fact that they
have met each other prior to this scene, and so he should know that
she is quite capable of fighting on her own.

They haven't met each other before this. Usagi has been playing amateur
detective off and on trying to learn who the 'Gentleman Bandit' is, but
Tuxedo Kamen has never appeared before Sailor Moon before this night. Why he
appeared now... well. That's another story.

And again, this feels absolutely nothing like Usagi.

Well, there are substantial differences, I will admit. Working on your own
like this isn't likely to contribute to your sense of cheerfulness.

I'm wondering how they met and how their relationship developed like
this.

Answers to that should be forthcoming soon.

Gay people everywhere...

See elsewhere. And as I think I already said. This is a Princess who isn't
pleased with her mother's choices for her future, and thus, rumors like that
benefit her wants and desires, whether they are true or not. But, I will
clarify since that isn't as apparent as it should be.
Also, will fix the comment about the Queen. (Though, I don't see that,
myself. She's a Queen. They're her Soldiers. They're bringing her important
info and thus, she's closeted with them in council often.)

This isn't in the present--this is in the past!  Also, this whole
youma approach doesn't fit with the series.  Jaedite's youmas always
went for massive crowds, which wouldn't be found in a house-to-house
approach.  I haven't really gotten the impression that in this AU all
youmas rip up their victims, either--you need to go one way or the
other, I think, either they do or they don't.

Past, told through a present time flash-back. And as others have said, it
wasn't a youma.

Since when do youma physically kill their victims?  Again, I've only

seen up to ep sixteen, but the victims are always drained without
physical harm.  That is also true of at least the second half of the R
season, which I read the manga for.  I don't get this whole covered in
her parents' blood thing.

See above.

Where's her brother?

Institutionalised in a coma, as Lurker so cannily deduced. :)

What?

Okay, yes, the flasback with Naru was a bit unclear. As was the police
speaking. Notes are made to repair those.

I'm more interested in all this unrevealed backstory than I am in
what's happening now.

Well, at least I have your interest on some level. ;)

This mystery character thing is annoying.

Not a mystery. I just didn't see any need to name her right then.

Hm.  Overall thoughts?  This isn't Usagi.  The way that Usagi ended up
here from her original state is quite unclear.  How Usagi ended up
very dominant in her relationship with Luna isn't indicated.  How the
whole lesbian thing with Rei showed up is never even mentioned.  The
respectful relationship between Jaedite and Usagi that developed isn't
very clear.  The idea of all this waiting years to happen (by this
point all of the other SM enemies should have long since shown up,
too, which is a problem) is hard to go along with.

I'm hoping that the next part will explain that. Assuming, that is, that I
can wrest control of it back from Rei, who has gone off on a complete
tangent. -_-

I have to say that I'm not that interested in the way things are in
the story right now.  I'd much rather see how all of this
developed--Usagi's reaction to her parents' death (again, I don't
really think the character feels right for that) and all of the
consequences that follow.  That interests me.  I want to see all this
happening and I want to see it happening when Usagi is still fourteen
instead of years later when nothing makes sense.

I thought about that, but the fact is, it would be dreadfully boring with
only a few interesting points. (Beginning of it, middle, where she has her
duel with Jadeite, and when she meets Rei. Aside from that, it is just
massive repetition. And frankly, as you will see, the way she was to start
is more than a bit unpleasant. -_- There's a REASON the youma call her
Destroyer.

I do like the idea you've got going here--the changed Usagi thing
makes me think of DarkAlpha's similar Ami fic, Riptides.  I don't
think you quite pulled it off, but the idea is good and I'd like to
see more.  I do hope you keep my comments in mind when
revising/rewriting/continuing, though.

I'm hoping it will all work out, and continuing onward. :)


Alan



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