At 09:11 PM 3/20/00 -0800, you wrote:

On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, matthew lewis wrote:


>
>       She knows.  I don't think she prays to the kami
> anymore.  She doesn't even pray anymore, really; she
> asks.  She concentrates, she meditates, but she doesn't
> supplicate; she asks.  She asks, because she's
> addressing her friends.  Mina, Makoto, Ami.  And me.  I
> can't be sure about the others but I can feel when she
> asks me.
>
I don't quite get your meaning here.  You're saying she thinks of the
Senshi as being kamis now?

       Not exactly.  Rei has to have dealt with the question of her faith: does what she does work because it works, or does it work because of who she is.  Coming to terms with what Usagi is, she also has to accept that she's the same, to a lesser degree.  She is Mars, and that gives her a certain control over reality.  I don't think it would difficult to incorporate the concept into her Shinto world view, and the Senshi are being of power she doesn't have to have faith in, she has direct knowledge.

>
> Author's notes:
>          Well, I've rewritten the third chapter of Balance and Ruin (BGC/El
> Hazard fic) three times already, and in the middle of a final, but this
> forced its way out of my head.  I feel like it's become fashionable to
> paint Sailor Moon with a darker brush than the original.  Crystal Tokyo

A trend which makes me ill.

       Oooooh!  I'm not alone!

> rail against 'utopias' with.  And its good those messages get out.  But I
> get sad seeing something that could be so nice twisted like it needs to be
> twisted to convey those messages so well.  So I guess, like Usagi, I feel

Yep.

John Biles
Emperor of all He Surveys
http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html

      "Would it not be better to be dead than to
       have this horrible fear that Aslan has come
       and is not like the Aslan we have believed in
       and longed for?  It is as if the sun rose one
       day and it was a black sun."

       "I know" said Jewel, "or as if you drank water
       and it were DRY water.  You are right, sire,
       this is the end of all things. >
--The Last Battle, by C. S. Lewis

                             ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._
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mal@bulldog.georgetown.edu     (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'
                            _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'
                          (il).-''  (li).'  ((!.-'

Beware of organizations that proclaim their devotion to the light without
embracing, bowing to the dark; for when they idealize half the world they
must devalue the rest.
                          -Miriam Simos