Usagi Quest (CK3/Princess Maker) (Sailor Moon)

[Pittauro]

@QTesseract @Pittauro that's how life works. Think about how often and how many spawn are born to creatures of different lifespans. Here: Immortality Procreation Clause.

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are you really quoting tvtropes on a complex and currently completely theoretical problem?

also, go down below to the "real life" section, you'll find these:

• Thought experiments on population growth rates suggest that extending lifespan needn't necessarily produce an Explosive Breeder, as it's really the age at first reproduction that determines how fast a population grows. Mathematically, having a breeding female live forever will do less to increase birth rates than having her produce a daughter (who'll breed early in turn) slightly sooner.
• 
  
• This idea is truth in television in human communities insomuch as the childbirth rate of a country appears to be inversely related to its average lifespan. This is attributed to things like education, not seeing everyone around you die young (which tends to cause survivor lust), and good healthcare that improves lifespans and reduces infant mortality, meaning people don't need to have as many children to guarantee some survive. More developed countries also tend to have less of a primary-industry focus, meaning children are a net drain on assets rather than a source of income. State welfare and wealth in general also means parents aren't as reliant on children to support them in their old age.

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Honestly, If I were to take this seriously, I'd say the birthrates in a society of immortals would completely depend on the culture.

And, more personally (and possibly selfishly), I'd be fine with a stagnant society if that meant I get to live in it forever, as long as it's a decently good society.

Not that I believe such a society would NECESSARILY be stagnant, really. It depends again on too many factors to count, starting from its culture, laws, financial incentives..

Actually, their are established polities that remember the silver millenium.

*points to all the patrons of the Pretty Cures* I'm fairly sure we have evidence/confirmation that they are familiar with or knew the Silver Millenium on some level?

We get ten magical kingdoms going "nah, this is legit, they were here before you" it, uhh, kinda hard to argue with that.

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kingdoms that are not yet in contact with mundane governments, to be fair.

I wonder how that went actually. Was it faked? Did they find the ruins? Cause we might have to slap a bitch if America is trying to claim them.

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Maybe they simply landed far from them.

I mean, the ruins are more or less ONE CASTLE. That's not that big, they might not have noticed it yet. There might even be some kind of barrier hiding it, who knows.

it's not philosophy advice. It is how Biology and Psychology work.

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Biology doesn't mean anything when we're talking about MAGICAL LIFE-EXTENSIONS, and I very much doubt there's PROOF of psychology working like that. And in any case it depends on the culture, really.

I mean, I find myself profoundly unconvinced. For one, in story senshi are immortal already, and they haven't given up on change, before or after their reincarnation. In real life, there's no evidence of lives getting longer decreasing innovation and change (and a gret deal of evidence to the contrary), so there isn't a trendline you can extend. Insofar as there's a logical argument supporting it, it's one that begs the question; the logic only holds if you sneak the conclusion into your premises.

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To be fair, we don't know if they're actually immortal, or just long lived, but I don't think it really matters that much.

 

[Themarineguy]

...seriously, how would a muslim country deal with the idea of the Sailor Senshi? I know it's a delicate topic, but it's kinda relevant if we're dealing with an Earth actually similar to the real one.

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I also wonder if Mass Effect, Halo, or Stargate will show itself later down the line.

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Mass Effect is probably a no, or at least it would need to be changed by a lot. After all Reapers would need to have experienced Senshi and magics already, unless the Silver Millennium was somehow an extreme outlier.

I know so little about Halo and Stargate that I can't comment about them.

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Mass Effect: Assuming no massive overhaul, we loom over everyone else, including the paper tiger faction that is the Reapers( In the OTL, they were dying out because in spite of their hype, they, in spite of the set battlefield seem to usually take nasty losses which eclipse their recuperation capabilities, with them losing multiple cycles worth of forces in single battles...)
Stargate:They have the tech lying around that could t least be worth something, but the Canon big players for the most part have various issues when it comes to actually using it, like the flighty Alterans, Arrogant Go'auld and Tollans... As far as my limited knowledge is aware of...

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Halo? They might be relevant, between the Precursers and the Covenant that was a massive near unstoppable threat to the UNSC...

 

[Pittauro]

Mass Effect: Assuming no massive overhaul, we loom over everyone else, including the paper tiger faction that is the Reapers( In the OTL, they were dying out because in spite of their hype, they, in spite of the set battlefield seem to usually take nasty losses which eclipse their recuperation capabilities, with them losing multiple cycles worth of forces in single battles...)

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To be fair we don't know how many reapers are born each cycle, and usually they had an easy win by taking the citadel and shutting down the relay network. but yeah, Mass Effect is just not up to our heavy hitters

 

[FictionPack]

but yeah, Mass Effect is just not up to our heavy hitters

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I'm not so sure.
There are outliers like Jack for instance.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Regardless, citizenship will be tricky, seeing as Japan forbids dual citizenship over the age of 20; while we might be OK to renounce Japanese citizenship at that point, it's definitely a risk. On the other hand, apparently Japanese and North Korean citizenship can de facto coexist because of Japan not recognizing NK, so that might be a temporary way out. It's not a great look though. On the third hand, there's a fast-path to reacquiring Japanese citizenship (see Article 17) if you renounce it in favor of another citizenship, so if this all falls apart we should be able to go back to being Japanese without too much trouble.

We'd also want to check out the domestic legality of this sort of thing: using Japan as a base to start your own country might well be a crime there.

*Or Regent, if we want to keep the title of Princess for now.

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I will note that we are very likely to wind up in a position of privilege.

And let's dig into that term a bit. "Privilege" originally means 'private law,' in the sense of 'the rules that apply to you are custom-tailored for you and possibly those like you.'

Under the circumstances obtaining in this setting, it is basic common sense to apply different rules to Usagi and the senshi, once national governments become aware of them. There is no constructive agenda that is served by trying to treat them in any other way. Because their ability to be helpful is tied up in their unique personal abilities and their willingness to cooperate- either you succeed and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, or you fail and pointlessly antagonize them.

As such, by the time we reach the "nation-building" stage of the game, it is very likely that mere regulations will no longer present a relevant obstacle to our activities. Just like how in real life billionaires don't need to stress very much about what country they have citizenship in, and can generally move to a new country and obtain citizenship at will if they so desire.

Maybe you don't like that... but it's a reality that is just as relevant as any of the specific laws you cite. Laws loom large in our minds right now because we don't have the clout to get them rewritten easily if we need to.

The one concern I have with this is that claiming sovereignty over the moon (or any other celestial body) is illegal under international law. Now the Silver Millennium never signed the Outer Space Treaty*, but somebody might argue that the prohibition is jus cogens and we're bound by it anyways. On the other hand, nobody can actually enforce that against us, so why should we care?

*IIRC all the other UN space treaties depend on it, so I suppose we can't sign those either.

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The combination of "this treaty claim is unenforceable" and "this treaty claim is massively counterproductive" is a great way to ensure that a treaty is ignored or revised. This is basically the same point I'm making about things like citizenship laws.

While calling ourselves a county might be too far, we could absolutely legitimately claim sovereignty and be respected; for example, see the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. They have a currency, issue passports (that some countries accept), are an observer at the UN (like the Vatican), can make treaties, and so on.

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Yeah, but you can't claim sovereignty without claiming territory somewhere.

While I'd be good using the old system of laws on a provisional basis, rewriting everything once we have a chance is probably a good idea, for similar reasons to why I suggested a new constitution when it's necessary. Additionally, laws become a mess over time without constant effort, and the refounding of the state is probably a good chance to rewrite things from the ground up.

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Normally yes, but normally you have more than a single digit number of educated individuals equipped to rewrite the law code.

In this case, it's probably better to just use old Silver Millennium laws (Usagi will have enough trouble getting up to speed on them) and revise them as appropriate.

I'm going to state again that I don't want us to be the Queen of the World or even ruling a country. That is a bad idea. I also disagree with making people immortal, as that kills all need to have children, which in turn kills innovation and change, as new ideas aren't being introduced, which leads to stagnation and the eventual fall of humanity. Humanity must remain Mortal, extended lives sure, but not Biological Immortality.

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I think the problem you're worrying about here is a figment of your imagination.

it's not philosophy advice. It is how Biology and Psychology work.

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This is an evidence-free assertion on your part.

Actually, their are established polities that remember the silver millenium.

*points to all the patrons of the Pretty Cures* I'm fairly sure we have evidence/confirmation that they are familiar with or knew the Silver Millenium on some level?

We get ten magical kingdoms going "nah, this is legit, they were here before you" it, uhh, kinda hard to argue with that.

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Good point.

I wonder how that went actually. Was it faked? Did they find the ruins? Cause we might have to slap a bitch if America is trying to claim them.

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I'm pretty sure the US hasn't openly acknowledged that they know about ruins on the Moon. And all the Apollo astronauts' communications with Earth were recorded and, as I understand it, in the clear, so if they'd been reporting back on such ruins it would likely have become public knowledge.

I can only infer that the Silver Millennium ruins on the moon are well hidden enough that the Apollo astronauts, despite orbiting the Moon at relatively low altitudes and landing on the surface several times, never really identified what they were looking at. Princess Saturn musta did a real number on the place.

That, or the more interesting ruins were all cloaked somehow, or there was some kind of compulsion much like the Sailor Scouts' glamour in place to ensure that visiting astronauts (or, more likely as a threat Queen Serenity would prepare against, scouts from an alien civilization) wouldn't be able to easily find and loot the ruins.

 

[silentorphan]

Wait, is that the space crossover? Sentinel Prime stuck in an Ark somewhere on the Moon?

(Apropos of nothing: I can't believe that movie's 10 years old now.)

 

[EnderofWorlds]

I have to assume her power/potential is much higher than the previous queen, as Usagi accomplishes so many crazy things that, if Queen Serenity was capable of even half of it, she could have simply restored the silver millennium instead of going for her "reincarnation in the future" spell.

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Probably also helps that the Silver Crystal is her soul, which in hindsight raises a lot of questions on how she was ok given that her mom was holding onto it and using it as a Magic McGuffin to do a lot of important shit. Dear Mommy Dearest basically was piggybacking off of her daughter's untapped potential as Magical Girl Krishna.

And lets not even get started on the shit her future daughter gets into prancing around with said soul crystal.

If we channel the power of the Silver Crystal together with both inner and outer senshi and Mamoru (and who knows, maybe we can find Pluto. It kinda looked like there's a way to access the Time Door from the Silver Millennium castle to me, so maybe we could find her there, still guarding the door.. unless she actually died during the fall. That's still not very clear to me), maybe we can boost the self-repair of the palace to include the rest of the kingdom.

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Oh boy is it time to talk about SM time travel and how the Line of Serenity consistently abuses and beats it into a corner crying?

Technically, Pluto was stuck on guard duty up until all the talismans triggered to gather the outers together and summon Saturn to do the mass system purge that ultimately exterminated everyone...except Pluto, who just got dumped back at the Time Door to resume her duty. Which she in fact does....all the way to the 30th century, upon which Chibi-Usa runs into her and they become friends.

Then the Black Moon Clan arc happens, Diamond decides he's gonna break the space-time continuum by shoving the present-time Silver Crystal into the future Silver Crystal, and so Pluto stops this via shattering the third taboo and stopping time. The aftermath of which ends up awaking Sailor Chibi Moon and killing Pluto, thus ending things or a bittersweet note...

...Until Neo-Queen Serenity decides to reward Pluto for her duty and sacrifice by reincarnating her into the 20th century. Whereupon she awakens around the time the Deathbusters arc starts up, after Neptune and Uranus do.

Which means that, yes, there is currently a Pluto at the gates right now and an un-awakened Setsuna running around just waiting to become Pluto again. Simultaneously. Somehow. Because Usagi does not give a FUCK about temporal mechanics and just decides "This is how things work now". Guess that's just the perks of being the avatar of all creation; nobody gets to tell you 'no' when you decide to dictate terms.

To be fair, we don't know if they're actually immortal, or just long lived, but I don't think it really matters that much.

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Last I checked, they're ageless and when they're killed they'll just reincarnate and be reborn all over again; eventually reclaiming the memories of their past selves - up until they decide they're tired of it and just...stop to become a planet/star unto themselves. Perks of having a Sailor Crystal aka the soul of a planet/star.

 

[Pittauro]

Probably also helps that the Silver Crystal is her soul, which in hindsight raises a lot of questions on how she was ok given that her mom was holding onto it and using it as a Magic McGuffin to do a lot of important shit. Dear Mommy Dearest basically was piggybacking off of her daughter's untapped potential as Magical Girl Krishna.

And lets not even get started on the shit her future daughter gets into prancing around with said soul crystal.

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Maybe the Silver crystal only became Usagi's soul AFTER the reincarnation, and it was originally a separate artifact for the queen? That would explain why Usagi seems just that much stronger than her mother.

Or maybe it has to do with the ascension to queen status. Neo-queen Serenity is apparently unable to transform into Sailor Moon, so maybe the Silver Crystal automatically goes to the newborn daughter, and Queen Serenity was then mostly powerless?

that final spell might have basically been her taking the silver crystal from her daughter's cold body and use it for a final, desparate spell.

Which means that, yes, there is currently a Pluto at the gates right now and an un-awakened Setsuna running around just waiting to become Pluto again. Simultaneously. Somehow. Because Usagi does not give a FUCK about temporal mechanics and just decides "This is how things work now". Guess that's just the perks of being the avatar of all creation; nobody gets to tell you 'no' when you decide to dictate terms.

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It gets worse. because.. well, where IS Setsuna in Future Crystal Tokyo?

It's probably easier to deal with this if we believe/accept that Future Tokyo is at this point an alternate future, kinda like in dbz, and what happens there does NOT affect what happens in the past, and viceversa.

Last I checked, they're ageless and when they're killed they'll just reincarnate and be reborn all over again; eventually reclaiming the memories of their past selves - up until they decide they're tired of it and just...stop to become a planet/star unto themselves. Perks of having a Sailor Crystal aka the soul of a planet/star.

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ah, I was more thinking of how future Endymion once mentioned how "members of the royal family have a lifespan of a thousand years", thanks to the Silver Crystal. And that this benefit was then extended to everyone on Earth.

And then there was a whole bit about Chibiusa being of mixed blood, and that's why she stopped growing/couldn't use the silver crystal initially.

What you say can't be the whole story, otherwise HOW can Chibiusa have the Silver Crystal after her mother? Unless we're simply accepting that the Silver Crystal follows completely different rules from normal star seeds... which is, actually, pretty reasonable.

 

[Nuew]

Sorry about responding to all issues with my post as if you were the only one saying them @Simon_Jester, but you've got most everything in a single post, so responding to just you is more convenient.

Maybe you don't like that... but it's a reality that is just as relevant as any of the specific laws you cite. Laws loom large in our minds right now because we don't have the clout to get them rewritten easily if we need to.

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So I totally get this; I don't think it would be out of the question to get the laws rewritten, or at least an exception made. And that's another way out of the problem. It does seem like a few rich Japanese people have tried to get it changed before and failed, but we are on a totally different level than them. But that would be a substantial expenditure of political capital, for what seems like not too much gain. It's a problem, but one with a relatively easy solution, especially by the time it's relevant. Having Usagi simultaneously be both Queen and a Japanese citizen seems not great for a lot of reasons, and gives an appearance we might prefer not to. For the rest of the Senshi & Naru, this is less of an issue. Though, seeing as there are occasional controversies in various countries over MPs or whatever having foreign citizenships, some people will probably be upset. I'd guess they'd mostly be from amongst Silver Millenium refugees? Regardless, it's current law and we need some plan regarding it once we start actually claiming statehood.

The combination of "this treaty claim is unenforceable" and "this treaty claim is massively counterproductive" is a great way to ensure that a treaty is ignored or revised. This is basically the same point I'm making about things like citizenship laws.

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So I might have been misunderstood on this point, but I was never saying that we ought to follow the treaty; that would be dumb. I was saying that claiming the moon will blow up international space law, which was working more or less fine* beforehand. This will annoy people, and we should be aware of that. The misunderstanding (if it exists? I'm not sure if people are saying "no" or "yes and") is my fault.

I guess my response to these two sections in general is that I'm not saying we can't break/change the law (we obviously can and often should), but that we should be aware that we will be doing so before we actually do it. We're annoying people anyways, we shouldn't annoy them further with half-baked plans and ignorance.

*Save for the issues with asteroid mining, and similar.

Yeah, but you can't claim sovereignty without claiming territory somewhere.

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The Holy See (as distinct from the Papal States and the Vatican) was considered sovereign by some countries even during the "Prisoner in the Vatican" era, who still sent full ambassadors as if it was a normal state. To this day, it's often considered sovereign in its own right, independent from the sovereignty of Vatican City**. Admittedly, you could potentially consider the Holy See in that case as something like a government in exile. But, as I said in my original post, the SMOM are generally considered sovereign, hold no territory, and have no outstanding territorial claims. And even if you say that they don't count, if we're limiting it to just claiming, not actual possession, we do claim the moon, at the very least.

** Bizarrely, Vatican City itself is often considered a non-sovereign territory in something like a feudal relationship with the sovereign Holy See. See the Crown's relationship with the UK for a reasonably close analog.

Normally yes, but normally you have more than a single digit number of educated individuals equipped to rewrite the law code.

In this case, it's probably better to just use old Silver Millennium laws (Usagi will have enough trouble getting up to speed on them) and revise them as appropriate.

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Do note that I did say we should use "the old system of laws on a provisional basis" — we obviously aren't in a position to do much of anything regarding them now. But I think limiting ourselves to major revisions in the long run is probably a mistake (even if we presumably won't deal with the results either way in this Quest in any case). Once we have an actual population in the millions, putting a few dozen lawyers on a complete rewrite could really improve a literally 10,000 year old law code. We genuinely have no idea what kinda strange nonsense is in there. In just the criminal code, things that are totally acceptable today could be criminalized, and things that are totally unacceptable today could be perfectly legal (Infanticide was 100% legal in ancient Greece and Rome, and occasionally mandatory). Sure, we could fix the egregious cases, but this sort of nonsense is probably all over their laws, and unless they've been taking very good care of them, there's tons of ad-hoc temporary or reactive bullshit that could easily be consolidated into a couple of enactments. Beyond that, do they even have laws regarding modern technology? Is there a Silver Millenium driving code? Silver Millenium Nuclear Regulations? Probably not!

It's not urgent, but it's gotta be done, and there's not really a better time to commit to it.

 

[UberJJK]

I'm going to state again that I don't want us to be the Queen of the World or even ruling a country. That is a bad idea. I also disagree with making people immortal, as that kills all need to have children, which in turn kills innovation and change, as new ideas aren't being introduced, which leads to stagnation and the eventual fall of humanity. Humanity must remain Mortal, extended lives sure, but not Biological Immortality.

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So people have pointed out various issues with this but I have a couple more.

The first is that broadly speaking people want children. Now that obviously isn't true for everyone but the fact humanity actually exists strongly suggests it is true for most people. Things like effective contraception and sexual education significantly reduce the number of unplanned children and the increasing need for both partners to work makes finding time for children more difficult yet even countries with negative birth rates are still having a lot of children.

South Korea for example has a total fertility rate of 1.0 births per woman which is obviously well below the amount needed to sustain their population. Yet they are still birthing 300k+ children per year.

So I'm not particularly concerned about people just magically stopping having children because they don't "need" them.


The second point is that even with biological immortality we kinda do need more children. Or rather we want them. We have multiple planets and dozens of moons out there just waiting to be recolonized. Earth currently has a population density of 15 people per square kilometer (51.5 if you count just land). Even colonizing just Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the moon add another 717,758,500km^2 which at similar densities comes to between another 10.7 and 40.0 billion people.

And all that is without getting into the fact the Silver Millennium was actually scaled appropriately for an interplanetary empire with trillions of people inhabiting the Jupiter region:

"The Silver Millennium covered the whole of the Solar System. From the Rainbow Rains of Venus, to the Technological Marvels of Mercury. The towering spires of the Moon Castle, to the many Temples of Mars. Jupiter and it's moons alone housed trillions of people. The whole solar system was fed by the Orchal Complexes of Jupiter Itself."

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Even with immortality and unrestrained exponential growth our current (global) 1.85% birth rate will take 266 years to reach just one trillion. Given that we'd likely see a slow down in the birth rate as with immortality over time the percentage of the population without children would slowly decrease. Now we might see families having children every couple decades as their previous set move on but that is uncertain.


Finally though we come to the big issue; biological immortality is not true immortality. People will still die from non-age dependent sources like accidents or conflict. The whole "live a thousand years" thing is actually one of those amazingly accidentally on point numbers since IIRC using modern day accidental death rates you'd expect the average life expectancy of a biologically immortal person to be right around a thousand years with some falling short by centuries and others being lucky enough to make it to see their second or even third millennium.

Advanced magitech, living conditions, and other advances would likely push this number up but unless you are a serial reincarnator like the Senshi, or Sailor Moon is personally interested in you enough to continually resurrect you, probability will eventually catch up with you.

 

[EnderofWorlds]

Maybe the Silver crystal only became Usagi's soul AFTER the reincarnation, and it was originally a separate artifact for the queen? That would explain why Usagi seems just that much stronger than her mother.

Or maybe it has to do with the ascension to queen status. Neo-queen Serenity is apparently unable to transform into Sailor Moon, so maybe the Silver Crystal automatically goes to the newborn daughter, and Queen Serenity was then mostly powerless?

that final spell might have basically been her taking the silver crystal from her daughter's cold body and use it for a final, desperate spell.

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Ok, so context story-time; in the final chapter or two of Sailor Moon, we get some in-depth lore via Guardian Cosmos, keeper of the Cosmos Crystal which is the core of the Galaxy Cauldron, the font of all creation that is responsible for birth of the cosmos and serves as the ultimate wellspring of all life. She explains that a long, long time ago a traveler came to the cauldron carrying a dead Sailor Crystal/star-seed. Said traveler wished to plead and bargain with the guardian to revive the husk she carried because it died young and far before its time, even offering up her own body and soul in exchange for this. Guardian Cosmos, touched by this, does a thing with the Cosmos Crystal and so the lifeless husk is reborn into the Silver Crystal.

Said traveler, turns out, is Queen Serenity; who then travels to the moon and establishes the Silver Millennium and eventually has her daughter, Princess Serenity. Though not outright stated, it's implied to the point of just being shy of stating that the events that led to the rebirth of the Silver Crystal also led to the princess's own birth. Everything else in the Galaxia Arc regarding Sailor Crystals and how senshi work further supports this.

So yeah, Princess Serenity aka Usagi was born from the very heart of the cosmos itself; hence why she'll inevitably become Sailor Cosmos and also why I refer to her as Magical Girl Krishna. Because that's literally what she is.

Edit: Queen Serenity being able to use the cyrstal was probably by virtue of being the virgin mother to Usagi, which probably gave her sub-admin rights to using it. Likewise with Chibi-Usa being able to use it by virtue of being her daughter, despite having a completely separate Sailor Crystal independent from the Silver Crystal. This still means that, for a not-insignificant period of time or two, there is someone running around with Usagi's soul using it to do stuff.

 

[ShadowAngelBeta]

But that would be a substantial expenditure of political capital, for what seems like not too much gain.

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This might be one of those issues we need to, uhh, smooth out. That is having dual citizenships or... I don't know. The thing is, its not just the Senshi. It not even the refugees still in cryo.

Every Precure is hands down considered a citizen of whatever Kingdom or Queendom they are the Champions of. Every patron that finds them is basically a diplomatic emissary (or refugee).

I won't say national lines are falling apart, but they kinda are going to maybe.

Hmm... Let me put it this way: What use is a government that can't serve its people?

I don't know how badly magic returning is going to screw things over, but I'm not taking the complete collapse of mundane governments off the table yet. It still seems unlikely with what we do know however, but only unlikely cause there's still a lot we don't know about.

To be frank everything comes back to the "Then stop me" point I've brought up. We're going to try to be nice, be helpful, but ultimately they only have as much as we give them.

We don't want to confront and make them capitulate, but someone's going to make us somewhere along the line. Jupiter alone taking down an entire task force sent to arrest or kill us on someone's ill thought out orders, us walking into the Diet building and making a speech of some kind because they can't stop us (and can't shut it off)...

If it was just us I'd be less caring about it, but we have our refugees in cryo, other magical girls who can't just up and leave their home country, other general magical people hiding throughout the country...

I can't agree with up and leaving when there are too many people who would have the fear and recrimination fall onto them. We're protected, our identities are terrifyingly well guarded by our magic, but I seriously doubt there are any others like us.

We are the voice of the coming Age because there isn't anyone else in the position to do so safely.

I suppose, in the end, its that we can't afford to give ground politically. We can't, not if we really want to help everyone else in this boat.

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Faux Edit 2: I wrote this before Ender's last post.

So, I want to put this correctly... I question what Usagi really is.

Usagi regularly twists the arm of all of Reality into doing what she wants. She walks up to and stands in front of the Star Cauldron without falling apart, basically walking up to an active Big Bang and just standing there taking it on the chin, she twists time's arm in half to save Pluto and give her a life outside of the Time Gates, does a reverse Thanos and snaps the entire universe back to life after Galaxia's/Chaos' rampage killed literally everything except the two of them, proceeds to drop kick Chaos for a little while as well...

Then there's the part about how Order itself is thinking about ending everything because its tired of the fight and Usagi gives it hope again.

Usagi all but screams that she's an Outer Goddess and everyone just politely looks away because she's actually helping.

Now, I don't think Serenity was an Outer Goddess. We don't see much of her at all before the reincarnation, but she seemed to fit into the almost Fae Court thing the Silver Millenium was.

I think the Silver Crystal might very well be Usagi's soul, I don't think it was Serenity's. It might be now, their souls either were held in or passed through it when old Serenity cast the reincarnation spell I imagine.

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On another point, think the uniforms will ever change/be upgraded? I think its cause I see them in school uniforms and feel like they should change into something else as they mature/grow more powerful.

Faux Edit: Having written everything past this point, I can safely say you can ignore it, its just me rambling about my views/thoughts on the above question.

Usagi has her series of changes, but still retains the overall aesthetic I know. I'm kinda fine with that, its just... I don't know, imagining Makoto in a, feminine mind you, suit of green armor like a horrible meeting of F/Z's Lancelot and F/SN's Hercules with lightning aspected mana bursts... Ami probably in something similar, if slimmer, in ice blue, but instead focuses on ice constructs and field control (the girl would be a nightmare with a finesse style).

All I got for Rei is a modified Miko uniform with full halo of fire lit up behind her.



Sue me, some are simple.

I wouldn't want to take any of it too far away from the aesthetic. Despite what I say for Makoto and Ami they would still have their faces exposed, Ami would have her computer over her eyes and I'm seeing Makoto with one of those... the part of a Samurai mask that just covers the forehead and down the sides of the cheeks. Full skirts and heeled boots, just armored.

I don't know.

I've just thought a lot about it long before this quest started, or even this quest's semi-predecessor, so its kinda always caught in their whenever I read anything about Sailor Moon at this point.

 

[EnderofWorlds]

It gets worse. because.. well, where IS Setsuna in Future Crystal Tokyo?

It's probably easier to deal with this if we believe/accept that Future Tokyo is at this point an alternate future, kinda like in dbz, and what happens there does NOT affect what happens in the past, and viceversa.

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Ahahahaha...yeah that'd be the logical and reasonable answer, wouldn't it? Sadly, no - it's confirmed several times that Crystal Tokyo is the future, full stop, and that events in the past can and do affect it. Chibi-Usa in fact has to do a last-minute save in the final arc because both she and Neo-Queen Serenity are about to be null'd out of existence via what's going on with the climax of that arc.

Pluto's even the one who sends Chibi Moon and her Sailor Quartet to back Moon up vs. Galaxia. So yeah I guess Setsuna just popped in the day after Pluto bit it and it was business as usual. Best answer I got is "Usagi believes that's the future, so guess that's the future now and everything else will sort itself out". Given that Neo-Queen Serenity admits that she never saw herself off back to the 20th century, only for both her and Usagi to disregard literally everything to run into each other's arms and have a tearful farewell complete with apologies and compliments to each other, thereby tearing the timestream a new asshole via a paradox only for nothing bad to happen, it's best not to dwell on it and just assume it'll sort itself out.

What you say can't be the whole story, otherwise HOW can Chibiusa have the Silver Crystal after her mother? Unless we're simply accepting that the Silver Crystal follows completely different rules from normal star seeds... which is, actually, pretty reasonable.

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She has it the same way Queen Serenity had it; she carries it around and uses it for stuff, but it's not her Sailor Crystal. Her Sailor Crystal is the Pink Moon Crystal, which is distinct and separate from the Silver Crystal. It's hard to notice but when she transforms into Chibi Moon for the first time, she doesn't have either iteration of the Silver Crystal on her: Usagi has the 20th century one and Venus is holding the 30th century one.

Now, I don't think Serenity was an Outer Goddess. We don't see much of her at all before the reincarnation, but she seemed to fit into the almost Fae Court thing the Silver Millenium was.

I think the Silver Crystal might very well be Usagi's soul, I don't think it was Serenity's. It might be now, their souls either were held in or passed through it when old Serenity cast the reincarnation spell I imagine.

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That's because Serenity was a sheltered princess who didn't need vast cosmic power and in fact had their vast cosmic power being thrown around via her mother's hand and Moon Stick rather than her own. Literally the only distinction made between Usagi and Serenity is that Usagi was drafted/decided to become a senshi, whereas Serenity never did because it was a peaceful time and she was a pretty princess. Otherwise they're the exact same individual with the exact same soul; thus, Serenity's soul is the Silver Crystal and she, too, is the avatar of all creation. She just never bothered to act on it like Usagi blatantly and flagrantly does.

 

[Pittauro]

Ahahahaha...yeah that'd be the logical and reasonable answer, wouldn't it? Sadly, no - it's confirmed several times that Crystal Tokyo is the future, full stop, and that events in the past can and do affect it. Chibi-Usa in fact has to do a last-minute save in the final arc because both she and Neo-Queen Serenity are about to be null'd out of existence via what's going on with the climax of that arc.

Pluto's even the one who sends Chibi Moon and her Sailor Quartet to back Moon up vs. Galaxia. So yeah I guess Setsuna just popped in the day after Pluto bit it and it was business as usual. Best answer I got is "Usagi believes that's the future, so guess that's the future now and everything else will sort itself out". Given that Neo-Queen Serenity admits that she never saw herself off back to the 20th century, only for both her and Usagi to disregard literally everything to run into each other's arms and have a tearful farewell complete with apologies and compliments to each other, thereby tearing the timestream a new asshole via a paradox only for nothing bad to happen, it's best not to dwell on it and just assume it'll sort itself out.

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What I got from this is that if most time travel fiction can cause headaches once you start to REALLY think about them, Sailor moon is just so much worse.

She has it the same way Queen Serenity had it; she carries it around and uses it for stuff, but it's not her Sailor Crystal. Her Sailor Crystal is the Pink Moon Crystal, which is distinct and separate from the Silver Crystal. It's hard to notice but when she transforms into Chibi Moon for the first time, she doesn't have either iteration of the Silver Crystal on her: Usagi has the 20th century one and Venus is holding the 30th century one.

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mh.. I'm halways through Crystal season 3, and after Mistress 9 steals her silver crystal she's basically kinda dead, and the outer senshi mention she lost her soul.

Maybe the Pink Moon crystal somehow binds itself to the Silver Crystal? There's also the fact that Sailor Moon, at the VERY beginning (and depending on your interpretation) does NOT have the silver crystal on her.

Especially if we accept that here the silver crystal has been broken/separated into the 7 rainbow crystals.

So, Usagi would ALSO have her own moon crystal I think.

There was a theory mentioned before about maybe Usagi and Chibiusa having a fragment of the Silver Crystal bonded to their own actual sailor crystals, I think.

...yeah, Lunaryon will have to decide on her own interpretation of all such things, because we kinda need a more clear/well defined set of rules, at least for the things that we actually CAN discover/verify in story.

thus, Serenity's soul is the Silver Crystal and she, too, is the avatar of all creation. She just never bothered to act on it like Usagi blatantly and flagrantly does.

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hear, little children, about the story of the girl who didn't know she was God...

EDIT: ...wait, isn't that basically the plot of Haruhi Suzumiya (which I never watched)?

 

[GoukaRyuu]

I was pretty sure the silver crystal was Queen Serenity's, Princess Serenity's mother's, soul. It may explain why her "Let's reincarnate everyone" action didn't work for her.

 

[Pittauro]

I was pretty sure the silver crystal was Queen Serenity's, Princess Serenity's mother's, soul. It may explain why her "Let's reincarnate everyone" action didn't work for her.

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It wouldn't explain why she couldn't simply resurrect everyone in the present. Usagi does it MANY times on Earth!

...Unless we assume there's a distance limit, and while resurrecting everyone on a planet is possible, doing it to the whole SOLAR SYSTEM was beyond her...

 

[QTesseract]

I was pretty sure the silver crystal was Queen Serenity's, Princess Serenity's mother's, soul. It may explain why her "Let's reincarnate everyone" action didn't work for her.

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That's contradicted by canon. Could make a cool fanfic with the premise but it definitely isn't the case already.

 

[UberJJK]

That's because Serenity was a sheltered princess who didn't need vast cosmic power and in fact had their vast cosmic power being thrown around via her mother's hand and Moon Stick rather than her own. Literally the only distinction made between Usagi and Serenity is that Usagi was drafted/decided to become a senshi, whereas Serenity never did because it was a peaceful time and she was a pretty princess. Otherwise they're the exact same individual with the exact same soul; thus, Serenity's soul is the Silver Crystal and she, too, is the avatar of all creation. She just never bothered to act on it like Usagi blatantly and flagrantly does.

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Something else to wonder is how old, both in absolute and relative terms, was Serenity when she died? Because from what I've seen and read it certainly seems like she was quite young. She disobeys orders to sneak down to Earth because she is fascinated by it. Endymion is her first love to which she has extreme reactions to (she commits suicide when he dies defending her). She spends her time skipping lessons to play with her friends. These all suggest she is early teens in maturity level which makes sense when a lot of her backstory is meant to draw parallels to Usagi who is actually in her early teens. It is quite possible then that Serenity never grew into her potential because she never had time to grow.

Plus you know the whole Usagi, and her friends, is a child soldier forced into maturing early as the weight of the world (almost literally considering she saves it multiple times) is thrust upon her shoulders.

 

[GoukaRyuu]

That's contradicted by canon. Could make a cool fanfic with the premise but it definitely isn't the case already.

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If it is manga canon than I wouldn't know. And, hell, I've been watching the anime over the last year and they don't really go into too much detail on Silver Millennium and the fall either.

 

[EnderofWorlds]

mh.. I'm halways through Crystal season 3, and after Mistress 9 steals her silver crystal she's basically kinda dead, and the outer senshi mention she lost her soul.

Maybe the Pink Moon crystal somehow binds itself to the Silver Crystal? There's also the fact that Sailor Moon, at the VERY beginning (and depending on your interpretation) does NOT have the silver crystal on her.

Especially if we accept that here the silver crystal has been broken/separated into the 7 rainbow crystals.

So, Usagi would ALSO have her own moon crystal I think.

There was a theory mentioned before about maybe Usagi and Chibiusa having a fragment of the Silver Crystal bonded to their own actual sailor crystals, I think.

...yeah, Lunaryon will have to decide on her own interpretation of all such things, because we kinda need a more clear/well defined set of rules, at least for the things that we actually CAN discover/verify in story.

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Souls are weird in Sailor Moon; but general consensus from what I've seen is that Chibiusa's the official legit senshi of the moon and her Pink Moon Crystal is the proper Sailor Crystal of the moon. Usagi, meanwhile, is just cosplaying as the Moon Senshi and gets away with it because nothing can tell the Silver Crystal and nascent-Sailor Cosmos "no" when push comes to shove. Even Luna admits that Sailor Moon was pretty much a homebrew set-up so that the princess can both protect herself while also furthering the con that Venus and Artemis were running to keep everyone away from the real Princess Serenity, to the point of even suppressing Luna's memories to sell the illusion better.

As for how Usagi operates without a soul? Well, in Moon Kingdom times the Silver Crystal was always around in her mother's hands so no real issues there. In the 30th century it's kept in the palace, except when Chibiusa takes it out to party in the 20th century. You're right that Chibi gets knocked out when Mistress 9 takes the future Silver Crystal, but it should also be noted that life-force sucking is what her kind do and that she and Pharaoh 90 were doing their best to gorge on the energy of the Silver Crystal nonstop until they were stopped by several parties in action. My best guess is that as long as the connection between Usagi and the Silver Crystal isn't full on severed, then she's perfectly fine and functionally has a soul, even if said soul is fooling around in the past in someone else's hands.

Should also be noted that the senshi power and transformation progression capstone is using the Sailor Crystal itself to transform rather than any pen/wand/compact/whatever. Which, for Usagi, is the Silver Crystal. Should also be noted, however, that her final form used, Eternal Sailor Moon, still uses an alternate device as an intermediary rather than using the full-on Silver Crystal raw; though she does follow the other's in regards to the transform command.

If it is manga canon than I wouldn't know. And, hell, I've been watching the anime I they don't really go into too much detail on Silver Millennium and the fall either.

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Even 90's anime Stars arc outlines that the Silver Crystal is Usagi's soul, and that was a reinterpretation of the manga's Galaxia arc, which also refers to the Silver Crystal as Usagi's soul just like how every other Sailor Crystal is their respective senshi's soul along with the planet it corresponds to.

Incidentally, yes, this does mean that every senshi in fact is the living incarnation and avatar of their respective celestial bodies by virtue of possessing the very world-soul of said planets/stars. Why else do you think so many of the senshi end up being literally divine along with ending up in positions of authority and rule?

 

[GoukaRyuu]

I'm watching Stars now. But yeah, I'm mostly familiar with my friend's own Sailor Moon Quest and I'm pretty sure that while he has watched the anime, and also uses the old live action TV show, a lot of what he has done is based on his own interpretation too. So yeah, don't mind me. Just wanted to participate.

 

[Pittauro]

Should also be noted that the senshi power and transformation progression capstone is using the Sailor Crystal itself to transform rather than any pen/wand/compact/whatever. Which, for Usagi, is the Silver Crystal. Should also be noted, however, that her final form used, Eternal Sailor Moon, still uses an alternate device as an intermediary rather than using the full-on Silver Crystal raw; though she does follow the other's in regards to the transform command.

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to be fair Usagi's compacts usually contain the Silver Crystal (at least in the manga), so she IS actually using it directly (or at least more directly that with the pens of the other senshi).

About all the discussion about sailor moon's soul being the silver crystal... all I'm hearing here is that the Silver Crystal is basically Usagi's soul gem, madoka style

I'm watching Stars now. But yeah, I'm mostly familiar with my friend's own Sailor Moon Quest and I'm pretty sure that while he has watched the anime, and also uses the old live action TV show, a lot of what he has done is based on his own interpretation too. So yeah, don't mind me. Just wanted to participate.

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eh, sailor moon is confusing, and there's a few unclarified bits. Is normal to use some headcanons at some point, especially if you're trying to take both elements from the manga and from the anime, like it has been done here.

 

[Simon_Jester]

So I totally get this; I don't think it would be out of the question to get the laws rewritten, or at least an exception made. And that's another way out of the problem. It does seem like a few rich Japanese people have tried to get it changed before and failed, but we are on a totally different level than them. But that would be a substantial expenditure of political capital, for what seems like not too much gain. It's a problem, but one with a relatively easy solution, especially by the time it's relevant. Having Usagi simultaneously be both Queen and a Japanese citizen seems not great for a lot of reasons, and gives an appearance we might prefer not to. For the rest of the Senshi & Naru, this is less of an issue. Though, seeing as there are occasional controversies in various countries over MPs or whatever having foreign citizenships, some people will probably be upset. I'd guess they'd mostly be from amongst Silver Millenium refugees? Regardless, it's current law and we need some plan regarding it once we start actually claiming statehood.

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Fair fair. And, yeah, having our high officials and the senshi subject to foreign jurisdiction is gonna present problems.

So I might have been misunderstood on this point, but I was never saying that we ought to follow the treaty; that would be dumb. I was saying that claiming the moon will blow up international space law, which was working more or less fine* beforehand. This will annoy people, and we should be aware of that.

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Ehhh.

Well, I'm not so much disputing that as pointing out that the Outer Space Treaty works mainly because no one lives in space, so there is no incentive to assert lasting sovereignty over it. Occupancy of space is so temporary, so tenuous, and so much the massive pet project of some nation-state for each individual space launch.

I think that "people being annoyed" by Queen Serenity II (this makes way more sense as a regnal name than "Neo-Queen Serenity") claiming to rule the moon is going to be mostly pro forma and the territory of a handful of idiots. Most people won't care, or will care because of actual objections to the Moon Kingdom itself, objections that would apply if the OST did not exist. Not because of some abstract treaty violation.

The Holy See (as distinct from the Papal States and the Vatican) was considered sovereign by some countries even during the "Prisoner in the Vatican" era, who still sent full ambassadors as if it was a normal state. To this day, it's often considered sovereign in its own right, independent from the sovereignty of Vatican City**. Admittedly, you could potentially consider the Holy See in that case as something like a government in exile. But, as I said in my original post, the SMOM are generally considered sovereign, hold no territory, and have no outstanding territorial claims. And even if you say that they don't count, if we're limiting it to just claiming, not actual possession, we do claim the moon, at the very least.

** Bizarrely, Vatican City itself is often considered a non-sovereign territory in something like a feudal relationship with the sovereign Holy See. See the Crown's relationship with the UK for a reasonably close analog.

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SMOM holds territory- namely, a couple of buildings. The Vatican's sovereignty was a contested matter during the "Prisoner in the Vatican" era, but that's kind of the point, it was contested; the Papal States had previously held territory, which then got compressed down into a tiny dot around the Vatican proper, and the legal status of the Vatican with regards to the new Kingdom of Italy was ambiguous, but the Pope basically just kept acting like a sovereign head of state and plenty of other countries kept accepting that.

The underlying point here is that you can't reasonably claim sovereignty without having somewhere that is definably yours and not the territory of some other polity. If nothing else, because without that, there's no place to enforce our own laws.

Do note that I did say we should use "the old system of laws on a provisional basis" — we obviously aren't in a position to do much of anything regarding them now. But I think limiting ourselves to major revisions in the long run is probably a mistake (even if we presumably won't deal with the results either way in this Quest in any case). Once we have an actual population in the millions, putting a few dozen lawyers on a complete rewrite could really improve a literally 10,000 year old law code. We genuinely have no idea what kinda strange nonsense is in there. In just the criminal code, things that are totally acceptable today could be criminalized, and things that are totally unacceptable today could be perfectly legal (Infanticide was 100% legal in ancient Greece and Rome, and occasionally mandatory). Sure, we could fix the egregious cases, but this sort of nonsense is probably all over their laws, and unless they've been taking very good care of them, there's tons of ad-hoc temporary or reactive bullshit that could easily be consolidated into a couple of enactments. Beyond that, do they even have laws regarding modern technology? Is there a Silver Millenium driving code? Silver Millenium Nuclear Regulations? Probably not!

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The problem is that for a substantial period after restarting the Moon Kingdom, we're going to have only Silver Millennium-era lawyers who will only be familiar with the Silver Millennium legal code, and who are products of that era's culture.

They won't know what they need to change, in other words, and if they do propose changes they're likely to be changes that take advantage of our ignorance to create loopholes beneficial to themselves or their patrons.

We'd need to establish adequate familiarity with the law code as a whole, and a corps of people familiar with both the modern era and the Silver Millennium's history and laws, before we could make this work.

So no, I don't think the founding is the best time, because it's the time when 99.9999% of our population still has their heads firmly stuck in the past, and the remaining 0.0001% is far, far too busy and lacking in knowledge of Silver Millennium law to do a good job.

 

[EnderofWorlds]

eh, sailor moon is confusing, and there's a few unclarified bits. Is normal to use some headcanons at some point, especially if you're trying to take both elements from the manga and from the anime, like it has been done here.

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A lot of this is due to two major factors: one being that the 90's anime was running concurrently with the anime, so they had to improv a lot in regards to that. The second is that Takeuchi herself simply ran out of time to explore everything she wanted to and decided to just leave things hanging rather than force herself to work through burnout. Hence why SM itself is around 60 chapters long versus far longer running manga series, though granted those chapters are a bit larger than your average manga chapter if memory serves.

The biggest divergence between anime and manga is the Outers; in the 90's anime they were way more standoffish and adversarial than they were in the manga. Manga had them all aloof and separate because they'd rather resolve the problem themselves rather than get the Princess involved and dragged into this mess; the assumed, fairly correctly, that further knowledge of the whole situation would cause Usagi a fair amount of grief and heartache, so they wanted to spare her the trouble by keeping her and the others out of it.

Naturally, Usagi being Usagi, this doesn't work and everyone's in the thick of it all together at the end and Sailor Moon saves the day and fixes everything. Only difference is that this time she has Sailor Saturn as her partner/back-up dancer to genocide purge the entire Tau Nebula*.

*Never forget that the moment Saturn awoke and transformed that Pharaoh 90 immediately shit himself and begged to at least have the decency to be executed in his own system rather than in our own. Which Pluto was more than happy to oblige, literally shutting the door and locking it on his way out. ...Of course this meant fuck-all to Usagi who proceeded to dive in, rescue, and then reincarnate Hotaru.

 

[Nuew]

I think that "people being annoyed" by Queen Serenity II (this makes way more sense as a regnal name than "Neo-Queen Serenity") claiming to rule the moon is going to be mostly pro forma and the territory of a handful of idiots. Most people won't care, or will care because of actual objections to the Moon Kingdom itself, objections that would apply if the OST did not exist. Not because of some abstract treaty violation.

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So I think we agree on most everything here. Bringing up the OST wasn't meant to be a big "gotcha" or a deal-breaker or anything. It was something to be aware of.

I'll admit I didn't express that as well as I should have.

SMOM holds territory- namely, a couple of buildings. The Vatican's sovereignty was a contested matter during the "Prisoner in the Vatican" era, but that's kind of the point, it was contested; the Papal States had previously held territory, which then got compressed down into a tiny dot around the Vatican proper, and the legal status of the Vatican with regards to the new Kingdom of Italy was ambiguous, but the Pope basically just kept acting like a sovereign head of state and plenty of other countries kept accepting that.

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SMOM's buildings are under extraterritorial jurisdiction, which isn't the same thing as genuine sovereign ownership over some territory. Now, a separate agreement with Italy gives SMOM special privileges that arguably mean that both Italy and SMOM are sovereign over their buildings, but neither position is universally accepted.

On the broader point, I was never saying that there wouldn't be argument over our actual sovereign status*, but, given our military power and presumable ability demonstrate the existence of the Silver Millennium**, that, as long as we act sovereign, most everybody will be willing to provisionally treat us as sovereign until we can actually take possession of the Moon. Once we have that, if we ask to sign the Genocide Convention, I'd imagine that they'll say yes. We might have trouble joining the UN or it's specialized agencies though; I don't think our 13 funds will cover the membership fees .

*Given my other points in the same post, I see why this should have been stated explicitly.
**Through, for example, a talking cat.

The problem is that for a substantial period after restarting the Moon Kingdom, we're going to have only Silver Millennium-era lawyers who will only be familiar with the Silver Millennium legal code, and who are products of that era's culture.

They won't know what they need to change, in other words, and if they do propose changes they're likely to be changes that take advantage of our ignorance to create loopholes beneficial to themselves or their patrons.

We'd need to establish adequate familiarity with the law code as a whole, and a corps of people familiar with both the modern era and the Silver Millennium's history and laws, before we could make this work.

So no, I don't think the founding is the best time, because it's the time when 99.9999% of our population still has their heads firmly stuck in the past, and the remaining 0.0001% is far, far too busy and lacking in knowledge of Silver Millennium law to do a good job.

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At the point where we have a serious population, we will have enough money to hire lawyers from outside of the country to help with the rewrite. While we of course want some domestic lawyers, not the least because we want an official translation into High Lunar, we probably don't actually want much influence from the existing legal code, except with regards to Magic, where there is no existing Earth law. For other law, though, unless the Silver Millennium has some special super great futuristic legal technology*** a modern legal code is going to be necessary, and the later we do it, the harder the transition will be. Also, having a relatively standard legal code will help with treaty compliance and trade, to the extent that we're buying into the current treaty systems and capitalism, respectively.

Again, this isn't super urgent. But it ought to be done within the first few years of actually being a country.

***And, based on them not having any substantial industrial technology, they probably don't.

---

Well, I think the word 'sovereign' has been thoroughly semantically saturated for all of us. Unfortunately (for my ego at least, lol), I don't see any response to my idea for a formal privy council either, which was actually the most important idea in my first post. I really think we ought to do that during our next downtime, in some form or another. I have some potential structures, if anyone's interested.