2003-05-24 - 10:40 a.m.

I am the copyhalfcat (bad joke): go see what Seema wrote: www.livejournal.com/users/seemag

To make this less confusing I'll stick to one fandom since I have around five or six. The fandom of the day: Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon (henceforth referred to as BSSM), or for us English-speaking folk: Pretty Soldier Sailormoon.

1. Most annoying bit of fanon.

When people decide that Haruka and Michiru can't love each other because they're both women and break them up from self-inserts or turn one of them into a man. It just makes me want to punch out the computer screen when I read things like this.

2. Most annoying 'ship.

Seiya and Haruka, no doubt. These characters HATE one another in the canon show. Well, maybe HATE is too strong a word, but to be sure, they have a certain respect for one another but at the same time they don't neccesarily like one another. Aside from that, I personally don't like Seiya so I could never like a relationship where Haruka was with hir.

3. A fic you read and laughed at.

I can't remember the name, but it was a wannabe lemon. I'm not sure whether the author just didn't speak English natively or just didn't use a spellcheck/betareader/anything. The author was trying to be so delicate about the goings-on and then I got to the sentence, "Michiru had her first organism."

4. Character most brutalized in fic.

Michiru. She's most often written as a controlling bitch who cares for nothing but herself and occasionally Haruka. Or she's written without a personality. She's truly a hard character to write for so I can see why people often have trouble doing so; I have trouble writing for her at times. It's so much easier just to write her as a superficial character rather than one with a complex history (which is ficably wonderful in its vagueness) who lives for the person she loves.

5. Bats?

When people mix characters from the original version with the translated version. A lot of people do this and it just does not work on any level. For one thing, there are about six thousand plotholes in the translated version to contend with and secondly, the characters have different relationships in the translated versions. Michiru and Haruka are lesbians. Naoko Takeuchi has freely admitted this to the fans of the work. Michelle and Amara, their English counterparts, are cousins. Mixing Michelle and Haruka or Amara and Michiru does not work. First off there's the whole deal of the language barrier...

If one likes the English names better than the Japanese names than use the English names or vice versa. If one can't spell one or more of the names then look it up or ask or do something; don't just switch from Japanese to English because one doesn't can't spell or doesn't know. This drives me insane.

For the benefit of someone, hopefully, how to spell the names of the main Sailormoon characters in English and Japanese:

Disclaimer: I don't know the last names for the English characters thus I will not write them. Most stories don't require them anyway.

Serena Tsukino.....Tsukino Usagi

Amy Anderson.......Mizuno Ami

Raye ( )...........Hino Rei

Lita ( )...........Kino Makoto

Mina...............Aino Minako

Michelle ( ).......Kaiou Michiru

Amara ( )..........Tenou Haruka

Susan ( )..........Meiou Setsuna

Hotaru Tomoe.......Tomoe Hotaru

Darien ( ).........Chiba Mamoru

Note: Michiru, Haruka and Setsuna's last names all have two or three accepted spellings. I use the Japanese phonetic version sans the stop. Kaioh, Tenoh and Meioh are probably just as common (English phoentic version), if not more common, than the Japanese version in the English fanfic world. As for Hotaru, the difference between the English version and the Japanese version lies in the pronounciation: the Japanese version is pronounced /Toe-moe-eh/ while the English version is /Toe-moe/.

Okay, I'm done ranting.

Wow, I feel better.

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