i can dig it – Rhio's Tunglr Stuff

commas-and-ampersands:

mochibuni:

lillykane-dreams-on:

keyofnik:

I was right!

Reincarnated SilMil Moon Kingdom citizen having subconscious flashbacks!

YOU CAN’T TAKE THIS FROM ME

Going through JW’s headcanon tag (as you do), and you know what’s just occurred to me?

They didn’t finish coloring in Tuxie’s cape and that really fucking bothers me.

No, what I actually realized: Tuxedo Kamen is probably Sailor V’s love interest in the Sailor V anime.

This. Is. Amazing.

Minako and Mamoru already don’t get along, but having an anime depict them having some kind of epic romance? omg yes please

Especially since Tuxedo Kamen probably saves Sailor V at least once or twice. Minako can forgive a lot of errors the anime makes (since they didn’t ask her for any input whatsoever, the jerks), but this? Oh no. Minako will never forgive this. Being depicted on screen for all time as not only making kissy-face with Mamoru, but being saved by him? Being inferior to him? Oh no. This will not stand.

So let’s say the world is on the brink of ending. Everyone’s preparing for the end of the world, but Minako keeps slipping away and she won’t tell anyone what’s going on.

One day, Mamoru and Usagi are out having one of their final dates before the end of the world, when they see it: Sailor V sneaking out of a warehouse with a bunch of DVDs from her own anime.

Usagi is confused. She knows Minako had some creative disagreements with the production team, but it’s an anime about Minako. Surely it is the greatest gift to Minako’s ego ever. And Makoto and Ami and Rei are all in it! And Artemis! She and Luna aren’t, but that’s fine because this is MINAKO’S thing and she loves seeing how awesome everyone is on screen, even if they don’t always get things right.

But Mamoru is immediately rolling up his sleeves to help.

Minako is confused. Mamoru and her? Working together? This is the very thing she is trying to erase. What is he doing? Why? What’s his angle? She demands an explanation.

Mamoru makes an excuse in the moment, which does not fool Minako for a second. He glances at Usagi meaningfully though, and since there are a lot of things they very purposefully do not say in front of Usagi, Minako rolls with it.

Between the three of them, they gather up every single existing copy of the anime still in existence in short order. Especially since Minako’s made a significant dent in it already. Sure she literally tore that one copy out of a crying child’s hands BUT IT WAS FOR THE GREATER GOOD DAMMIT.

Back at Hikawa Shrine, there is a bonfire to complete the destruction. Nobody gets why Minako is so keen about this (since explaining her reasoning might hurt Usagi’s feelings, she can’t really say), but if Minako wants it, she’s getting it whether they like it or not. Probably they’re roasting marshmallows over it anyway, so everyone’s happy.

Minako is at peace. The abomination has died. The apocalypse is coming, yeah, but Sailor V’s legacy is intact.

At some point, Mamoru casually sidles up to her – probably under the “pretense” of getting her to stop hogging the chocolate. And he tells her.

“If you think I’m going down in history as your lovesick lackey, you have lost your mind.”

(I may fic this in earnest later because I am now completely smitten with this. THE ONE TIME MINAKO AND MAMORU WORKED TOGETHER AND IT WAS BECAUSE THEY DISLIKE EACH OTHER SO VERY MUCH. God I love them.)

I still just don’t get Minako and Mamoru hating each other. It’s funny, but I don’t see it without making Minako or Mamoru OOC. What am I missing? D:

A lot of people don’t get it, and that’s fine. Frankly, as long as you’re amused, I feel it’s a job well done. xD

See, I came at it kind of backwards. One day I just noticed that Minako and Mamoru never actually talk to one another in canon. I know she shouts “Mamoru!” when he hits Fiore with the rose in the R movie. That is literally the only time I can remember either of them speaking to one another. Everyone else has some substantial one-on-one time with him, but not Minako.

That fascinated the hell out of me, so I had to find a justification for why they didn’t ever interact.

Naturally I decided they hated each other.

Okay, hate may be strong, but there are days where hate is dangerously close to appropriate.

For Minako, it comes down to really bad first impressions.

Minako’s first interaction with Mamoru is saving him from Zoisite. The next time she sees him, Zoisite’s either killed him or he’s very near dead. And then after that, he’s trying to kill her. All of her formative experiences with him are negative. These are not things that make her want to be buds.

I mean, it’s not like she blames him for getting killed (the first time). He was protecting Usagi. This is a good thing! He performed his function. Minako got killed for Usagi later on as well, so it’s nice to see he is willing and able to do this if called upon.

Minako of course looked at the situation and saw 5 different ways to get Usagi out of danger without Mamoru getting himself stabbed, but he was already hurt and it was a tense moment, so okay. Pass. Main objective accomplished. Would have been nice to spare Usagi the trauma, plus it would have meant Mamoru didn’t get kidnapped, but whatever. Shit happens.

But then Mamoru’s evil and all up in their shit and Minako can’t stop thinking about him.

She thinks of that first night. Him mistaking Zoisite for Sailor Moon was weird. For months, he’d been swooping in and saving Sailor Moon ALL THE TIME. They were up close and personal every other day, but he didn’t notice that Zoisite and Usagi look nothing alike? That the uniform was wrong? And the eye color? And that the scenario of Sailor Moon hanging from a crane with no one around just made fuck all sense? But they’re supposed to be destined lovers? And he’s supposed to be a genius future doctor guy?

What the fuck is that?

She just has this one interaction where he isn’t evil to go off of, and she obsesses over it. And the fact that he keeps being menacing in her general direction, and in particular Usagi’s direction, continues to color her opinion.

But Minako is a generous soul. Or at least she’s pretending to be one until she’s sure the others like her. Usagi loves him. Rei dated him. Maybe she’s missing something. So she asks around.

And she hears nothing but stories about how big of a dick he was to Usagi. In retrospect, everyone sees this as Mamoru failing to know how to be a human being because of his Tragic Past, but as far as Minako can tell, he got his jollies from making a 14-year-old cry. That is not on.

And even though she can’t 100% hold him accountable for the whole Tsukikage no Knight nonsense, she can’t help but do it anyway. Because that shit was ridiculous. Oh, it’s hilarious that some subconscious part of Mamoru decided dressing up like something out of Arabian Nights was a good idea, but that’s not the point. The point is that some part of him made a decision not to remember. I think it was good self-preservation; I’m of the opinion that his time with Beryl really fucked him up and he needed a bit longer to recover than the others. But all Minako sees is a refusal of duty, and if there is one thing she can’t forgive, it’s Mamoru bailing.

She’s at her breaking point now. Mamoru abandoned Usagi, and that infuriates her. But there’s a general consensus that this wasn’t a conscious decision (which Minako thinks is hair-splitting frankly), and he did do a good job of saving Usagi when he didn’t remember what was going on. That is what saved him… for a time.

The last straw for Minako is the R break up arc.

I don’t think she necessarily disagrees with Mamoru’s decision that he should stay away from Usagi. The problem is he didn’t do it right, and the other thing Minako can’t forgive is incompetence. Because he didn’t actually stay away from Usagi. Mamoru broke up with her, and then kept hanging around, making Usagi even more miserable.

AND EVEN THIS SHE COULD MAYBE GET PAST EVENTUALLY. Like when she finds out Chibi-Usa’s his kid. It makes sense he’d feel a connection with her, okay, blahblah she gets it.

It’s like one excuse after another, but fine. Whatever. He had reasons.

All of this could eventually be overcome… if only he had told her what was going on.

Okay, he probably wouldn’t specifically tell her, but Rei. He should have told Rei, who would have told Minako. It’s Minako’s job to protect Usagi from death and danger. How is she supposed to do that job when Mamoru holds crucial information back? Yeah, it all came to nothing, but it might not have been nothing. How can she trust him not to do this again, only next time, it might not be some fucked up test provided by his fucked up future self.

PS WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT? Endymion’s half-assed explanation was completely ridonkulous. "Your love had to be strong to withstand a test that never actually happens blahblah.“ The fuck? Endymion and Mamoru are the same person. The king should know that their love was strong enough. It’s already survived DEATH. MULTIPLE TIMES. AND YOU BECOMING EVIL. MULTIPLE TIMES.

Or Endymion could have sent along constructive information like, “Oh hey, so this thing’s gonna happen and it’s gonna be rough, but don’t wimp out, ok? Give our girl a kiss for me.”

But no, he made the bizarre ass decision to make Usagi miserable for reasons Minako can’t figure out. It’s not only needlessly cruel; it’s inefficient. It didn’t work. The test Endymion supposedly prepared for never really manifested, unless the preparation for the test WAS THE TEST, in which case Endymion is seven different kinds of fucked up. Not to mention dangerous.

She gets that Usagi loves Mamoru, and I think eventually she comes around to the fact that Mamoru and Usagi are good together. Provided he can stop from being brainwashed for five seconds.

However, for a good long while, Minako thinks Usagi can do better. Mamoru may have died protecting Usagi, but the big gestures don’t make up for the smaller failures. She cannot trust him to protect Usagi.

Hilariously, Mamoru has the exact same opinion but about Minako.

Mamoru never got to know Minako independently. She just kind of showed up right before he went to the dark side (they had cookies), and by the time he was back in the game, she was fairly well integrated and thus pretty comfortable being “herself.” As much as Minako ever is herself.

Because for awhile, Minako was on her best behavior with everyone. She had an image to maintain, and after at least a year of battle-weary isolation, Minako may have forgotten how to friend. Mamoru never got that nice treatment from Minako. He just saw Minako coming into her glorious Minakoness, which he did not find so glorious. There’s no accounting for taste.

So all he really knows is the Minako who’s this huge flake, totally selfish, and obnoxious, plus a litany of other things that in his estimation, make her terrible for her job.

And yet she is really fucking good at her job.

Because while Minako appears hopeless at everything, Venus is a terrifyingly efficient super general lightning bruiser. He cannot reconcile the two. His brain goes into a blue screen of death every time he tries. Eventually it becomes clear that he will fundamentally never understand Minako. I think he’s half convinced himself she’s bipolar or schizophrenic or something to explain her behavior, which helps not at all.

There’s no canon moment I can point to and say, “This is the moment they hate each other forever.” It’s more the lack of canon moments that made it for me, and I filled in the blanks.

I feel like they could eventually hash it out. At least on Mamoru’s end, things could be smoothed over; the first impression thing with Minako may be too strong to ever completely undo. But if Minako would ever be 100% real with Mamoru, I think she’d at least partially click. He may never understand, but he wouldn’t doubt her.

Problem is Minako will never do that. Artemis sees Minako without the walls on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes Minako lets Usagi in. Minako does this because they are her people and she loves them and trusts them already. Showing vulnerability to someone she doesn’t trust to get him to trust her? Never gonna happen.

I don’t think Mamoru’s up for trying either. He’s already given up. And probably afraid at looking at Minako too closely and going insane himself.

The idea of spending one-on-one time with Minako literally gives him nightmares. They are in some ways worse than the ones of Usagi dying because at least then, he knew what was coming.

And finally, there’s Minako’s ruthless pragmatism. She is sure deep in her gut that at some point, Mamoru’s going to wind up brainwashed again. At a minimum of 5 times. One of those times, Usagi might not be able to save him, and there may be no choice but to take him out. No one else will want to do it. It would hurt Usagi to take Mamoru away from her, and even if it comes down to saving Mamoru or letting him kill Usagi, they may still hesitate because they genuinely love the guy like a brother.

Minako’s going to make sure at least one of them has no qualms about pulling that trigger.