I love Sailor Moon. I know that it is an important franchise for the LGBTQ community. But I disagree with the popular takes that claim that all the seshis are bisexual/pansexual. I won’t hate on anyone’s ship either, but seeing every hug of two characters as proof that there is romantic/sexual chemistry between them is not only tiring but puts it into a light where any kind of physical touch or emotional connection between two people has to be romantic or sexual and cannot be platonic, friendship based, or simple kindness. It has an “oh look Timmy is hugging Susie he must have a crush on her haha!” energy that tainted tons of friendships in my youth.

I think part of that annoyance comes with the fact that there are canonically very gay characters in the franchise already. Two senshis are literally lesbians. They include a third one (non sexually tho) in a rainbow family construct to raise a reborn senshi. You have gender switching senshis. It is quite versatile as it is. For what it’s worth, I am talking about characters who canonically have straight love interests in the main story or in some side story.

But that being said, if you find strength, support, or comfort in your headcanon and interpretation of any fictional character being a closeted gay, that’s obviously great and more power to you. If this is what you need in your life that’s absolutely fine.

But why the massages? Serious question

Wait they planned on getting pregnant? Edit: ok I saw your other comment, this is bonkers

My daughter is 4 too. While I get the worries, and I absolutely don’t want to encourage or downplay teenage pregnancies, I’ve thought about it a lot, and if she ever became pregnant at a young age, I decided that my first reaction needs to be one of joy and congratulations. Because if she ends up keeping the kid, it’s gonna be loved, and I want them to know that people were happy about them existing and being chosen to exist, and not just looked at as a burden and accident. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel if the first reaction from everyone is shock, disgust, “fafo”, anger. That being said, the next thing is I would make sure I’d support her no matter what decision she takes. Abortion, adoption, raising the kid, I’m on board because it is her life, her body, her decision.

I hope your kid has books today.

My kid has books and we constantly read books so I am absolutely outread by the end of the day. To be fair, the hat trilogy by Jon Klassen and gymnastics for the tail Grigori Oster are a lot of fun to read and cut straight to the point, not like grown up books, so I find a lot of enjoyment in what we read in general. But whenever I try to pick up a book for adults I now automatically fall asleep. Best I can do is manga and graphic novels right now. Unfortunately my kid finds them and mistakes these for comics, I ended up having to read Persepolis to a four year old.

This has also impacted my ability to go back to work. I can’t read a scientific paper without falling asleep anymore.

That’s an interesting take. I worked in a pharma startup once and they were grinding cutthroat bitches, but yeah, they were very focused on what they wanted to achieve. The most unethical thing - apart from absolutely ignoring human decency and worker’s rights - was probably exploiting funding for Covid research for cancer research. To be fair tho, it was the early days of Covid and their initial cancer target was structurally similar to a molecule in sars cov 2. And the CEO slept like 3 hours a day and was always one of the first ones to turn in applications for some funding contest, which is why he often got them. You have to get the money for your work somehow. And we did use the money for the development of the covid drug, it is just that we also used it to run the same tests and get equipment/reagents for the cancer targets.

The results of my master’s thesis were used for two papers in Nature Communications. So much of the data was fudged and I was either asked to leave out data points, sets of data that didn’t fit the hypothesis, or I was looking how my supervisor just deleted numbers until it looked good. I was so incredibly embarrassed and angry. I declined the offer to do a PhD under the same supervisor. Oral gavage yourself with your dick my dude.

Damn ._.

Isn’t it the German town with the highest suicide rate?

They do, they have breast tissue, even if very little. Which also means that men can get breast cancer.

I was snoopy at a fair. The requirement was “be 160 cm or shorter”. I am 161. I’ve never felt that one centimeter more.

Absolutely yes.

I’ve dreamt of making movies and theater plays. I got into internships after finishing school and it was going good, I just started hating it. I hated movies, I couldn’t see them without thinking of all the misery behind the scenes. I hated TV. I hated theater.

I stopped after a year and went to university. It ruined something else for me, but at least, after a while, I was able to enjoy movies again.

Yeah, giving a prognosis on the duration of a war is usually not the best idea.

Sincerely, a Russian. We’ve been stuck in our oh so glorious three day war for over four years now.

Maybe somewhat like a mandatory exam that you have to take at 18 (+/-) would help. It would, however, exclude a chunk of disabled people.

As a side note, I’d argue if you have lived in a country for 5 years and have no intentions of leaving (i.e. you have a job, your kids are in school) you should be able to vote for the country you are residing in.

And vice versa, if you move away, you keep your voting privileges for 5 years, no more. I still cannot believe that voting based on citizenship is a thing in the 21st century tbh.

I’ll join you in talking to the void about inuyasha since I am rewatching it for the first time since I was a teen (and it is the first time I actually have an order): I see what you mean with Kagura. But some poetic bittersweet death does the story good. Sess being there when she died and comforting her was a huge character development.

I’ve seen some clips from Yashahime and I doubt I’ll be able to watch it. I think the idea of the main conflict is compelling, but it’s already the language (“dad” instead of “father” is already off putting) and the character design (the tomboy daughter looks like she is wearing a suit and I somehow dislike that they had to make a tomboy character to begin with instead of a boy) that makes me unlikely to watch it.

I’ve spoiled myself the whole Rin thing though while I was in the middle of my rewatch and I have to admit I can see it. And I like it, and I prefer it. There is nothing romantic between Kagura and Sess, she only gives small indications, apart from the final declaration in the final act. (Not there yet in the manga, might scream into the void later.) He clearly only has compassion towards the end but no romantic or emotional attachment.

Honestly I can see it. While he is thankfully not grooming Rin when she is a child or showing any kind of romantic feelings towards her, it’s obvious she has a very unique position for a reason. The whole thing where he jumped into the Meido to save her from the netherworld (?) was a crazy episode. She’s the only person who makes him feel emotions like fear, sadness, regret, despair, and yes, love. Love for her, Jaken, life, his brother, the quest, people and beings. Hell even Sess’s mom was like “tf” and somehow found it in herself to revive a “human being” that is beneath her like an ant.

Afaik, even in Yashahime Sess is not being too present with Rin and never was, and their relationship isn’t all too lovey dovey. Their relationship, even when a romantic one, will be very… discrete. People point out that he is hundreds of years old anyway, so there will always be a difference in age/maturity when he finds a human partner. But I think this is almost making it too complicated. He is a demon. She is a human. The ick that we perceive stems from seeing it as a human-human coupling, when he is a demon and cannot be assessed this way. Apart from that, Japan in the feudal era and such. Him giving her choices en masse is already quite the luxury. Him not aging also. He is still a spoilt teenage/tween brat at the beginning of the series, despite being hundreds of years old.

Also I think Rin has a crush on Sess all along. I still have 4 episodes to go from the final act and idk what happens to Kohaku, maybe that would have been a more satisfying match for the audience, but I think for the characters SessRin makes more sense than SessKag and KohRin. I can absolutely imagine Rin being the pushier one to get together with Sess.

To be fair, the manga is much better in that regard. Tuxedo mask is actually very useful and might have a better character arc than Usagi herself, being that he starts out as a guy who just dresses up to someone with some powers who still feels inferior to his super badass gf whom he feels he is only holding back, to actually having a crystal of his own and some deep shit crazy powers. I’m not so sure it was supposed to be about empowerment as much as we want to read onto it. Same with all the sapphic views on it, claiming everyone there is gay or at least bi. Have it your way and read into it what you want, but I don’t think it was the actual intention of the creators, neither Naoko nor the anime studio.

I mean they literally give the girls manicures in their transformations, although they wear gloves - simply because the executives planned to market nail polish.

Both the seshi and tuxedo mask have episodes where they are vital though. I hate when he is called a damsel in distress as much as when the senshi are reduced to bystanders. Within the format and with the target audience, with the ease of production goals, I honestly think it is ok to not have them all kick ass every episode.

Sincerely, a huge Sailor Moon fan who is currently rewatching with their daughter. (The pegasus storyline is awful in the anime so far but it might be the best one in the manga.)

Yay, now I can open the first image and zoom in! The lil’ heart on Pluto 💜 thank you!

I was using standard firefox btw. The two other pictures that are cut outs can’t be zoomed or opened, in case you want to know!

If it’s of any use to you, I cannot zoom in on the website (in mobile mode), neither on the pictures, nor on the text. My guess was that this was a feature to not copy your work? On my phone, this ends up being too small to be readable. But I’ll assume you did my boy Pluto justice.

The only acceptable finance bro

This is so lovely! I can’t read everything the dwarf planets say unfortunately but it is cute nevertheless.

I laughed at Neptune being so happy about having the strongest winds. Truly a gassy planet.