#I love history and original concepts and nearly untouched rides and

[splynter]

“Now don't close your eyes

And don't try to hide

Or a silly spook may sit by your side

Shrouded in a daft disguise

They pretend to terrorize

Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize~”

[floraone]

So, Rec'tober is almost over and I come in at the finish line.

But I wanted to write a special kind of fic rec, something beyond what I normally do. And so I target this post not towards our little corner of the internet that have read every big fic that was posted in the last two decades, but towards those who pop in from time to time, to those that loved Sailor Moon in their childhood and youth and feel that pinge of nostalgia for the world. This post is for you!

Not everything in the Sailor Moon franchise survived the test of time. There are parts of canon we REMEMBER differently - we remember what it made us feel at the time, but re-watching it, it just doesn’t have the same impact. We grew up, and we STILL LOVE THE FRIGGIN CONCEPT, but we notice the flaws we didn’t notice before. But we want that back - we want the feeling that we had watching the show when we were little. We want that wonder, that newness, that full heart about how GOOD and wholesome Usagi is, we want the miracle romance, we want our favorite characters but how they grew with us in our heads.

And well, there IS a place where we can find this fix of what it felt like. And it’s preserved in a treasure box of fanfiction. Of people who write these characters as they might be today, of people who take their essence and make it new.

So, this list is filled with tons of fics that tried to re-create canon with that affectionate, nostalgic feeling. I specifically for this list chose fics that dealt with canon themes - either through fix-it fics that took specific episodes and put their own spin to it, or to spins on canon, the what ifs - what if this specific choice weren’t made, what if the break up arc didn’t end, what if we took this plot point and spun it somewhere new, playing with the things we vaguely remember to have loved so dearly. (Though, of course, the world of Alternative Universes and Non-Senshi fics is vast, and if you are looking for a fix of that, please check out @uglygreenjacket ‘s elaborate worlds and @queenrisa14 fantastic AU spins out especially for this purpose!)

(Take note that these stories prominently feature stories revolving Usagi and Mamoru and the Miracle Romance, since that is my absolute jam. (Though it didn’t even used to be my most favorite part of the story growing up!) And some categories feature more stories by the same authors (for instance those that just like to dabble in What Ifs  - a not all TOO common trope, though I hope it were!))

So, let me transport you back into your childhood:

What If’s:

Forget Me Not by Antigone2 What if, post-stars, Usagi was suddenly the one to forget Mamoru for once, and he had to try really hard to make a new good first impression? This plays off all my buttons, and @idesofnovember is a master of making you remember the small details of these dorks that were so special.

What If by Antigone2 Canon had the habit of making Mamoru forget his memories, and @idesofnovember is a master of taking this trope and making it better. Here, Usagi wonders if Mamoru would have ever dated her if it weren’t for their history, and Setsuna, fed up, makes it happen.

Desperate and Divine by Antigone2 (Rated M) This story will always have a giant place in my heart: What If Mamoru never remembered after Beryl’s defeat, and Usagi was trying to get that one special night of closure. This had such an impact on me, reminding me how much I loved these characters, that it caused me to start writing fanfiction once more.

Royal Pain and Similes by Antigone2 What If the Senshi had found out Usagi is Serenity, but never that Mamoru is Endymion in this spectacular pinefest that will make your heart bleed.

Coming Of Age by Kasienda What if the R story arc surrounding Chibi-Usa was a little more sensical, a little more tragic, a little more realistic? This kid shows up in front of Mamoru’s door, Sailor Pluto informing him she’s from a great war in the future and him being the only one of age, he is now her legal guardian. Watch Mamoru and Usagi becoming parents to a war-traumatized Chibi-Usa, and all the struggles with it.

The Reveal by Kasienda This is a series of unconnected fics set in first season primarly and beyond, and it reinvents that crucial moment where the superhero personas of our favorite characters are revealed over and over and over again, because that moment can never be special and new enough.

A Craving for Milkshakes by Kasienda What if during first season, a monster-of-the-week had caused Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon to be telepathically linked? Watch how it would progressively have changed their dynamic in this endearing, sweet story!

Wring My Emotions and interpret canon anew:

Six Birthdays by Kiyoshi Dot This Fic reads like a poem, and it runs your through the ups and downs of the Miracle Romance via gifts Usagi receives forher birthday through the years, and it has the feeling of the Manga written all over it.

Aisuru, Mamo-chan by ellephedre Post-stars, Mamoru receives a package from Harvard. In it are all the letters Usagi wrote to him while he was dead during Stars. And yes, this read is as painful and therapeutic as you imagine it is.

Song for a scribbled out name by Antigone2 Centered in the first season during the anime’s Evil!Endymion arc, this little story teases you with what might have become of this enticing little nugget of piney, deliciously angsty plot!

The Odds Considered by Kiyoshi Dot Takes you through the secret romance of Usagi and Mamoru in the first season in this hauntingly beautiful way of forming words, and made me hurt in the way I always wanted the manga to hurt me.

Resiliency is My Mask by MamaLadyKT This is an episode fix surrounding the time Usagi was nearly suffocated by a monster-of-the-week in the infamous Saori-episode, and Mamoru cares a LOT about it.

Feel Good Little Moments with these characters as we remember them:

Je t’aime by Antigone2 A snapshot moment where Usagi uses the disguise pen to sneak into a university event of Mamoru’s and takes him for a little test. This little story feels so delightfully, essentially THEM in the way they behaved during later seasons of the anime that it makes my chest feel light and happy!

Day Of Delinquency by UglyGreenJacket A snippet of a moment that captures the humor of the series as my heart remembers it, in which Haruka takes Usagi on a joy ride, Usagi lands them in jail, and Mamoru and Michiri have to bail them out.

Distractions by Antigone2 follows Mamoru unsuccessfully trying to help Usagi study and it feels like home.

The Untouchable King in the Day and Night Lacunae Series by Tina Century What if we let @tinacentury show King Endymion the Sailor Moon Crystal series? This is exactly as delightful as it sounds.

A Romance For The Small Things by amomo Newest on this list, @spider-momo wrote these fall-themed snippets of Senshi interactions in the way that feel so painfully right and homey and warm they are bound to make you ache to re-acquaint yourself with these old friends of yours.

Public Eye by Antigone2 Canon never gave us a terrible lot of interaction between Usagi and Tuxedo Mask or Mamoru and Sailor Moon. This is a cheeky and delightful little ficlet about Mamoru having to pretend he has No Relations Going On With This Superheroine.

Rainbow by Kasienda I’m pretty sure I put this fic on every fic rec list I ever wrote, but @kasienda encapsulated everything I love about Mamoru and Usagi’s dynamic in the first season of the anime and made my heart ache in its simplistic beauty.

The Space Between by Uglygreenjacket This series of ficlets explores the space between R and S and gives you that sweet feeling of Usagi and Mamoru tender baby love as we were used to in S!

A Week With Mamoru Chiba by Dreams In Pink This fic takes us through a series of Mamoru-centered mini-stories in a mostly first season second that feel so delightfully warm and funny it will warm your heart.

Flower Power By irritable-vowel-types Do you miss the absolute ridiculousness that were these show’s monster-of-the-week, or Tuxedo Mask’s outrageous speeches? This fic is a crackfic, and yet it somehow manages to feel EXACTLY as ridiculous and not a tad more than those original canon monsters.

All’s Fun With Love and Orbs by irritable-vowel-types This is set in Super-S, and reads like an episode as it should have been. What if one of the Amazon Quartett’s shenanigans was to flip all love into hate for one delightfully hilarious read?

The Thing About Your Transformation by AngelMoon Girl Delightfully funny, this little ficlet explores the fact that Mamoru can’t quite deal with the fact that for a short moment before every battle, Usagi may be all glitter, but she’s also briefly naked as she transforms.

Shall We Dance by ncisduckie A snippet in time and a secret relationship as Serenity and Endymion share a bittersweet dance.

And, if you still want more, I wrote my own canon spins, too. Most notably, the Ikigai and Yugen duo (Rated M), in which I tried to hand-pick everything I loved about the Sailor Moon story, manga and anime and all, of all the seasons, and tried to reinvent it in a way that felt contemporary and told one consecutive narrative within the anime setting. And in contrast to that for the manga meets anime setting, my story Priorities (Rated M) tried to encapsulate what the feeling of reading the Manga for the first time felt like to me, but now with a very adult and mature and heart-aching spin to it.

This list I gave you is non-exhaustive. There are many, many more where they come from. And if you need a fix of Sailor Moon nostalgia, they are waiting for you. Have FUN!

(And if you liked any of them, please consider leaving the author a review, so they will keep motivated to supply us with such beautiful, free, nostalgic treasures!)

[gracewithducks]

“You Have Found Favor”  (Luke 1:26-30)

I never really got the Mary thing.

 I mean, let’s be honest: I grew up Protestant. I grew up as United Methodist in a town where the Roman Catholics were one of the biggest churches around. Along with CCD and popes and Friday fish fries, I knew vaguely that Mary was a really big deal. People had statues of Mary in bathtub shrines in their yard; they wore necklaces and medallions and hung her picture on their walls, and when they said, “Hail, Mary,” they weren’t just talking about football.

 I knew that Mary was a big deal. But I didn’t get it.

 In our church, it was different. We’d dust Mary off every Advent, and allow her to meekly acquiesce to God’s will, and gaze serenely at her newborn son… and maybe we might even talk about how hard it would be to ride a donkey when you’re pregnant, or maybe we’d look at some of the amazing imagery of the Magnificat – but Mary then got packed away with the nativity scenes, ushered off the scene as the spotlight shifted to her suddenly full-grown son.

 Over the years, lots of stories and legends have grown up around Mary. And along the way, some of those stories and legends came about for theological reasons – as theologians wrestled, for example, with their understanding of holiness, and the ways that holiness cannot come into contact with our sinful humanity – which is one way of understanding what it means for us to be saved, sanctified, or redeemed. This line of reasoning says, as sinful people, we couldn’t possibly stand in the presence of God’s perfection and holiness without being destroyed – think of what happened when they opened the Ark of the Covenant in that Indiana Jones movie; God is just too big, too powerful, too pure for our humanity to handle… and so what Jesus comes to accomplish is to cleanse us or purify us or let us hide our sinfulness behind his spotlessness, so that we can come fully into the presence of God.

 But, theologians started to wonder – what about Mary? If Mary carried the incarnate God in her womb, if Mary shared space and nutrients and life itself with the perfect and holy and eternal God… how did Mary manage it, without being destroyed? How did she carry Christ without being burned and consumed from within?

 And one answer was: Mary herself must have been without sin. This idea grew, until it was suggested that Mary had been immaculately conceived – that is, she herself was conceived untouched by the stain of original sin, and she herself was pure and spotless and blameless, a wonder and miracle among us mere mortals… and so God was preparing her, even from the moment of her own sinless conception, to be a perfect vessel for the conception of birth of God in flesh.

 But then, if Mary didn’t sin, surely she wasn’t under the sentence of suffering and death that the rest of us share – and so arose the idea that, rather than dying and wallowing in purgatory like the rest of us mere mortals, Mary was assumed – that is, Mary was taken up, body and soul, right into heaven.

 And if either one of those ideas sounds a bit strange to you, chances are you didn’t grow up Catholic, either. But I have to think it might be a bit telling that the only times the pope has ever used that famous papal infallibility – the only two times that the leader of the Roman Catholic Church has used the weight of that office and brought it to bear in a way that makes questioning his words impossible – it’s only understood to have happened twice in history, and both times, it was about Mary: once, to affirm her immaculate conception, and once, to affirm her assumption into heaven.

 For me, I start to wonder where the chain reaction ends: if Mary couldn’t bear Jesus unless she was sinless, and so she had to be conceived without sin herself – how could Mary’s mother carry her? Didn’t any of her mother’s sin cross over, sneaking in with the antibodies and nutrients? Does that mean Mary’s mother also had to be sinless, to preserve Mary in utero? And what about Mary’s mother’s mother, then?

 And – well, if it was that easy for God to spare a person from the effects of sin, then why even bother with the whole incarnate-in-flesh, teaching-and-preaching, dying-on-a-cross, rising-from-the-dead thing in the first place? Why not just wave that holy magic wand and make every one of us pure and sinless, too? Why not save us all from suffering and death? It sure seems a lot easier than taking the long way around.

 And what about all the ways that we understand sin to be tied up with our free will, our freedom to choose whether or not we will return God’s love. Does that mean that Mary didn’t have any choice? That, from the instant of her conception, she was already predestined, preordained, no matter what, to be the Mother of Christ?

 But if Mary didn’t have a choice – if Mary was somehow unique, spared from the brokenness that is a constant thread throughout all humanity – does that mean that Mary actually wasn’t fully human? And if she didn’t share our humanity – well, how on earth could Christ?

 I don’t get it. And maybe some of you who did grow up Catholic are sitting there just itching to explain to me how I’ve gotten it all wrong. I’ll admit, it doesn’t make sense to me. I just don’t get the Mary thing at all.

 There are even more stories out there about Mary. We’re told that her mother, Saint Anne, was barren, and she was very old, far too old to hope for children – a common theme in scripture. Mary’s conception, then, links her to Sarah and Sarah’s miracle son Isaac, born long after she’d given up hope; Mary’s conception links her to Rebekah and her miracle twins, Jacob and Esau, who nearly tore her apart; it links her to Rachel and her miracle son Joseph and her long-awaited second miracle, Benjamin, whose birth meant his mother’s grief and death; it links her to Hannah, who prayed so desperately for a child that the priest thought she was drunk, and who later left her son Samuel with the priests so he could be raised to serve God; and even Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant after a lifetime of barrenness and who gave birth, just months before Christ’s birth, to his cousin, the baby who became John the Baptist.

 Mary, then, is also seen herself as a miracle baby; her own birth may have even been foretold by angels. She started walking at six months old, according to tradition, and she may have been, like Samuel, given over to serve in the Temple when she was still very young. There are stories and traditions that affirm for us, again and again, that Mary was a model young women, a wonder, a beauty, practically perfect in every way…

 And maybe that’s why I’ve never really understood Mary – because I’ve never believed that Mary had anything to do with me.

 Mary was a miracle; I’m just an ordinary person. Mary was a model of faith; I’ve been full of doubts my whole life. Mary’s purpose was prepared even before her birth – but I’ve had to search for and question mine along the way.

 If Mary was all that they say that she is, it’s no surprise that God would show up to this pure and patient and miraculous young woman and tell her she’s going to give birth to the messiah. Who else would God have chosen? I’ll bet Mary never even lost her temper, not even when Joseph worked late and supper got cold, not even when Jesus drew on the walls after keeping her up all night, not even when he called her “woman” instead of mom and sent her away. She just kept smiling that enigmatic Mona-Lisa smile and basking in the reflected glow of heaven… and I just don’t get that.

 Which is why, I think, it’s very good news that Mary wasn’t perfect at all.

 All those stories about her wondrous childhood and immaculate conception and service and faith – those stories came later. Those are stories people started to tell, because they just couldn’t understand, because it didn’t make sense to them, that God would choose a poor uneducated ordinary girl from a poor insignificant ordinary town to be a part of the greatest miracle history had ever known.

 But that’s exactly why we need Mary to be – just Mary, not Mary the blessed virgin, sinless and deathless and serene – but Mary, a real person. Mary, an ordinary woman. Mary, who is surprised when an angel shows up to tell her God’s plan: Mary who asks, with the same awe and doubt as the rest of us: “Why me?” and “How could this be?”

 And the angel says, “You are favored by God.”

 Favor. It’s not with merit, but with grace that this story begins.

 We are going to be spending a lot of time with Mary this Lent – not the perfect, sinless, unruffled and nonplussed Mary, but the real Mary, a Mary who looks a whole lot more like you and me – Mary with questions on her lips and circles under her eyes, a Mary who prays and rejoices and mourns with the rest of us.

 We are going to meet Mary, not as an ideal woman, not as an ideal mother – but Mary as a disciple, as a model of faith in the middle of the messiness of life, a model for all of us, men and women, young and old, alike.

 And let me tell you why it matters to me that, until God shows up, Mary is just another ordinary person – and even after God shows up and interrupts her plans, Mary is still just another human being trying to do the best she can.

 It matters because ordinary people are who God loves. Ordinary people are who Jesus came to show our worth.

 And it matters because ordinary people, doing the best they can, by the grace of God, are the best hope the world has today.

 This has been a rough week. I feel like I acknowledge that a lot lately, but that’s just where we are. Some of you were here on Wednesday night, when we marked one another with ashes and were reminded: “You are dust, and to dust you will return.” We were reminded that we are mortal, our lives are small and short and fleeting, and much of what we do will be seen and remembered only by God.

 We were reminded of our mortality on the same day that 17 people lost their lives in yet another school shooting. And one of the poignant images of that day shows a mother in tears, holding her frantic daughter, with the sign of the cross in ashes on her forehead.

 This stuff is real, and it matters.

 After Wednesday, I found myself thrown into a whirlwind of despair. I found myself talking to my husband  – only half joking – about whether we should think about home-schooling our kids; I found myself fantasizing about moving to another country where this stuff doesn’t happen.

 And I found myself having to turn off the television and turn off the computer and log off Facebook because I just couldn’t handle the debates, the anger, the ignorance, the spin, the grief and the brokenness any more.

 And my despair only deepened, because all my coping strategies – checking out, turning it off, talking about hiding or running away – all of them are privileges that not everyone has. And I know that there is so much more at stake than just keeping my own children and my own family safe. I need to think bigger. And I know that. I just don’t know what to do now.

 And I cried out to God, why doesn’t anybody do anything?

 And I remembered Mary. Ordinary Mary just trying to get through her life the best she can – when God interrupts her plans, and she becomes a part of something bigger… not because she’s perfect, not because she’s been preparing for it her whole life, but just because God, by God’s grace, saw potential,  saw that the world could be changed, and refused to give up, and God, by God’s grace, invited Mary to be a part of it.

 God still shows up today. And God still does amazing things, through ordinary people like you and like me.

 I’m not perfect. I’m far from it – I’m tired, and I wrestle with despair and doubt every single moment of every single day.

 But I also believe that the God who called Mary, the God who called Abraham and Sarah and Miriam and Moses, the God of the reluctant and imperfect souls, is still at work today.

 And I think of the long line of women who prayed fervently for God to make a way where there was none, for God to bring hope in the darkness of despair, for God to bring life in the midst of death – Hannah, her prayers rolling off her lips, Rebekah, taking things into her own hands, Rachel, sacrificing herself so her children might live, even Sarah, who is so short-sighted she creates more heartache – even Sarah is a part of God doing a new thing.

 And Mary. Mary, ordinary Mary, just going about her ordinary day… when she hears those words, “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.”

 The Lord is with us. Ordinary, weary, angry, imperfect us. And when God’s grace shows up, anything is possible.

 Let us not lose heart. The God of miraculous life and wondrous transformations is with us. The story isn’t over yet.

 Thanks be to God.

 ---------

Our Lenten series this year is grounded in the book Blessed Is She: Living Lent with Mary by Tim Perry (2006).