fortythousandth: femmedreams: fortythousandth: femmedreams: This is so Michiru. Image from the Sailor Moon doujinshi Platinum78 by Muttri Moony YES One of the most befuddling things about this couple is that there is SO LITTLE TOP!MICHIRU IN THE WORLD (and so little Haruka/Michiru kink out there in general, come to think). I mean, they’re hugely popular, and whenever a post suggesting top!Michiru comes up, everyone always agrees and gets super excited about it. SO WHERE ARE THE FANWORKS???? I haven’t seen a lot of doujinshi but in the few that I have seen there is quite a bit of kink with Michiru as the top, which is fantastic. In terms of fanfiction, there is a really disappointing lack of Michiru as the top. Of course, it’s fanfiction so people are at liberty to write whoever they want as top, but nonetheless on a broader level it’s telling that Haruka is the top over and over again (not to mention how many stories there are in which Haruka is gay and Michiru is straight before Haruka but that’s another rant for another day). I think there’s this assumption that because Michiru is femme and Haruka is butch that Haruka is naturally the top. This is annoying because it assumes that femininity =passive and masculinity =assertive. Of course there are butch tops and femme bottoms and that’s great too, it just can’t be assumed. I also think people also assume that Michiru’s personality -being more reserved socially, feminine and as Usagi refers to her as one point -‘the perfect princess figure’ -is incompatible with being a top. But that’s one of the wonderful things about her -she is feminine, she is reserved, she is quiet is certain social situations, she is sweet AND she is a sexual person and into kink and into topping. There’s hardly any kink in the fanfiction that I’ve seen. Most Haruka/Michiru fanfiction these days seems to be on fanfiction.net and I suspect the rating system plays a part in discouraging more kinky fics. That said, there is rarely even any implied kink. Overall it is disappointing, because to me, in the anime, the comments they make to each other in Stars clearly imply that they are into kink and that Michiru is the top and it would be great to see more of that. In my response I was starting to bold things that I especially agreed with in your post, but it turned out that I was basically bolding the whole thing so I stopped with that. But yes—I am completely and totally with you 100% in virtually everything you write here. Everyone always assumes Uranus is stronger, but—correct me if I’m misremembering—I don’t think we actually get anything, at least in the anime, which I’m a lot more familiar with, that EXPLICITLY TELLS US that Uranus is massively more powerful than Neptune. I think a lot of the time people forget how the job distributions in the Silver Millennium actually went: Pluto was presumably at the Time Gate, Saturn was dormant, and that left Uranus and Neptune to be the frontline soldiers doing the actual Outers task of protecting against threats from outside of the solar system. Uranus AND NEPTUNE. And with the implication that Uranus and Neptune were stationed on their planets in fairly solitary positions, you can’t tell me that Uranus was doing all of the work for both of them or that she was constantly swooping in to save Neptune. Like…that just can’t have been the case. It would make no tactical sense to have two soldiers stationed as your kingdom’s first line of defense with one of the two significantly weaker or incapable of taking care of herself. Uranus and Neptune were BOTH endowed with humongously strong power sets because they BOTH were in charge of taking down these enemies, presumably on their own the vast majority of the time.. Yes, Uranus is more impulsive and usually the first to charge in and attack, but all that tells us is that Uranus is more of a doer than a thinker, whereas Neptune is the opposite. And we do live in a society that tends to reward doers over thinkers, but just because Neptune tends to hang back and assess her situation at first doesn’t mean that she isn’t fully capable of kicking just as much ass as Uranus. And it’s not like there’s a huge canon precedent of Neptune needing Uranus to save her—in fact, in several of Haruka and Michiru’s big episodes, the opposite seems to be true. In 110 (Marine Cathedral), Uranus sees Neptune trapped and charges in, taking essentially one round of bullets, which then puts her down. Neptune then takes two rounds—and who knows, maybe could have taken more—of what took only one round to fall Uranus, and this is even after whatever Eudial did to her to be allowed to tie Neptune up, because Neptune seems to be unconscious or at least fairly hurt at the beginning of that scene. And you could say that she was driven by the *POWER OF LOVE,* but then, wouldn’t you also then have to say that was exactly what Uranus was acting on when she saw Neptune tied up and essentially ran in unthinkingly? Then the Super S Special shows Neptune essentially risking the whole WORLD to save a useless and incapacitated Haruka. Yet we STILL have this plethora of Haruka always in control and Michiru always needing to be rescued. Gee, I wonder why that might be?! (/endsarcasm) I think you hit the nail on the head: people write and interpret Uranus and Neptune and Haruka and Michiru as if they fall into that stereotypical butch/femme dynamic, which they flatout don’t. When I see interpretations of Michiru/Neptune being a soggy emotional mess and constantly falling into Haruka’s arms, it drives me up a wall because I think that it’s fairly explicit that Haruka/Uranus is the emotional weak link of the Outers. I don’t necessarily mean that being emotional is a bad thing; I just think that Haruka’s fairly consistently been shown as the one who hesitates. On the other hand, we consistently see Michiru as much more coldblooded and controlled. Haruka, when you break her down, is essentially a big ball of fluff. It’s like that expression—a butch is steel covering velvet, a femme is velvet covering steel—and I think you see that in full force with Haruka and Michiru. The way that they subvert so many of the butch/femme stereotypes is part of what I tend to love about them. And it’s also not that there aren’t times when they do fall into that dynamic. I absolutely think that Haruka’s into being SEEN as the protector, and Michiru absolutely lets her go along with it: see Stars, when Michiru is constantly leaning on Haruka/holding onto Haruka/putting her head on Haruka’s shoulder, and it’s adorable. But just because Michiru leans on Haruka doesn’t mean that she can’t stand on her own. And I think that fact gets missed way too much. And re: fanworks, YES, I LOVE that Michiru comes across as demure and feminine and calm, but that we actually get it IN CANON that she’s also REALLY INTO SEX AND REALLY INTO SEXING HER GIRLFRIEND, and all it takes is one subtle comment from her to turn Haruka into a blushing mess. I really do wish that would get reflected in fanfiction more, although you’re totally right that FFN doesn’t make it super easy to do that. But like you said, for these two, there’s so much to work with that’s even canon?? Like, I can’t even imagine any way that Michiru isn’t a massive tease, or any situation when she’s not basically the one in control (even when Haruka’s topping her, Michiru is absolutely calling the shots, whether Haruka knows it or not). It’s just…I can’t get around these two as having a ton of awesome kinky sex and I wish there was more of that represented, sigghhhh. (ETA: where are you finding this awesome doujinshi? because i totally would be interested in links. because reasons.)
