At 01:14 PM 10/4/97 -0600, you wrote:

David Homerick wrote:

But I doubt that Serenity deliberately tried to become worshipped,
or for that matter that she deliberately takes over the world, or
would
actively try to expand her domain past whatever it is, whether
it's the world, or just a city-state.  Remember, this is
Usagi, we're talking about.  Would you describe her as ambitious,
hard working, eager to make the hard choices involved in running the
world?  Even after she grows up, I strongly suspect she wouldn't
qualify as a Type A personality.

I would describe her as lazy, flighty, and ignorant.  However, that
doesn't mean she couldn't be the nominal head of an aggressive,
expansionist empire.  Quite the opposite.  If Serenity is incapable of

Well, she could be, except that she _is_ married to Mamoru/Endymion.
The only way it's likely that she could be the figurehead for a
warlike power is if Endymion was the one responsible, say an Endymion
who was corrupted by leftovers from his spell with Beryl.  But the 
normal Mamoru, while more on the ball than Usagi, is also distinctly
inclined to use the minimum intervention necessary in any given 
situation.  Generally speaking, I'd suspect that Crystal Tokyo is
an extension of the system of modern Japan, much like Star Trek's 
Federation was an extension of the system of the modern United States.  
A constitutional parliamentary government presided over, but not ruled 
by a rather remote monarch with a tinge of divinity, who provides 
symbolism and unity.  Except in this case, the monarch is also 
a one-woman nuke who can be deployed in times of attack.  

wielding power, others will be willing to do it for her... and there's
an excellent chance they will wield it malevolently.  Power attracts the
corruptible.

The example of Emperor Hirohito comes to mind here.  By most accounts,
he was a decent, unassuming fellow, but he had little or no control over
the things that happened in his name.  Serenity could easily become a
mere figurehead, isolated and powerless.

Never powerless, except to the extent that ignorance is powerlessness,
and Mercury, Mars and Pluto would limit the extent of her ignorance.
But most of the time, Serenity simply wouldn't bother to use her
power unless something she recognised as a crisis was going on.  

The arguments over the "evils" of the Crystal Tokyo empire and the senshi
who populate it, and the process of forcing people who don't want to have
the both the domination and the process of becoming "one" with the utopia
imposed upon them off the Earth, reminds me of the argument I was involved
with on the Eva ML about the Human Instrumentality Project and the forced
removal of all our AT Fields in End of Evangelion, where we are all reduced
to an ocean of LCL, our minds coalescing within this ocean, removed of all
hatred.

In many ways, the ultimate product of this was to create a collective
conciousness imbecile, with its component parts unable to question the
actions of the body as a whole, and therefore unable to tell what is right
and what is wrong when the wrong path is taken, just as long as everyone is
"happy", or seen to be happy.  

In Crystal Tokyo, everyone will have the will of Serenity imposed upon
them, passed down through the waves of senshi (inner, outer, asteroid etc
etc) into the noblemen and women, to the servants and the commoners.  It
begs the question of what would happen if one of Usagi/Serenity's
successors turned out to be psychologically unstable....

Of course, I remind everyone here that there is no immortality within
Crystal Tokyo, merely super-extended life.  The "souls" of the senshi,
however, are immortal, and will be passed down from generation to generation.

Mark A Page