Yuri Fanfic: Courtly Tales of Crystal Tokyo

March 7th, 2014

SenshiIn the late 1990s, (when I was writing a lot of fanfic) it seemed sort of obvious to me that the Senshi, archetypal as they were, would make good crossovers with legends of King Arthur.

I wrote a fanfic called Kuroko, Senshi of the Kitchen. Sailor Mars became burning Sir Cai’s later self, the bitchy seneschal Sir Kay and Sailor Saturn became Sir Gareth, Gawain’s youngest brother. Chibi-Usa plays Lynette in that tale. This was followed by Sailor Jupiter and the Green Knight, which was loosely based on the rather famous epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I really enjoyed mashing the Senshi with these timeless Arthurian stories (versions taken from a favorite book from my youth, The Boy’s King Arthur, which when you think about it explains a lot about me.)

In the Senshi’s Challenge, I rewrote Gawain and Gareth’s brothers, Agravain and Gaheris as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, while Sailor Pluto took up the role of Merlin. And it all still made perfect sense to me. ^_^

In 2006, I was contacted by a women writing her thesis on the way Arthurian legends are reinterpreted and she did a chapter that discusses Sailor Jupiter and the Green Knight. As we corresponded (me, from the rather mythic town of Padstow, England) we discussed the remaining stories. She asked me who Mercury and Venus were and I had no hesitation when I said that Mercury was Bedwyr and Venus Lancelot…and I’d get to those stories eventually.

Years passed and I never did write them.

Last year, I realized that Mercury was not Bedwyr, but his later incarnation Parsifal…and I knew instantly how the story would go. I finally had a chance to write Senshi of the Grail.

The idea for Venus’s story came to me in Padstow in 2006 as I talked about how she’d be a perfect Lancelot…after all, wasn’t she strong because her heart was pure? The very idea of spoofing her “heart crystal” episode from Sailor Moon S, the play Camelot and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King in one sentence was too juicy. Added to that, I have a very deep loathing for White’s handling of the Lancelot and Elaine story. So, I fixed it. ^_^

I present to you the very last of the Courtly Tales of Crystal Tokyo – The Morning Star Burns Brightly

I hope you enjoy it.

2 Responses

  1. Grisznak says:

    Oh God, I read and translated lot of your fics, but seems I totally missed that series. Gotta print it and read it soon.
    You reminded me good, old times when I did lot of Sailor Moon fics (sometimes totally crack, like Sailor Scouts rebirth in communist Russia or Sailor Mercury as wanna-be detective trying to find who’s Kira from Death Note). Damn, how creative we were when we were young.

    • Haha. Indeed. I remember a very long, very unfinished epic series about Haruka and Michiru in Nazi Germany. It had to not end, there was no way it could have ended well.

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