Temple of Ranma's Sailor Senshi Seifuku

I've been considering writing a one-shot humor story in which H.P. Lovecraft (who has been known to be a vocal xenophobe) is transported to Crystal Tokyo by means of a temporal anomaly and the rest of the story is basically poking fun at his xenophobia. My problem though is I'm not quite sure how to portray Crystal Tokyo in an unironic untopian sense, I'm also not sure if Crystal Tokyo is just within Japan only or if it is global, can anyone help?

the kingdom is global, is my usual assumption, but the city only exists in tokyo.

The standard of living is high and people are content globally.


Its ok to allow a little irony to enter in.

Knight of Ranko wrote:the kingdom is global, is my usual assumption, but the city only exists in tokyo.

The standard of living is high and people are content globally.


Its ok to allow a little irony to enter in.

The few views we have show little outisde the city though... so population is probably thin.

Was this due to the war or lack of recolonization after the 'fall', though?

Sailor_Chaos wrote:I've been considering writing a one-shot humor story in which H.P. Lovecraft (who has been known to be a vocal xenophobe) is transported to Crystal Tokyo by means of a temporal anomaly and the rest of the story is basically poking fun at his xenophobia. My problem though is I'm not quite sure how to portray Crystal Tokyo in an unironic untopian sense, I'm also not sure if Crystal Tokyo is just within Japan only or if it is global, can anyone help?

I'm not sure if Crystal Tokyo can be portrayed in an unironic utopian manner especially from Lovecraft's Western 1920s-30s POV.

Another problem is all the foes of the Sailor Senshi can be argued to reinforce Lovecraft's xenophobia: Beryl used youma who are generally not of this world while being possessed by something not of this world, the aliens (it you are using the anime), Wiseman, Mistress 9, and Pharaoh 90 might has well stepped right out of a Lovecraftian novel and the same is true of the Chaos entity that seems to behind them and everybody else (except for the aliens).

Also you have the issue that the fact Neo-Queen Serenity is Japanese is going to taint anything Lovecraft sees ala Yellow Peril. Throw in the Cleaning (the Cleansing of evil = elimination of free will is a common fanfiction trope) and any concept of Crystal Tokyo being a utopia goes right out the window and it becomes more like Huxley's Brave New World (1932) which is decidedly dystopian in nature.

Finally there are the themes in Lovecraft that show up in Sailor Moon as well: Non-human influences on humanity, Fate, and Civilization under threat.

Maximara wrote:
I'm not sure if Crystal Tokyo can be portrayed in an unironic utopian manner especially from Lovecraft's Western 1920s-30s POV.

Another problem is all the foes of the Sailor Senshi can be argued to reinforce Lovecraft's xenophobia: Beryl used youma who are generally not of this world while being possessed by something not of this world, the aliens (it you are using the anime), Wiseman, Mistress 9, and Pharaoh 90 might has well stepped right out of a Lovecraftian novel and the same is true of the Chaos entity that seems to behind them and everybody else (except for the aliens).

Also you have the issue that the fact Neo-Queen Serenity is Japanese is going to taint anything Lovecraft sees ala Yellow Peril. Throw in the Cleaning (the Cleansing of evil = elimination of free will is a common fanfiction trope) and any concept of Crystal Tokyo being a utopia goes right out the window and it becomes more like Huxley's Brave New World (1932) which is decidedly dystopian in nature.

Finally there are the themes in Lovecraft that show up in Sailor Moon as well: Non-human influences on humanity, Fate, and Civilization under threat.

Hmmmm your Brave New World analogy does give me an idea though I'm not entirely sure how to be satirical without coming off as racist when poking fun at his xenophobia. Plus of course I'd like him to come off as seeing wrong in his beliefs to at least some degree rather than being proven in them.

Sailor_Chaos wrote:Hmmmm your Brave New World analogy does give me an idea though I'm not entirely sure how to be satirical without coming off as racist when poking fun at his xenophobia. Plus of course I'd like him to come off as seeing wrong in his beliefs to at least some degree rather than being proven in them.

When you have Pharaoh 90 lurking about, you don't need racism to work up a fine frothing xenophobia. Nor is xenophobia necessarily a thing that needs to have fun poked at it! Xenophobia is bred into us all the way down to the reptile brain. There's something strange in the neighborhood? Do you think it might want to eat us? Don't forget -- a lot of the early hominid fossils bear marks of being gnawed by leopards and such. That's only a hundred thousand years or so back. It's not the sort of thing a species forgets easily.

Strangeness might be dangerous. Best to be cautious until we figure it out. It could be a Death Phantom plot, or maybe a Great Old One.

Ellen Kuhfeld wrote:When you have Pharaoh 90 lurking about, you don't need racism to work up a fine frothing xenophobia. Nor is xenophobia necessarily a thing that needs to have fun poked at it! Xenophobia is bred into us all the way down to the reptile brain. There's something strange in the neighborhood? Do you think it might want to eat us? Don't forget -- a lot of the early hominid fossils bear marks of being gnawed by leopards and such. That's only a hundred thousand years or so back. It's not the sort of thing a species forgets easily.

Strangeness might be dangerous. Best to be cautious until we figure it out. It could be a Death Phantom plot, or maybe a Great Old One.

I think you're missing the point, Lovecraft's xenophobia revolved around his fear that any outside HUMAN cultures would destroy or corrupt the Anglo-Saxon culture of America. The reason I think it transporting him to Crystal Tokyo to both poke fun at and disprove his idea is that it shows a Japanese culture creating a "perfect" world.

Sailor_Chaos wrote:I think you're missing the point, Lovecraft's xenophobia revolved around his fear that any outside HUMAN cultures would destroy or corrupt the Anglo-Saxon culture of America. The reason I think it transporting him to Crystal Tokyo to both poke fun at and disprove his idea is that it shows a Japanese culture creating a "perfect" world.

The key phrase there is "Anglo-Saxon culture of America" which Crystal Tokyo is the very antithesis. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is likely the closest contemporary to Lovecraft that resembles Crystal Tokyo and it is decidedly communist in nature...something that was feared from 1918 on. More over such utopian worlds have logical and-or social flaws that went examined result in explanations that tend to turn them decidedly dystopian. Take Bellamy's idea that crime is the product of either atavism or mental illness and trials are handled by three judges...who must all agree on the verdict or they do the trial all over again. There are several dark aspect on how such a system could work.

Again the stripping of free will (the Cleansing) is the biggest hurdle one has even in our modern world with Crystal Tokyo...again one only look at Brave New World where people are conditioned from childhood to accept their world. In fact, Brave New World has been often called the flip side of 1984 and in its own way just as unpleasant. Instead of Room 101 you have soma, instead of information control you have information overload, and so on.

Sailor_Chaos wrote:I think you're missing the point, Lovecraft's xenophobia revolved around his fear that any outside HUMAN cultures would destroy or corrupt the Anglo-Saxon culture of America. The reason I think it transporting him to Crystal Tokyo to both poke fun at and disprove his idea is that it shows a Japanese culture creating a "perfect" world.

There are people claiming that the Anglo-Saxon culture of America is corrupting the human cultures of the rest of the world. This may be xenophobia, but it's hardly a unique madness. Most of them have a point.

If you like the culture you grew up in, change is bad. Hence the eternal plaint of "what's the matter with kids today?" That's simple enough -- those kids grew up in a different culture than you did. They're behaving strangely. You're not completely sure what they'll do next. (Alternatively, if you're young, you don't understand why the old folks make such a fuss about perfectly normal behavior.)

There are cultures on earth today I'd be terrified of living in. North Korea is a relatively non-controversial one. I'm sure we all could compile a personal list. I'd hate to have the US loaded down with immigrants from those cultures. And they, equally, would hate to be loaded down with immigrants from the US. It's even true within the US. Witness the slogan "Don't Californicate Oregon," or the scorn Coastals pour upon "fly-over country" and the bumpkins thereof.

At its root, xenophobia is the fear of the strange. When things are strange, you don't know what to do -- or what the consequences will be of doing it. At a relatively low level, you can get the operating system wars: Microsoft vs Apple vs Linux vs Unix. At a much more vicious level, you get Moslems vs Jews. But that doesn't mean xenophobia is wrong. It's too useful and ubiquitous for that. It just means you shouldn't get carried away by it, but you should likewise be aware that some people do get carried away by it.

Frankly, I don't know enough about Lovecraft to know where he was on that spectrum.

Well from the biographies and documentary I've read and seen, he appears to have a very strong resentment of most if not all the immigrants that were coming into New York (Lovecraft lived in New York from 1924-1926 after he got married) and he frequently went into tirades about immigrants such as Jews (though his wife was Jewish and frequently stopped him). He also expressed much of his xenophobia very plainly in his stories He and The Horror at Red Hook. His xenophobia was also more then likely a result of his mother mostly keeping him indoors as she was very protective yet verbally abusive.