It feels like I'd be breaking some kind of Serious Rule to directly share it myself, or even really talk about it, but @eatthepen dropped what I'm eyeballing as a couple thousand words of bona fide serious examination of Pilot Princess Soul Defender Moonstone, and aside from feeling like I owe her a hug, that's a thing you can go and read if you want??
That isn't breaking cohost etiquette (which I'm still figuring out) because it's not about me, so I'm going to directly link it here and also reshare it on my page after this so you can see it directly. Here is the link: https://cohost.org/eatthepen/post/2365118-ducking-hell
So as a scholar of many things, including toku studios, mecha literature, sentai shows and magical girl media (both of which are relevant, both of which are different, both of which are the same, it is a complex interrelationship), iterations and treatment of the 'mad scientist' throughout modern media history, yuri, dear god the yuri, and just, I mean. Gestures vaguely. I still say this was written for me. Anyhow, as a scholar of all the above and more, the original work nailed it; a deconstruction without pretense, but also without needing to BE a deconstruction. A distillation; taking as read the fact that we are familiar with these things, because even outside of their primary audience all of these things have become a part of our popular culture, doing away with the need to explain more than simply trust. It's all there, in a series of shorts. A bit too long to be microfiction, a bit too short to be a novella, but what are those other than convenient categories anyway? I'm saying these things because @eatthepen mentions that they aren't literate in the heroic genres, and I am here to reassure her that not only is this not necessary, that Otter has indeed knocked it out of the proverbial park in all ways but one, and that one way itself is not necessary at all.
If you're wondering, the "missing way" is purely Mech Porn, to put it indelicately. In a visual medium, we'd definitely see the PPSDM mechs and probably see them in action, in the written medium we don't really see them any more than just, y'know, knowing that they exist and that Moonstone does kickflips off gigantic flechette rounds at least once, and frankly that's, well, that's okay. We don't have to, because in this particular mech story, just like in all good mech stories, the robot isn't the point.
Even when the robot is the point, the robot isn't the point, you know? I mean sometimes it is, but it still isn't. A warmachine without motive is just a dangerous piece of metal. You need the context. You need the people. And so skipping the robot and acknowledging "it's there, it's important, it does kickflips" and then going straight to the people is a narrative power move because we know from robots, we can make the connections we need, we don't need to know whether it looks like a mecha-sailor-senshi or a pastel-palette gundam or what, they're all valid because that's not what matters.
Eat talks about so much more that I just want to echo 100%, I won't replicate those words, go read them. I will just say one bit, though, quoted from their piece:
this is also, if you're in its strike zone, an extremely sexy story. It's a seduction. Moonstone, the chainsmoking bad girl who can't sleep without a weighted blanket, is fantastically desirable, but the Hazel who lies like a kraken in the depths below the text, the Hazel implied by what she's accomplished so far and what she describes of how she did it, the Hazel when some assembly is no longer required of the pieces in the boxes, is a fantasy of desire, ...
(conclusory text omitted because it touches on the heart of the quoted essay and is more powerful in context)
This is laser targeted at me, someone who is in that strike zone, spreadeagled like some vitruvian woman so you cannot graze that target area without impacting me.
I could keep going, I could talk about the soundtracks that play in my head, I could talk about how I want to see more, I could talk about how I'm afraid seeing more would dilute the perfect gut-punch, I could talk about how my perspective is not universal and there are people who'll look at it and shrug but... yeah, you wanna read both the PPSDM series and Eatthepen's take.
