Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,450
I try to only get involved with verses I know nothing about if the content presented is so egregiously wrong that even a casual observer could notice the issues. And, well, today that verse just so happens to be Sailor Moon. When I say that, I don’t mean downgrading the verse or anything - Rather, just look at the state of the profiles. Ostensibly good, but comically bloated and low quality upon closer inspection. Let’s break it down, using Usagi’s profile as a basis.
This Isn’t Powerlisting Wiki
Sailor Moon profiles do this thing where they list every possible subset of an ability as its own, unique ability. Usagi drawing power from the moon can’t just be empowerment - it’s also Lunar Empowerment, Lunarkinetic Combat, Lunar Energy Absorption, and so on, for like 50 different abilities that all ultimately mean the same thing. Notably, a lot of these powers are listed on the powerlisting wiki, so it’s not like they were just made up on the spot - that said, we obviously can’t use another wiki’s standards on our pages. I lost count of how many different times weapon mastery was listed, because it’s listed separately for every single weapon instead of just being one ability that lists each weapon in a single chunk of text. Imagine if Batman’s profile listed Martial Arts 500 separate times - one for each style he’s mastered - instead of just once; That’s what Sailor Moon profiles do.
To give a very small sampling of how bad this issue is, here’s every made-up power on Usagi’s profile -
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE bullshit abilities on ONE profile. This is, to be blunt, unacceptable.
Another issue is how some abilities are listed multiple times when they really don’t need to be. For example, her self-sustenance lists “Vacuum Adaptation” as a sub-power (which is unnecessary in and of itself), but literally five lines down it’s listed again as a completely separate power. Why? This is just bloat, there’s not really another word for that.
A Lot of Those Powers are Wrong
A related issue is how single abilities are extrapolated into two or even three abilities simultaneously. Take for example Princess Serenity’s sound manipulation on Sailor Moon’s page. This is the scan, for reference. It’s listed as Sound Wave Generation, which is a weird way to say “sound manipulation”, but the real issue is that each work leads to a separate power - Sound manipulation, energy manipulation, and elemental manipulation. The latter two simply… aren’t true. Neither the scan nor the justification explain why this is anything more than sound manipulation. Resistance to “Poison Gas Generation” (ie; Fucking Poison) is somehow extrapolated into poison manipulation, elemental manipulation, and… matter manipulation??
Everything Needs Scans and References
A prevalent issue throughout the Sailor Moon pages is how many abilities lack any sort of justification at all. No scans and references is one thing, but having dozens of abilities that just aren’t explained in any capacity is far worse. For example -
This is unacceptable. In conjunction with the made-up abilities, it’s very difficult to tell what I’m supposed to be gleaning from the profile here. What does Usagi gain from “Pure Form”? What does “Pure Stellar Manipulation” do? None of these things are intuitive, and they aren’t explained on the page itself, so they might as well mean nothing.
Please Learn How References Work
Many references on this profile are formatted in a specific way - for example, “PSSM (Vol. 1)/Shinsouban, Act 3 Rei - Sailor Mars/Pg. 117”. This is really good, and a level of detail a lot of profiles wish they had. However, this is not applied consistently - looking at the feats section, many references are actually just… text written above the sentence, like so:
Writing a reference isn’t particularly hard, and evidently someone editing the page knew how to write them properly, so this is just baffling.
Please Learn How Keys Work
Yet another issue is the inconsistency in how keys for each version of a character are treated. Take Sailor Moon for example - She has 10 keys in total. Now, I can’t speak as to whether or not each key is really necessary, but the rest of the profile should abide by that number… but it doesn’t. Her lifting strength only has 3 keys, with no explanation as to which of those three correlates to what key listed at the top of the page. Same goes for intelligence, range, and stamina - it’s completely ambiguous as to which key has which stats.
Another issue is with the P&A. Usagi’s keys start at Prism Form (Partially Awoken). However, her P&A section starts at Usagi Tsukino (Original Power), before moving on to Usagi Tsukino (Complete Power), which means there’s at least one, possibly two whole keys completely unaccounted for everywhere else on the profile.
The Feats Section is Really Bad
Many of the “feats” listed are either not feats, or they could be better indexed elsewhere. The Silver Crystal’s feats, for example, should instead go in the equipment section, since it’s mostly a compilation of its basic functions. Every subsequent tab is just weird to me - we don’t need a sentence opening with “FTL speed is VERY common in the verse” when the page should just let the speed section speak for itself. The “Complete Form” tab is one line of text, and it doesn’t even explain why it’s a feat - it’s totally unnecessary. The Princess Serenity tab isn’t much better, since it’s two sentences and one of them is just forbidden romance. The line “She doesn't have many feats because she is in the series so briefly but she does have some.” is, again, not needed.
And then we come to the Personality section. This is just fluff - even I, in my obsession with the personalities and character arcs of various Touhou characters, know where to draw a line with explaining characterization on a VS debating site. You can put this stuff in the summary if you wish, as that’s where character breakdowns are supposed to go, but there is absolutely no reason why “forgives beautiful people”, “is mischievous”, and “has a husbando” (no, that’s not a typo) should be considered feats. Really, this entire section ought to be deleted. You can keep the bisexuality though, that’s based.
The Insanity Has Overtaken Me
Fuck it. Here’s a lightning round of everything else I take issue with.
How Did This Happen?
I found it odd how any reasonable wiki - although I may be overly generous in calling VSBW “reasonable” - could allow so many faulty additions to pass through unchecked. If someone made a CRT trying to add 50 shitzillion variants of transformation and energy manipulation, surely it’d get caught, right? Well uh, a CRT wasn’t made. This edit and this edit are where most of the faulty changes come from, including the wholly unnecessary Personality section in the feats tab. No CRT was attached, and I could not find one on the forums, so apparently someone just fucking doubled the size of Usagi’s page in a single day and it went unchecked for almost a year. Cool.
How Do We Fix This?
The cynical part of me says we don’t. We just archive the profiles and then nuke them. So much is wrong, and I likely missed so much, that any cleanup effort is well beyond what any one person is capable of in a reasonable timeframe - mind you, almost every issue I listed stems from one profile. It might even be better to remake the profiles from scratch at this point.
However, I would like to believe that the verse supporters (all three of ‘em) can also see the issues here, and are willing to fix these issues, or at the very least explain why things are the way that they are. In any case, the pages are obviously bad and need to be fixed somehow.
This Isn’t Powerlisting Wiki
Sailor Moon profiles do this thing where they list every possible subset of an ability as its own, unique ability. Usagi drawing power from the moon can’t just be empowerment - it’s also Lunar Empowerment, Lunarkinetic Combat, Lunar Energy Absorption, and so on, for like 50 different abilities that all ultimately mean the same thing. Notably, a lot of these powers are listed on the powerlisting wiki, so it’s not like they were just made up on the spot - that said, we obviously can’t use another wiki’s standards on our pages. I lost count of how many different times weapon mastery was listed, because it’s listed separately for every single weapon instead of just being one ability that lists each weapon in a single chunk of text. Imagine if Batman’s profile listed Martial Arts 500 separate times - one for each style he’s mastered - instead of just once; That’s what Sailor Moon profiles do.
To give a very small sampling of how bad this issue is, here’s every made-up power on Usagi’s profile -
- Disguise Mastery
- Infiltration Mastery
- Gender Transformation
- Accessory Manipulation
- Cosmetic Generation
- Object Manipulation
- Ability Creation
- Self-Confidence Inducement
- Profession Mastery
- Fictional Mimicry
- Mass Teleportation
- Destiny Chosen
- Pure Heart
- Royal Inheritance
- Vacuum Adaptation
- Accessory Manipulation (yes, it’s here twice)
- Cosmetic Generation
- Decomposition Manipulation
- I want to note that this is ONLY HER FIRST KEY. It gets worse!
- Pure Form
- Restoration (redundant with healing, which is listed one line prior)
- Lunar Manipulation
- Lunar Magic
- Wand Magic
- Spell Creation
- Lunar Energy Absorption
- Lunar Symbiosis
- Personal Lunar Energy
- Lunar Healing
- Lunakinetic Combat
- Lunar Weaponry
- Lunar Attacks
- Lunar Infusion
- Lunakinetic Combat (again, listed twice for no reason)
- Lunar Beam Emission
- Roofhopping
- Mass Teleportation (again…)
- Wand Proficiency
- Throwing Weapon Proficiency
- Boomerang Proficiency
- Dust Transmutation (this is literally just deconstruction)
- Astral Plane Manipulation
- Avatar Physiology
- Jewelry Creation
- Past Life Power Access
- Lunar Power Link
- Binding Attacks
- Purified Power Link: (the colon followed by nothing is true artistry at work)
- Purification Energy Manipulation
- Purification Aura
- Purification Combat
- Purification Attacks
- Healing and Purification Mode
- Psychic Blindspot
- Clairaudience
- Astrological Physiology
- Lunaportation
- Bond Empowerment
- Soulmate Connection
- Automatic Defense via Crystallokinetic Constructs
- Infinite Energy
- Love Empowerment
- Staff Magic
- Holy Gift
- Blindness Immunity
- Absolute Restoration
- Remote Teleportation
- Temporal Teleportation
- Psychic Powers:
- Rod Proficiency
- Channeling
- World Healing
- Weapon Summoning
- Indomitable Love
- Love Empowerment
- Combat Empowerment
- True Love's Kiss
- Team Combination
- Death-Force Attacks
- Cosmic Magic
- Cosmic Elemental Manipulation
- Lunar Blast
- Purification Blast
- Love Attacks
- Esoteric Cosmic Manipulation
- Danger Detection
- Love and Justice Embodiment
- Purity Embodiment
- Power Summoning
- Lunar Healing
- Past Life Power Access
- All of the Cosmic Power (idk what this means but at least it isn’t listed as yet another fucking ability)
- Pure Moon Manipulation
- Conversion
- Transformation Bestowal
- Enchantment
- Symbiotic Energy Manipulation
- Glass Attacks
- Mirror Manipulation
- Soul-Bound Weapon
- Conversion Manipulation
- Essence Manipulation
- Miracle Performing
- Lunar Generation
- Lunar Polearm Construction
- Staff/Sceptre Proficiency
- Automatic Defense and Hibernation via Crystallokinetic Constructs
- Absolute Restoration
- Genius Intelligence (I’m noting this because none of Usagi’s intelligence ratings are listed as Genius, so why the fuck is this even here?)
- Sacrificial Protection
- Universal Object
- Essence Manipulation (for some reason, this has way more abilities than it did in prior keys despite being listed as the same ability)
- Wing Manifestation
- Indomitable Hope
- Universal Force Empowerment
- Identity Manipulation
- Chaos Attacks
- Pure Stellar Manipulation
- Order Manipulation
- Order Embodiment
- Possible Primordial Force Manipulation (at least it’s only “possible” and not a solid rating!)
- Cosmic Entity Physiology
- Space-Time Transcendence
- Light Form
- Pure Form
- Sacrificial Power
Another issue is how some abilities are listed multiple times when they really don’t need to be. For example, her self-sustenance lists “Vacuum Adaptation” as a sub-power (which is unnecessary in and of itself), but literally five lines down it’s listed again as a completely separate power. Why? This is just bloat, there’s not really another word for that.
A Lot of Those Powers are Wrong
A related issue is how single abilities are extrapolated into two or even three abilities simultaneously. Take for example Princess Serenity’s sound manipulation on Sailor Moon’s page. This is the scan, for reference. It’s listed as Sound Wave Generation, which is a weird way to say “sound manipulation”, but the real issue is that each work leads to a separate power - Sound manipulation, energy manipulation, and elemental manipulation. The latter two simply… aren’t true. Neither the scan nor the justification explain why this is anything more than sound manipulation. Resistance to “Poison Gas Generation” (ie; Fucking Poison) is somehow extrapolated into poison manipulation, elemental manipulation, and… matter manipulation??
Everything Needs Scans and References
A prevalent issue throughout the Sailor Moon pages is how many abilities lack any sort of justification at all. No scans and references is one thing, but having dozens of abilities that just aren’t explained in any capacity is far worse. For example -
This is unacceptable. In conjunction with the made-up abilities, it’s very difficult to tell what I’m supposed to be gleaning from the profile here. What does Usagi gain from “Pure Form”? What does “Pure Stellar Manipulation” do? None of these things are intuitive, and they aren’t explained on the page itself, so they might as well mean nothing.
Please Learn How References Work
Many references on this profile are formatted in a specific way - for example, “PSSM (Vol. 1)/Shinsouban, Act 3 Rei - Sailor Mars/Pg. 117”. This is really good, and a level of detail a lot of profiles wish they had. However, this is not applied consistently - looking at the feats section, many references are actually just… text written above the sentence, like so:
Writing a reference isn’t particularly hard, and evidently someone editing the page knew how to write them properly, so this is just baffling.
Please Learn How Keys Work
Yet another issue is the inconsistency in how keys for each version of a character are treated. Take Sailor Moon for example - She has 10 keys in total. Now, I can’t speak as to whether or not each key is really necessary, but the rest of the profile should abide by that number… but it doesn’t. Her lifting strength only has 3 keys, with no explanation as to which of those three correlates to what key listed at the top of the page. Same goes for intelligence, range, and stamina - it’s completely ambiguous as to which key has which stats.
Another issue is with the P&A. Usagi’s keys start at Prism Form (Partially Awoken). However, her P&A section starts at Usagi Tsukino (Original Power), before moving on to Usagi Tsukino (Complete Power), which means there’s at least one, possibly two whole keys completely unaccounted for everywhere else on the profile.
The Feats Section is Really Bad
Many of the “feats” listed are either not feats, or they could be better indexed elsewhere. The Silver Crystal’s feats, for example, should instead go in the equipment section, since it’s mostly a compilation of its basic functions. Every subsequent tab is just weird to me - we don’t need a sentence opening with “FTL speed is VERY common in the verse” when the page should just let the speed section speak for itself. The “Complete Form” tab is one line of text, and it doesn’t even explain why it’s a feat - it’s totally unnecessary. The Princess Serenity tab isn’t much better, since it’s two sentences and one of them is just forbidden romance. The line “She doesn't have many feats because she is in the series so briefly but she does have some.” is, again, not needed.
And then we come to the Personality section. This is just fluff - even I, in my obsession with the personalities and character arcs of various Touhou characters, know where to draw a line with explaining characterization on a VS debating site. You can put this stuff in the summary if you wish, as that’s where character breakdowns are supposed to go, but there is absolutely no reason why “forgives beautiful people”, “is mischievous”, and “has a husbando” (no, that’s not a typo) should be considered feats. Really, this entire section ought to be deleted. You can keep the bisexuality though, that’s based.
The Insanity Has Overtaken Me
Fuck it. Here’s a lightning round of everything else I take issue with.
- While my gripes with how the P&A section is organized are largely subjective, I have to ask what the hell “Supportive” means in this context and why it’s distinct from Active and Passive abilities.
- The notes section is… very odd. The first note mentions contradictions and upscaling, while giving no source for either of those things. The second note just… kind of asserts that something isn't a hyperbole, when it could just let the evidence speak for itself, while also making the non-sequitur of “the Silver Crystal is a plot device and villains try to get it”, which is completely unnecessary.
- There is no reason why this page needs SIX links to the Sailor Moon wiki.
- The explanations section is entirely unnecessary. We don’t need to know that Usagi gets a new transformation every arc, or that her techniques have healing/light attributes, or the name of one of her techniques, because it’s either irrelevant or already listed elsewhere.
- I don’t even know what’s going on here -
- how the hell does this even happen -
How Did This Happen?
I found it odd how any reasonable wiki - although I may be overly generous in calling VSBW “reasonable” - could allow so many faulty additions to pass through unchecked. If someone made a CRT trying to add 50 shitzillion variants of transformation and energy manipulation, surely it’d get caught, right? Well uh, a CRT wasn’t made. This edit and this edit are where most of the faulty changes come from, including the wholly unnecessary Personality section in the feats tab. No CRT was attached, and I could not find one on the forums, so apparently someone just fucking doubled the size of Usagi’s page in a single day and it went unchecked for almost a year. Cool.
How Do We Fix This?
The cynical part of me says we don’t. We just archive the profiles and then nuke them. So much is wrong, and I likely missed so much, that any cleanup effort is well beyond what any one person is capable of in a reasonable timeframe - mind you, almost every issue I listed stems from one profile. It might even be better to remake the profiles from scratch at this point.
However, I would like to believe that the verse supporters (all three of ‘em) can also see the issues here, and are willing to fix these issues, or at the very least explain why things are the way that they are. In any case, the pages are obviously bad and need to be fixed somehow.
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