Hunt for the Night Yorb!
Once you know that Marissa Meyer based The Lunar Chronicles (and specifically Cinder, the first book) on an old Sailor Moon fanfic she wrote, the inspiration can be fairly obvious (most obvious being the missing princess from the moon and the threat of war between Earth and the Moon). That being said, there’s enough of Meyer’s own inspiration/ideas in there to help make it stand out (the futuristic setting, for one thing).
But it did make me think: Bill Ellis (who I mentioned on here before) wrote an essay about Princess Tutu where he said that Cinderella–the fairy tale Cinder retells–is an archetypal precedent to magical girl transformations. Cinderella and Sailor Moon have premises unique to themselves, but then I thought about the basics of both stories: both Cinderella and Usagi start out as girls who are at a low point of their life (Cinderella is mistreated by her stepfamily, while Usagi is chronically late for school and failing tests–one is arguably worse than the other, sure, but the point is, neither of them is doing great in their own way). Then both of them encounter magic (fairy godmother, talking space cat, etc.) that gives them, as Ellis puts it, the skills they need to accomplish whatever they need to do (go to the ball, fight evil). For an added bonus, no one at the ball ever recognizes Cinderella, similar to how no one ever puts it together that Usagi is Sailor Moon, despite her never covering her face (though she did have a mask in the early chapters of the manga). Also, there’s a prince in both stories.
With that in mind, it’s not hard to see how it was easy for Meyer to take inspiration from Sailor Moon in her Cinderella retelling. (Interestingly enough, the original fanfic was a Puss in Boots AU, because as Meyer pointed out, both Puss in Boots and Sailor Moon have talking cats.)
Cutie-pie of the sea (x)
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Bonus:
Harrow: my deepest darkest trauma is that my parents killed a bunch of children in order to make me into a powerful necromancer. they died for me. their blood is on my hands.
Gideon: that sucks dude. anyways I'm going to sacrifice myself to save your life. you'll be an even more powerful necromancer. pretty sick, huh?
Gideon: why are you so upset about this
Gideon: is it because you don't like me