MILES to GO || before I sleep

Sometimes finding sources for the little details in Sailor Moon can be annoying.

For example, everyone and their moon cat says that Naru Osaka was born on January 1, and that Shingo Tsukino is 12 years old, but can someone please point to me some sort of official source that says that? An act in the manga, a line in an episode (Japanese or English), a liner note in an artbook?

Sailor Moon was full of fanon, and it's usually pretty easy to sort the junk out, but stuff like this is a lot harder, especially considering the anime and manga have two VERY different timelines, and as such, one cannot logically be used as a resource for the other (for the most part).

Case in point: Mamoru. How old is the guy, anyway? We know he's older in the anime than he is in the manga, because he drives (something you have to be at least 18 to do in Japan), has at least one job, and is enrolled in university.

In the anime, if you take the movies as part of the larger continuity, then he first met Usagi when he was six years old, shortly after the accident that claimed the lives of his parents, and his memories. How old was Usagi during this meeting? Well, she was there for the birth of her younger brother, Shingo.

Shingo is said to be 12 years old at the start of the Sailor Moon series (supposedly...where does it say this?), and we know from Usagi's introductions that she's 14. That means there's a two year difference between the siblings, which means Usagi was all of TWO years old when she met Mamoru! That seems a bit odd to me. Three or four I could accept, considering that she was capable of talking, had a full head of hair (complete with odango) and no one seemed to be freaking out that she was wandering around the hospital by herself, but two seems a little low.

In any case, let's pretend she was just an intelligent, precocious two-year-old. That would mean Mamoru is four years older than her, and that at the start of the Sailor Moon series, he was 18. You can drive, have a job, and be in university at age 18. It seems like an awful lot for Mamoru to have accomplished in the short time he was "allowed" to do those things, but he might be like Haruka, and have found ways to "bend" those rules. He was, after all, an orphan, and may have "improvised" where necessary.

In the manga, Mamoru is in high school--Year 2, to be precise (Grade 11). That would make him either age 16 or 17. So he's a bit younger than he was when he first appeared in the anime, but not by much.

Wasn't there some particular reason why people thought it was so naughty for Serena/Usagi and Darien/Mamoru to be dating, especially given their ages in the anime? I seem to recall something like a supposed SIX year age difference, but I can't find any canonical evidence to support that, even from the dub, where I suppose he might have said something like "I'm X year in university" or something, and that might have made him 20 instead of 18, and a sophomore or junior instead of a freshman.

Help?

Question: If you could go back in time, and change one event, one decision that you made, only, you couldn't go back to your "real" time no matter how far in the future it was, and you would HAVE to remember your old life... would you? Where would you go, and what decision would you change?

Time fascinates me. Time travel, shows like Sliders, Quantum Leap, and Star Trek are the best in my book. The way I see time is like this: Time is sort of like a never-ending tree. It begins in one place, continues endlessly in one direction until... until something change the course of all life. Sentience. A thought, an idea. Change. A branch grows. People emerge from hunters and gatherers, turn into farmers, merchants... life grows and expands.

We are where we are now. The present. Decisions are made, every second, every day. With every word you say, the tone and attitude in which you say it, and with the responses to questions.
Yes or No. Black or White. Dark or Light. Or some more complicated decisions. Some people have to choose whether to take a loved one off of life support and have them die in peace, or let them suffer in pain, longer.

Perhaps it is more than a choice of two. Choosing between more things makes the final decision all the more difficult. Then, I was faced with this question, and it has plagued me to this day, when I felt the most inspired to write about it.

Maybe I'm being over-worldly and a bit too eloquent, seeing as I normally rant, rave, or whine, but this is something I've really put thought into.

A lot of things have happened in my life in the past several years. My life has not been uneventful or boring. But you know that the tiniest detail can change an entire future.

If someone traveled to the future to acquire technology that had not yet been invented, then "invented" it themselves, would the technology simply disappear, or destroy both times, seeing as it never could have gotten there without the original inventor in the first place? Hence time paradoxes.

Ok. Hypothetical situation. I'm given the power to go back in time. A one-way trip, to any point, right down to the exact millisecond. The mind of my present self is transferred into the mind of my past self, and stays there. If I go back to a time when I am five, I have the mind of a sixteen year old. Once I reach sixteen again, I begin to live life again.

When would I go back?
Perhaps to change the chance I never took.
Perhaps to see if that guy really *did* like me.
To ace that exam, transfer out of that class, avoid that beating. To be myself, what people wanted, to be the best. To experience new things...
or to cheat Death.

I'll say now that I don't really have much of a belief in religion. There have been times when I have prayed, and used the cross as my amen sign, but I do not believe in Christ. I don't want to get into religious issues here, but is it wrong to wish you could take back someone's death?

It would inevitably also change the events after that. Perhaps my uncle, aunt, and grandmother wouldn't die as well. But because a future where my sister-- the one person I want the most to be here now-- is alive is new and unknown to me, would I be able to cope, the mind of a sixteen year old in an eleven year old body?
What would I do to prevent my sister from going on the hiking trip to the cliffs that took her to her death? What could I say or do to bring her back?

I used to wish to become something extraordinary. Like, in the Joy Luck Club, where the goose became a swan-- something more than what was hoped for.

In my mind, that was someone who was fantastically beautiful, with a wonderful personality, telepathy, superpowers, super strength, anything. If I could go back in time and have any of those, I believe that I could do *something* to save my sister.

But... "Wake Up And Smell The Reality." Not now, maybe not ever, will time travel exist in that manner. The world would collapse in on itself. But the idea is still intriguing, no? So, believing that I could, but with the restriction that only I know of my true future, with no kind of powers... what would I do to change it?

Could I?

Would you?