One thing that I will unapologetically admit to cribbing from DocHolligay’s excellent take on Sailor Moon

Is that of Haruka Tenoh and Michiru Kaioh one is indeed the ‘gold star lesbian’ and it’s….Michiru Kaioh, who is a femme lesbian and as femme as femme can get. This has sweet fuck all to do with Sailor Neptune now or in the Silver Millennium, it’s Michiru being Michiru. She is one variant of a queer experience and somewhat more consciously so than Haruka, at least to a point.

Haruka represents a very different and messier take that also applies IRL to people with queer experiences where it can take time to fully figure out and then to accept things. Michiru never doubted who she was or tried to be anything different. Publicly this is Haruka to the core, privately Haruka did doubt and did try very hard before reality smacked her in the face with the metaphorical nailbat.

I actually have this element return with a vengeance in one storyline where Haruka’s old boyfriend decides to 'rescue’ his girlfriend from the evil lesbian with the relatively faster healing Neptune has giving the impression of something that very much isn’t true, leading to a particular storyline that illustrates both 'stop helping me’ and deconstructs aspects of the Senshi and their healing and what happens when Senshi magic had a bit of a blind spot.

That storyline is intended to 100% be as mean spirited a hatchet job on all those old 90s and 2000s era fanfics as it can get.