between_time_and_42 | Another work story

Two interesting things happened at work today. First, I saw the film dude again. He told me he had watched up to the last 20 minutes of A Most Violent Year and was really looking forward to finding out how it ends. His only problem with it so far was “I didn’t really like him in the big gangster coat, but I got used to it.” (Which was funny to me because I LOVE the coat Oscar Isaac wears in that movie, I want to wear it myself.) I asked if he had made his choice between Taxi Driver and Superbad and he said he and his friends had watched Taxi Driver over the weekend, which he then informed me was written by the same person who wrote The Card Counter. We talked a bit more and it was nice. (Although before he left, he made a joke that I felt uncomfortable with, so maybe it’s best if we don’t grow too familiar.)

I also got to help out a young girl who was probably somewhere between 11 and 13. She wanted me to put Demon Slayer on hold for her and then asked if I had any Walking Dead books. I searched for them and told her where to find them, and she said in a positively gleeful voice, “My parents won’t let me watch The Walking Dead!” I told her that the comics were the inspiration for the show, so if she reads the comics, she’ll know what the show is about. Next thing I know, she has every single Walking Dead comic book in her arms. As I was checking them out, she told me excitedly how her parents would be so mad if they knew she was reading these, and how she’d have to hide them in her room and only read them at 4 AM when she was supposed to be asleep. Then the adult she was with (I’m assuming a babysitter) said “I asked your parents and they said you could watch that show because it’s TV-14!” And the kid seemed SO affronted. Probably because the idea of doing something her parents wouldn‘t approve of was so exciting! I told her that I support her endeavors and got her a bag to take the books home in, so her parents wouldn’t see them. The bag had a “future healthcare professionals” logo on it so I pointed it out and said “Very professional, no one would think to look in there!” The babysitter said that she better be allowed to read these books, or she’ll get fired for letting her read them… but she also didn’t seem very concerned at the thought. I think we both wanted this kid to pursue her apparent interest in zombie shows. :D I hope she likes the comics and doesn’t get freaked out by them!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

plutodetective

I'm so glad you made friends with one of the patrons, that must make work more fun. :) And good luck to the kid! I laughed at how affronted she was that her parents let her watch the show. She'll probably enjoy the comics, kids like stuff adults find freaky. :) I'll never forget that Other Mother wanting to saw buttons on Coraline's eyes was Neil Gaiman's 6 years old daughter's idea (or his response of "great idea, what a fun kid! :D" xD). I'll also never forget the time when I was on my late 20s and my mother watched an episode of Sailor Moon for the first time and was horrified that she and the other adults in the family used to let me watch it by myself when I was 10, hahaha.

From:

between_time_and_42

Omg, I didn't know a 6 year old thought of that! That's amazingly dark... kids have such great imaginations :D I also didn't know Sailor Moon got that dark! I think I was just easily scared as a kid but it does seem like creepy things have a certain appeal for kids haha :P

From:

plutodetective

Kids' imaginations are great, haha. About Sailor Moon, to be fair the episode that my mother watched was one of the darkest in the show. But it was also my favorite, hahaha, which confirms that kids like creepy things. xP Feel free to skip the rest of the post if you aren't interested, but this is a summary of what happens:

The villains of the third season were after 3 talismans that would give them the power to control the universe. These talismans were hidden inside the hearts of the 3 most pure-hearted people on Earth, and could only be obtained by killing them. The main five characters (Sailors Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter), who are of course very different from each other, but who morally speaking are all your standard children media's protagonists, were trying to find and protect these pure-hearted people. But then there were new characters Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, who, btw, are a couple. They were determined to stop the villains and save the universe by any means necessary, even if it involved killing the three pure-hearted people themselves in order to use the power of the talismans to put an end to the villains.

After a whole season of tension between the two groups of Sailors, and of the villains going after the sweetest, nicest people you can possibly imagine, Uranus and Neptune fell into a trap. At this point, Uranus had stolen Usagi (Sailor Moon)'s magical brooch, so she couldn't transform, so the other group was without their leader. Neptune was tied up and Uranus was fighting the villain. Neptune struggled to free herself and get to Uranus to help, but the way was paved with deadly traps and she ended up dying in front of Uranus. As soon as she fell dead, her heart floated out of her body and transformed into one of the talismans, revealing that "pure-hearted" didn't mean "good." It meant being pure in the sense of being fully dedicated to the goal of saving the universe, no matter the cost. Driven by the rage of losing her girlfriend, Uranus won the fight against the villain. Then Usagi, powerless, came running in and upon seeing the scene in front of her, started trying to resurrect Neptune. Uranus pushed her away from the body. But then, impressed by how she was trying to keep the world safe even without her powers, she returned the magical brooch, begged Usagi to find the third talisman and keep the world safe... And commited on-screen suicide. The second talisman came floating out of her body, and the episode ended with Usagi crying over the two bodies.

(Don't worry, they came back to life a couple of episodes later and eventually had a happy ending with an adorable adopted daughter.)

This episode fascinated me SO MUCH as a child. The complex morality, the inner struggle of Uranus and Neptune, who didn't WANT to kill anyone, but were willing to be murderers if it was necessary, if no one else would, but felt like monsters for doing so. The fact that it was a queer couple saving the universe. Uranus pushing Usagi away from Neptune's body. I'd seen countless heroes willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, but I'd never seen one of their loved ones going "sacrificing herself for the universe is what she would have wanted, don't you dare disrespect that by bringing her back." There's a lot more to Uranus and Neptune's story, and they were my favorite characters in the show, so this tragic episode centered on them, and revealing them to be the world's most pure-hearted people, made a huge impression on 10 years old me. In conclusion to this really long comment, kids do like creepy things, haha. xP

From:

between_time_and_42

This is always a safe space for infodumping! Wow, that is a FASCINATING episode. Uranus committing suicide to help stop the bad guys is really wild, I can't believe that was in a kid's show. The twist on "pure-hearted" sounds really interesting too. Did they end up resurrecting Neptune and Uranus after stopping the bad guys, or was this the end for them? That must have been a really upsetting ending.

From:

plutodetective

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that! ^^ And yeah, in retrospect I can't believe it either, but I'm really thankful to the show for trusting the audience enough to go there. It really impacted me a lot at the time, in a good way, and expanded my mind in terms of what was "allowed" within storytelling, if that makes sense.

And don't worry, Uranus and Neptune were alright in the end! The lore of the show (thanks again for allowing me to infodump! ^^) is that millennia ago there was a galactic war, and our solar system was kept safe by nine warriors (that was back when Pluto was a planet, lol. Sailor Pluto was the holder of the third talisman. There's no Sailor Earth, but there's Sailor Moon's boyfriend, who is also a super hero and was the prince of Earth back then) who all lost their lives in battle. In the present day, all nine (plus Sailor Moon's boyfriend) were ressurrected as normal people, but all "awoke to their powers" and recuperated their memories of their past lives at some point during their teenage years. (Haruka- Sailor Uranus- seeing Michiru- Sailor Neptune- for the first time irl and recognizing her as the literal girl from her dreams was the height of romance for 10 years old me, haha.)

You may have noticed that by this point I've mentioned every Sailor except for Saturn. That's because she was reborn as the daughter of season 3's main villain, and he kept her from awakening by treating her in really abusive ways. Despite his efforts, she woke to her powers during the season's final battle. She's the most powerful of Sailors, but her great powers came with great consequences to herself. She managed to sort of "soft reboot" the universe, undoing all of her father's evils, including the deaths he'd caused. So that's how Uranus and Neptune came back to life. But in doing so, Saturn also ended up "rebooting" herself into a baby. Despite both being only 17, which has bothered me for ever, Uranus and Neptune adopted her. The last we see of them in the season, Uranus is driving her car alongside the beach during the sunset, with Neptune in the passenger seat holding the baby. They made for a very adorable family, and were the first serious representation I saw for families with same-sex parents. :)

From:

between_time_and_42

That definitely makes sense! I don't know if I truly had a moment like that with children's media (maybe I did and I'm struggling to remember it on the spot), but that really is a great feeling, when you see something that changes the game in terms of how a story is told, and what kinds of stories can be told. I can imagine the big impression it left on you, and perhaps on others who saw that episode.

I'll be honest, even though it was popular when I was younger (though I think I may be too young to have witnessed the height of its popularity, but I definitely remember a few kids my age being into it when I was young), I never knew anything about Sailor Moon other than what the characters looked like and some of their names. And later on I heard about the LGBT themes (I guess that's referring to the Uranus/Neptune relationship, unless there's more which would be awesome!) and how it got censored in some adaptations? But I never knew the plot or even the premise, so thank you for writing about this! It actually sounds very interesting, and Uranus recognizing Neptune does sound romantic, haha.

I'm happy that Uranus and Neptune were okay! Thanks for explaining that. Although I can see why them adopting Saturn would bother you, haha. Kids shouldn't raise kids! Still sounds like a really nice, positive ending for them :D

From:

plutodetective

Yeah, you were definitely too young to catch the height of Sailor Moon's popularity, at least if it was at the same time in the US as it was in Brazil. If you'd watched it as a kid, though, you'd have seen Uranus and Neptune claiming to be cousins (*rolls eyes*), because that was how the American dub tried to erase/censor their relationship. I hear from American fans that instead it just made they look incestuous. I can imagine that was the unfortunate result, because there was no way to disguise some of the scenes without completely erasing plot-relevant information. And the episode with the flashbacks to when they first met definitely must have been erased completely, to support the narrative that they were close because they were family and grew up together.

And I have no idea how they dealt with season 4, where more LGBT themes appeared! :) By season 3 we had met a Sailor for each planet in the solar system (with Sailor Moon instead of Sailor Earth), so it looked like there couldn't be any more, right? Wrong. They brought in three Sailors from a different solar system. If memory serves, they were called the Sailor Starlights, and I don't remember their individual names. The great thing about them, though, is that they were all what today we call AMAB! They were a boyband in their civilian identity, and all used male pronouns. But they were still all magical girls, who got magical girls transformation sequences, and were women, using feminine pronouns, in their hero forms. In other words, they were all genderfluid. I don't remember enough of season 4, since it only aired once before I grew out of the show's demographic, to know if it was handled gracefully, but just from them existing Sailor Moon was already miles ahead of its time. :)

Oh, and in season 3 several of the main five Sailors had crushes on Uranus. It's another thing that I don't know how they'd have managed to disguise.

I'm glad you enjoyed reading about the plot! ^^ Thanks for indulging my infodumps! ^^

And yeah, agreed on "kids shouldn't raise kids!" I really wish Uranus' or Neptune's parents had shown up at some point, so I could understand their situation better. They had their own apartment because Neptune's family was rich and could afford for her to live separated from her parents, in Tokyo, where I guess she convinced them she should go for her studies (when she actually wanted to go for her superhero work), but I never got how they allowed her girlfriend to live with her at such a young age, where Uranus' parents were, and how they managed to adopt a baby. But it was an adorable image, and made me happy nonetheless. :D

From:

between_time_and_42

It's SO awesome to learn that there were more LGBT themes in Sailor Moon than the Uranus/Neptune relationship! It's so funny, because Sailor Moon was SO popular and is one of the shows that anyone who doesn't know anything about manga/anime could namedrop, but this is the first time I'm hearing about this. Of course, that could be because of international censorship like you mentioned... What a nightmare it must have been to go to such lengths and still preserve the story, and for what? When obviously the uncensored version had a positive impact on you and surely others, seeing a same-sex couple have a happy ending and even start a family.

From:

plutodetective

Yeah, it's so strange that you haven't heard about any of this before. The other show that helped me a bit to come to terms with my bisexuality around that time, even though it wasn't as explicit as in Sailor Moon, was Sakura Card Captors, in which the male love interest for the longest time had a crush on the same older boy as the female protagonist, before they ended up with each other and the older boy ended up with the protagonist's brother. In the States all of this was censored as well, and it must also have taken an extreme effort to do that while preserving the story. It's such a shame that it happened, and that it deprived other kids from the positive impact the show had on me and, like you said, surely on other kids who got to watch the uncensored versions.