Sailor Saturn in all her forms

[Sky]

I'm hardly qualified to debate in this thread, but I think this is what Comartemis is looking for.[/url]

[Zwzn]

Pluto likely knew before hand what was going to happen. I stand by my theory that someone tampered with Saturn's mind at the begining of season 5. We know those of Crystal Tokyo will do that sort of thing for the "greater good".

Oh for christ's sake, not this again. Drop it and drop it fast, Zwzn, or this could get ugly.

I stumbled across this article about a week ago and I just now thought of posting it here; it's a excerpt from an essay called The Arts of Interpretation, and I thought it was relevant to the discussion as it stood a page or two ago. Boldface type indicates especially relevant stuff.

Hotaru's memories of the lab are drasticly different in season 5 then season 3. We have an unknown being tampering with Hotaru's mind in season 5, but not in season 3. The differences in season 5 make it look like Hotaru's father is dead or in no shape to care for her because he shielded her from the blast. The memories in season 3 show that if anyone did the shielding it was Hotaru.

Bujold is right; there have been arguments going on for centuries upon centuries about what constitutes literature as an art form. Go read some of Aristophanes' plays, ripping on Euripides; they're really funny. Practically speaking, based on my last nine years of observation in academia, I would have to say that literature, as a category, boils down to stories that are complex enough to support multiple interpretations. After all, a story so simple that it really does only support one reading wouldn't hold anyone's attention for very long. What keeps a story in circulation is that people keep talking about what it means. I would define literature, then, as stories that can't be reduced to a single reading. This is, of course, slightly self-serving, since it lets me argue that my favorite anime shows are also literature and, therefore, something I am justified in spending professional time on as well as hobby time. Given this perspective it fails to surprise me that the most vigorous discussions I've found cover the most ambiguous material--after all, that's where it gets fun. What disturbs me is the unproductive either-or tenor to these debates.

Take, for instance, the question raised about Season Three of Sailor Moon: who is the true Messiah? What keeps this discussion going is the fact that we don't have very clear indications in any direction. Whenever the Outers talk about the true Messiah, as opposed to the Messiah of Silence, the drawing we see is of a fairly featureless rainbow colored woman with butterfly wings. The litmus test for Messiah-hood is the ability to utilize the Grail's power. On the one hand, Uranus has two visions of Usagi looking like the drawing of the true Messiah and whenever Usagi uses the Grail for her second tier transformation she briefly manifests butterfly wings. On the other hand, she doesn't have the strength to maintain this transformation for long which leads Uranus and Neptune to conclude that she isn't the true Messiah after all. The other candidate suggested for the role is Sailor Saturn. Hotaru is certainly the host of the Messiah of Silence, Mistress Nine. The image, in the visions that Michiru and Rei share, of a woman holding the Silence Glaive lead the Outers to conclude that Sailor Saturn herself is going to be the Messiah of Silence, but this expectation is derailed by Mistress Nine overwhelming Hotaru. There would certainly be a nice poetic balance in Saturn being the true Messiah--both Messiahs in one body, duking it out. Sailor Saturn herself is never in contact with the Grail, which makes it impossible to apply the same test to her as to Usagi. Saturn does, however, manage to save the world from the approaching Silence, embodied in Pharaoh Ninety, after evicting Mistress Nine. Again, a certain balance of power seems indicated by this; if Hotaru overwhelms the Messiah of Silence, perhaps she's a Messiah too. I'm inclined to think that Usagi/Sailor Moon is the true Messiah, based on Mistress Nine's statement that the Grail is a heart crystal always at the height of emotion (love, hate, determination, etc.). She's taunting Sailor Moon, who can't transform to Super Sailor Moon since the Grail has just been destroyed to open the path for Pharaoh Ninety, that without an equally powerfully charged heart crystal she'll never be able to defeat the approaching entity. Once Sailor Saturn evicts Mistress Nine and takes off to destroy Pharaoh Ninety along with herself, however, Sailor Moon is so desperate to transform that she manages it anyway, apparently by drawing on the power of the other senshi. By my reading, this implies that Sailor Moon's heart somehow reached the same peak as the Grail, allowing her to both transform and follow Sailor Saturn to rescue her. As I say, though, this reading is based on an implication, a snippet of symbolism that can be read (like any symbol) more than one way. It's highly suggestive, but not conclusive. This is an awareness that I find lacking in an unfortunate percentage of such debates.

A similar, if even more diffusive, debate is the one over the presence or absence of homosexuality in Gundam Wing.

<snip>

Given this I'm not at all surprised to see people both making arguments and writing fics that connect these characters sexually, nor am I surprised to see other people just as vociferously campaigning against sexual connections either in essays or in fics. What does disturb me is the unwillingness I see on both sides to allow for more than one possible answer. Personally, I'm all for fics going in whatever direction the author wants to take it, bless her or his inventive little psyche; no one's forcing anyone to read them, after all. More precision in AU and OOC labels would be nice, to be sure. The essays...well, I'd like to see a little more analytical sophistication in the essays on all sides.

What people really seem to be missing, while they argue about the little details, is the big picture. The most interesting point for analysis is not, in my not at all humble opinion, whether the true Messiah is Sailor Moon or Sailor Saturn, or whether Heero is going to (eventually) get together with Relena or Duo. The most interesting point is that the authors didn't arrange a clear answer one way or the other. Why not? That's the question I see all too many people ignoring. What value might the authors have seen, to their stories, in leaving those questions open? Maybe there isn't a true Messiah, and what does that say about the Outers' mission or about truth or Messiahs in general? If Heero has all these vague options open and kept deliberately up in the air, ranging from no one through Trowa, Relena, Duo, Zechs, whomever, what message does that convey about relationships and fifteen year old, socially inept boys in the middle of a war? Don't just settle for one answer, that's boring, look at the details of each possibility, put them all together, and see what shape they make. Inclusion, people.

Now if I could just find the page I found this on, I could cite my source properly...

Nice article, but I can see some mistakes in it.

[P.H. Wise]

Are you still at it, Zwzn?