In Which My Head Continues To Remain In Small Fandom Land
OMG, it turns out that Sapphire and Steel is complete crack. Or some kind of drug, anyway. Probably some sort of hallucinogen mixed with barbiturates. All I know is, it's bizarrely addictive, and whatever it is, I've been downing it like candy. I don't think it's gotten any faster paced or anything, either but somehow I've stopped noticing its glacial slowness.
I'm five stories/discs in (meaning I have only one more to go), and still absolutely nothing yet has made any remote kind of sense at all, but in some fashion I totally fail to understand, this thing seems to have elevated lack-of-sense-making into something approaching a transcendent art form. It's not like there's a rational framework with big holes in it, or an attempt to use real-world science in a way that misunderstands it, or even the kind of surrealism that's meant to be all metaphorical. It just bravely refuses to ever acknowledge the existence of Earth Logic, or indeed, any sort of logic at all. It feels no need to justify or explain itself to us mere mortals. How is it that this works?! It ought to drive me crazy! Instead... Well, in the last story I watched, various guest characters complain at various points that things make no sense, and I found myself laughing (rather giddily, I must admit) and feeling amusedly superior to them, because I already knew all about things making no sense and had learned to happily go along with it. Honestly, I think that fifth story was, among several other things, a brilliant deadpan comedy, one you're only likely to "get" if you have just given in and learned to roll with the complete unintelligibility of the whole concept. Whether that's intentional or not, I don't know, but I don't think it actually matters.
Also, Steel just gets more adorable with every episode. Sometimes I want to pat his cheeks and floofle his hair and go, "Awww, who's a cute little uptight Agent of Cosmic Order, then?", if only to see his entertainingly befuddled glower afterward. And there is also some very sweet and engaging (and at times inexplicably sexy) shippiness. Which is every bit as random, confusing, and unexplained as anything else in the show, but somehow that just adds to the appeal.
*shrugs helplessly and gives up trying to analyze it*
I'm five stories/discs in (meaning I have only one more to go), and still absolutely nothing yet has made any remote kind of sense at all, but in some fashion I totally fail to understand, this thing seems to have elevated lack-of-sense-making into something approaching a transcendent art form. It's not like there's a rational framework with big holes in it, or an attempt to use real-world science in a way that misunderstands it, or even the kind of surrealism that's meant to be all metaphorical. It just bravely refuses to ever acknowledge the existence of Earth Logic, or indeed, any sort of logic at all. It feels no need to justify or explain itself to us mere mortals. How is it that this works?! It ought to drive me crazy! Instead... Well, in the last story I watched, various guest characters complain at various points that things make no sense, and I found myself laughing (rather giddily, I must admit) and feeling amusedly superior to them, because I already knew all about things making no sense and had learned to happily go along with it. Honestly, I think that fifth story was, among several other things, a brilliant deadpan comedy, one you're only likely to "get" if you have just given in and learned to roll with the complete unintelligibility of the whole concept. Whether that's intentional or not, I don't know, but I don't think it actually matters.
Also, Steel just gets more adorable with every episode. Sometimes I want to pat his cheeks and floofle his hair and go, "Awww, who's a cute little uptight Agent of Cosmic Order, then?", if only to see his entertainingly befuddled glower afterward. And there is also some very sweet and engaging (and at times inexplicably sexy) shippiness. Which is every bit as random, confusing, and unexplained as anything else in the show, but somehow that just adds to the appeal.
*shrugs helplessly and gives up trying to analyze it*