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taking the pin out of this thinking that ofc a text doesn't need to only be "about" one thing and it's normal for a text to exist in multiple planes of meaning and context. but also that appearances and the power of self-delusion are such a vital theme in ktd. the dead are brought back to life by the faith they place in their own existence. tulotef exists because people believe it in it. cinnabar deludes herself in the tragedy of her husband leaving her and ciddey lives in the shadow of guilt over killing her sister. myal is convinced he's good for nothing and is blind to his own musical genius and his sense of justice. and parl, the king of swords, bringer of misfortune, is so self-sacrificial, so altruistic in the most practical sense and at once so self-centred. he shows such kindness in deed yet cannot imagine being vulnerable, truly relying on anyone but himself in spirit. he ruins the lives he touches, and more often than not they are the lives of women.

is he in love? can he love? was there ever anyone, anything, that wasn't a reflection of his own person? a ghost? is myal truly his blood, or was that a lie too?

random thought I wanna keep for later: how did it take me this long to realise that Kill The Dead is about misogyny not only in the literal sense of portraying women in the context of prejudice but in the sense that a man finds the notion of loving / being vulnerable with anyone but himself so incomprehensible he actually falls in love with his own son, a narrative extension of himself.

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18 - massage

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babylon 5 commission for @eusuchia ! thank you so much : )

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random thought I wanna keep for later: how did it take me this long to realise that Kill The Dead is about misogyny not only in the literal sense of portraying women in the context of prejudice but in the sense that a man finds the notion of loving / being vulnerable with anyone but himself so incomprehensible he actually falls in love with his own son, a narrative extension of himself.

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I made a meme

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that's what I love so much about them: they do perform gender norms in certain ways but at the core sapphire is stone cold. she analyses people in the exact same fashion as she does with inanimate objects. her beauty is cool and collected and only passes as feminine affectation at first glance. and steel below his mask of restraint feels everything all the time, understands nothing, acts with an almost childish straight-forwardness, is easily rattled.

I also love how in the later eps it develops into this idea that sapphire can go places where steel cannot, but she needs him as an anchor in order to return. specifically in assignments 2 and 5, where she says repeatedly that she can't (insert some sort of spiritual experience) and steel keeps insisting that she tries. he's really just like, 'my beautiful powerhouse of a wife is plagued by visions but it's ok i will hold her in my arms as she witnesses horrors beyond comprehension. i don't understand any of it but im here for her.'

i've just started rewatching sapphire & steel (saw it for the first time in 2020, my memory of it's kind of foggy) and one of my favourite things about these early episodes is that it introduces you to these guys like oh ok it's the standard gendered division where the man is stern and job oriented and not very good with the kids and the woman is warm and friendly and a people person who's trying to put them at their ease, the emotional one to offset the man's abrasive and logical attitude - steel even backs up this idea by suggesting to sapphire that she's the one who smooths things over with the humans they interact with. and i mean look at her! look at how silly and warm she is changing her outfit just for the fun of it, how gently she speaks to them, how much she smiles (especially compared to the po-faced steel)!

and then she manipulates rob's personal time when he tries to open the door to the policeman.

and then she sits him down, and calmly explains, in that same gentle voice with that same gentle smile and all perfectly reasonably, that if he tries to leave through the window to get help she'll trap him in a time loop which he has absolutely no hope of escaping for hours on end :)

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mutual interest

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This perfectly sums up Sapphire and Steel’s relationship.

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Sapphire & Steel (1979 - 1982), Season 2: Tender moments

If you're the Sapphire I've grown to know and to love... Who is that person?

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in the spirit of drawing parallels between avon and steel, been thinking that tanith lee was a fucking genius for her take on avon's capacity for compassion in sarcophagus. she really just came out and said, hey this man is gentle actually. yeah he understands grief and loneliness and doesn't see compassion as demeaning. she elaborates on it in ktd with parl dro - I think his most attractive quality is that he shows an incredible amount of emotional intelligence when it matters.

and it's sorta fun to wonder if she'd seen s&s because pj hammond beat her to it with steel. steel is a bitch with everyone but so so gentle with sapphire. not like a man in the presence of a weak defenceless woman but like he's encountered a force outside his control and is humbled by it. and it's this level of emotional honesty that makes me so crazy abt them. irl men should do this more too.

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in case you're wondering how s&s watch is going

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sapphire & steel have pushed a button in my brain that makes it go AWOOGA loud enough to shatter glass. where else will you get a "straight" couple (all elements are trans & nb but we don't have time to unpack that) being so openly affectionate with each other without it ever outright being labelled as romantic. where else will you get a man kissing a woman on the cheek in the middle of a heated argument and kissing her hand after she saves him and stating casually that yes he does in fact love her... and then just moving on with the plot without any further elaboration. oh and the guy is the super affectionate touchy feely one btw. it's like they skipped all the regular stuff and went straight to having been married for 50 years. what they have escapes the confines of human comprehension. my god I will never be normal again.

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everyone very correctly lauds the talents of the actors playing the alien ambassadors in b5, creating these enormous and iconic and weird personalities that then define an entire alien culture. but i really want to shout out richard biggs, because he's so good as doctor franklin that it doesn't even seem like a performance. you can miss it because it's so excellent. never once in the entire series do i think "oh that's a guy who's acting." and it's genuinely from minute one!! with none of the shaky steps i expect from actors at the start of a sci-fi series while they figure out how big to play it and how to interact with the future world. he lands in the character so solidly and never blinks. starring doctor franklin as himself. truly a "if you do something well enough it looks like you didn't do anything at all" situation. richard biggs. goddamn.

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Cally: I have no pronouns, when referring to me use only a brief, eerie silence