Well there is at least one other story happening which is S&S's story... through the six adventures (three seasons IIRC) it becomes more and more obvious that they are sent out by a force that has its own murky objectives and are regularly lied to. The final adventure left fans howling but even in this first story, S&S are discovering things about the 'enemy' that disturb them and are contrary to the propaganda.
The handwaving is a little bit more than handwaving Forces of Eviltm because it explains that you have Time... which is a million miles big where a human's life is an inch so not particularly interested in individual humans... and it steals things and breaks through etc. You also have the creatures that can traverse the big dangerous river of time... ones that come from the beginning and the end of Time and want out into the 'present' (whatever present they can get into). And then you have whatever sends S&S around, and S&S themselves -- who can manipulate time in the present.
There's also a coming-of-age story in that Rob is facing up to time as well... the way everyone has to face up to time stealing our lives. He's been sent down from reading nursery rhymes in Helen's room to get on with his homework (and in the UK at that time most kids only started having serious homework in secondary school... or as they were approaching their teens)... his childhood is coming to an end and his relationship with his parents will be changing. When S&S arrive they call Helen 'The Child' but treat Rob as an adult (Sapphire even flirts with him a fair bit). Helen turns immediately to obeying the replacement authority figures, most of Rob's problems come from obeying his parents (or the things pretending to be his parents) and he expects S&S to forgive that obedience.
But Rob's mother--as we are explicitly told--taught Rob that nursery rhymes reflect pieces of history, Only it's *not*-Rob's-mother says that, in response to Rob saying he's too old for nursery rhymes... and when the seductive voice changes tack to his mother having always said they were bits of history Rob says 'No' and to Sapphire he later says about it sounding like his mother but getting things wrong.
With Tully, of course, it isn't that the ghosts are wartime ghosts but that they died when they shouldn't have (for certain values of shouldn't) and the creature concerned feeds on that. It also manipulates time to do so which makes it a problem (see Adventure Three for a 'thing which isn't evil but needs to be stopped'). IIRC The problem is solved by giving it Tully because having the darkness feed on Time's resentment means it isn't manipulating time in the present anymore.
Of course, I like writing stories about non-human characters so a series of stories that centre on non-human characters engaged in a cold war with other non-human forces, where the humans are game tokens suits me fine. Really that was the thing about S&S... the humans are like Pakistani hill tribesmen during the Cold War... mostly irrelevant to the players, sometimes inconvenient, and now and then used as pawns and squabbled over.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 12:38 am (UTC)The handwaving is a little bit more than handwaving Forces of Eviltm because it explains that you have Time... which is a million miles big where a human's life is an inch so not particularly interested in individual humans... and it steals things and breaks through etc. You also have the creatures that can traverse the big dangerous river of time... ones that come from the beginning and the end of Time and want out into the 'present' (whatever present they can get into). And then you have whatever sends S&S around, and S&S themselves -- who can manipulate time in the present.
There's also a coming-of-age story in that Rob is facing up to time as well... the way everyone has to face up to time stealing our lives. He's been sent down from reading nursery rhymes in Helen's room to get on with his homework (and in the UK at that time most kids only started having serious homework in secondary school... or as they were approaching their teens)... his childhood is coming to an end and his relationship with his parents will be changing. When S&S arrive they call Helen 'The Child' but treat Rob as an adult (Sapphire even flirts with him a fair bit). Helen turns immediately to obeying the replacement authority figures, most of Rob's problems come from obeying his parents (or the things pretending to be his parents) and he expects S&S to forgive that obedience.
But Rob's mother--as we are explicitly told--taught Rob that nursery rhymes reflect pieces of history, Only it's *not*-Rob's-mother says that, in response to Rob saying he's too old for nursery rhymes... and when the seductive voice changes tack to his mother having always said they were bits of history Rob says 'No' and to Sapphire he later says about it sounding like his mother but getting things wrong.
With Tully, of course, it isn't that the ghosts are wartime ghosts but that they died when they shouldn't have (for certain values of shouldn't) and the creature concerned feeds on that. It also manipulates time to do so which makes it a problem (see Adventure Three for a 'thing which isn't evil but needs to be stopped'). IIRC The problem is solved by giving it Tully because having the darkness feed on Time's resentment means it isn't manipulating time in the present anymore.
Of course, I like writing stories about non-human characters so a series of stories that centre on non-human characters engaged in a cold war with other non-human forces, where the humans are game tokens suits me fine. Really that was the thing about S&S... the humans are like Pakistani hill tribesmen during the Cold War... mostly irrelevant to the players, sometimes inconvenient, and now and then used as pawns and squabbled over.