Blakes7 February 2001

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80 participants
929 discussions

Re: Torture
by Sarah Thompson 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

This is an old thread, I know, but I'm catching up on a lot of older posts. I think that there are multiple answers to the question of why Avon is such a popular subject for hurt-comfort stories. It's certainly been a prominent theme throughout the entire history of B7 fanfic; when I was cataloguing zine contents I found that the very first B7 zines ever published, back in 1978, already included get-Avon stories. One reason that I don't think anyone suggested, and that applies especially to the early material, is that in some ways it is suggested by the show itself and by Avon's initial role as "hero's sidekick." One of the functions of the sidekick is to be injured or put in jeopardy and be succored or rescued by the hero. Examples that come to mind are "The Web" and "Hostage." When the hero himself is in trouble, e.g. Blake being tortured in "Cygnus Alpha," he's more often expected to rescue himself. Sidekicks are often the geeky, nerdy, hyper-intellectual type, since those qualities are interesting to viewers but not acceptable in a conventional hero. IMO the fannish tendency to torture geeks is an accidental result of this situation. Of course, the roles get all confused in the later seasons, when the nerdly sidekick becomes the hero; but then that sort of flouting of expectations is a big part of what makes B7 so special. Another reason is that many female fans like to hurt the male character they find most attractive. I think the reason for this is explained in one of my favorite books, Michael Malone's =Heroes of Eros=, which is about Hollywood stars but can certainly apply to British television as well. Malone says: "In the fiction of romantic films, something always shifts the weight away from male supremacy in sex. Something is done to reduce the traditional advantages of sex role our society grants to men." (p. 11) <various examples of wounded heroes deleted> "By so handicapping the male half of the couple, movies tilt the sexual scale into a momentary equilibrium between the male and female." (p. 12) Since Avon is the most widely admired, he is the most likely to be hurt in fan fiction. There need not even be an overt romantic element within the story, given the romance between the author and her character in the meta-universe. A third reason, as one person already pointed out (sorry-- I can't remember who it was), is that Avon =does= suffer beautifully; you just can't discount that as a factor in why Avon, more than any of the others, is The Man We Love to Hurt (as the eloquent Barbara Tennison once put it). Or, to give an external reason, one of Paul Darrow's special strengths as an actor is that he does "pain" very convincingly and somehow manages to go on looking good while he does it. Strictly speaking, this is not very realistic, since most people look awful when they're seriously hurt or upset; but when he does it, it's convincing and effective. And I think Mr. D. knows very well that he's good at that. To my mind the most interesting thing about =Avon: A Terrible Aspect= was that Avon got beaten up so much in it. I just bet that as he wrote the book, PD was imagining himself acting out the role, and so he put in plenty of what he knew he'd be good at. Avon also gets beaten up in the "Man of Iron" script, and there is a scene of Servalan gloating over him that I would dearly have loved to see acted out. Hey, if he does it himself, no wonder fans do it so much! Sarah T.

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OT: Penguins
by Julia Jones 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

Since we're talking about penguins again, I thought that Una and Neil would be interested in one of the sights on my day out today - the penguin fence along the side of the road. Yes, really - the main highway runs a few yards from the dunes and beach, and the penguin colonies in said dunes don't have a very good grasp of the highway code. -- Julia Jones "Never mind about Lara. The Tomb Raider games are the only games where I've shot someone because they were getting in the way of the scenery." Terry Pratchett talking in afp

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Re: [B7L] Re: Fanfic
by Sally Manton 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

Neil wrote: <I got the idea for this one after reading a story that had an all-female society put Avon in a cage and use him as a stud. I couldn't help thinking that putting Avon in a cage was the author's real reason for inventing this scenario, but maybe I was just being unfairly cynical.> Ermmm ... no, actually I don't think you were :-) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Re: [B7L] Deliverance
by Natasa Tucev 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

Re the question of whether 'Avon left Meegat to die'. I'm not sure whether my hunch is right, but somehow the whole concept of 'rescuing' a native out of his original habitat and indigenous culture 'because it's so primitive and dangerous', strikes me as imperialistic and prejudiced in itself. N.

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Re: Subtext vs Character
by Betty Ragan 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

Well, here's where I get to see whether I set things up properly to let me post from my work account... Neil wrote: > True. What I meant was, ignore the characters as characters, but > don't ignore them as representations of an ideological position. > See them for *what* they stand for, rather than *who* they are. No, thanks. The whole idea of viewing people not as individual people but as representations of some ideological abstraction is, frankly, pretty repugnant to me (and that's true, if perhaps slightly less so, even in the case of fictional people). Avon is Avon and Meegat is Meegat. They're *characters*, not simply representations of ideological positions, and, IMO, to treat them otherwise is to do them -- and the entire series -- a grave disservice. If they *were* just cardboard mouthpieces for ideological positions, I wouldn't be watching the series. (OK, OK, Meegat is arguably rather cardboard, but IMHO, whether you attribute it to Terry Nation, to the director, or to the actress, she comes across as having far more dignity and individuality than she seems to be getting credit for.) You can argue that the fact that the educated, "civilized" male character is cast in this role and the female, "primitive" character in that one is significant, and you undoubtedly have a point there (although I wouldn't take it nearly as far as some people seem to be inclined to). But the details of Avon's *individual* personality, I think, are every bit as relevant to how the situation plays itself out, and to ignore them is to ignore a significant facet of the episode. The scripts, after all, aren't written for generic, faceless ideological mouthpieces, they're written for specific, established characters, and that *has* to shape the story, subtext and all. (It would have been very interesting, I think, to see how "Deliverance" would have gone with Blake in Avon's place. I suspect it would have played *very* differently.) -- Betty Ragan ** bragan(a)nrao.edu ** http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~bragan Not speaking for my employers, officially or otherwise. "Seeing a rotten picture for the special effects is like eating a tough steak for the smothered onions..." -- Isaac Asimov

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Re: [B7L] liking 'character'
by Tavia Chalcraft 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

Neil again: >Neglect of original characters is something I've moaned about more than >once in the past, since in many (though not all) cases they are severely >underwritten, underdescribed, badly named, and little more than >one-dimensional cyphers to give 'our heroes' something to play off against. ... >Likewise settings,which can be nothing more than an abstract locale >in which the action takes place, and consequently left all but undescribed. I agree, poor settings and the seeming antipathy to original characters (aka Mary-Sues) are two of my pet peeves of fanfic. The whole anti-Mary-Sue feeling has (IMO) done more to stultify B7 fanfic than anything else. I'd rather put up with a whole host of blatant Mary-Sues in the hope that people felt freer to invent new characters and new situations. After all, very few (if any?) episodes stuck rigidly to the cast members only, nearly all acquired some new (and often interesting) characters for Our Heroes to play off/with. Moreover I assume the predilection for quarry-of-the-weekism stemmed from budget constraints and they would cheerfully have gone somewhere with interesting scenery had costs allowed. Tavia

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Re: Fanfic
by Helen Krummenacker 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

> And readers simply > want to *read* about "no one else" but the main characters. And I can > understand the sentiment, really I can -- because the point of fanfic is > that one is using someone else's characters and setting, so if one isn't > going to use them, then why is one writing it? You already given the other reason... using the *setting*. I think it would be a fantastic thing to do a fanzine where none of the stories use the main characters, or are perhaps, allowed a single main-character appearence. Thus you could get plots like, "the Federation tries to take over a matriarchal planet; Blake, during his absence from the Liberator, arrives there to try to organize the locals only to find they have their own ideas on how to manage things, thank you very much, but the poor little man seems so sincere they could perhaps let him travel with the fighting squad as a mascot" or "Governor Le Grande discovers a horrible secret about the Federation which makes her determined to oppose it" or "Pollux, the interesting product of a genetic experiment by the Clonemasters, can change his shape at will. He is commissioned to morph himself into the likeness of Jenna Stannis to make contact with Avon and get the Liberator. However, once he dodges those watching him, he duplicates Servalan's likeness to gather resources for his own bid for personal freedom... Will he be able to lose his trackers and become a free and independent being?" All of these would be making use of some of the 'givens' of the Blake's 7 universe: Blake's fame as a rebel, and how it might not matter much on an outside world; filling in some unknown background on Le Grand; the technology of the Clonemasters and the weaknesses of the Federation as an organization. They would not need much in the way of the main characters, but could be fascinating ways of rounding out the Blake's 7 universe. Some people wouldn't read it because it would mean no revelling in the character relationships, but one could create *new* character dynamics between the cameo character and the original creations. The biggest challenge for the writers would be, I think, keeping the 'tone' of the universe. That is, Pollux would probably die; possibly in an ironic twist, shot by Dayna who thought he really was Servalan. Le Grand may be succesful in creating changes within her section of organization, but the story should hold foreshadowings that this is unlikely to last after Voices From The Past. One reason I don't read a lot of fanfic is that, from what I read about it, it sounds like the same things are rehashed endlessly. I like the idea of developing not just the characters but the universe. Why not write stories like that as original fics since the characters are mostly new or little developed in the series? Because 1. It's hard to get original fiction published. 2. You'd have to estblish all the givens; B is a big-name hero; F is evil institution and uses genocide and drugs to take over new worlds and quell posessed ones; C have the only advanced genetic technology accessable to the F and S wants to use it to get the L through A. 3. Once you had done all that to create an 'original' universe, some Blake's 7 fan will take a look and say, "It's an avatar universe."

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Next Round of B7 fanzines & goodies has been posted
by Bizarro7＠aol.com 12 Feb '01

12 Feb '01

...at the ongoing Ashton Press eBay auction. I'm just too darn lazy to post the names of the zines this time; take the time to have a peek and hunt up some gems for your collection or just plain classic B7 fanfic yourself! Remember; only one copy of each zine is being offered as we continue to clear out the massive collection. Good luck! Auction located at: http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/ashton7/

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Fw: [B7L] OT: Penguins
by Deborah Day 11 Feb '01

11 Feb '01

This email was delivered to you by The Free Internet, a Business Online Group company. http://www.thefreeinternet.net --------------------------------------------------------------- >> There was an article in the paper the other day >> saying that a baby penguin >> had been found outside McDonalds in Melbourne being >> very depressed. >> Apparently people take them home from the beach and >> then leave them in the >> town and they just can't cope with it. I wonder >> what it would have ordered? > >Oh no! This is the first time I've ever heard of >stuff like this - How could they just leave them in >the concrete jungle like that - what is wrong with >these people? > >Cheryl. > > >___________________________________________________________________________ __ >http://entertainment.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Entertainment >- Feeling a little bored? Need some entertainment? >

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Re: [B7L] liking 'character'
by Tavia Chalcraft 11 Feb '01

11 Feb '01

Dana wrote: >Harking back to the Deliverance discussion ... I bet that what people >really object to are subconscious Mary Sues. Hard to see that either Terry Nation or Chris Boucher subconsciously wished to fall at Avon's feet. Though PD has been known to claim that Tanith Lee, author of Sarcophagus, was obsessed with him, so perhaps the Cally alien ? Tavia

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Blakes7 February 2001