From: Ellynne G. rilliara@juno.com
The proponents of male-speak, female-speak theories (which goes with that thing about men and women being two alien species, yadda, yadda, yadda,
I'm afraid the biologist in me insists that terms like 'species' be used with precision. We are all the same species, and we are all 99% bonobo.
depending on whether or not you buy that [do somedays, don't others, myself]) say that women tend to bond over things like shared feelings but also sharing hurt and comforting each other about it.
Which fits in with my general feeling that h/c and - to some extent - slash are essentially about 'feminising' the male characters, to get them to think, speak and above all feel in a female way (though not to make them female as such). Whilst this entails, as I've argued before, levelling off or even reversing a perceived imbalance of power between the sexes, it also tries to bridge the cultural gap between them and thus open up the opportunities for productive and efective communication.
It could also be argued that my preference for Ripley-esque action women and toughening up the women is essentially doing exactly the same thing, but working from the opposite direction by 'masculinising' the women (though again, not making them male per se).
A bit like the old joke about the Channel Tunnel. You know, the British starting at one end, working in yards, and the French at the other end working in metres...
Now, I'll be the first to admit, this is something that must be handled with care in the B7 universe. I don't quite see Avon and Tarrant sitting down over a large quantity of chocolate and saying things like <snip>
This relates, vaguely, to my last couple of nights at work. Monday night was an absolute pig, and I was heading for a right barney with my cell controller. Nothing actually got said, but a lot was left hanging in the air. Tuesday night, it was still hanging. But without saying a word on the subject, we wiped the slate clean. I asked him to clarify something for me (on the upcoming shift changes, a completely different subject), he did, I thanked him, the proverbial nod and a wink, and that was that. I really don't know, and never will, what was going on in his head, but I could feel the hatchets being buried. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I don't think so.
And that, to me, is how things ought to work in B7. It's not the kind of set-up where characters talk *about* issues, it's where they resolve issues by talking *around* them. It might be a very 'male' way of handling things, but for the male characters at least that only makes it more appropriate.
I'll concede, though, that it can be damn difficult to write!
Neil