From: Ellynne G. rilliara@juno.com
For me, killing Blake is one step too far (the same if Avon had killed Vila). Without extenuating circumstances, this is just more than I can take from him.
A death is a death is a death. Who killed whom is immaterial. What makes Avon so special? What makes Blake so special? Avon killed plenty of other people through the course of the series. Come to think of it, so did Blake.
But, I think it's also more than he can take as a character.
I have always seen that as a case of fannish wishful thinking.
An Avon who has knowingly killed Blake has destroyed something essential about himself. Whatever Blake symbolized to him - hope, idealism, selflessness - and whatever part of him (however grudgingly) connected to that is dead.
No matter what happens to him, Avon carries on. Though there is much to be said for a PGP scenario in which Blake survives and the two can be reconciled in some way.
Maybe the right term isn't absolve so much as absolution, the idea that forgiveness and redemption are miracles that occur outside the individual. For the story to go on, that's what's needed. Either Avon needs to be credibly separated from full guilt or an equally credible party needs to forgive him (probably Blake, unless a very good argument can be made for someone else).
I don't think it can be disputed that Avon shot Blake. It was his finger on the trigger. Nor can it be denied that Blake was unarmed, though we might question how aware of this Avon might have been, with so much happening so fast at what was clearly a moment of crisis. We should also consider that Blake was accompanied by at least one other person who was armed, and that Avon was in territory that he had grounds to consider as hostile. Avon was also accompanied by others who were likewise armed (though one had been somewhat severely battered by recent events), and who is to say that they might not have started shooting even if Avon had held back. Probably not, though, since he would seem to have become the de facto leader of his party, a position for which he was not entirely qualified and did not particularly want.
No doubt there are some who believe that Avon went to Gauda Prime with the express intention of killing Blake, but I have never interpreted the episode in this way. Things fell apart in catastrophically short order, and someone previously assumed to be a friend or at least ally (for all the sardonic gibes previously aimed at him) suddenly appeared in the guise of an enemy who seemed incapable of offering a coherent explanation for himself. Avon was thrown onto the defensive, and with a gun forced into his hands by immediately preceding events it should come as no great surprise that he defended himself the way he did. It was a gut reaction permitted by circumstance and opportunity. Not, by any means, the only action he could have made, nor necessarily the best, but the imperative to act overrode consideration of other possibilities. The decision to shoot was, I think, both conscious and deliberate, but in his mind he was not shooting the Blake he had known in the past and had hoped to find again, but a stranger who had, albeit unwittingly, turned everything upside down amid chaotic and stressful circumstances. Tragic, but tragedy is part of life and cannot be denied.
There is, of course, the possibility that he shot the clone, and that the real Blake is still out there.
Neil