Neil wrote: <Takee very careful note, everyone, you might never see this again. I agree with Sally.>
That's all right, everyone's allowed to once or twice a decade :-) Now if I can just convert the Tarrant Nostra ...
<But some of us are thinking about the parameters, and stay out of threads where we feel we have no meaningful contribution to make. <snip> <Actually 'the post that started it all' accused the episode, not Avon, of misogyny. A classic case of imposing a CJ framework on a non-CJ thread, methinks.>
Now this could illustrate the viewpoint problem here. The post that actually drew *me* into the thread wasn't Wendy's short opening one, but (and Wendy, I'm truly not trying to criticise you, I'm quoting this to try and make things clearer for non-CJs) went as follows : "After a bit of Freudian imagery of Avon firing off a big rocket and fertalising her race, he then leaves her to die of radiation poisoning on Cephlon, having taken away her reason for living! A case if wham, bang, thank you man. What a sexist pig!"
To me, that *did* refer to Avon, I didn't mentally add the words "Terry Nation is!" to the end of the sentence. I did take it as character discussion, since it appeared to be a comment not on the episodic inferences, but on one character's own actions. So of course I treated it as as much a character thread as a subtext one, since the point I entered, and most of the posts I answered appeared - and still appears to me - to have derived at least partly *from* this comment which I saw as a judgment of the character, not the episode, and as based on a statement about his actions (that he left her to die) which I didn't agree was *fact* but rather supposition.
Now of course, my reading could be because I am more interested in the characters than the writers, and therefore it's more in the way I read the post. I accept that. But it wasn't a *totally* unreasonable assumption, *me* thinks ...
This business of staying out of threads is a bit of a hairy business therefore. It's easy for me to say "this thread's on the chemical properties of Aquitar, I'll just sit back and try and learn or even understand something". It's easy for you to say "Red leather trousers and Avon's state of mind at Terminal ... oh bloody hell, not again!" But when it's a thread combining [a] interpretation of a perceived subtext by one of the writers involved on the episode *and* [b] interpretation of what one or more of the characters *actually did or did not do* (remember, part of this discussion was a disagreement on the validity of individual interpretations of the part of the action not shown) it gets more complicated.
Besides which, do admit, had all of us CJs not become involved over that little point, the thread wouldn't have been nearly as long or convoluted, and probably died a quiet death. As it is, my inbox is chockers every morning. *How* many posts has it spawned now?
<And why are you telling your rats?>
They listen so politely and never disagree ...
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