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----- Original Message ----- From: Betty Ragan ragan@sdc.org
(Also, I should add that I am currently drugged up with narcotic cough syrup, so if this post is even more disjointed and nonsensical than usual, that's my excuse. :))
Get well soon! Just to even the score, it's late at night (well, early in the morning :) here in Oxford, and I've had a long day :)).
People can interpret whatever they like, but to my mind there's some that fits the text, some that fits the text with a bit of stretching and straining, and some that doesn't fit the text at all, and these should all be acknowledged as such.
I don't think we're actually in disagreement here, at all. It's just that I think there's a very important additional point to keep in mind, there, which is that different views are possible on just how much stretching and straining any one interpretation actually takes.
Indeed. But also that any single example of "homosexual" activity on the part of Avon and Blake (n.t.m. Vila, Tarrant, Gan...) on the screen has thus far been shown to have been a misinterpretation or an outright removal of the scene from context.
Not to sound utterly Tory here, but I do think it also has to be acknowledged that some people do have sensibilities which should be respected for politeness' sake (which I am blatantly disregarding at the moment, but
in
fairness I'll point out that we're both using serious warnings on the
topic
thread).
Definitely. I don't remotely disagree here, either, which is why I stuck serious warnings on my posts in the first place, and which is why I was actually rather reluctant to address the subject here at all. But, you know, in all fairness, it seems primarily to have been the *anti*-slashers who brought the topic up in the first place, and who seem to want to keep discussing the topic.
As I say in another post, I'm not anti-slash, just anti-retconning. But it was actually Steve Rogerson (who seems to have been taking a pro-slash line) who brought up the topic this time round, and IIRC it was Dana the first time round. And in any case, it takes two to tango...
In my experience, slash fans are generally been conscientious about people's sensibilities
Except when they're producing lurid artwork without the actors' permission, randomly killfiling people, arguing semantics... <irritated>. But yes, I do agree that most slashers have historically been careful of others' sensibilities. But IIRC one of the things fueling the debate initially was some people feeling as if slash/slashy subjects were intruding too much into ordinary/academic debate on the lyst (which also seems to have at least partly fueled the anti-hijacking and anti-silliness threads last month).
Avon and Blake (particularly on Avon's part).
As I'm sure you're aware, I don't agree, and for reasons we've discussed
:).
Yup. But you asked for my opinion. :)
True :).
Jenna and Blake (almost entirely on Jenna's part, I think).
But the fact that in "Duel," Jenna is the one chosen to represent the
"death
of a friend" suggests it's mutual.
Well, it suggests Jenna is a friend, anyway. :) Actually, I agree, that's an interesting point, and one I'm still kind of mulling over.
Since I've dug up a lot of material on it, I'm taking the executive decision of moving the Jenna/Blake thread to a separate post :).
Possibly Cally and Avon (though perhaps more on Cally's than on Avon's).
As I said, certainly it's ambiguous. Although it's interesting,
actually,
that on her death she cries out "Blake!"
Something for which many, many explanations have been put forth, none of which has succeeded in fully convincing me. I'm still not remotely sure what that was about.
Interesting, though, innit?
If I can cite Chris Boucher (who wrote the episode) again in an unpublished interview which would have gone into the Marvel B7 Special had it not folded (which was sent to me by the author, Alan Stevens, and I've gotten his permission to quote it here), Cally shouted out Blake's name because she was calling out to the leader, and that Avon thought nothing of Cally's death, as the only person he cared about was himself. But I'm aware of your feelings about canonicity of interviews :), so this is cited as a side point only.
. Many people see having sex with men as
extremely out of character for Avon. Others don't. I don't; as I've said before, I can easily see the character as bisexual, based on what's on the screen.
Again, can you give me examples?
Ooh, once again, we're not talking about anything specific, just general, personal impressions. I'd say it's based on several things, though: his body langauge, the fact that he doesn't seem terribly concerned with conforming to conventional morality... If I were being flippant, I might say the way he dresses. :) Mainly, it's just that I don't see anything in him that screams "exclusive heterosexual"
But that's not hard evidence. As I've pointed out, we don't see any sort of same-sex flirtation, sexual eye- or physical contact, innuendos of the "every vice... every pleasure..." sort, which we do see for Egrorian, Krantor, Carnell and Dorian. Shane may take issue with this :), but if we're confining ourselves to onscreen hard evidence, I don't think body language or fashion sense are admissible.
I'm also racking my brains trying to think where Avon suggests that he doesn't conform to conventional morality, and what I've been able to come up with is that he is an embezzler, a terrorist and occasionally shows sadistic leanings. I assume (well, I sincerely hope!) you're not including bisexuality with that lot... :).
I won't dispute that PWP's probably outnumber the really complex and interesting stuff in slash. But then, I think that "shallow" action-adventure gen fiction probably outnumbers really complex and interesting gen fiction, too. Have you heard of Sturgeon's Law? 99% of everything is crap. :)
Fair point :). I've gotten your other post and I'm going to read those stories and reply. May take a day or two, though.
However, most of what I've read seems to go more along the lines of "Avon and Blake seem to respect each other but be suspicious of each other, Avon risks everything twice on a slim chance of finding Blake, Blake trusts Avon despite all the odds... why is this? I know, they're lovers!"
Ah, well, that seems to have the causality backwards, to me.
Sorry, not sure I understand. Please accept that I'm dumb, and spell it
out
for me.
Er, I thought I did, in the bit you snipped. I see that *emotional* attatchment as being primary in that relationship, and much slash fiction also sees it that way, I think. If Avon and Blake become lovers, it's because that complex emotional relationship already exists. It's not that that relationship springs automatically into being simply because they're having sex.
Thanks, I do understand now :), and that's exactly my problem with it. It's that a complex emotional relationship is being explained as simply sexual tension.
It makes perfect sense to me. Presumably, Travis knew that Blake and Inga had had a close emotional relationship (more like a brother-sister one than a cousinly one). Travis, if he really does know Blake that well, also knows how important family is to Blake, and that, in particular, the way to get to him is to use someone for whom he he's had not just familial feelings, but *protective* feelings. Even if it was a long time ago, and those feelings are no longer immediate (and he *does* say "she was important to me once," not "she is important to me," so that seems to be the case *regardless* of the nature of the relationship), Blake will remember that relationship and feel bound by it. (And this could be very much magnified by the fact that Blake's *actual* brother and sister are dead, leaving Inga the closest thing to a sibling he's got left.)
Basically, I *do* agree that Blake must have had a strong emotional attatchment to Inga. I just don't think it was sexual.
That's well argued, and a plausible and acceptable argument. Point conceded--it's brotherly love :).
People *can*
have strong emotional attatchments to people with whom they do not have a sexual relationship, as I seem to recall you pointing out with respect to Blake and Avon. :)
Touche! But see my posts elsewhere on evidence for Blake's heterosexuality vs homo/bisexuality.
[Jenna]
I find it easy to imagine that she did, in fact, do this and he utterly failed to respond...
But where does he utterly not respond? He does. I've pointed out how he touches her face in "Bounty."
I still need to re-watch that ep, because I don't remember this bit at all (despite having watched it multiple times in the last year or so).
In "Killer," they sit together on the couch, smiling and chatting with lots of eye contact. In fact, there is mutual eye-contact and smiling in many episodes.
The thing is, I do see evidence of *affection* between Blake and Jenna, but nowhere did he ever seem to me to display anything that looked much like sexual attraction. I'm telling you, I just don't see it. (And Blake and Avon make eye contact and smile...)
But don't touch each other's faces, or waists, or hands (except where there are other reasons to present, e.g. an explosion). Or hug. Or act jealous whenever anyone else shows any interest....
Btw, do you see "Redemption" as evidence that Jenna and *Avon* had a sexual attraction? The way that she's sitting cuddled up next to him in the cell?
No, on the grounds that they *were* inside a prison cell, and thus had non-sexual justification for cuddling up together-- no idea what was going to happen to them, after all. Besides, that contact does seem to be a one-off for the pair of them.
Finally, in "Blake," Blake knows how she dies, suggesting that he cared enough to stay in contact throughout the wilderness years.
I don't think that's really evidence for much of anything. We don't know anything at *all* about what happened during those years. For all we know, it's a third-hand report he picked up on the rebel grapevine.
But one he's remembered. If that's the case, too, why didn't he mention Cally's death? Or Gan's, which he knew about personally and which would probably have equal impact with regard to "testing" Tarrant's allegiances as Jenna's?
[Sara struggle snipped]
Which to my mind suggests that what was intended to be a violent act suddenly turned sexual, for him if not her.
I tend to interpet that more as him enjoying the violence, the adrenaline rush... And feeling just a little bit weird about it, since Sara is such a tiny little thing that it almost seems wrong to be beating up on her, no matter how well she fights. But, OK, it's easy to see how that can be read as sexual, and that kind of a reaction seems quite in character for Avon. Not that it matters a whole lot for this discussion, as I never disputed the fact that Avon was interested in women...
True, but others have... :). And again, the point was that we do occasionally see things like that for Avon and women, but not for Avon and men.
I think that's one reason why I don't really understand the argument that so many people seem to be making, that since there's no solid evidence for slash relationships obviously there *weren't* any.
There's no evidence at all, that's the problem-- which still to me
implies
that to say that they existed falls in the same category as saying Avon likes disco-dancing.
<Shrug> Seems to me that this eventually just boils down to a fundamental differnce of viewpoint, really.
And I'm fine with that... so long as the difference is between those who say "I'm going to adhere to canon" and those who say "Sod canon" (or some continuum between them). It does worry me when one side are saying "Canon says straight," and the other side are saying "Canon says gay/bi" and side A has all the hard evidence. Again, we do seem to be in agreement on this (why are we arguing again :)?) but I like to define my terms.
To which I add that, IMHO, sexual tension between Avon and Blake is a tiny, tiny stretch of credibility, and actual A/B sex is a moderate-to-somewhat-large stretch. Whereas it-was-the-clone is a *very* large stretch, and Avon-likes-disco-dancing is a stretch of light-years. :)
I think they're all equally unlikely :).
True, though as I argued in my article "There Is A Hole in Your
Plotline"
(Zenith Magazine, 2000 <buy it, buy it>),
Bought it. :)
Good!
compared to series which were actually intended to have a soaplike element (e.g. B5), the changes are pretty subtle and minimal.
They certainly were so compared to B5, but, based on what I remember of the article, I think I do see them as being more significant than you do.
In support of my viewpoint, I'd like to point out that one can effectively strip Season 3 down to three episodes: Aftermath, Powerplay, Terminal. All the significant changes in plot and characterisation take place within those three episodes only. One can do similar things for the other seasons.
Furthermore, the point Boucher seems to be making there is not that relationships couldn't develop and change, but that
they
shouldn't change so much or in such a way that somebody dropping
casually
into the series midway in couldn't pick up pretty quickly on the relationships between the characters.
I dunno, though. Seems to me that someone coming in at, oh, say "Terminal" is going to be pretty darned confused about who this Blake person is and exactly what Avon's relationship is to him. As an off-the-top-of-my-head example. Or, a while back, I showed a third-season episode to a friend of mine who'd only seen part of the first season. He was confused. "What happened? Who *are* these people?"
In the first case, a season-ender episode, which Chris in the interview exempts from the continuity rule-- and in fairness, it *is* explained who Blake is and what Avon's relationship to him was/is over the course of the episode. In the second case, again, Chris seems to have been referring to within-season viewing (again, recall the original mode of consumption of the series-- it was being shown with no assumption that it was going to be rerun, and indeed with no idea whether or not they would be able to continue from one season to the next).
However, were an explicitly-portrayed romance to happen between, say,
Blake
and Jenna, a lot of internal continuity would need to be built up. It's
true
that one could tune into one episode and understand them as friends, and then into another and understand them as lovers, but it does require a
bit
more viewer explanation than simply having Travis say "I'm on the run
from
the Federation."
I dunno, that seems to me to underestimate the intelligence and flexibility of the audience somewhat. They were friends. They became lovers. What's so hard to understand about that?
I refer you to my reaction on Odo and Kira-- or to your friend's reaction to the third season, or to the fun times my family used to have when I was small and we were watching Doctor Who and occasionally missing episodes due to other commitments (these being pre-VCR days). But also that all these occurred within fan/regular viewer contexts. The B7 team were operating on the assumption that a good portion of their audience consisted of casual viewers who might be alienated by too much continuity.
Actually, too, I think there's been a shift in intervening years on SF attitudes to continuity. In ST:TOS, B7 and other series of the 60s-70s (I'm exempting serials like DW), the writers and creators seem to pretty much take a minimal-continuity attitude to their series; ST:TOS, Space 1999, The Avengers and Randall and Hopkirk are all shows which you can pretty much pick up anywhere without too much strain to follow the relationships. In the late 80s and early 90s, though, we get shows like ST:TNG and its offshoots, followed by B5, Buffy etc., which (although admittedly you can to some extent jump in late in the series and get by) do take a quasi-soap format. This is (get to the point, Fiona!) not to say that audiences have necessarily increased in intelligence :), but that at the time of B7's creation, writers in general were more wary than today of putting in too much continuity, and perhaps audiences were less "conditioned" to accept soap elements in SF.
Hmm. Whereas my reaction when it was revealed that Odo was in love with Kira was "He *is*?!" [pause] "Oh, yes, of *course* he is!" But then, I *was* watching the show from the beginning, so admittedly my perspective is different.
My point exactly :). Whereas I was someone who did know the premises of the series, but who dropped in casually from time to time, as a non-fan.
True enough. But where one draws the line between something that fits well with canon and something that doesn't is going to differ a lot from person to person.
As we've seen. But I'm still campaigning for a continuum!
Oh, well, I'm *always* in favor of a continuum! But the simple fact is, no two people are going to place everything on exactly the same places on that continuum.
Which is good, or else we'd have a very boring lyst :).
Including politics and allegorical representations :). Bit too
character-oriented for my take, but hey, as we've both been saying, live
and
let live...
Well, you know, if it weren't possible to take a character-oriented approach to the series, I wouldn't be watching it, let alone be enthused enough about it to want to spend hours on-line discussing it. :) But this kinda goes back to my (very badly expressed, IIRC) comments to Neil about the "characters vs. ideology" thing, which I'm not entirely sure I want to get into again...
Nor do I. I'm a non-CJ (perhaps a bit surprisingly for an anthropologist) but I freely accept, and celebrate, the fact that other people are.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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