Steve said:
<Fiona said: "Yes, but if you saw me eating chocolate ice cream all the time? If, when offered a choice between chocolate and vanilla, I inevitably pick chocolate? If I talk to you about how much I like chocolate ice cream, but never mention vanilla?"
That doesn't mean you won't eat vanilla if the shop's sold out of chocolate.>
Hm. So, to bring the metaphor back to sex, homosexual behaviour on the part of Blake and Avon is an act of desperation?
<No-one's denying that the men show a preference for women (apart from Blake who shows no preference)>
<Sigh>. Allow me to copy out for the third time (the rest of you may wish to skip down the page):
------- Not disagreeing about Tyce. Actually, I was thinking of the scene in which Jenna informs Blake that Tarkin (whom Blake knows to be her ex-lover) is dead, a death she herself brought about. Blake cups the side of her face with his hand, looks into her eyes and smiles at her, and says softly "Take us out of here, Jenna." She returns the smile. I think the subtext there is pretty darn clear :). Furthermore, Jenna is visibly jealous of Tyce, and Blake's reaction to this in the final scene shows that he is very much aware of Jenna's feelings.
<bit about the Inga/Blake kiss snipped>
Yes, but there's more than just the kiss there. When Inga first appears on screen, Jenna asks him who she is. Blake says "She meant a lot to me once..." They are cousins (a kin relationship which is distant enough to make a sexual relationship possible), and there doesn't seem to be any family rift; there is thus a suggestion of possible romantic involvement, or at least a "crush". At the end of the story he kisses her-- fairly chastely; he holds her hand while saying goodbye to Ashton; Jenna visibly bristles, and again Blake does not seem unaware of her reaction.
Furthermore: If Blake was gay, surely Jenna would have noticed in such a closed environment-- and wouldn't be reacting in such a possessive way anytime a woman appears interested in him. To say nothing of how it would affected Jenna if Avon and Blake were in fact having a sexual relationship... thwarted affection is hard to hide.
-----
<, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have a gay relationship.>
Now, if you were talking about real people, I'd agree. I certainly don't think it's justifiable to make assumptions about a person's exclusive sexual preference based on their current choice of partner (although I should make the point that I don't consider it invalid either. If a friend, whatever their gender, has up until this point only gone out with women to my knowledge, I'd be pretty surprised if they mentioned a boyfriend).
However, the fictional world is considerably simpler. Vladimir Nabokov once made a remark to the effect of how, in literature, characters can't go against the way they have been written by their authors: King Lear can't make it up to his daughters, Madame Bovary can't stay with her husband and, in Nabokov's case, Humbert can't cure himself of his obsession with Lolita, even though it is arguable that had these three been real people, they could conceivably have had such changes of heart.
In an action-adventure series, the rules of characterisation are considerably narrower than in literature. So therefore, just as, if one is going to write a story about King Lear, one would have to base him on Shakespeare's characterisation to be taken seriously, if one is going to write about Avon and Blake, one has to take the filmed and written (scripts, character sketches, interviews...) evidence into account first.
<All we are saying here is that it is a viable avenue for fan fiction to explore and that some of the reactions, notably between Blake and Avon, can be interpreted that way. >
I'd agree with you on the "viable avenue for fan fiction to explore" bit. Just like it's viable for fan fiction to explore what the show would have been like if written as a camp comedy, a high Arthurian fantasy, or if the characters were cross-gendered (Rogina Blake, Jonno Stannis, Villette Restal?). Once again, though, I'd say that to retconn this avenue back onto somebody else's text is taking interpretation far too far.
<I know you don't interpret them that way, but there are many fans that do, and their view is also valid.>
Once again: surely to read into the show something that its creators didn't intend is a tiny bit disrespectful of the people who spent so much time and effort creating a complex action-adventure story with political undertones?
And as for relative numbers: well, there are any number of bad governments that got in with a majority vote.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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