Calle Dybedahl wrote:

Avoid becoming a professional writer;,

I will - it doesn't pay enough :-)

Before I turned to the dark side and became a sysadmin, I studied

literature at university for three years. One of the very first things we were taught, in the very first course of the first term, was that the author's opinion of a work and/or intent behind it is utterly irrelevant.<

Glad I never went to university, if this is the kind of attitude that is taught :-) Sorry, but to me this comes over as disrespect to the creator.

snipped long argument<

Point taken, but *to me* it still feels callous to dismiss canon and the intent of the creators. Note, I'm not saying that anyone else should feel this way - I never expect others to agree with me - I'm just giving *my* opinion. I'm aware that, not having been to university, I can't argue as well as most lystmembers, but that won't keep me from trying. :-)

The slash interpretation can be made. There are hundreds, if not

thousands, of fanzines as evidence of that.<

Obviously they fulfil a deeply felt need :-)

The non-slash interpretation can also be made. There are just as much

evidence for that.<

A lot more, IMO.

Arguing that the slash interpretation can't be made or shouldn't be

made is utterly pointless.<

Absolutely.

So many people, many of them entirely independent of each other, have come

up with the slash interpretation that we can say that it is, undeniably, one valid interpretation of Blake's 7.<

Well, to me Fiona's arguments for it not being canon were pretty convincing. But it certainly is an *interpretation* of canon.

Trying to argue it out of existence will achieve absolutely nothing except

a lot of bad feelings and ill will.<

I never presumed to do that, perish the thought! If it came over that way, I apologise sincerely. My only aim was to bring up one aspect which I felt had been neglected in the debate, namely the fact that in writing fanfiction, we are hijacking characters that other people created. How people deal with that, is of course entirely up to them.

Marian