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5511 discussions

Re: [B7L] What's Silly ?
by Harriet Monkhouse 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

Stephen asked: >What does and what does not spoil people's >watching of B7 ? As far as I am concerned >Vampire Sand is very silly I like vampire sand, as a concept at least, because it's really alien. It's aliens like the Ultras who I can't take seriously (however beautifully Sheelagh painted them). Like that Dr Who story, 4th doctor I think, where they were on a planet with an excess of vegetation and a shortage of metal, and they met an alien imprisoned in some tunnels who was basically a giant brain rolling about. Last time I saw it, on UK Gold, the announcer said something on the lines of "silliest alien ever"; I thought it was one of the most convincing aliens ever. Harriere

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Re: [B7L] Redemption (the Episode)
by Dana Shilling 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

Una said: > I'm sure I've blathered on about this before. 'Redemption' serves for me the > purpose that I think 'Animals' serves for many others: i.e. a scapegoat episode > for all the things in B7 which annoy me: cheapness, ham, crap aliens... There's a saying the US that a conservative is a liberal who has just been mugged...not that I've ever had my car stolen (I don't even know how to drive) but I'm sure I'd feel much more sympathy for The System if I had. -(Y)

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Re: [B7L] Re:intellectual debates on the list
by Ashton7＠aol.com 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

In a message dated 2/22/01 2:04:11 AM Eastern Standard Time, avona(a)jps.net writes: << Can't we agree to sometimes have different tastes? No one owns a topic or thread, serious or humourous, and I'm really surprised to hear what some of you have said. >> Yes, very succinctly put. That's all I was getting at. You (meaning a universal you) cannot *own* a thread on a public mailing list and if you think you can, you are setting yourself up to be annoyed...and disappointed. Not to mention the people who might get annoyed when you try to impose your vision of what the thread "should" be on them. Annie

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Re: [B7L] Hurt/comfort & S&M (Was: Deliverance/H/C)
by Tavia Chalcraft 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

Neil wrote about h/c: >I would define it as a story in which one >character, not necessarily Avon, is literally and physically hurt, and >markedly debilitated as a result, quite possibly to the point of complete >helplessness. he (usually he) is then sustained through the period of >debilitation by one (possibly more, but normally just one) other character. >This might be the entire recovery process, or might merely be until the >Liberator arrives to teleport the hapless duo to safety. The story ends >with a strengthened bridge of understanding between comfortee and comforter >(or indeed the building of such a bridge from scratch), mostly through the >comfortee's heightened acknowledgement of the comforter's worth. The story >is typically written from the comforter's POV. He or she can often (but by >no means all always) feel suspiciously like a rather ubiquitous woman who >goes by the name of Mary-something or other. As outlined here there are certainly some similarities with what I would understand by S&M (and please stop reading now if discussion of this is going to offend you). Let's take it as read that the event discussed is fully consensual and is between people who are not strangers. To me, the central feature of S&M is the relationship between the top and the bottom, in particular, trust from the bottom and responsibility from the top. An ideal scene will often try to push the limits of the bottom's trust. There's also usually two phases to an S&M scene, which correspond in an obvious fashion with hurt and comfort. In these regards, there are clear similarities with h/c. In h/c, the hurt is almost invariably inflicted by a third party or other agent. In S&M, the hurt and comfort are usually both dispensed by the same person. Psychologically, the two ideas seem completely different to me. In h/c, the hurt is out of control of either the comforter or the comfortee, and usually does real damage, which would be permanent, even fatal without the Liberator medical technology (and therein lies the angst potential). In S&M, nothing should *ever* be out of control. The hurt is usually reasonably trivial, short-lived and self-healing. While the top *nominally* controls the process, the bottom is really in control of what goes on (and I don't just mean what tends to be referred to as 'topping from the bottom'). In my opinion, this is such a key difference between the two areas that I get quite annoyed/upset by people who equate them, even though I can perceive some similarities. Another aspect that Neil mentioned in another post was ritual. I don't have his comment to hand but I think he was talking about the way the hurt/comfort stories evolve usually being relatively formulaic and comparing this with the ritual of the S&M scene. I don't see this myself. A perfectly good explanation for the formulaic nature of some h/c stories is bad (or at least unoriginal) writing. The ritual aspect of S&M exists (1) to heighten the experience of what might in other contexts be perceived as relatively trivial pain, and (2) to allow a top who's physically weaker than the bottom to exert enough control for the scene to work. I'm certainly one of those who sees sexual imagery in at least some h/c stories, and I've even referred to Blake & Avon h/c as a kind of 'poor man's slash'. I mean this in the sense that slash stories often use the sex almost as a plot device to develop an emotional relationship between the two characters, while the comfort fulfils this role in h/c stories. Tavia http://www.viragene.com/ PS: In another context, Fiona talked about a friend with a 'gay-dar'. In similar fashion, I possess an S&M-dar, and believe me, hurt/comfort doesn't activate it.

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Domes
by Dana Shilling 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

OK. Starting fresh, new thread, possibly serious discussion: 1. How big is a dome--would it be the equivalent of, e.g., a city block, The City of London, London, or England? I imagine it must be fairly small--in The Way Back, you can see the light bulb shining through the little bitty windows cut in the styrofoam, the way you can in a building as you walk past. 2. Which brings up the question of how many domes there are, and whether separate countries are still recognized-- i.e., I've made references to Englandome and Helveticadome but even if countries still exist there would probably be lots of domes per country. And the question of whether Blake is Welsh just because Gareth Thomas implies the continued existence of Wales. 3. How do people get around within a dome? I know that personal transportation has been banned, but I can't believe that domes are small enough to walk from one end to the other. I assume something like trams or commuter trains. 4. Are there subcategories in grades (Beta-2, Gamma-4)? That could be what Avon means by a "fifth-grade ignorant," but I assume he means that Vila dropped out of school or was expelled in the fifth grade... 5. Which brings up the question of whether the schools have "grades" or "forms," "high schools" or "comprehensives," "colleges" or "universities." -(Y)

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Re: [B7L] Wendy's complaint (was Sally-speak)
by Neil Faulkner 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

From: Mistral <mistral(a)centurytel.net> What a wonderful header: Wendy's Complaint. "Well, doctor? What do the tests say?" "All the symptoms seem to point to Wendy's Complaint, I'm afraid." "Is it serious?" "No, not really. Some people find it rather aggravating, but it's quite harmless if you don't take it too seriously. Take two of these three times a day; they won't actually do anything but you can always pretend they help." > Fiona Moore wrote: > > Actually to me it sounds ironic. Wendy expressed a view of Deliverance quite > > different from the Gospel According to Lysator, and, good heavens, she got > > attacked for it. So did Neil, Dana and I for agreeing with her. Under those > > circumstances, I'd be a bit bitter too... > > Well, this just proves how differently people can see things. You and > Neil got _disagreed_ with. _Debated_. I think I might have noticed if I'd actually been attacked. Disagreed with, yes, but not all that much, debated certainly, but *attacked*? Nah. It was actually quite interesting to come home from work and download a megasack of 70-odd posts from what I now think of as The Night of The Long Wendy. As soon as I saw the sheer volume I thought, "Aha, something's happened," and following its development blow by blow was by various turns fascinating, gripping, horrifying and saddening, and in the middle of it all, the one lone post from the UK Birding list: >Do Black Redstarts ever use nest boxes? I almost fell off me chair when I read that. Neil

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RE: [B7L] Sally-speak
by Louise Rutter 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

Tavia wrote: >This could of course be bad acting. I detected no sexual (or any other) >tension between Anna and Avon, but put that down to poor acting or at least >uninspired casting. Hang on, there - the two were on screen together for the grand total of about 5 minutes. Couples don't radiate sexual tension on a permanent basis - sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't and I'd require more than a few minutes observation before I'd be willing to hazard a guess whether any two people were in a sexual relationship. OTOH in the many, many hours of Blake/Avon interaction, I'd expect to see a glimmer of _something_. And I don't. Louise

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Re: [B7L] Thread hijacking (was Re: Sally-speak)
by littles＠lycos.co.uk 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

> Fiona Moore wrote: > > > Now, what bothers me personally about serious (like Neil I'd avoid the word > > "intelligent") conversations going silly is that often it's not a natural > > progression, it's a hijacking. To give a (semi-)fictitious example, some > > people can be having a discussion on, say, themes of class struggle in > > "Weapon," and then somebody else, who hasn't participated at all up until > > this point, will launch in and say "Ooh, I think Carnell's accent is dead > > sexy! What's everyone else think?" And there's the whole prospect of further > > serious discussion gone to pot. Betty wrote: > Why? "Thread hijacking" is a complaint I've seen other places as well, > and it's just not something I really understand, so this is a completely > serious question. IMO one of the great things about e-mail as a > communications medium is its non-linear nature. If person A is talking > about subject 1, and person B wants to develop that into a discussion of > subject 2, and person C wants to jump in and make a point about subject > 3... Well, it's entirely possible to have *both* conversations going on > at the same time, Yes but it's a bit of a shock, when you're following a thread, to suddenly find, in between two posts full of Marxist theory, a post about Avon's socks, or something else of his that's a bit more personal :). Back a while ago, somebody said "if you don't like a theme, don't read it" but you can't *avoid* it when you're following a serious thread and somebody hijacks it into another direction. But there's another sort of thread hijacking which neither of you mentioned, which is when somebody comes on the serious thread and makes a point, but does it in a silly way, say calling Blake "my sweet baboo" or calling Servalan "She who must be obeyed." Which IMO trivialises the the character, the argument and the poster's point, all at the same time. Shane Vila: Blake would have been proud of you, you know. Avon: Yes, but then he never was very bright.

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Re: [B7L] Re:intellectual debates on the list
by Susan Beth 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

Helen Krummenacker wrote: >Or, like me, we can enjoy *both* the serious posts, and the silly side >commentary, which sometimes serves as needed comic relief when tempers >start in, IMHO. ... >Can't we agree to sometimes have different tastes? No one owns a topic >or thread, serious or humourous, and I'm really surprised to hear what >some of you have said. I was sooo tempted to quote every line of this message, in hopes rereading it would help her message sink in. Because I agree with every word of it and think Helen deserves nomination for Lyst's Voice of Reason. Threads, serious or silly, do NOT die because someone has interjected a message of a different tone and/or direction of thought. Some people ignore the side branch, some people (maybe new to the conversation, maybe part of the original conversation) find the side branch worth pursuing -- instead of or as well as -- the original. What kills a partical thread in the narrowest sense of 'original discussion topic & tone' is when there are no longer at least two list members who feel they have anything left to say on the original subject that they care to type out and post. Period. Susan Beth (susanbeth33(a)mindspring.com)

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Re: [B7L] Re:Deliverance
by Tavia Chalcraft 23 Feb '01

23 Feb '01

Fiona wrote: >Neil has made several rational, intelligent posts lately >on the subject of why he considers H/C to resemble S/M. >Very few people have actually posted in to say "OK, Neil, >I see your point," or "OK, Neil, but you're overlooking..." >Either they haven't responded, or they've responded with >categorical denials of the thesis of the debate which, as my >old philosophy tutor used to say, is a non-starter. I would have responded to these at length, however at present it appears to be tricky to discuss S&M and h/c without getting people's knickers in a twist. And we wouldn't want to do that. Tavia http://www.viragene.com/

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