Blakes7

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5511 discussions

Re: the "25% rule"
by Sally Manton 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

Helen wrote: <What always sticks out in my mind is how d*mn many times Blake needed Avon to bail him out.> Oh yes, but be fair, just about *everyone* got their turn at rescuing Fearless Leader, including people they never even met (Rashel, for instance). _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Re: torture & h/c
by Tavia Chalcraft 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

Fascinating discussion. I tend to dislike hurt/comfort as a B7 genre, unless it's done rather subtly. I think Neil is correct that one of its 'purposes' is to allow the writer and/or reader emotional closeness to usually distant characters, frequently Avon, though I've seen it done successfully with other characters, including Travis and Servalan, which might tend to support Neil's analysis. I'd agree that in this sense it's essentially a non-overtly sexualised version of slash. Personally, as a writer, I'd prefer to use other ways of gaining closeness to the character, the easiest being to use their point of view -- if you want to expose Avon's inner child then just walk right into his head and expose it.... Tavia

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Re: hurt/comfort
by Marian de Haan 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

Sorry, I can't recall who is quoted here: >> Well, for actual _physical_ suffering, I'll choose just about anyone rather than Avon, it seems. Whether I like his coping mechanisms or not, I think they're up to it.< I prefer to see Avon suffer physically rather than mentally, just *because* he's seems better able to cope with that :-) Actually, I'm not too fond of all that soppy mental suffering stuff, but oh, give me a juicy torture scene! (Medieval-like cellar with an old fashioned rack, that kind of thing - why didn't they *show* us Blake being tortured in Cygnus Alpha?) I can do without the comfort, though, as we don't see much of that in canon. With the exception of Vila, I can't remember any of the regulars ever showing a desire to be comforted. On the contrary, they all seem to prefer to suffer in silence and alone - that British stiff upper lip :-) Even Gan, who seems the most "ordinary" of the lot, prefers to take a painkiller in secret rather than tell the others that he's feeling unwell. That really leaves Vila as the only one who'd *want* to be comforted. Marian (who loves to see the blood drip from the screen and pages but can't stand the sight of it in Real Life :-) )

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RE: [B7L] characters vs interesting stuff
by Louise Rutter 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

Julia wrote: >Bugger not opening up that can of worms. It's too useful when we do want >to discuss personality, since it has that very useful I-E distinction. >Hands up all the I, and in particular INTx, types on the list who are >character junkies. Errr, that would be me too, I'm afraid. Not that I don't appreciate a plot (preferably a scientifically accurate one), but I'm not interested in reading purely action-adventure fic. And the fandoms that grab me and involve me are the ones with ambiguous characters, irrespective of what setting they happen to be in. Louise

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Re: [B7L] Avon's Leadership
by Ellynne G. 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

On Sun, 04 Feb 2001 13:31:56 -0700 Helen Krummenacker <avona(a)jps.net> writes: > > <grin> the fact that under Ye Democratic System he seems to have > lost the > > vote more often than not couldn't have anything to do with his > decision, oh > > no no no ... > > Didn't stop George W Bush (grumble, grumble) (The following rant is largely political in nature and may be of limited interest to those more likely to read this list for B7 debates than American politics) Uh, in all due defense of Bush, he didn't invent the electoral college which, to be honest, like the Bill of Rights, was designed with the idea of balancing power among different interests and groups. On Sun, 04 Feb 2001 13:31:56 -0700 Helen Krummenacker <avona(a)jps.net> writes: > > <grin> the fact that under Ye Democratic System he seems to have > lost the > > vote more often than not couldn't have anything to do with his > decision, oh > > no no no ... > > Didn't stop George W Bush (grumble, grumble) (The following rant is largely political in nature and may be of limited interest to those more likely to read this list for B7 debates than American politics) Uh, in all due defense of Bush, he didn't invent the electoral college which, to be honest, like the Bill of Rights, was designed with the idea of balancing power among different interests and groups. Nor did he challenge votes in other critical states where there are stories of widespread voter fraud (like Michigan). Nor did he whine and pout every time the recount went against him, finally resorting to arguments that recounts should focus on trying to guess voter intent. But only in places where Gore expected things to go his way. But then, I'm slightly prejudiced against the previous presidency, which managed to normalize every form of graft and corruption. I mean, if you can support the argument that, so long as the economy is good, rape, theft, bribery, selling national secrets, dropping bombs for PR, and a few other deficits of character don't matter, then you really can't argue that Blake had any reason to go against the Federation. Their economy seemed to be in excellent condition. Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.

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do you want to defend Blake?
by Steve Rogerson 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

At Redemption we will be having a mock trial of Roj Blake as if he hadn't been killed in the final episode but was put on trial. We've got the prosecution sorted out, but we are after two people to help with this, one to play Blake and one to play Blake's defender. Any volunteers, email me offlist. The trial will take place on the Sunday, so there'll be plenty of time to talk with the others involved to work out what you need to do. -- cheers Steve Rogerson http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/steve.rogerson Redemption: The Blake's 7 and Babylon 5 convention 23-25 February 2001, Ashford, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption

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Redemption hotel rooms
by Steve Rogerson 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

OK, with a little bit of rejigging, we now have three rooms free on Friday and they will go on a first come, first served basis. We are still after others in single rooms who would be willing to share to free up some more rooms. -- cheers Steve Rogerson http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/steve.rogerson Redemption: The Blake's 7 and Babylon 5 convention 23-25 February 2001, Ashford, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption

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Further to the last post
by Fiona Moore 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

Something else occurs to me in all this. Neil points out that the men regress to the primitive, whereas A Woman keeps the dying flame of culture alight. Now, if Wendy will allow me to read an anthropological interpretation into this :-), I'd like to point out that in most societies, or at least Indo-European ones, women are seen as being the ones who are the guardians of culture, as they are the ones who educate the children; among immigrants to the UK, women are initially under a lot of social pressure not to assimilate, regardless of whether or not the men do, because this is usually seen as a situation in which one's culture is under threat. Now, interestingly enough, in these same cultures, although the women are the guardians of culture, it's the men, specifically the elite men, who guide what the values of that culture are. So, for instance, it's literary professors (most of whom are still male) who determine that Jane Austen is a great writer, even though it's women who pass on this value to the children and ensure that it stays in their society. Sound a lot like some bird safeguarding the gene banks and some bloke coming along and firing them off? Fiona The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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Deliverance (Mr Humphries)?
by Fiona Moore 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

Trying again after having FINALLY sorted my Outlook Express settings out (grumble grumble-- new computer)... To add to Neil's argument, I'd like to point out something that the sociologist Erving Goffman said about gender roles in a study of advertisements. He noted that certain stereotyped roles are set up between men and women in advertising photos (e.g. man speaking, woman listening). He also noticed that these were sometimes reversed, but that when this happened, the viewer of the image, knowing the conventions of the advertising photo, would see the reversed image *with the conventional image in mind.* So if, for instance, we saw Mr Humphries rescuing Xena, we would be seeing that image knowing that the "normal" version of events would be James Kirk rescuing Uhura, and bearing it in mind on some level. This is why you often get that sort of role reversal in comedies-- or, to pick up on Neil's reference to H. Rider Haggard, why She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is such a disturbing figure. Or, to put it another way: if it had been Vila or Gan in the "saviour role," we would be viewing it knowing that *conventionally* it should have been Avon or Blake, and our interpretations of it would stem from that fact. If you don't believe me, go back and watch "City at the Edge of the World" again. Now *there's* a story bearing a bit of looking at. OK, rottweilers: if it had been Avon as the focus of "City," would Kerrill still have wound up all girly in a frock at the end, or would she have carried on being tough and macho? Fiona The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: Blakes7 digest, Vol 1 #24 - 9 msgs
by Helen Krummenacker 05 Feb '01

05 Feb '01

> > Oh, what a great idea. I love time loop stories with a great passion. We > > must have one. Nay, a whole zine of them. > > > > Alison > > I rather like the idea, but I fear we will end up with nineteen rewrites of > _Blake_ To avoid this, an agreement could be made to have each for a different episode. Una could probably do a lovely job with a Groudhog Day Animals (while I cringe at the notion of seeing the Servalan-Dayna scenes repeated even once). The potential writers would just have to tell the potential editor which episode(s) they are interested in writing before getting into detail, so the editor can tell them if it's already taken. Maybe there's a Dawn of the Gods where the Tharn gets to keep trying again until he remembers to put the self-destruct in a *secret* location. Really, Blake is an obvious choice, but I'm having much more fun thinking of how I would "Groundhog-ize" other stories, mostly the ones that had major flaws.

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