Tried to send this this morning, but Hotmail was playing up ... then thought of a couple of changes :-)
After I wrote: <anyone who kills dispassionately (like Blake, for instance) would have no trouble circumventing it :-)>
Dana wrote: <I wouldn't say that Blake is dispassionate about killing, more that any killing he does is part of a plan involving rational objectives about which he feels strong emotion.>
He can, however, divorce his emotions (not his sense of morality, a different thing) from the act itself, seeing it *purely* as a weapon and therefore able to weigh the pros and cons more objectively than most people could. He doesn't by any means do it lightly, but he can do it, once he believes the killing is necessary (the Ortega, among other cases). He makes his decision quickly and cleanly, and doesn't agonise, before or after.
Blake doesn't lash out *physically* in anger (verbally, he can dismember with the best of them) because he does have that ability to divorce the action from the emotion. One of my own personal fanonical rules - "Blake Would Never, Ever, Ever so much as Raise a Hand to Avon. And Avon Knows It," - was a straight reaction to a string of fanfic where Blake was portrayed as endlessly losing his temper and beating up on Avon, because I simply don't see him ever doing that to *any* of his crewmates (this is, of course, with the important exceptions of [a] self-defence (Breakdown) and [a] if he did come to the decision that it *was necessary* (for the safety of the rest, perhaps), he would (I'm firmly of the opinion that he'd have made the same decision Avon did at the end of Stardrive).
<Some of Blake's extreme grief in "Trial" is caused by the loss of any crew member ->
Yes, he is hurt by Cally's 'death' in SLD as well. What's also interesting is that at this stage - following at least two massacres he's witnessed, and the number of his friends/family he's lost, he still hasn't hardened to the deaths of people he cares about in the way that many of the others do, despite his ability to divorce his emotions from his own killing; he doesn't slam down the walls the way they all do over Cally, for instance. He's a wonderfully complex individual.
Which of course begs the question touched on above ... turning the end of 'Blake' around, if one of his own had betrayed him and he *did* decide he had to kill them - how would he react?
<but a lot of it is due to Blake's respect and liking for Gan as an individual.>
Both Shadow and Pressure Point, and the tone his arguments with the man in both, show a lot of respect for Gan's sense and the reservations about the path Blake has chosen. Not that that *stops* Blake doing what he's set his formidable will to, but then whatever did :-)?
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