"Penberriss Wendy S." wrote:
Funny, but that's exactly my prblem with some of the arguments that have been put forward. At least one person put it forward *as fact* that Meegat was asked to go and didn't; another put it forward *as fact* that Avon was awed and humbled at the responsibility he was given. Neither of which, we both agree, are *facts.*
Sorry, no. I'm the person who originally said that Avon was humbled by the responsibility, in this paragraph:
There are, IMO, two things going on in this ep. One is to set up the 'Orac' plot, which can be discounted because it could have been easily folded into the next episode. The other, and far more important, is to characterize Avon - he is more human by the end of the ep; he is the character in this story that changes and grows. He has been humbled by a new awareness of the responsibility inherent in leadership and power. (He's annoyed that Blake has noticed that he's learned it, but he's learned it nonetheless. And yes, he does seem to keep trying to unlearn it; but I don't think he ever quite succeeds.) That final exchange with Blake is where, for me, Avon became a sympathetic, three-dimensional character.
Do you see the IMO? That's _in my opinion_. Not presented as fact at all.
And of course, we all understand that we're just stating our opinions, so it isn't necessary to constantly throw in qualifiers and dilute the clarity of one's arguments. However, directly stating one's opinion, even without qualifiers is IMO significantly different from battering one's fellow participants with repeated insistences of _opinions that are still in dispute_ as if they were self-evident.
Or to put it another way: if I think the lump in the river is a crocodile, and you think it's a rock, I'm not going to use it as a stepping-stone just because you say so until you _convince_ me it's a rock. It doesn't matter how many times you jump up and down and shout that it's a rock; that approach is not effective. It's also tedious.
Mistral