Helen wrote: <Sally gave a lovely image of a cluttered cabin for Blake, but I've always liked the idea that Avon would be the one with clutter, a technological version of Sherlock Holmes.>
<grin> somehow I do think of Avon as a very precise person, in his habits as much as in his vocabulary, but I liked this anyway :-) (OTOH, I have known people who go in for precise clutter, which I can see with our Kerr).
I know that it's unlikely that Our Heroes would be going in for anything 'terribly House and Garden' but I do think that you can tell a fair bit about someone by the stuff they accumulate and keep in their own private doman (or *could* tell a fair bit if the makers had seen fit to show us, mutter grumble).
The problem with all of them is how they would *obtain* anything that wasn't actually [a] on the ship or [b] made themselves. I guess they could might pick stuff up if they stopped at neutral planets or resistance bases for supplies (actually, they'd have to have picked up all the games somewhere?) but surely they couldnt stop for long (and someone - pobably Jenna - would have to pawn some of the treasure room baubles for spendable cash first :-)).
and Ellynne on Jenna: <I don't know what a spacer's cabin normally looks like, but there is no doubt Jenna's cabin is very obviously one - and that it is just as obvious the spacer in question is Jenna.>
An unlikely but extremely appealing thought occurred to me; the jewellry in the treasure room, 300 million credits' worth (according to Jenna herself). I have this mental picture of Jenna using strings of diamonds, rubies, pearls etc as garlands or 'bead curtains' in her room, thus satisfying both her taste for glittery decoration and her (uncanonical but quite possible) streak of avarice ...
And : <Vila - I don't know what's in there, but I'm sure there's a lot of it. Vila's a packrat.>
Absolutely. He's the sort who would keep useless stuff on the grounds that it *might* come in handy someday ... and I also see him with a taste for the gaudy and kitschy and absolutely, endearingly *awful* sort of thing we all get junk mail catalogues stuffed with ...
Tarrant would probably have learned neatness and economy of habit in the military, and keeps his own room fairly bare (or alternately, went OTT in the other direction and covers everything in sight with flashy pseudo-piratical flair.)
And more on Blake ... actually, I'm going to cheat and quite an unfinished PGP thing I scribbled, which described his room from Soolin's POV ... "Untidy, yes, but not overly so - a big, rumpled bed, a couple of chairs piled with clothes, all of which have seen better days. Papers semi-stacked in a corner, escaping into a muddle, covered with a large, round handwriting and surprisingly neat, precise drawings - engineering plans, none of which she understands. Several guns, and a knife more suited to gutting carnivores than any purpose she wants to think of. Old booktapes, older books. Scattered tools. On one shelf, a mangled bracelet rather different from the Scorpio ones, and a leatherette pouch spilling jewels, thrown down as carelessly as cheap toys.
A candy-pink scarf, a woman's, carefully folded ... when she unwraps it, a necklace of diamonds, sparkling coldly in the dim light, falls out. Somehow, it seems important. *The pilot -? Jenna? Dead, he said ...*
Several holographic crystals, as delicate as soap bubbles, of people she doesn't know, and among them, one of Avon. He looked younger then - the different hair, the silver tunic - *what, no black then?* - the look in the brown eyes. When she half-turns it, the lips seem to touch on a smile, a real smile, just for a moment."
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