Tavia wrote: 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....>

Yes, but that only gets closeness for the *reader* (which is nice, of course); doesn't give a reason for him to open up even a smidge to the friend/partner/etc of choice. And while one can always say "Blake or Cally - or even Vila - already *knows*, that's not the same.

It isn't only Avon who usually uses layered, defensive speech patterns, though he's best at it - all of them do. If one wants to break through this a bit, one has to have a very good reason. H/C provides reasons on both sides (one of the pleasures *of* H/C with Blake copping the h is watching what it does to *Avon's* defences - whether you see a bond or not, he does tend to be protective of 'the big gawk' on screen). _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.