Blake's 7 Fannish Rambling
I have been reliving the Blake love with R, who is new to the show and just the sort to appreciate it on that fannish level. Very fun. It gets to me reminiscing.
B7 really is awesome. It really is one of the best, cardboard sets and golf ball planets, Dayna's pink pants, and Jarvik notwithstanding. (And it has much higher production values than the movie I'm making, which is scaring me slightly.)
And I find myself returning to an observation I first made in a public forum, oh, it must be eleven years ago, and which I quickly learned to shut up about, but which I have never really stopped believing: Blake and Avon are not very slashable. Oh, they are soul mates (or whatever), but plausibly getting them into bed is very difficult. I stand by my perception that Avon is flaming het and Blake is flaming A. And even were that not the case, neither is going to be vulnerable to the other in the way they'd have to if they were going to have sex. Yes, there is such a thing as invulnerable sex: Servalan knows it well, but Blake and Avon, I think, don't. It requires a callousness or a playfulness toward other people that Blake does not have. And it requires a willingness to be exposed and awkward (even just physically) that neither of them has. Furthermore, conjecture what you will about the "real" attitudes toward homosexuality in the Federation we don't quite get to see on 1970s TV, the Federation is a highly gendered, somewhat sexist social space, which means male homosexuality is fraught with power politics, which is another reason neither Avon nor Blake would go there with each other. They have enough power politicking to do without further complications.
I have said it's hard to slash them, but it's not impossible. I have read in my life one story that does it entirely plausibly: blakefancier's "Save for Twilight". In this beautiful, sad tale, she very wisely and realistically strips away all the factors that keep them apart: they have no social status to lose, no power to lose, no future. What they do have is a lot of physical hardship and a lot of need for physical comfort and no one else to turn to. And that's the recipe. If you like B/A, go read it now.
B7 really is awesome. It really is one of the best, cardboard sets and golf ball planets, Dayna's pink pants, and Jarvik notwithstanding. (And it has much higher production values than the movie I'm making, which is scaring me slightly.)
And I find myself returning to an observation I first made in a public forum, oh, it must be eleven years ago, and which I quickly learned to shut up about, but which I have never really stopped believing: Blake and Avon are not very slashable. Oh, they are soul mates (or whatever), but plausibly getting them into bed is very difficult. I stand by my perception that Avon is flaming het and Blake is flaming A. And even were that not the case, neither is going to be vulnerable to the other in the way they'd have to if they were going to have sex. Yes, there is such a thing as invulnerable sex: Servalan knows it well, but Blake and Avon, I think, don't. It requires a callousness or a playfulness toward other people that Blake does not have. And it requires a willingness to be exposed and awkward (even just physically) that neither of them has. Furthermore, conjecture what you will about the "real" attitudes toward homosexuality in the Federation we don't quite get to see on 1970s TV, the Federation is a highly gendered, somewhat sexist social space, which means male homosexuality is fraught with power politics, which is another reason neither Avon nor Blake would go there with each other. They have enough power politicking to do without further complications.
I have said it's hard to slash them, but it's not impossible. I have read in my life one story that does it entirely plausibly: blakefancier's "Save for Twilight". In this beautiful, sad tale, she very wisely and realistically strips away all the factors that keep them apart: they have no social status to lose, no power to lose, no future. What they do have is a lot of physical hardship and a lot of need for physical comfort and no one else to turn to. And that's the recipe. If you like B/A, go read it now.