I started writing for Fanlore

[erimia]

I never planned to, but it seems that my interest in this website reached the critical point. I'm surprised how much I like writing for an internet encyclopedia - it seems that it has just the right mix of collective and individual contribution, of anonomity and visibility that I found suitable for myself. For now I'm writing and editing articles for Blake's 7 (being an older media fandom, it's one of the most extensively recorded at Fanlore), but I'm also thinking about writing about the Phantom of the Opera, which isn't that well-recorded there. The problem, of course, is that while I'm enthusiastic to explore Blake's 7 fandom at any point of its history, I don't want to even come close to large portions of the old POTO fandom archieves, which limits me to the 2010s and maybe the descriptions of the "time before that" that I heard from modern fans.

My Fanlore profile is here. I have a lot of plans, but not sure if I'll be able to carry them out.

Comments

[igenlode]

"A tendency towards" rather than full-on overt manifestation. And those were the ones that I remembered as annoying, rather than the general trend.

(And you've got to admit that Avon's soul has its problems -- I'm as much in favour of an uncomfortable redemption as anyone. The problem comes when a reader-insert character is put in there to heal him with her selfless love/sacrifice... interestingly, my impression is that it often *is* sacrifice rather than happy-ever-after with Avon. I don't know if that's a nod to canon outcomes, where I think there are zero successful guest character romances, or an unconscious sense that they'd rather have Avon grieving over *them* than Anna Grant, or a tacit acknowledgement that he is too self-absorbed to make for comfortable husband material ;-p)

There was probably more 'shipping' around than I realised, given that all the explicit stuff was marketed separately. I'd never have had the face to buy one of those zines, even if I'd been interested!

[erimia]

I don't object to Avon's redemption as such, but I'm rather sceptical of the stories that redeem characters with the Love of a Good Person.

From the fannish recollections on Fanlore and elsewhere I got the impression that Blake bashing was quite common in the early fandom. :( Even now many fans either dislike him or are just not interested in him, and those who do like him are usually primarily B/A shippers, and while I don't mind B/A, this tendency significantly limits the range of stories that provide Blake with the major role or good characterization.

[igenlode]

Somebody shared a very good article on Facebook a few months back about how Avon fits the template for the modern TV protagonist -- the cynical wisecracking nerd with poor people skills who prefers to sit back and make nihilistic jibes about the state of the world and the folly of thinking that it might ever be otherwise, rather than taking the risk of exposing anything that he actually believes in. Avon represents a society that knows far better than to trust anyone or hope for anything unselfish: homo economicus, who makes decisions in his own best interest. (Or, if you prefer, the Dwarfs in "The Last Battle", who are so determined not to be taken in by false promises that they no longer allow themselves to believe in anything good at all.)

It is very much easier to deride everything from a safe distance than to stick your neck out and actually risk being wrong, let alone to affirm an abstract ideal. (And the great thing about the Avon/Blake dynamic is that Blake is every bit Avon's match: he's just as intelligent and just as good at turning an argument his way... or 'manipulation', as the Avon-fans put it.)

Blake is prepared to lead; Avon isn't prepared to do anything more than stand aside and snipe at the idea of anyone leading. He represents a postmodern sensibility that distrusts faith, saviours and crusades in principle, and nowadays that plays very well to the gallery.

[erimia]

Avon represents a society that knows far better than to trust anyone or hope for anything unselfish: homo economicus, who makes decisions in his own best interest. <...> He represents a postmodern sensibility that distrusts faith, saviours and crusades in principle, and nowadays that plays very well to the gallery.

This sums it up really well. Even though the creators didn't intend it, I always found it symbolic that "Blake's" seasons were made in the 70s while "Avon's" seasons were made in the 80s and that the show ends like it ends. I even suspect that this anti-Blake angle in the fandom is partially caused by the fact that the peak of B7 fandom activity was in the period from the 80s to the 00s, when anti-idealistic attitudes were more popular than in the decades before or after that.

[igenlode]

Not really my insight, but based on http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/boucher-backbone-and-blake-the-legacy-of-blakes-7/ (which I think I already pointed you at...)

But I think anti-idealistic attitudes are pretty strong nowadays too, or at least the protagonist as Damaged Anti-Social Loner who doesn't care whom he offends is; I saw a theory which hypothesised that the current popularity of the trope was the Revenge of the Nerds, because that generation of computer geeks who couldn't get a girlfriend are now the rich and successful entrepreneurs that popular culture looks up to.
On the other hand, the trope arguably goes back to the brooding Byronic hero who is mad, bad and dangerous to know, but strangely charismatic :-p

I have a certain suspicion that dislike of Blake is the *result of* passion for Avon -- firstly a desire to make Avon look better by bashing Blake (whose existence threatens not only his place in the limelight but his whole worldview) and secondly an identification with Avon so strong that it involves seeing everything through the character's (somewhat distorted) perspective. If Avon resents Blake, then Blake must therefore be deserving of resentment -- or else Avon might be Wrong, which heaven forfend.

I know when I first saw the show I quickly found myself looking out eagerly for Avon's appearances, because he got all the best lines. It wasn't a sexual attraction, obviously, although a lot of the fandom proudly proclaims itself undying in its weakness at the knees where Avon/Paul Darrow is concerned, but he was certainly my favourite character at that point. And maybe... I just went over to Blake when I found out that despite being the title character and the designated hero figure, he *wasn't* the one most people liked best? I don't remember, but I'm entirely capable of being both that contrary and that shallow.

But by the time we got to "Star One", I'm pretty sure I was not on Avon's side; I certainly wasn't going 'Blake is a fanatical terrorist and we have to stop him', and the final Blake/Avon exchange is powerful precisely because it's not at all a foregone conclusion that Avon will do the right thing -- if the viewer were as sure as Blake claims to be, then there would be no poignancy to the exchange.

And of course, seeing fandom bias in favour of a self-justificatory and author-worshipped Avon would have been enough to put me very firmly in the opposing camp, as it did with the Phantom (for whose unhappy situation I had a lot more sympathy before I read the fan-fic). I don't dislike Avon, but I do consciously enjoy seeing him taken down a peg or two by his crewmates in fan-fiction (which is true to canon -- even Gan is capable of scoring a quiet point against Avon on occasion) rather than being endlessly elevated as the one who is Right when everyone else is unrealistic and wrong. And I'm not particularly comfortable about stories that try to get him to Show His Pain and be Healed (either by his crewmates or by a female love-interest), which frankly seems degrading and cruel to a stoical and self-contained character -- perhaps I do identify with him myself after all ;-)

I certainly admire Blake for the things that he has got that I haven't; charisma, warmth, certainty, the skills to draw together a crew and defuse an angry situation, and the confidence to stand up for what he believes in. Blake is, basically, unselfish and generous. Avon is not instinctively either of those things. I had rather be Blake then be Avon, and I would... I suppose I would like to hope that Blake could draw out of me those qualities that he manages to evoke in others, and even in Avon, whom I find myself to resemble rather too closely for comfort.