I had an unusually bizarre dream last night, which came out as a Blake's 7 episode (although there was a lot of stuff with bicycles and cinemas earlier on that I have forgotten) in which Avon was for some reason condemned to death by being taken up inside a tall tower and left to stand in the darkness on a high beam there with only two vertical ropes on either side to cling onto for support... so once the ladders were taken away, the moment he lost his balance or became so exhausted he could no longer hold on, or was no longer able to stay awake, he would inevitably fall. ( Read more... )

I have a suspicion that it may have been triggered by reading Joe Simpson's anecdotes of mountaineering deaths on the Eiger yesterday, which featured several cases where climbers were eventually found frozen while still attached to their ropes or wedged onto their ledges -- I'm not at all sure where the B7 content can have come from, save that I was also coincidentally rereading the exchange Mei Bruges and I had about Blake/Avon slash last night while looking back over the records of my AO3 stats script. But Blake wasn't part of this dream at all, so I don't quite see the relevance...

I did, however, receive a review on "Chick or Child" on AO3 almost immediately after bewailing the lack of readership there (now up to 10 hits!)

I wrote this while trying to demonstrate to someone the different possibilities of attributing dialogue *without* ransacking a thesaurus...

Avon looked up. "Do you have to hang over me like that, Vila? If I hadn't already had to watch you devouring that appalling garlic-laden stew at lunch-time, I can assure you I'd be able to name its principal ingredient by now."

"I happen to like garlic." Vila assumed a look of injured innocence. "Besides, you ate it too, so I don't believe you can smell a thing."

"You flatter yourself," Avon said drily, bending again to the task of repair. "Is it merely the unaccustomed spectacle of work that fascinates you, or would it be the thrill of watching other people engaged in gainful employment while you enjoy this period of enforced leisure?"

"My fingers are my fortune. You think I like having them all smothered up like that?" He thrust his gauze-swathed hands in front of Avon's face, obscuring the view of the damaged circuit-boards. "Suppose -- just suppose you wanted me to get you in through a locked door in a hurry, or to lift a key out of some guard's pocket? Can't do it like this, can I?"

"Then you should have been more careful about trying to handle stolen goods. Particularly ones that turned out to have a heat-field protecting them."

(Not sure Avon would actually use that many gratuitous multi-syllabic words; I was trying to illustrate the concept that if your characters' 'voices' are sufficiently distinct then you don't necessarily need to attribute dialogue at all...)

I'm not even going to bother posting ch13 over in the Blake's 7 section, since this chapter is entirely B7-centric and is unlikely to attract much interest in the POTO section -- I may as well upload this one briefly, then move them both over at once.

At any rate, in chapter 14 we finally find out just what did happen to the Liberator, and why Blake and Gan are currently stranded on Newparis. When writing this story, I'd originally intended to insert the 'Liberator-chapter' in its chronological place, e.g. immediately after Blake and Gan are set down on the planet. But I came to the conclusion that it would be much more effective to do it retrospectively so that the reader would have no more idea of what had happened to the ship than Blake did -- the result of which is that most of this chapter, as usual, consists of what is effectively flashback :-p

Yet another (unavoidable) point of view switch, which means a chance to explore yet another character's opinions and motivations...

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Chapter 14: Adrift in Space

‘WISDOM MUST BE GATHERED. IT CANNOT BE GIVEN,’ Zen had assured them once, evading the answers Avon demanded.

Well, they’d learnt that now all right, Jenna Stannis thought bitterly. And most of the wisdom she’d gathered over the past endless hours was wisdom of a variety she could well have done without. Right now she’d have given half the contents of Avon’s famous treasure room — still stored up in useless splendour deep within the ship, just as he had discovered it — to hear Zen’s electronic philosophising again. To hear anything at all from Zen.

( Read more... )

Here goes!

(Memo to self: I still need to proof-read the last chapter against the manuscript and fix E.E.'s "globed head and hands" passage...) Done :-D

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Blue Remembered Hills

Chapter 1: Outsiders

Olag Gan had never dreamed, in all his born days, that one day he would stand on the flight deck of a starship. But then many things had changed in the long months since he’d killed an armed man with his bare hands; since he’d brought down the Federation trooper who’d left the woman he loved crumpled and lifeless on the street.

There were weeks he preferred not to remember. Weeks of bright light and antiseptic and pain, as his helpless body had been passed from prison cell to test lab as involuntary subject, along with other specimens selected for their strength. Weeks that had left him with a shaved patch on his skull and a dead place in his mind where that act of retaliation had once lain: a metal spider sent its filaments into his brain, locking those impulses now and forever.

( Read more... )