Excerpts from Chapter 23 of "Blake's Rebels: A Historical Perspective", with Interludes (PG)

[lady-smith.livejournal.com]

Hello again! I'm Liza, and you may or may not remember me from my stint back in June 2005, driving the van for that other set of escaped prisoners who act like they're on Jerry Springer: Farscape. But I'm going back to my roots this month, and giving you the tour of one of my first fandoms - Blakes7.

I'm a big lover of Vila, Cally, AI's, angst, Gen, and unhappy PGPs, so expect a lot of those, but I'm not above slash, crackfic, or happy endings, so there should be something for everybody. I've also limited myself to one fic per author (no really I mean it this time), so while you're going to see a lot of familiar names, you should be introduced to a couple new ones, too.

Enough about me. Time to teleport!

Fandom: BLAKES7
Pairing: open to interpretation, but vague suggestions of Avon/Blake
Author on LJ: astrogirl2
Author Website: Maximum Verbosity
Why this must be read:

Besides the fact that it's Astrogirl, besides the fact that it's Astrogirl doing Avon, and besides the fact that it was a product of the Multi-Fandom Lyric Wheel (a little known and much underrated ficathon collecting some amazing stuff), this is I think one of the best examples I've ever seen in my life of the "faux history" fic sub-genre. Astro here perfectly assumes the position of some nameless, faceless Federation Historian, progressing through the last year of Blake's Rebellion, offering theories and questions about the motivations of that most enigmatic of historical figures, Kerr Avon.

...The question of Kerr Avon's motivations has been a favorite subject of historians, psychologists, and psychostrategists for many decades, and nowhere are those motivations more unclear that at the opening of the final year of his life. What could possibly induce a man to turn, seemingly overnight, from random, unsuccessful acts of piracy and undirected destruction to a serious attempt at fomenting strategic, carefully organized rebellion?

What sets this fic apart from your average meta-fic is that Astro then puts her money where her mouth is and gets into Avon's head, answering her own questions and raising countless others.

So, if death and defeat are his future, as they have been his past, what is there left to do? Self-destruction holds some little appeal, but the survival instincts of a lifetime are not so easy to overcome. Hedonism, perhaps? Enjoy the present while it exists? Ah, there might have been a time when that would have been possible, but there's far too little joy left in him now.

Only one viable option remains: go down fighting. He mulls the idea over and finds it appeals to his sense of drama. He can almost fancy the idea of himself, defiant at the end, standing, perhaps, over a pile of Federation bodies and smiling at approaching annihilation and the satisfactory completion of his plans.

How can you resist irony like that? This is a tightly woven, satisfying read, spoilery as all hell. Enjoy, and don't forget to feed the author.

Excerpts from Chapter 23 of "Blake's Rebels: A Historical Perspective", with Interludes