Baccalaureate by Executrix (PG-13?)

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Fandom: Blakes 7
Pairing: various, including Blake/Avon, Cally/OMC, Vila/OFC
Author on LJ executrix
Author Website: No
Why this must be read:
Hello. I'm Hafren, standing in for Executrix this month. Executrix is herself one of the most interesting B7 writers, but how are you going to find that out if she's always doing the recs? So, for this month, look forward to a lot of ExecRecs! (Not all the stories I'm reccing are hers, , but certainly at least half of them.)
Executrix doesn't so much do crossovers, or even AUs in the normal sense of "what if this rather than that had happened?". Hers are more "what if these characters had lived at this time, in this milieu?" She being such an allusive, intertextual writer, the milieu in question is as likely to be fictional as historical and this one is Dorothy L Sayers' Gaudy Night. Our heroes in academic dress, in a punt, having Wind in the Willows-style picnics – and, typically for E'trix, the food and the surroundings are very vividly, sensually portrayed. Where else is Avon going to smell of blackcurrant pastilles? Oh, there's a plot too. Quite a lot of plot. But that isn't really the point, at least not for me. The point is them being them, and nobody makes them do that more convincingly. Or amusingly:


They passed under an arch of willows, and Blake busied himself with avoiding the other boats, coping with a messy patch of river bottom (innocence, once lost, is no more recoverable than mercury released from a bottle--so it is necessary to clarify just what sort of bottom was being stirred up), and gazing at the cloudless sky alternatively concealed and revealed by dapples of leaves.

Then they were past the busiest stretch of the river, and Blake could let the boat drift. He glanced over, and saw that Avon had slipped down from the seat, and was asleep with his head pillowed on one arm. Blake picked up the book that had fallen out of Avon's hand. Something called "Finnegan's Wake." Flicking through the pages, Blake was unable to make head or tail of it--well, obviously Avon hadn't found it immensely compelling either.


Baccalaureate

Comments

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Gosh, hafren: thank you!

FWIW, I think that my usual field of operations is not so much AU as pastiche--i.e., assigning B7 characters roles in other works of fiction. This is not very common in B7, although I think of Judith Proctor's Shane and Morgan (both of which are available at http://www.hermit.org) as pastiches rather than AUs. So is Linda Norman's Famous Five-esque "Blakes 7 Go Camping," and Neil Faulkner's two Molesworth!Avon stores, but they're in zines and not Webbed.

Mostly I like pastiches because I'm bad at plotting so tend to, so to speak, lay my eggs in someone else's nest, but the upside is how much you learn about the characters when they're being someone else. In B7 terms, for example, "As You Like It" is a Blake/Avon, whereas "Twelfth Night" is a Blake/Vila because of the more diffident nature of Viola!Vila as opposed to the more assertive Rosalind!Avon.

As for pastiches in other fandoms,
Chocolate Frog recently posted the results of the Harry Potter pastiche challenge:
http://www.remembrall.slashcity.net/fiction/classiccanon.html

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I'd have thought "Morgan" a genuine crossover myself, in that Avon does literally cross into Morgan's universe (thanks for the reminder; I might rec it on the 15th!)

Re Finnegan's Wake, one of my favourite moments from TV sitcom was the battery sergeant-major from It Ain't Half Hot, Mum reading out the title of the book he'd just found: "Useless, by James Joyce".

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I see what you mean about Morgan. (Note that I'm using a crossover icon.)

It's probably an urban legend that someone went into a big bookstore and asked for "Less Miserable" and was directed to the Self-Help section.