This Gun for Hire by Executrix (PG-13)

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Fandom: Blakes 7
Pairing: Various
Author on LJ executrix
Author Website: No
Why this must be read:
This is B7 meets Greeneland, as in Graham Greene, several of whose novels are vaguely pastiched here. Greene's emphasis on guilt and repentance fits in with the way Executrix sometimes likes to see Avon as a Catholic in various stages of lapsedness, but since this is also Executrix meets Greene, the result is a lot more flippant and sardonic than unadulterated Greene would be. Like many of her fics, this is divided into sections, each inspired by a different bit of Greene and the way she weaves the ambience of each different novel or story into an Executrix core makes this a very literary piece of fanfic. But don't let that put you off if you aren't usually into that sort of thing. It would still be very readable as fanfic if you didn't know Greene from Adam. Here's Vila, explaining himself and his crewmates to an outsider:


"No, it's just Blake and five of us. That's enough so we can divide up into factions and hate each other, not enough to have a big enough faction that we don't care and just ignore the others. I'll tell you what it's like.
If a great, hairy, smelly, ten-tentacled alien came on board (not that the Federation didn't go around wiping them up whenever they found them), then Blake would try to recruit its friends to fight the Federation. Jenna would tell him not to, the alien must have a side deal with Servalan. Cally--you haven't seen her, she's an Auron, not a person--she'd brew up something nice and gray and slimy and sit down with it for a good natter. Humans, right boil on the bum, eh? I'd probably steal its wallet, or at least make sure where it kept its valuables. And Avon would see if a tentacle job was on offer."

This Gun for Hire

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

BTW the outsider is Sergeant Wield, who with Dalziel and Pascoe in train has wandered over from Reginald Hill's series of police procedurals about the Mid-Yorkshire Constabulary. I'm *sure* that Hill is the reason why several of my characters sound Northern.

And it's not real person *slash* but adolescent Avon does replicate something that adolescent Greene did (or, anyway, said he did in his autobiography).

[hafren.livejournal.com]

That's one crossover ref I wouldn't have picked up; I never saw D & P!

[executrix.livejournal.com]

When it comes to Dalziel and Pascoe, I'm a firm follower of the books and NOT the series--all the actors look completely wrong for their roles! The Fat Man should look like a more-or-less human version of Jabba the Hutt, whereas, as my boyfriend says, Warren Clarke as Dalziel looks almost "natty."