Ash Wednesday

Fanfiction
Title:	Ash Wednesday
Author(s):	Firerose
Date(s):	2001
Length:
Genre:	Post-Gauda Prime
Fandom:	Blake's 7
External Links:	TTBA archive
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Ash Wednesday is a Blake's 7 story by Firerose. It was published in TTBA in 2001. It also has a short slash prequel Some Questions Best Unanswered" written by the same author and published in the same zine.

Cover of TTBA zine by "Whitby27" was possibly the illustration for this story. "The colour front cover ... - beautifully and moodily pencilled, and well reproduced - confused me with a slightly "fantasy" feel, but now I think it may originally have been an illustration for Firerose's Ash Wednesday. It's beautiful - particularly the haunted-looking Avon - but I don't think it reflects the mood of the zine as a whole. Non-fantasy fans (like me!) don't be put off."

Summary

After the events on Gauda Prime, a shell-shocked Avon is stranded on a primitive agricultural planet, survival his only priority. But nothing on Encatrin is quite as it seems...

Reactions and Reviews

I generally don't like B7 fanfic with a fantasy feel - I'm more of a Space Command, domes, hi-tech imperialism sort of a girl - but this had a nasty little twist which reconciled me to the "primitive planet" setting. I was also chuffed by the wonderfully intense, complex A-B dynamics which underpin this story of Avon's acceptance of his survival of Gauda Prime. We get a very interesting insight into the Avon/Anna relationship along the way, too.

Very good Orac, and a lovely, weary, S5 Avon: the other characters are all OCs, but they're likeable and believable. The plot intertwines perfectly with the emotional developments in and between Avon and Zenia. The Avon-Raznan subplot is moving and fascinating to me, as someone who's obsessed with the Blake/not- Blake theme in canon. The writing style occasionally pushed my too-many-long- words-in-one-sentence button, but then it *is* Avon POV....

As I was typing this up I realised I still wasn't sure why it was called Ash Wednesday. I'm assuming it's a TS Eliot reference, but then what do I know.

Why this must be read: Partly because it knocks on the head the stupid notion that "original female character equals Mary Sue equals rubbish". There is a very strong original female character at the centre of this. So what? It works. As does the original setting, and the sequel plot. Why should an original character be any less available than an original plot or setting to an author who sees a use for one?

Despite the "pairing", this post-Gauda Prime fic is very much about Avon coming to terms with his relationship with the dead Blake. As such, it's typical of the nostalgia and regret that pervade this fandom, but you don't often get this amount of plot into the bargain. Nor such a sense of place:

"The first few hundred metres of descent from the farm had proved the hardest. As Avon had guessed, Zenia was agile over the hill terrain, and she had led them steeply downhill, sure-footed among the bare rocks rendered frictionless by a thin coating of precipitation. At lower altitudes, the dense forest canopy effectively suppressed the undergrowth, making for relatively comfortable passage, and the thick layer of needles underfoot damped all sound of their passing. The smooth trunks and regular radial branches of the coniferous giants seemed to form a living equivalent to the elaborate network of metal pillars and struts of the Dome's huge central meeting area, and their dank drippings were not so dissimilar from its humid recycled atmosphere. But nothing had prepared him for the cobwebs of grey moss, disfiguring every tree, their exuberant growth unchecked in this unnaturally sparse ecosystem."

"Ash Wednesday" by Firerose highlights for me one of the advantages of paper over electronic media in certain circumstances. At 32 pages it's not really that long in the universal scheme of things, and kept me reading with interest all the way through, whereas in its original electronic incarnation I found its length unwieldy and I think I skimmed a lot, which naturally left me feeling confused. Very good long-short story.

Firerose's 'Ash Wednesday' is a most skillfully executed blending of fantasy and science-fiction reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin, and also an excellent study of the psychology of despair.