Open All Hours

Fanfiction
Title:	Open All Hours
Author(s):	M. Fae Glasgow
Date(s):	1995
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Blake's 7
External Links:	online here
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Open All Hours is a Blake's 7 Avon/Blake story by M. Fae Glasgow.

It was first published in Bene Dictum #2 and has been archived online.

Reactions and Reviews

1996

Thanks (?) to Joyce, I've gotten to sample a couple of "/" stories from the OBLAQUE folk, confirming that I really don't want to read any more of those. The one where Avon's amnesiac was so-so, but "Open All Hours" by M. Fae Glasgow, and "The Night Watch" by Erzbet Bathory... nope, never again. I really don't enjoy reading stuff that leaves me feeling grubby and nauseous. It's stories like that which get me thinking, "Y'know, maybe the Anti-Slash Brigade has a point..."

2017

WHY ARE BLAKE AND AVON DOOMED THIS WEEK? Blake is in his Feelings about mind-wipe trauma. He also loves Avon, but thinks Avon doesn’t give a fuck really, and that Avon is too probably-emotionally-eviscerating to even get into all this with (fair).

EDITOR’S NOTE:

[see screenshot at original post]

Oh well THAT makes a refreshing change.

PROSE: ‘even his tastebuds could remember those screams’ da fuq? And who rouges a nipple, really? Does that even look good? I bet it’s like, sticky and super weird. But overall, better than her standard, I think.

OVERALL: This… is a decent story. I am not worse for reading it; the world is not worse for having this story in it. It’s Blake-focused, and though I don’t like Mind Wipe: The Plot, it’s not really unfair to him. It’s very like several other stories: they leave the ship for the leisure centre in a way that’s just like a Willa fic (one which I quite like), the brothel encounter is very like what I think? is another decent Glasgow (but one that is, as is more typical, Avon-focused), there’s another Oblique fic (I think not by Glasgow?) with a very similar POV and emotional arc. This is more or less as competent as these other stories it’s like (with the exception of ‘one of my favourite Willa’s’, which is significantly more ambitious). Not much happens herein, and what does happen is not my cuppa (anonymous group sex is so my dad’s era, like paisley and the blithe absence of condoms), but there are feelings and there isn’t character-assassination, the situation is well described, and the prose is readable and propulsive enough. The way Blake’s mind keeps circling Avon and returning to him before Blake knows he’s in love with Avon is well-done. I’m also not sure that Avon *wasn’t* one of the people Blake encountered in the brothel, and I like that ambiguity–there’s a productive range of possible readings of this story.

Not a word, though, on how bad leather tastes. We’ve all made that stupid mistake at some point or another.