Purple Haze (Blake's 7 story)
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| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Purple Haze |
| Author(s): | Executrix |
| Date(s): | c.2000, 2001 |
| Length: | ~2800 words |
| Genre: | historical AU, PWB |
| Fandom: | Blake's 7 |
| External Links: | TTBA archive |
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Purple Haze is a Blake's 7 short story by Executrix, which works both as an historical AU dramatising the Kent State University shootings of 1970, and as a pre-Way Back story exploring Blake's politicisation. Executrix describes her inspiration:
- I wrote the story because, when you get up to Inga's episode ("Hostage") she looks like the mourning girl in the Kent State photograph.[1]
It features Blake, Avon, Jenna, an infant Dayna, and several minors including Dayna's father Hal Mellanby, Blake's cousin Inga, Kasabi, as well as original characters. The non-explicit pairings include both het & slash. The publisher's summary is: A delicious series of interlinked shorts. 'An iron fist in a velvet glove' (Una McCormack).
"Purple Haze" first appeared on the Freedom City mailing list in around 2000 and was print published in the zine TTBA in 2001. It is archived at the TTBA online archive.
Recs & Reviews
Her story 'Purple Haze' first appeared on Freedom City, and perhaps people remember my adoration of this story from then. Executrix's translation of real life events (the Kent State University shootings) into the B7 universe neither undermines those terrible, actual events, nor weakens the impact of their fictional counterpart. Turning the famous photo of the young student berating the heavens over the body of her dead friend into an image of Inga and the source of Blake's politicization is only one of a number of masterstrokes in this story. This is a superb piece of politically critical fiction; it could only exist as fanfiction, and is all the better for it. Anyone claiming that fanfiction cannot be as good as profiction should be forced to read this story until they understand the point. (Una McCormack)[2]
1960's-ish student agitation on the University of the Federation/Federation Engineering Academy campus. Great revolutionary rhetoric, nice cameos from a variety of canonical characters (including the offbeat but somehow immediately convincing pairing of Hal Mellonby/Kasabi), and a dark, harsh denouement, in Executrix's rollercoaster style. (Una called it "an iron fist in a velvet glove".) The Avon-focussed plot is the peg on which all this hangs, and I'm probably entirely unique in that it awakens in me a small desire to slap Avon for being all superior. Oh - I liked the attention to childcare details - never seen that in fanfic before. (Ika)[3]
Sexual politics meets revolutionary politics in this delicious series of interlinked shorts. This is one of my all-time favourites amongst Executrix's immensely varied and stylish output (Espresso Addict)[4]
Executrix specialises in setting her source property in other times and places. Rather than localising it, this universalises it; Blake belongs as much in the university protest culture of the 1960s as he does in his own futuristic time. For anyone alive then (guilty, m'lud) this is an evocative, nostalgic fic; for those not around at the time it's a bit of a political education. And a very good read. ... Sometimes, mixing real-life events and fan fiction can look dubious but it never does here. The speech of the black activist Hal Mellanby is as relevant whenever he makes, made or will make it. (Hafren in Crack Van)[5]
it broke my meta-brain. It's the Federation ten, fifteen years before B7, but it's all 60s and flower-power-stylee, which is what you'd get if you took the screen dates of B7 and went backwards that amount of time. Honestly, it broke my brain, and it made me all kinds of happy. Also? It has the best description of Avon ever. Yes. (kangeiko)[1]
References
- ^ a b kangeiko: Fic Rec - Purple Haze (accessed 26 July 2013)
- ^ TTBA: Review by Una McCormack (accessed 26 July 2013)
- ^ TTBA: Review by Ika (accessed 26 July 2013)
- ^ Espresso Recommendations: Blake's 7 (accessed 26 July 2013)
- ^ crack_van: Purple Haze by Executrix (PG) (accessed 26 July 2013)