On the Edge (Blake's 7 story)

Fanfiction
Title:	On the Edge
Author(s):	Sylvia Knight
Date(s):	1989
Length:	11730 words
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Blake's 7
Relationship(s):
External Links:	the story on AO3
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On the Edge is a Blake/Avon story by Sylvia Knight, the final part of the Descending Horizon series.

It was published in Resistance #3 in January 1989 alongside two other stories from the series: Shards (a prequel to the Descending Horizon story from the previous issue of Resistance) and A Friend in Need (a sequel to Descending Horizon).

Author's Comments

In 1994, Gayle said:

On the Edge ends with a series related line. Avon abruptly breaks off his Sporadic relationship with Blake, right before Star One. He tells him it's over. Blake tells him "This is over when we are both dead." Frankly, I got very lucky with that one, as it turned out to be the end of the series that I wrote, when I had planned on others. It set up the continuing obsession, and gave a foreboding shiver of the end that did await them.

Summary

"Blake and Avon visit the night life of Edge City in search of Vila and have several encounters that force them to face their feelings for each other and deal with their past mstakes."

Reactions and Reviews

Sylvia Knight, "Descending Horizon," Resistance #2, and "On the Edge," Resistance #3 (there are also two other stories from the same universe in #3). Among my very favorites. I don't usually like Avon-was-an-abused-child stories, but these work for me.

There's some excellent writing in this volume - not all of it to my taste, but certainly of a high standard. Following on from 'Descending Horizon' from Resistance #2 there are three interconnected stories by Sylvia Knight - 'Shards' (set pre-series), 'A Friend in Need' (after Countdown - B/V, a very rare item, and not bad at all, though poor Vilakins is so blatantly second-choice), and 'On The Edge' (pre-Star One, A/B, and even more explosive and intense than the earlier story). All three men are well, if quite harshly, portrayed, and the emotion between Our Heroes is a satisfying mix of passion and vitriol, though I did miss the humour of the series. Recommended, especially the last.

A fitting, and wrenching, climax to the sequence. It's much more painful to watch Avon's dark-and-twisted psyche at work knowing the backstory from *Shards.* Dark psychology and hot sex: rather like an *Oblaque* story really. Which is, of course, praise. One for tragedy fans: through no fault of their own, the characters have fallen in love with the wrong people -- each other -- and any closeness can only be temporary. I'm not a tragedy fan, but I love these stories anyway.

This has plenty of problems too (including the reappearance of rape!brother), but I really like it. I am kind of weak for the B/A go to a hotel/visit brothels genre to my shame, and I love the fighty sex here. Really well written and hot. I like that the fact that Blake slept with Vila comes back and is the instigation both for Avon to be really angry, and then really amused.

x_los is turned off by the fact that, for her, this fic makes it clear that Avon isn't really that into Blake, he's just using him to work through his issues (which, she argues, are issues that we know the effects of IRL and so shouldn't be treated so casually by fic - she probably has more and better to say about this). I agree that Avon presses this issue really strongly, but given what we learned in 'Descending Horizon' I think he's using the brother thing to push Blake away. Blake is nothing like Rav (Avon says this, and he even says of the similarity that Blake pushes for - the fact they are both manipulators - that Blake doesn't consciously manipulate), except that he also made Avon love him against his will (although in Blake's case, as we know, it was unconscious) - basically that's like connecting Blake to any partners in Avon's past i.e. Anna. And I think ultimately yes that's true - but it's not the big problem of this fic (which is why it would be good if the brother stuff could just be lifted out and not here), which is the stuff about Blake himself and his own interest in dominance. If anything, Blake is Avon's revolutionary uncle who looks like a bear - who he loved purely, and who betrayed him by doing things he couldn't possibly understand and then being killed/abandoning Avon.

Anyway - what I'm saying is, there's a lot going on in this fic, and a lot of it is very interesting. This is the best of the series for me. The editorial at the beginning of the zine suggests that there was going to be an A/Anna in this series too, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Thank god, really - see above.