Relations

Fanfiction
Title:	Relations
Author(s):	Penny Dreadful
Date(s):	2001
Length:
Genre(s):	het
Fandom(s):	Blake's 7
Relationship(s):
External Links:	online here
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Relations is a Blake's 7 story by Penny Dreadful. It was published in I, Mutoid in 2001.

Summary

Relations: this Blakes 7 story originally appeared in I, Mutoid, edited by the lovely and talented Emma Peel. Thanks, Emma!

Reactions and Reviews

It beautifully ties together and fleshes out various insufficiently-developed bits of canon. It presents an utterly believable and convincing look at what life is like on Earth under the Federation. It's extremely well-written, as all of Penny's stories are. And all of that would be reason enough to read it, but what really makes this story a stand-out is the chillingly perfect way it conveys the horrifying, mundane evil of the Federation, evil inflicted not by mustache-twirling villains, but by human beings who may actually believe they're doing good, or at least doing an honest day's work. The POV character -- whose name attentive B7 fans will recognize -- works in a processing facility which creates mutoids, and the complete matter-of-factness with which she regards the horrors that surround her literally makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This one isn't for the faint-hearted, but it packs one hell of an impact.

"Relations" by Penny Dreadful answers the question of where mutoids come from, and it's an extremely well-thought out, well-presented, and disturbing answer. It also provides yet another answer to the question of Kiera's original identity, and a wonderfully fitting and ironic one, IMHO. And the characterization of pre-mutoid Kiera herself is wonderful; she strikes me as an ordinary and very sympathetic person, yet simultaneously as soulless and empty of compassion any mutoid. (There's a scene in here that may well qualify as the most chilling thing I've read recently, and all the more so because, from Kiera's viewpoint, it's viewed so utterly matter-of-factly.) Being a Penny Dreadful story, of course, it also features a great deal of Travis.

Like every story of hers that I've ever read, Penny Dreadful's PWB Travis story, "Relations," is a knockout. That's Relations as in Public Relations; some people can put a good spin on practically anything and even be perfectly sincere about it. Chilling.