Shane

Fanfiction
Title:	Shane
Author(s):	Judith Proctor
Date(s):	1994
Length:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	Blake's 7
External Links:	Online here
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Shane is a Blake's 7 story by Judith Proctor.

It was originally printed in the zine Star Two.

Reactions and Reviews

One of the best 'Avon goes to find Blake's clone' PGP stories there is or ever could be. Very much still a Western, but very much still a Blake's 7 story - and a Blake's 7 story specifically about the episode 'Weapon'. Our POV character is the son of the clone and Rashel - and he's both an interesting character in his own right and one who is able to make many interesting and unbiased observations about Avon, which are then augmented by what his parents know about Avon. It's also a fabulous version of this new Blake.

Avon as a gunslinger. It has an utterly delicious drawing on page 118, but shouldn't he have an authentic big black hat? If you haven't read the novel by Jack Schaefer or seen the film you won't get all the resonances, but this is still a very enjoyable read. Perhaps you should get the novel too?

I have to say that I liked Shane the best, perhaps merely because it was the story I read last. Not being familiar with the story from which this was um, inspired, I don't know how original it was, but I came at it fresh, and I simply liked it. This is the Avon I like best - dark, mysterious, sharp-tongued, full of angst, pragmatic and honourable in his own sneaky way. A melancholy story, really.

It's many years after Gauda Prime, and a familiar character using a new name finds himself drifting alone on an agricultural planet and into the lives of a man who calls himself Roj Blake, his wife Rashel, and their young son. Now, I personally don't generally much care for Westerns, and I've never even seen the movie Shane. So when I say I really like this story -- which, as I understand it, follows the plot of the movie pretty closely -- that probably tells you something about the quality of the story and how well it stands on its own, entirely separate from the source that inspired it. One thing I do like is a story that conveys deep, solid characterization in very subtle ways, a story where there are realms of significance and emotion to be found between the lines as much as in the words themselves. This piece really delivers that. It's told from the point of view of "Blake"'s son, and the boy has no understanding of the background or the significance of the events he's witnessing. But the reader does, and therein lies the power of the story. And the end is wrenching... something that I strongly suspect is true even if you see it coming.

I finally read Shane by Judith Proctor, it’s a very well written fic, I wasn’t much of old western movie fan (even though I’m a casual samurai movie fan), so I didn’t know the book or the movie, and how much of plot the fic owes it (I think it’s minimum)

However I love Doppelganger and this fic’s emotional impact is subtly different compared to Doppelganger. It’s good and it’s sad, the sadness is more rustic. It set in OC’s POV (Joey Blake, I think) I’m not going to spoil the plot even if I guess most of fans I befriended here already did.

Doppelganger’s sadness was Avon’s own, entangled and melancholic, and I think Shane’s sadness is others reflecting him as a person.