The Things We Do for Love

Fanfiction
Title:	The Things We Do for Love
Author(s):	M. Fae Glasgow
Date(s):	1988
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Blake's 7
Relationship(s):
External Links:	online here
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The Things We Do for Love is a Blake's 7 Blake/Avon story by M. Fae Glasgow. It was published in Oblaque #1 and is online.

It was discussed by Henry Jenkins in Textual Poachers.

Reactions and Reviews

One M.Fae Glasgow story (1988) restages Freud’s “Child is Being Beaten” scenario as Blake, trapped in a closet, watches with charged fascination as Avon and Vila play dominance and submission games (the childlike thief spanking the wayward computer technician) <...> Not only does Glasgow’s story reproduce the multiple identificatory positions of the Freudian scenario (with Blake simultaneously wanting to be, to have, and to watch Avon as he is “being beaten”) but Cally subsequently acts as a psychotherapist, urging Blake to examine his conflicting feelings (“I saw him under me, but also me under him. How could I want things so completely opposite?” [14–15]).

MUSE OF FIRE RESPONSIBLE: M. Fae Glasgow

HAS POOR VILA BEEN DRAGOONED INTO THIS SHITSHOW? Vila, but almost as a prop? He’s so not psychologically important to this story.

WHY ARE BLAKE AND AVON DOOMED THIS WEEK? Avon has been too sex-abused, Blake is too stupid for life.

EDITOR’S NOTE: a weird dare to leave this section alone I wish I could take PROSE: In the initial section she can’t reconcile herself to the fact that the voyeuristic POV she’s chosen means giving up on some experiential details of the sex. She wants the frisson and surprise of the having the telling given over to an observer, but also to give readers all the details of the porn. Which–undercuts both modes, to be honest? It could have been better managed with a more omniscient narrator, capable of dipping into the three people in the room.

We’re in ‘the big rebel’ lands.

The descriptions are at times quite competent, if businesslike. ‘Cream’ and ‘lifeseed’ though. ‘The timbre of his voice was indigo velvet’. Cause with a capital C. OVERALL: This story loses me at ‘hello’ with something about Blake, in Avon’s room prying on legit business, hiding in the closet when Avon comes in. Metaphorically it’s very slightly amusing, but come the fuck on, Roj Blake lifestyle revolutionary doesn’t hide in the closet when he believes himself to be Right and on Necessary Business. Duh. Duh! ALL THIS IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. WHICH IS NOT YET DONE!

Cod Freud Cally–my old nemesis. We meet again! She is here to provide a Womanly Explanation of All This. WHY IS ALIEN CALLY THE DOYEN OF THE BIG BAD UNDERBELLY OF FEDERATION SOCIETY??

Apparently Avon is SO FREE with information about his life, but Blake just won’t ask, he won’t SEE!! It’s fucking ridiculous I’m sorry. Why do such violence to Blake and Avon alike to make this story work? Key traits Blake has to lose for this story to function: perceptiveness, emotional intelligence (inconsistent but definitely something he has a lot of at times), assertiveness, pragmatism, concern for his ship/work/life/lives of his friends, resourcefulness, experience of the world, intelligence, sense of humour. BLAKE responds to Cally informing him that Vila was abandoned as a child with “but the social services–“, as if Blake has any reason whatever to trust the state. As if he doesn’t know the shit the state gets up to, and as if his entire life is not dedicated to unseating it. Even if Blake were unaware of this detail of their fuckery, it would never, ever surprise him. Glasgow brings it back a little with ‘oh he’d heard shit like this before’, but you can’t have Blake be a rube and an arse in this sense and then back-read in plausibility and THEN strip Blake’s experience out again for the next paragraph. Where was her beta??

Key traits Avon has to lose to make the story function include his general reserve or guardedness. He also wobbles between being a Metatron speaking with the Voice of God, tuned in to the authorial fiat re: how psychology works in this story, and randomly utterly unwilling to act on his own insights of a moment ago. How good was this story, that the writer wanted to strip down the characters this completely to get here? Could it have been told about anyone, really, so long as class distinctions and the bdsm frame were preserved?

It most annoys me that this fic makes awkward little stabs towards thinking seriously about Blake as a subject, and indeed marshals them into its greater project of dehumanising Blake in order to tell a story about the self-help book sexual psychology it’s so invested in. Is this really elitist of me? It’s not necessary that someone have done a lot of work on psychoanalysis to write a fucking fanfic, and what I’m demanding from them is a treatment of the subject that satisfies someone who’s read up on it to a grad school level. The demographics of earlier and current fandom have shifted, there–this education level is more common in fandom now, and in part it’s due to larger cultural shifts in the discourse and the availability of higher ed to women (the primary readers and writers in this field). I guess what I’d ask is that the stories, regardless of their era of composition, not FOCUS on this if they’re going to do it really badly: not come out swinging and didactic and complacent in their knowledge, offering one absolute solution and interpretation of people and their actions within the world they’ve created, and having that solution be this facile.

[snipped, see the original post for the rest]