Trap of Glass

Fanfiction
Title:	Trap of Glass
Author(s):	Penny Dreadful
Date(s):	2000 or before
Length:
Genre(s):	gen
Fandom(s):	Blake's 7
Relationship(s):
External Links:	online here
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Trap of Glass is a Blake's 7 story by Penny Dreadful. It was published in Star #4 in October 2000.

Summary

Trap of Glass: another Blakes 7 tale of Travis' trials and tribulations. The year was 1999. The theme of the Labour Day party was "Something New". I threw in somethings old, borrowed, and blue, too, for kicks. The title, as usual, is a song lyric. Sigh. Originally published in Star Four, available here now with permission of the editor. Thank you, Judith! (I typed this in by hand from the zine, so any typos may be blamed on me and my eight-finger transcription. I've got Pathetic Pinky Syndrome.)

Reactions and Reviews

Trap of Glass (Penny Dreadful) is as original as we've come to expect from Penny, and to say any more would spoil it.

Trap of Glass (Penny Dreadful) discusses whether it is just a coincidence that Travis's personal tragedy and psychic disposition are so suitable to the Federation needs. There is some fine eye/optic/glass symbolism and it is very professionally written.

'Trap of Glass' by Penny Dreadful, set between Orac and Weapon, is a very interesting explanation as to the differences between Travis 1 and Travis 2. I will not discuss it here, as I would give too much away, and will only say that it is worth reading.

Don't be worried by the URL, this story is gen and definitely *not* sleazy; what it is a perfect example of the harder, bleaker edge that some Blakes 7 fanfiction writers can bring to canon. It is a great story, but definitely not for those who need a feel-good factor in their fiction.

The name of the story is very apt; it *is* like a glass cage through which you see a moment between episodes, detached but vividly realised. Penny's stories, both gen and other, are centred around one of the villains of the series, Travis; in this story, she takes the point in the series where they changed actors and wraps a crystalline piece of prose around that change.

Her view of the society of Blakes 7 is dystopian; the characters move in a genuinely harsh, barren, dangerous world and are themselves as hard and barren as it is. (The futuristic and political/dystoptian elements are well handled - if the past is a foreign country, this future actually *feels* like one, which is rarely as well and unobtrusively done in fanfic). In this story, both the 'prisoner' and the doctor he talks to *feel* like authentic people from such a society; they are cold and wary, oblique and untrusting. There's also a brief but telling appearance by Servalan.

Unfortunately, there are a few typos in the middle section which jar a little: from reading other stories by Penny, I can say that they're typos rather than spelling mistakes, as I *know* her writing is usually free from this sort of mistake.

Highly recommended for people who like their fiction acid-washed or austerely bleak; fans of warm-n'fuzzy, or those who found the series itself too grim, stay far, far away.

A word of warning: like much Blakes 7 fiction, neither this story nor the others on Penny's website are ranked, and they don't come with warnings. If you go straight to the website to check other stories, you won't be able to tell from there which are gen and which are adult (meaning het mostly, there is one slash - it's a sendup and IMO it's easy to spot).