Now then voyager - I'd like a quiet word with you

Just finished watching 'Now Voyager'.

Now, before you (or indeed anyone else) starts on, yes, I DO know that it is regarded by many as a classic movie from the golden era of Hollywood.  Yes, I DO realise that lots of critics and fans regard it as one of the high points of both Bette Davis' and Paul Heinreid's careers.

And yes, I REMEMBER only too well that loads of women from my grandmothers' generation flocked to the cinema to see it and sat there in the dark steadily chomping chocolates as they clutched their tiny lace hankies to their eyes and wept daintily at all the stirring nobility and rampant self-sacrifice unfurling before them on the silver screen. 

Yet how Olive Higgins Prouty managed to make millions writing books like that, I cannot fathom.

I'm not sure if it's me, wilfully misunderstanding the works of fiction from another era.  Or whether it was the scriptwriter, being forced by the suits in the top office to recast many of the author's themes and subtexts to fit better with popular public opinion about spinsters at the time the film originally came out.

Or perhaps it's the revolutions of the Sixties that stand in the way between Prouty's zeitgeist and ours.

But I must confess to finding myself quite infuriated by many of the themes and arguments put forward in that film.

Having a selfish, domineering old bat of a mother who seems to regard her youngest child as a heaven-sent combination of recompense for suffering a generally crap life and guaranteed source of support in her old age is a very serious affliction, yes.  I imagine it quite probably would be enough to drive any sensitive and intelligent person three-quarters of the way into a nervous breakdown.

But as a life-long fat awkward old bat in glasses, it leaves me flabbergasted.

Are we supposed to conclude that women who need to wear glasses for whatever reason end up so traumatised by the experience that they go mad?  It's all very well for Charlotte and Tina in the film not to need theirs any more.  However, at the ripe old age of 43, I still require my short sight and astigmatism to be corrected in some way or other every single day - or else I keep bumping into all the furniture and can't be trusted to cross the road unattended.

Now Tina seemed to be wearing braces on her teeth, so even at that remote period in history, Americans were determined to help young teenagers improve their physical appearance.  If I remember rightly, it may have been about this time that Laurence Olivier had to wear contact lenses to change his eye colour for some role or other - and he said that they were pretty uncomfortable during this era. 

So fair enough - but why not try and find some more funky, flattering glasses for the two women to wear, then?  Or why not have the guts to wear your glasses WITH all the incredibly chic little outfits the wardrobe department decided in its wisdom to bestow upon Bette after she recovered from her nervous troubles?

(And while we're on the subject - who suggested to Bette's character that she would look a lot better wearing black and white Orry-Kelly gowns, pearl and diamante earrings and a kick-arse red lipstick?  If this was such an important element in her recovery - why can't we see the bloody makeover onscreen?  Or are women 'instinctively' meant to realise all this themselves, once their minds are working 'properly'? If the latter, hand me that credit card - I'm going shopping for the good of my health!!!!!!!!)

Next up are the two men Bette gets to choose between.

Well, if Charlotte just plain doesn't love (and doesn't seem to fancy either, by the looks of things) poor Elliott, she is quite right to give him his marching papers.  Sticking around wouldn't be fair to either of them.

However, Paul Heinreid is a completely different kettle of fish altogether.

Okay, okay, I appreciate that mainstream films back in those days couldn't really get away with showing a 'respectable' woman getting it on with a married man, for fear she would have been condemned by a large majority of the audience as 'wicked' and 'immoral'.

And this would be despite the fact that he was a good, moral bloke whose relationship with his wife had sadly gone down the toilet big time.

But don't tell me that she could then sublimate all her pent-up sexual desire and romantic longings for him into becoming the unpaid foster-mother for his troubled teenage daughter.  Don't tell me that he would find the sacrifice easy, either.  Or that his daughter Tina wouldn't begin to notice that there was something a bit strange about the relationship between her dad and her foster-mum.  Or that Tina's mum wouldn't kick up a fuss and a half once she found out about the fostering arrangement.

And if Charlotte suffered terribly through being lumbered with a very troubled mother of her own, why does she 'need' to redeem herself by fostering a teenage girl who's in danger of repeating her own history?

I'm afraid I could see why Sylvia Plath had a bit of a laugh describing how Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar had to go down to the local library to borrow copies of Philomena Guinea's works 'as the college library didn't seem to stock them for some reason' and how they were full of immensely long, suspenseful questions like: 'How could he possibly marry her, if he learned of the child Elsie hidden away with Mrs Rollmop back on the farm?'.

(Apologies if my memory has ended up rewriting any of these quotes slightly.  I'm a hack and my brain is determined to recast everything that's fed into it in its own image.  I'd be no good transmitting the oral heritage of my culture down the generations.)

Tiberius chucks a wobbly

Right, I said earlier that I've started getting into 'I Claudius' as well.

So I suppose now might be as good a time as any to explain a little why it might have caught on with audiences and critics much more than 'The Cleopatras' ever did.

In all probability, I suspect viewers probably found the Romans far more sympathetic and three-dimensional than the expat Greeks.

Now, this is no reflection whatever on any of the actors who appeared in 'The Cleopatras'.  They are all, in their many and varied ways, every bit as talented and able as those in 'I Claudius'.  Quite probably, more than one actor from each camp ended up auditioning for the other series.  They're married, they've got kids to feed and the gas bill is due.

Okay, so the Romans are a right bunch of evil bastards who could probably give the Cleopatras and Ptolomies a bloody good run for their money.  Of course, otherwise we wouldn't be so interested in watching their antics over two thousand years later.

But they are also surprisingly human.

We can identify with them and their dilemmas far more than the Greeks.

Take Livia and Augustus, first of all.

Both have been married before and had children by the previous marriages - Augustus a daughter Julia and Livia sons Drusus and Tiberius.  Each is obviously biased in favour of their own kids, yet neither will cut their progeny the slightest bit of slack.  This means that the children often have to appeal to the step-parent in order to get a bit of sympathy and understanding whenever they end up in trouble.

Naturally the kids have picked up on all the rivalries and antagonisms of the older generation and use them to pick quarrels amongst themselves.

Whatever their precise blood relationship to the child, the parents are far more likely to support their position if the sprog is of the same gender as themself and experiencing specific gender-related problems that they also have personal experience of.   So Augustus will occasionally speak up on Tiberius' behalf when he's experiencing problems with Julia, while Livia will back up Julia against Tiberius and Augustus when necessary (Livia's version of 'necessary' is never quite the same as Julia's you'll note.  Nor her husband's).

As many, many viewers from the Seventies until today are or have been members of a 'blended' family (as sociologists will persist in calling this), they will probably sit there nodding vigorously (and maybe wincing too) at all these shenanigans taking place on screen.

Next we must consider the character of Livia herself.

As she so rightly points out, she is easily the equal of the greatest Cleopatra of them all - but she lives in Rome and has lasted much longer than Cleo managed.

Unlike all the other Cleos, Livia has found herself a husband who is pretty remarkable in his own right.  Because he (with some adroit, well-timed help from her) has managed to retain his grip on power and restore the country to some sort of semblance of peace and stability, Augustus remains alive and well.

However, Livia got the measure of her husband long ago - and came to the inevitable conclusion that sometimes he lets his sentiment get the better of his political and social judgement.  If she lets him get away with these wrong decisions, the results could be catastrophic, not only for the family but Rome itself.

So she has to run round behind his back clearing up the messes his excessively warm heart has created.

Many, many women in the audience must identify with this particular scenario, surely?

Then we come to Tiberius.

Like Demetrius in 'The Cleopatras', he has suffered the breakdown of his marriage.  Like Demetrius, he was forced to marry a woman he didn't love for political reasons.

However, Tiberius is pretty talented and prefers getting up off his bum and doing something useful, rather than lounging about on a throne all day displaying his false beard and moobs to all and sundry whilst being languidly fanned with bunches of peacock feathers.  He runs military campaigns against the Germans in the Black Forest when he's not helping Augustus dole out the Roman version of income support.

He also has an ex-wife that he still loves.  He loves her so much that he follows her about down the streets of Rome and visits her in her new home for all the marital benefits he refuses to obtain from Julia.

Unlike Demetrius, he has the balls to argue with his wives.  He rants and raves and yells at both Julia and Vipsania.

And they both tell him in no uncertain terms just what they think of him.

Vipsania says he's got a bloody sauce shouting at her when HE was the one who divorced HER, while Julia complains about his sexual coldness and even accuses him of being a secret pervert.

Once again, a substantial section of the audience will be undergoing the pain of a relationship that's gone seriously and irreparably wrong.  Many of them will still be attached to their ex-partners, for good, for ill or something in between.

Probably they can even identify with the subjects of the quarrels and unhappiness.  After all, personal incompatibility and sexual frustration haven't changed over the past two millennia.

So tell me - where, in all of this does Demetrius get a look in?

Nowhere.

And that's why we can't develop an interest in him.

Oh yes, we learn enough about him to feel sorry for his fate.

But not enough to make him our friend and our brother.

And that is the great lesson about scriptwriting to take on board.

Follow that snake! Fiona watches 'The Cleopatras' on YouTube

Lurid historical melodrama has returned in a big way.

Following the huge success of 'The Tudors', the powers that be are now in the process of creating 'The Borgias'. 

No-one is sure yet whether this is meant to be a direct remake of the notorious BBC mini-series from the Eighties or more of a lush reimagining for the new millennium.  What we do know is that Ronan Vibert will be playing the son-in-law of the Pope - until he get shafted (in the metaphorical sense, that is) for being impotent (though really he's not, but that's the type of dirty lowdown subterfuge the inlaws have been forced to stoop down to back in the days when there was no such thing as a quickie divorce).

While we wait with breathless anticipation for this never-ending saga of incest, adultery, poisonings and other assorted murders, mayhem and general skullduggery in Renaissance Italy to reach the screen some time next year, now seems as good a time as any to take a look back at its antecedents.

Although Salford University library boasts the full and complete set of 'I Claudius' (in both DVD and VHS formats), the shelves are strangely lacking in anything either Borgia or Cleopatra related.  I haven't been able to find any transcripts for these series anywhere either.

So I've been forced to resort to YouTube.

What a bloody weird place YouTube is.

Yes, 'The Cleopatras' has been uploaded there for all and sundry to watch at their leisure.

But it seems to be a bit like 'Match Of The Day' would be, if it was edited by Ron Manager and had ashen-faced, tight-lipped Ron Knee (59) for the presenter.  Fair enough, if the highlights consisted of Rio Ferdinand scoring a hat-trick in the last 10 seconds of the Cup Final at Wembley.

As far as I can make out, each episode of 'The Cleopatras' must originally have been somewhere between 45 - 60 minutes long.  What you get on YouTube are sequences of around 15 minutes each.

Possibly the person who uploaded them chose these particular ones because their favourite actor appeared in them.

Fair enough - only what about the rest of us who'd like to see how the rest of the episode pans out?

For this and various other reasons which I shall be going into shortly, it is almost impossible to work out what the hell is meant to be going on each week.

I watched all the YouTube segments of episode 2.

The first thing you have to remember is that practically EVERY member of the wretched bunch of treacherous inbreds has the same name.  The women are all called Cleopatra and the men Ptolomey.  In order to tell each other apart, they have to resort to titles and nicknames.

So we had Cleopatra the Grandmother, Cleopatra the Mother and Cleopatra the Daughter (I think?).  Richard Griffiths played the splendidly named Ptolomey Potbelly.

Some woman (Cleo the Daughter?) kept complaining to her (husband?  brother?  son?  This is what the breakdown of traditional values does to family relationships!) that he was far too inclined to keep doing everything his mother told him.  If he wanted to be a tougher, more manly ruler, he needed to start saying no.

Meanwhile, another Cleo (the Mother?  Looks like my Auntie Betty in a wig made out of macrame plant pot holder string, anyway) came to the conclusion that her husband was completely and utterly useless, so she'd be better off without him.

Hubby was called Demetrius and turned out to be portrayed by Stephen Greif in what was meant to be the only reasonably realistic beard in the entire episode.

All the men of any status at any of the courts apparently believed that displaying a huge bushy beard of some description would prove both their masculinity and their high standing.  But because ritual and show were essential to the performance of government, these beards all ended up as very obvious stage props, held on under the chin by gold straps.  The Greeks had golden curly ones, the Egyptians the traditional stiff barbs from the Tutankhamen mummy-case.

Despite being Greek (I think?), Demetrius seemed to be ruling Syria - which may explain both the Assyrian wallcarving effort stuck to the long-suffering Mr G's poor chin and the lashings of black Alice Cooper-style eyeliner he was wearing.

Like the other male aristos, he had then been stuffed into some ill-fitting sausage skin of a linen tunic that created a rather unfortunate moob-effect around the chesticle region.  This was only enhanced by a huge clanking golden pectoral that would probably sell for several hundred pounds in the Prada or Marni stores these days.

You really did end up wondering if the Ancient Egyptians wanted every half-decent looking man at the court to be rendered so effete and decadent in appearance.  If so, then they were obviously doing a great job.

(Also remembered Diana Dors saying that when she appeared in 'Oedipus Rex' at the Chichester Festival, she and her co-stars all looked pretty much like this once they were in costume and fully made up.  One of the men once reduced her to fits of hysterics by announcing that he was just going down the fish shop for some chips - and did she want anything?  Couldn't get over the image in my mind of Demetrius and Potbelly meeting in the queue at The Codfather and Demetrius explaining that he'd just nipped in for a bit of battered flange, to which Potbelly replies that he should really try asking them to slip in a free Saveloy some time ... )

Anyway, Demetrius was so bloody useless that Cleopatra had left him in Syria and gone back to live with her mother in Egypt.

If I've understood this bit correctly, he had apparently (?) fathered several children over the years, including at least two sons, so he can't have been all THAT hopeless.  Problem was that the boys were now old enough to be ruling their own kingdoms - and mum fancied bossing about men who would actually be bothered enough to get up off their arses occasionally and do something she told them.

Due to BBC funding constraints, you didn't really see anything that would show how useless Demetrius was.  He just seemed to sit about on his arse all day while minions fanned him.   So you mostly had to take it on trust.

His mother-in-law decided for some strange reason or other to go and visit him in Syria.  She took all the money from the Egyptian treasuries with her.  She told him that she would give all the gold to him so that he could use it to start a war.

Demetrius agreed that this was a brilliant idea.

However, he took the money and ran - without fighting a single battle, as his estranged wife pointed out.

One Cleopatra (the Grandmother?) then suggested that he took refuge in the temple in Melkart (this is in Egypt, not Syria, and is the same place where Zawi El Hawass reckons Cleopatra and Anthony may have been later buried).

Naturally wifey soon sends a death squad to Melkart, a bloody great chopper is produced and poor Demetrius meets his end at the end of it with an expression much the same as Claudius must have done three seconds after swallowing the mushrooms.

Meanwhile, Potbelly declares that his overriding ambition in life is to become the fattest, most degenerate gutbucket the world has ever seen.  Although everyone laughed at his wit, Griffiths was by far the best looking (and svelte!) bloke to appear in this episode!

Someone had the inspired brainwave of purchasing a slave called Alexander from the market and putting the rumour about that he was some legitimate male claimant's illegitimate son.  It might even have been true.  It didn't matter, as they needed yet another man who was easy to boss about.

Yes, this is ancient feminism - Eighties style.

Men are crap, women rule.

It's just the way of nature, so there's no need to rant and rave about it unduly.

Credit where credit is due

Well, I've finally managed to get round to listening to 'Point Of No Return'.

And it really was worth the wait - and then some.

So I thought I would let author James Swallow know of my enjoyment.

Just had a note back from him thanking me for my kind message and explaining that he really enjoyed writing scripts for Commander Travis.

Nice to remember that we all respond to a bit of intelligent appreciation, isn't it?

Wiggy business

Right, totally cheesed off that the poxy bollocking wi-fi system in Starbucks opposite Sainsburys in Fallowfield decided in its wisdom to boot me off before I'd even managed to complete my allotted two-hour stint earlier today.  This was purely in order to let the yummy mummies and their googly ga-ga babies troop in, put their feet up and sink down more coffee.

But I'm a hack and I'm skint, so obviously I haven't spent enough dosh on triple frappucino skinny lattes to be of economic viability to the management.  Therefore my time online needs to be stringently limited, or the profit margin will plunge below the event horizon.

Probably just as well I had to make a move when I did, because the wiggy quota was beginning to burgeon alarmingly.

What is a 'wiggy', I may hear you ask?

(Or not, as the case may be.)

In very basic, down to earth terms, a 'wiggy' is a very pretty, feminine, young studenty-type woman.

The sort of woman I should have been myself back in 1986, only I never really had the equipment for it.

A 'wiggy' woman is so called because she has full, fat, rounded, wobbly buttocks, which she wiggles, woggles and switches back and forth like nobody's business every time she walks down the road.  She is knows that her femininity is the most important asset in her life.  She is fully confident in her charms and the power they have over the heterosexual male of the species.

So she keeps them switched on, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

She invariably talks in a cute, fluty, girly voice, just like she is still 5 years old and has never grown up.

Her clothes, hairstyle and accessories are all carefully chosen to emphasise both her curves and her cuteness.

No wiggy woman is afraid to let her wobblers roam free and wild.  The last thing she worries about is dirty old men panting down the ski-slopes of her ample cleavage.

Her skirts never fail to be any less than virtual pussy pelmets, while cosy sheepskin lined Ugg bootees caress her sweet little ankles in all weathers.

All wiggy women look and sound exactly the same - yet their boyfriends have no trouble at all distinguishing their particular girlfriends from the rest of the endlessly cloned tribe.

Personally I blame all those parents back in the late Eighties and early Nineties who elected to swamp their little princesses in oceans of pink frills and ferry them about in hunchback cars with 'Baby On Board' notices stuck in the back windows. 

Normal service will be resumed ...

... as soon as possible (ie when I think of something interesting to say).

Just going for a quick slash - some personal observations on the slash fiction of 'Blake's Seven'

Let's be honest here - slash fiction is a sensitive topic at the best of times.

In literary terms, it often tends to be regarded as the embarrassing cousin whose existence you prefer never to acknowledge - until they turn up at your wedding drunk, loud and disorderly as your typical Wetherspoons bar on a Friday night at 11 pm and proceed to regale all your prissy new in-laws with the tale of how during your student days you once decided to impress a new acquaintance with your ability to fly like Superman, only you miscalculated your flight path and fell 10 feet down the nearest manhole.

Actors frequently hate it because they often feel that in some fundamental way, the characters they portrayed in the series that inspired the fanfic somehow 'belong' to them.  Any differences between their views of the character's sexuality and those exhibited by the fans in the slash fiction can therefore be seen as a threat to their artistic integrity.

However, slash fiction must fulfill a vital role in fandom, otherwise there wouldn't be so much of it written across the different fandoms, nor would the actors and the fans clash so seriously over it.

I have been reading a lot of slash fiction recently because I am hoping to attend the Redemption 2011 convention in Coventry next February and am seriously considering taking part on the slash fiction panel.

Because Blake's Seven is my favourite sci-fi fan show, I feel I am best equipped to comment on the slash fiction associated with it.

Here are my basic conclusions so far:  

1.) There don’t seem to be any physical descriptions of what the people who enjoy sex with the canon characters actually see/hear/taste/smell of that character’s body. 

For example, in Ask Tell Pursue, the Travis in question is specifically stated by the author to be the Stephen Greif version of the character.  Stephen Greif and Brian Croucher both were and still are very physically striking men – but distinctly different in appearance. 

Why was the Greif version chosen for this story?  No indication is given. 

Very little attempt is made at describing what Travis 1’s body looks like, whether clothed or unclothed (apart from stock generic descriptions like ‘leanly muscled’.)  So you get almost no indication of what it is like as a physical sexual experience for Avon to make love to this specific man.

(Incidentally, if you want an example of a key physical detail that a lover of either gender would probably notice in Travis 1’s appearance – and that doesn’t make Stephen Greif want to dive for cover with sheer, utter embarrassment – he has surprisingly long, languorous eyelashes on his remaining eye.)

I would presume the almost complete lack of physical descriptions of the characters is due to the slash stories being written specifically for people who are already great fans of this particular series.  Therefore, they are assumed to be pretty conversant with all the canon characters.  Any additional or subsequent descriptions are considered not to be needed, because this would suggest the reader remains ignorant of the most basic details known to all the other fans and thus does not count as a properly paid up admirer of the series at all. 

Readers who still require descriptive details after this would probably be considered ignorant newbies or interloping lurkers, not proper fans.

2.)  Characters are often portrayed in their most basic, archetypal version – more like a mythical figure than a three-dimensional human being.

This would tend to suggest very strongly that a major need of the readers is to turn the canon characters into figures analogous with gods and goddesses, Jungian archetypes or key characters from the great myths and legends of the world’s many cultures. 

Therefore, Avon = Superman/Superlover, Servalan = Evil Bitch Glamorous Stepmother Queen, Vila = the Trickster figure etc.

Any sign of frailty or imperfection in the canon characters means that they are obviously human beings rather than gods or archetypes. All signs of everyday reality will be ruthlessly stamped on.

By the way, this may be another reason why so little specific physical description of the individual characters and their sex experiences is given.  If a character in bed with Travis 1 notices the surprisingly long, languorous eyelashes on his remaining eye, for example, the obvious implication is that Travis may not be the icy-cold, evil, hard psychopath that most people take him for. 

You are forced to confront the fact that he is a real man, with depths and nuances to his personality that perhaps you never suspected before.  He has stopped being a mythical archetype – and we can’t have that sort of thing going on when we need our heroes and villains to get us through the night!

3.)  Characters never seem to worry about the sexual consequences and emotional fall-out that the rest of us stuck here in the real world do.

So far, I don’t think I’ve come across a single B7 slash fiction story in which Servalan, Jenna, Cally or Soolin end up conceiving an unexpected baby after sleeping with Avon.  Or Servalan has slept with both Avon and Tarrant during the same week, and now she is not sure who the father of her baby is, so she has to ask them both to take a DNA test.

Or Blake has to confront the fact that he may be gay or bisexual after Avon has seduced him and he has ended up having sex with another man for the first time.  Or Travis catches the clap off Blake during gay sex, so he has to take himself down the Space Force Officers’ GUM clinic for treatment.

Critics will probably argue that the primary purpose of the slash story is to get yourself off in the best way possible by seeing your favourite characters getting off in the best way possible.  Reality only gets in the way of pleasure.

(Though I would pay bloody good money to see the B7 soap opera in action!  Who’s the father of Servalan’s baby?  Tune in next week for the shocking surprise twist finale … Avon’s determined not to pay any maintenance, whatever happens.  If he needs to, he’s quite prepared to stitch Tarrant up.) 

4.)  No-one ever has rubbish sex in any of these slash stories.

Although I must admit to finding Office Politics highly amusing and effective as a story, the sexual encounter between Servalan and Travis remains a stylised skirmish, rather than anything approaching a realistic intimate relationship.

Why doesn’t Travis refuse Servalan’s overtures?  He might well not fancy her at all in real life.  He might consider an affair with his boss a guaranteed form of professional suicide (quite apart from what he is already managing to arrange all on his own …).  Or he might consider the time, the place or both highly inappropriate.

Even if he does still decide to go ahead, he could end up suffering erectile failure, due to nerves – or exhaustion from all his hard work chasing Blake (fnerr, fnerr etc).

Perhaps Servalan discovers he is not as well equipped as she had hoped in the trouser department and decides not to bother after all.  Or maybe she plots the big seduction in great detail – then has to bail out at the last minute because it's the wrong time of the month.

Why can’t Travis just be crap in bed?  Or Servalan?

Even with the best will in the world, they may just not be in the right frame of mind to experience an orgasm that day.

(Please see point 3 for the expected critical reposte to this issue too.)

5.)  Sexual encounters are used as a symbolic means of establishing and exerting dominance and control over another character.

Hence Travis is symbolically ‘defeated’ and ‘punished’ through gay sex with Blake or Avon, as in One Afternoon.

[Though if Travis suffers from sensitive skin as claimed in this story, I think it unlikely that the cream he has been prescribed to combat this has been laced with a spicy scent.  He might also be allergic to strong perfumes, particularly on his raw, inflamed skin.  Just a minor observation, but there we go.]. 

Servalan has also done the same in this delightful little tale because it seemed the ‘ideal’ way of conditioning him to total unquestioning obedience of her (hee, hee, doesn’t seem to have worked very well, does it?). 

6.)  Sexual encounters are used as a symbolic means of a character being forced to confront their more tender, vulnerable side.

Practically EVERY Blake and Avon slash going falls under this rubric.

Avon sleeps with Servalan not only to ‘defeat’ and ‘punish’ her for her evil – but also to ‘prove’ to her that she is ‘only’ a woman.

An orgasm is regarded as the classic signal of defeat/surrender.

I must confess that I am NOT at ALL keen on either of these two tropes, as I consider them both terribly sexist and homophobic.

7.)  ‘Humiliating’ sexual encounters are used as a symbolic means of demonstrating that a so-called ‘evil’ character is a dishonest hypocrite.

Hence all the innumerable tales in which Travis is gay or bisexual, but does not face up to this vital fact about himself until Blake or Avon buggers him into the most mind-bendingly ecstatic orgasms, despite himself.

In these stories, Travis always seems to slope around shagging the trade on the quiet, trying to persuade himself that he is either just engaging in a bit of men who have sex with other men in order to get himself through the dark night of the soul - or he's so pissed-up on booze that he is no longer responsible for his own decisions and actions.

You never seem to get a story in which Travis is out – and proud.  But if he can take an odd sort of pride in his facial disfigurement, why not his sexual orientation too?

While we’re still on the subject, incidentally, I have not yet come across a narrative in which Blake is the one who constantly cruises for the most lurid forms of gay sex wherever and whenever he can find it.  Why not?  Is the great revolutionary too fine and noble for that sort of thing?