Welcome

John Steed, wearing his bowler and carrying his umbrella over his arm, opens a bottle of champagne. He is backlit and in silhouette.Welcome to Feather Dusters at 400 Yards, my blog about the British television series The Avengers. There’s a lot of cool stuff to explore in this groundbreaking series that spanned the entire decade of the 1960s: the characters, the performances, scene and episode analysis, technical aspects of the production, and more. Plus there are pages for Avengers fanfiction, music videos, and fan art! Links to audio versions of my blogs and fanfic are available on the podcasts page. So click on a tag or a category or something in the navigation menu, or just keep scrolling, and explore along with me.

Telepathic Steed?

In the Season 4 episode “Too Many Christmas Trees,” Steed’s mind is under attack by a group of telepaths who want to get the secrets Steed has in his head. At several points throughout the episode, Steed is overcome by sleepiness and slips into unpleasant dreams that turn out to be hints about what it happening to him.

The First Dream

Steed is sleeping in his own bed. The camera zooms in on his face and then the scene switches to the dreamscape.

Steed finds himself in his pyjamas, walking barefoot through snow. He arrives at a field of fake Christmas trees. At the end of the field of trees there is a big basket of presents, one of which is addressed to Steed. He opens it, and discovers a picture of himself. He then sees himself looking into a mirror, and a person in a Father Christmas costume and mask appears in the mirror next to him. Father Christmas beckons to Steed, and brings him to a place where the body of a dead man is lying on a platform. Steed is horrified. Father Christmas points at Steed and laughs. We later learn that the dead man is one of Steed’s colleagues.

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A word about my fan vids

YouTube is cracking down on content creators to make sure that they label their content according to whether that content is child-friendly or not. I have complied with this new rule, and as a result at least one of my vids as of this writing (and possibly others in future) will not be available to people under the age of 18.

I’m not doing this because I’m a prude or think that what I’m doing isn’t acceptable for multiple audiences. I’m doing it in order to protect myself so that I can continue providing Avengers fan vids and keep my channel live.

So if you like my vids, but are under the age of 18 and now find that one or more of them are not available, please don’t @ me. I’m not cutting you off from my content because I think you’re not mature enough for it. I’m closing that vid to protect myself.

Thanks for your understanding.

A Ponderable Blog From Elsewhere

I’ve blogged about Steed’s healthy masculinity and how he nurtures his partners and other people in ways that are traditionally gendered as feminine in our culture. Today I came across this wonderful op-ed about teaching men to get rid of toxic masculinity and thought I’d share, with a little taster printed below.

Ruth Whippman writes in the New York Times:

As long as the threat of emasculation is a baseline terror for men, encouraging them to act more like women still instinctively feels like a form of humiliation.

Which is exactly why we need to try, because until female norms and standards are seen as every bit as valuable and aspirational as those of men, we will never achieve equality. Promoting qualities such as deference, humility, cooperation and listening skills will benefit not only women but also businesses, politics and even men themselves, freeing them from the constant and exhausting expectation to perform a grandstanding masculinity, even when they feel insecure or unsure.

Read the whole op-ed piece here.

A Neurodivergent Steed Bloglet

ADHD culture is pulling the pin on a live grenade and then getting distracted by a different thought and forgetting to throw the grenade until your friends remind you that it would be a good idea to get rid of it right about now.

Purdey: Steed?
Steed: Oh, look at this….
Purdey: Steed.
Steed: Verrrry interesting, this….
Purdey: Steed! Throw the grenade!
Steed: Eh? Oh. Yeah.
Steed: <YEET>

[Image description: six screencaps from The New Avengers episode, “K is for Kill”. Steed holds a grenade in the top two caps, and he examines it closely. Purdey and a French soldier look at Steed intently. Purdey is speaking. Steed looks towards Purdey, then back at the grenade. Steed throws the grenade.]