A place for new fans of the show to ask questions about backstory, plot lines, or characters. Or old Browncoats who just forget these things!

I've watched the first two DVDs and the movie, and I have this question (which may be better suited for a nitpick thread, but I found no such thread):

With the Chinese culture being so big a part of the Firefly mythos, where are all the Asian people? Could they not get Asian actors where they filmed this, or was there some sort of story reason we didn't see them?

I've suggested before that there is still an east/west divide going on in how this solar system was first settled. In the part where Serenity travels I think we do see asians but on the rim they are mostly in menial positons, much like they had in the old west.

I've been watching the dvds on my computer, and it just occurred to me that they're letterboxed to fit a tv screen, like a movie would be. But Firefly was on tv to begin with, so what's the deal? Was it always that way?

If you've seen any of the airings on Sci-Fi, you'll notice they're not letterboxed either. The only epsiode that aired that way originally on FOX was, I believe, the belated showing of Serenity the Pilot. I may not be remembering correctly, but the show was shot in the letterbox ratio, but for whatever stupid reason, FOX chose not to air it that way.

I think the whole story can be found in the special features or in some interview...

I was just watching Serenity (the show not the BDM), and when they set down to talk to Banger (curse him and his hat), there were a lot of asian people in the market place. Example, there was a group off asian mercs walkign around in what looked like advanced japanesse armor. Also there was a group of people in the back ground fighting with kendo sticks.

Joss wanted them to be letterboxed on TV. At the time, I believe some shows like ER were and he was hoping FOX would allow it. But they said no. Joss talks about this in the DVD commentary. I believe he said he shot them with a camera that could sorta do both, so when the DVD came out they could be letterbox instead of widescreen.


I would've liked to see more Asian people. I know there are always some in the shots of extras milling around Persephone but I can't think of any speaking roles.

I didn't see a thread for fic so I'm asking here.

I am looking for an archive for Gen fic. Also a list of the better writers or stories would be great and if it included links to especially plotty stories it would be even better. You can email me off list if you would rather.

This is actually for a brother that's never read fanfic but he's so desperate for more Firefly that he's willing to try it.

Thanks

There is a fic thread but it's probably buried a few pages back.

Most of my stories are gen:

HawkMoth's Archive

I've got lots of gen recommendations:

Here


and here


Hope that helps!

I've just started reading the fanfic pretty recently and found a fantastic multi-part series (87 chapters and still going!) on Fireflyfans.net. Lots of adventure, humor, and truthfully written characters & dialogue.

The writer is 'ScrewTheAlliance.' Here is a list of his stuff.

One I've just started is called The Fish Job, and it's also quite entertaining - reads very much like an episode and is also multi-chaptered. The author is Mal4Prez.

C.A. Bridges wrote a cute twist on the famous Star Trek 'Visit to a Weird Planet'/'Visit to a Weird Planet, Revisited,' two stories about what if.... characters and actors were transposed. "Visit toa weird verse, revisited" stars Nathan Fillion... and Zoe Washburne, Simon and River Tam, etc...

I agree that what ScrewTheAlliance has written is utterly fantastic, but definitely start with Kaylee's Lament before reading The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu. The two just tie together, and it's all a bit more cogent that way.

And again, I agree that C.A. Bridges' stuff is also a hoot.

Not to mention Kaylee's Lament is shorter. MUCH shorter ;)

I work with high-speed copiers, and have a stack about a foot tall of fic I've printed out over the last few weeks (the best thing when one takes public transporation pretty much everywhere.) I'm frightened. I've heard of the Collier Brothers...

I can't help but wonder what a 'Visit story would be like with RIVER/SUMMER as the main character(s). YIKES.

This is a great theory---and one that, not surprisingly, never occurred to me!

I'm more of an 'old' semi-fan who recently rewatched the episodes on Sci-Fi and as a result is pretty much ready to change from 'semi-fan' to full-fledged, diehard fan. I had a couple of questions that I was hoping you guys could answer:

1) I've expressed my dislike for Inara and her role on other threads so won't bore you here, but does Joss ever explain---either on the DVD commentaries or elsewhere---exactly what he was trying to go for with this character and the whole idea of a companion? I'd love to hear it!

2) Is that book of essays about Firefly worth buying? I've always loved similar books about Buffy. I also do really love the underpining philosophy and ideas in FF, so would love to read more about them if I could.

3) Why is it that in the movie (of which I'm now the proud owner!) Mal's relationship with Simon has totally reverted back to what it was during the first few episodes?

4) Does Joss ever explain why, from a storytelling perspective, Wash had to die in Serenity? Maybe I'm just biased since I adore Wash, but I never saw it a sintegral to the story or the points he was trying to make.

Thanks in advance!

4) Does Joss ever explain why, from a storytelling perspective, Wash had to die in Serenity? Maybe I'm just biased since I adore Wash, but I never saw it a sintegral to the story or the points he was trying to make.


If I remember correctly Joss says in the commentary on Serenity that Wash had to die so we would be more afraid for everyone else. He was trying to give us a sense of danger because I guess the idea is that if Wash dies anyone could die.

2) I love the essay book and highly recommend it to you, especially if you enjoyed the Buffy ones. I've posted something about the book here. (You need to scroll down a bit.)

It's really the same thing he did with Jenny Calendar: set up this character as someone the audience loves, and is expecting to last a while, then abruptly kill them off to show them that there are high stakes on the show.

Thank you so much for all the responses!



I definitely see what you mean, but IMO this would have made more sense if it were still an ongoing series and further 'high stakes' were still in store for the viewers. I still don't quite see how killing off Wash in the movie was necessary but, again, I'm probably just biased because I adore the guy!

I think this is partly to give new viewers a taste of how they used to be and add edge.
And because he really does object to Mal using River in his jobs.

I think Wash and Jenny Calendar's respective deaths actually served pretty different purposes. The latter was less about raising the stakes for the rest of the characters than about proving to the audience how evil Angelus was. Wash's death is more analagous to Anya's, I think, albeit a lot more powerful.

New viewer here, in the middle of watching the series via Netflix. I haven't seen all of it yet, nor the movie (waiting in the queue!).

Just watched War Stories and had a question: where was Inara while everyone else was off saving Mal? You'd think she'd be more likely to pick up arms and join the raid than say, Kaylee. She had already said goodbye to the councilor so I assumed she was still on the ship. If someone was supposed to look after the ship while everyone was gone, I'd assume that someone would be Kaylee, and if Simon asked her to look after River, she did a piss-poor job, seeing as River managed to make her way down anyway and shoot three people. So that still leaves the question of why Inara didn't help out?

ETA. I forgot she did "help out" by getting whatever medical do-dad thingy Simon needed to reattached Mal's ear. But I still assumed that she got that AFTER the whole saving Mal thing.

If you do some searching around online, you can find the shooting scripts for the episodes. If I recall correctly, while the others are planning to save Mal, Inara is visiting the Councillor at her home planetside to plead for her to intercede. That scene was cut. There's a line from Kaylee? Wash? back on the ship where they say something about Inara not having any luck with the Councillor, and that they'll have to proceed with the plan. She's too far away to be able to help with the raid on Niska's compound at that point.

Ah, thanks, rivka. I thought that might be the case, but it just didn't really make sense to have Kaylee and Simon have to fight when they had absolutely no prior experience and not Inara.

Another question to throw out there: since all the characters seem to know how to speak varying amounts of Chinese, was it ever explained how and why they do? I mean, was Mandarin taught in schools? Or did the language just become so mixed that everyone learned both English and Chinese? Or is it just select replacements for swear words? I just don't see someone like Simon, for example, picking up some Mandarin off the streets. =)

Wash's death was definately more analagous to Anyas than Ms. Calendar's. If you listen to the commentaries on the show where Jenny dies and on the finale of Buffy and on Serenity, that definately becomes clear. Joss says he killed Jenny because he needed to prove (both to the characters on the show and to the audience) that everybody is vulnerable and they could all be killed off at any time. That way when they put one of the main characters in danger, as they do so often, you actually think they might die. Wash (and Anya, though far less well done) were killed at peak action moments in a battle you knew was going to be the last so that the audience would think "Is ANYONE going to make it out alive from this?" That's also why there were both such quick, senseless deaths that no one even had time to acknowledge until after the battle.

That was a good question about Inara in War Stories. I'd often wondered that myself- she just disappears for that portion.

As for the Mandarin, I'm pretty sure that in this 'verse English and Mandarin are both official languages and they learn both at school and at home. If you ever noticed, most of the official stuff (the signs, the computer screens) are in Mandarin and not English, so it may very well be that people learn Mandarin first.

Sort of. In the Serenityverse the two capital planets are Londinium (English speaking) and Sihnon (Mandarin speaking, where Inara is from). In the outer planets there's a hodgepodge of the two languages often spoken.

Plus Alan had asked Josh to kill him off. The way in which it was done was very effective though. Much better, as you say, than Anya. Her death still makes me cross.

Following up on the speaking Mandarin thing...if Chinese culture is so prevalent, why do there not seem to be any Asian people anywhere? I understand that individual planets may have been settled by specific cultural groups, but you'd think the situation would be different on Core planets.

And another question if you don't mind: Shepherd Book's book is obviously the Bible, and at one point he talks to Jayne about various denominations, some of whom are celibate and some of whom aren't. Since this is pretty common knowledge on our planet, I have to think that Christianity is less familiar, or less important, to the crew of Serenity. Plus, we never see Book leading prayer or service or generally putting any religious mojo on anyone. The only other religious practice I can recall (I haven't seen every episode yet) is Inara's Buddhist shrine-thing in the movie. So, do you figure that Christianity and Buddhism are the main religions? Do you suppose that's caused any conflict? Or is religion in general less important, at least on the outer planets?

Considering how heavily Chinese culture is borrowed and mixed with Western culture, I'd have to say yes. The main religion in China (and Asia in general) is Buddhism and for the Western world it's Christianity.

Also taking into account the fact that both cultures seem to be pretty well integrated in the 'verse, I don't think it's a source of conflict. It probably was when the cultures first started to merge, but not so much now.

It mostly seems to me that religion, or more specifically which religion you practice, isn't of much importance in the 'verse. In the current social climate we're shown, survival is more important. As long as you have something that gives you enough hope to carry on another day, it doesn't really matter.

The crew of Serenity spends most of their time in space; they probably aren't as in tune with the culture. They don't seem to be a very religious bunch either, though Mal's the only one we know off who has completely lost his faith (during the series, that is).

Not so sure about the Asian people thing. I'm sure some would have shown up eventually had the series continued.

In one of the DVD commentaries they mentioned that giving some of the characters Chinese last names was to imply they might have Asian heritage even if they didn't look like it, like the Tams and there was a client Inara had named Wing. One of the girls at the bordello in "Heart of Gold" was Asian.

I was hoping someone around here could point me towards some Joss Whedon interviews, specifically pertaining to the different implications of River's instability in the series versus the movie.

Or maybe I could just ask the question here: Is River "better" after Miranda? How much "better?" Why?

The distress of the memory versus the distress of a cut up brain and how each of those would be solved is leaving me to wonder how River's doing post-BDM

Lin, maybe that explains why I don't find Shepherd a very intereting character. If you introduce a religious figure, but neither the crew nor the ragtag outlaws you normally deal with care much about religion, there's not a whole lot for him to do (barring his "mysterious past", which I guess they never got to reveal).

Pam, that explanation makes a lot of sense, although if I were an Asian or Asian-American actor, I would probably be pretty annoyed that "blending" everyone made them pretty much all Caucasian.

On a more trivial note: why is the only food on Serenity protein glop? They have enough power to hurtle through space--can't they power a freezer? What about throwing a couple of bags of beans and rice in the hold? Heck, I do pretty well on camping trips with my Coleman stove.

I'm asian american and have been an "actor" most of my life (never professional) but I wasn't bothered by this at all. I never even really thought about it actually.

As for the protein glop: I think it's a matter of food sources not really being available that deep in space and when it is available, it either costs an arm and a leg or it's not very appitizing (the dogs being cooked on the grill in Persephone anyone?)

I agree with wlfdncer re: protein glop. Joss has mentioned in the commentaries that Badger being able to afford an apple and not eat the peel and Book buying passage with a box of strawberries was meant to show that not only is fresh produce hard to come by, but it's extremely expensive as well.

I think the crew did have canned vegetables on Serenity, but I imagine it's not as good as fresh produce.

It's odd that food would be so scarce when energy is apparently so cheap. Mal can afford to take Firefly across the galaxy to take Inara to a doctor's appointment, or to pick up an odd job. At least on Earth, if you have energy, you can grow food. Come to think of it, why don't they set up a little hydroponic greenhouse on Firefly and grow their own veggies?

On the assimilation thing, I'll buy that, but it evidently only happened with Asians and not people of African descent, who seem to be well represented on all the planets.

Yeah or why don't the people on the planets do that? Or just grow them on land? There seemed to be open space on many of the planets they went to.

I had assumed that the terraformed worlds don’t have the nutrients in the soil necessary to grow all types of food. Maybe they just cant’ get the right “natural” mix yet. Although, you would think that science would advance far enough to create something that works. But, the show really wanted to point out how they basically just threw people on barely-habitable planets (all of which had problems) and let them try to survive. For me, the scarcity of fruits and vegetables certainly helps flesh out that ‘verse.

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Well we know they have horse and cow poo! That plus compost would be enough it seems. I think the writers just don't know anything about farming.

Maybe the ground on alot of the planets were just too rocky and dry, not enough rain, etc?

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a trilogy, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars -- or Blue then Green, (its been a while since I've read them) which dealt, in part, on how hard and how long it can take to terraform a planet. Even on Earth, you can't grow every crop in every area. Dealing w/ the problems involved, while important from a purely scientific perspective, might make for some pretty dull story-telling. Not to mention that if all or most of the out planets had perfect terraforming and grew all their own fresh produce, then they would be the same as the alliance worlds.

I'm not sure the cast that we have would make good vehicles to explore the scientific underpinnings of the 'Verse. We have five people with some form of higher education (Simon, Inara, Book, Wash and River) but all of their knowledge would be highly specialised, with the obvious exception of River, who is ... not an appropriate vehicle to view how terraforming works etc. etc.

I'll buy that many of the outer planets have limited water and need to get the biggest bang for their buck from crops, so no strawberries, tomatoes, or other plants that need a lot of water. But I'll stubbornly stick to the idea that Serenity could have a nice little onboard greenhouse using artificial light and water that they presumably have to store anyway (there being, as far as I know, no such thing as dried water). They could keep some tanks of tilapia, and maybe some goats or chickens. Voila, no more mound o' protein birthday cakes.

More likely, the scarcity of foodstuffs that we don't even consider luxuries is a nice way of underscoring the haves/have-nots theme. The crew may fly around in a spaceship but it's not a cushy lifestyle (except for Inara, who apparently hired a decorator, but then it's probably tax-deductible because it's job related).

Any sort of livestock in a confined space like that would reek. Chickens are especially rank; the ammonia level in a poorly ventilated henhouse will make your eyes water. Granted, there would be things they could do to alleviate that, but it'd be a lot more trouble than just tossing them some feed every day and shoveling the manure. A hen will lay up to one egg per day, assuming she's in good health, eating right, and getting plenty of sunlight. So you'd need at least a couple dozen laying hens to provide enough eggs for daily breakfast -- assuming you don't eat any of those birds for meat. There's no reason they couldn't carry plenty of dried or canned meat, though (or even have a freezer -- there's plenty of cold right outside), so I'm guessing the protein glop is simply a lot cheaper than real food sources.

They might be able to pull off some container gardening, but I don't think it'd ever provide more than the occasional treat. Take potatoes, for example. It'd take 3-4 plants, typically, to provide nine baked potatoes, and those plants would occupy a couple square feet for 2-3 months before being ready to eat. That's just for one side dish for one meal. It'd take a garden the size of the entire cargo area to really seriously provide all the veggies for that many people. Still, an herb garden, and a few plants like green beans and broccoli that keep producing for a while, would add some variety to the usual meals of glop.

It makes sense that fresh apples and strawberries would be harder to come by than vegetables. Neither one is usually propogated by seed; apples are done with grafting and strawberries by digging up plants that have multiplied by sending out runners that root down. It'd be harder to get them successfully started on a new planet than something you could take along as a bag of seed.

As the crew explored with their cleverly concealed heard of cows. They didn't seem to thrilled with the idea of keeping livestock on their ship.

And I agree with Roark that there simply isn't enough space for a hydroponics bay. Not to mentiont he fact that that ship is always so dark so I'd guess powering it with sun lights might prove a problem. And Herbs shouldn't be a problem but I'd guess they already have them. Book made reference to the fact that he could make anything edible with enough spice, so I conjectuer they already have little herb plants or herbs are cheap enough they don't need to grow their own.

As for dried meat, I'm sure that'd be in the high price range of fresh meat and this crew is always broke.

But, that wouldn't necessarily be the case if Mal didn't keep letting his conscience prevent him from actually cashing in on their jobs.

Even when they do cash in on their jobs, that money is gone as soon as they get it. The only time we saw them actually still having some cash after a job was after the Ariel heist and then they had to use all of that (minus the cost of Jayne's apples) to free Wash from Niska.

You see. That's what I'm talking about. Mal just gives away the money from the job. To free Wash. As Jayne would (probably) say, "Damn. There goes that pesky conscience. Again."

That wasn't Mal, it was Zoe trying to free her men.

One thing I found completely stupid about that episode was that when Mal and Wash were kidnapped, the merchandise they were selling, which was supposedly worth its weight in gold, was just left in the middle of the desert. Nishka didn't take it, and Zoe, Book and Jayne didn't pick it up, so thousands of credits were just wasted. And it was money that they really, really needed, especially after they had to use all the rest to pay the ransom, which, again, they didn't take back from Nishka when they broke into his space station and recaptured Mal.

Sorry about that. I was trying not to let the facts get in the way of my joke.

I always fanwanked that as, well, obviously Niska wasn't interested in the money just revenge (although rather stupid on his part), but that made the statement to the rest of them that that was EXACTLY his motive, which made him so much scarier. As for Zoe, Book and Jayne not taking it, I always fanwanked that, while Jayne probably wanted to, Zoe and Book figured it would just slow them down (look how heavy it was when Wash was carrying it and going so slow) when the priority was rescuing their men, and when they came back for it later, someone else had taken it.

And I had always fanwanked that the medicine had gone bad by the time Zoe, Janyne and Book got there. It was originally in a cooler and had been sitting out in the sun for a while by the time they got there. I hadn’t thought about Niska’s guys taking it, though. My spontaneous fanwank: Niska killed a guy once who did something on a job he wasn’t ordered to, so now all the goons just do what they are told without thinking of anything else.

Fanwanking is fun!