In which she watched Firefly a couple of months ago

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 08:53:18 GMT

Firefly gave me something to do during the early weeks of the quake, but I never got around to telling the world my view on it.

My view is simply this:

It could have been quite a decent show if they'd removed all the men and replaced them with some actual plots.

I could probably be convinced to let Wash stay if he was given some characterisation.

(Also I was convinced that Kaylee and Mal were married until about halfway through "Our Mrs Reynolds". Kaylee's lack of jealousy was awesome but polygamy didn't seem to fit the world so I kept wondering why Mal didn't just explain to the woman that he's sorry, this marriage she insists happened is actually invalid because he's already married. It's only the fact that this simple excuse never occurred to him which made it slowly dawn on me that I'd apparently invented the whole Kaylee/Mal thing based solely on the fact that nothing else explained why she seemed to like him.)

Moreover the attempt at portraying a Chinese-dominant society came across as an unimaginative xenophobe's worst nightmare, to wit: "Oh noes, if the Chinese take over the world then occasionally we might get some hanzi subtitling the English signage!!!!11eleventy!" Much has been said about this aspect by people better equipped to say it than me. But. I mean. Honestly, my more-English-than-England hometown is more Chinese than the world of Firefly.

So the best part of Firefly/Serenity, in my opinion, is the fanvids. And with that I segue smoothly into:

Three fanvids about words
(This was going to be "three fanvids about words from shows I've never watched, except I only had two of them, and while I waited to come across a third I watched Firefly. Also the third one I came across was from Star Trek, which I had watched. Also technically I've seen bits of episodes of SGA too. So I just gave up on that part.)

Verb (Star Trek Reboot) by lapillus
Nice fun educational fluff. --I feel the need to clarify that 'fluff' isn't a bad thing, it's just not narratively or thematically deep, and that's okay because it's fun. And also in this case educational!

Language (Stargate:Atlantis) by newkidfan
I know who the people are, more or less, but not what's happening, and it doesn't matter a bit. The silence this speaks about is almost tangible. It makes me hold my breath straining to hear what isn't actually in an auditory mode. And that tension is held throughout, never resolved.

Sequence (Firefly/Serenity) by Lim [warning for some strobe effect]
Again I knew a bit about River Tam before watching, but nothing about the plot, and this vid worked just as well for me before I'd seen the series as after. And again, oh, the tension. It's coloured differently than that in Language but the shape is very much the same.

comments

Zeborah

In which she watched Firefly a couple of months ago