Why Firefly is Awesome by dreamtrove

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Why Firefly is Awesome

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Sunday, January 16, 2011 11:54
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VIEWED: 1375
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Thursday, January 13, 2011 4:38 PM

I know this isn't a real world event, but I was looking at some set shots and thought "Oh yeah, right, they actually built the ship. It's not just a greenscreen CGI. That's part of why Firefly is awesome."

So, why is firefly awesome?

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Thursday, January 13, 2011 4:49 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Well, if we're doing this here, in this forum, I'll play.

Everyone's " got stories ", as Kaylee so correctly points out.

And Joss knows how to tell these stories.

Or not.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Thursday, January 13, 2011 4:56 PM

BYTEMITE

I'd say it's because they actually cared. The ship was part of it, it feels real and lived in, with a lot of attention paid to little personal touches.

Another place where they cared was trying to get the Chinese right, though unfortunately non-Chinese actors with no previous training in Chinese are going to butcher even phonetic spellings.

And the themes of the story are pretty excellent, what with Joss' interest and knowledge in conspiracy theories, and equal disdain for government and corporations.

I also think all the actors really tried to fill their roles. Some may think differently, but I found all the portrayals nuanced and believable.

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Thursday, January 13, 2011 7:17 PM

DREAMTROVE

Thanks,

Yes, I know its not a real world event, but it is a firefly forum. The music thread reminded me that I like all you guys, and we sometimes get into it on political issues, but are not really made of our political views, and we need some positive discussions to keep us sane, or before you know itl we're at each other's throats...

And this is another thing awesome about firefly: the characters do get into it and are at each others throats, even though they do really care for one another. The real world intrudes to show the insanity of jayne selling out river or mal shoving him out the airlock, and then they pull together. And if they couldn't pull together, they would really have no chance against the alliance.

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Thursday, January 13, 2011 7:36 PM

BYTEMITE

As you say, the nakama friendship/family thing in the face of adversity also resonates well with audiences. :)

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Thursday, January 13, 2011 8:23 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
And if they couldn't pull together, they would really have no chance against the alliance.

So poignant. And so true.

I'll be honest. There are people here on RWED that I don't know if I can ever forgive enough to pull together with them. And they most likely feel the same way.

Firefly is awesome for me because it portrays an anarchist world and just how difficult it is to live in it. Freedom comes with hardships, responsibilities, and many costs. Not a lot of fictional worlds capture this.

And despite its horrifying difficulties, Mal and his crew would rather live in this world than a civilized world with all the creature comforts. Never have I seen characters who resonate with me as much as these. Mal lives the way I feel on the inside.

Firefly represents my Sky.

Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
------
Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Thursday, January 13, 2011 10:23 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

My favorite thing about Firefly is the characters. 9 main characters, every one of them fascinating. I think anyone could watch the show and find one they identify with. How many shows have preachers, cowboys, whores, zombies, ninjas, doctors and spaceships? What's not to like?!

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Friday, January 14, 2011 6:55 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Sometimes the stunts on the show really impressed me.

Upon embarking on a mission to rescue Mal, Book indicates that he intends to shoot at kneecaps.

Later, he shoots a man in the knee. The man collapses forward, smacks his head on an obstruction, then bounce-rolls back to land in a heap upon the floor.

My friends and I cringed when we saw that. "Ooooh, he got it worse than anyone!"

That's a good stunt.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 7:26 AM

JONGSSTRAW

I love Firefly because of the attitude of the whole thing. It's very non-conformist, and since I do conform to the expected demands of our society, I find it to be great escapism. I love the dialogue, I also love every character on the show including guest characters. Everything and every person that ever appeared on Firefly will always be considered very special to me.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 7:27 AM

DREAMTROVE

Happy

You left out lunatics.

River is what makes firefly awesome. Tv and movies tend to have lunatic villains, or crazy heroes who are always caricatures, which is part what annoyed me about Fringe. The pain of lunacy is something rarely captured by anything, and having been through it, I really feel they nailed this one. Tara in Buffy was decently done, but not like River.

CTS

yes, I know what you mean, but I still feel I could. I think that maybe people need some threat to keep them reconciling, and keep them caring about life. Sort of why I started this thread. People get to into discussing issues over which they have know control and about which they do not no everything, no one does, and then they get into arguing, we get into arguing, about differences that really aren't all that important, but they get magnified in our minds and it becomes this sort of insanity.

So, another thing that's awesome about firefly, when people's little differences get to be almost too much to bear, then reality checks in and shows them how small those differences really are.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 7:29 AM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I love Firefly because of the attitude of the whole thing. It's very non-conformist, and since I do conform to the expected demands of our society, I find it to be great escapism. I love the dialogue of the show. I also love every character on the show including guest characters. Everything and every person that ever appeared on Firefly will always be considered very special to me.

Kaylee Frye talking about engineering with the men at the ball.

Anthony,

Yes, everything... Seems very real. They're more into making it real than making a spectacle. Spectacles are nice, but Star Trek et al have always gotten to me in one respect:

I remember years ago, we were watching star trek next gen, and some characters were going up to the bridge, through a corridor, and they'd just come off of some planet, Nd I said "where are the footprints?"

And being Trekkies they all said things like "maybe there's a little robot that cleans up after them" or "perhaps it's a special type of carpeting that nothing sticks to"

And I said, "that's not really the point, is it? It wouldn't really be like this. Spaceships would be grungy. You wouldn't being pouring all of your effort into keeping tidy on the final frontier, it would be all you could do to keep the thing running, and you not dying, and there would be mud everywhere, and blood.

It's not just the federation that's spotless, their opponents are. Klingons, romulons, everyone is tidy, orderly, they obey, they conform, and they never have disagreements that stand, different outlooks, everyone is an arm of some one world govt., they don't have independent agendas, motives and outlooks. Riker is going to view the right and wrong of a situation pretty similarly to Picard or Crusher, in fact, pretty similar to Data or Worf even.

Simon is not looking at a situation the way Mal is, or Jayne, or anyone else...

Okay, ipads autocorrect just changed "else" to "LSD"

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Friday, January 14, 2011 7:49 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
So, another thing that's awesome about firefly, when people's little differences get to be almost too much to bear, then reality checks in and shows them how small those differences really are.

I don't know. I'm a grudge-bearing bitch.

It's not about the petty differences we argue about. It is how they argue, the venom and the lies, the deliberate refusal to treat me as a decent human being....I can't forgive that.

Not forgiving doesn't mean I hate them or anything like that. But I wouldn't be able to trust them to ever work WITH them. I can't ever let people like that into my family. (And they wouldn't want to be in mine, so the feeling's mutual.)

That was what Serenity was, a family. See, I woulda never forgiven Jayne for selling out Simon and River. I'd like to see the episode where Simon and River find out what Jayne did. Would they still be a family after that? That one would be interesting, huh?

Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
------
Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 7:57 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

"See, I woulda never forgiven Jayne for selling out Simon and River. I'd like to see the episode where Simon and River find out what Jayne did. Would they still be a family after that? That one would be interesting, huh?"

They did... "....and I can kill you with my brain.."

My take?

Yep, it was a family. They were as free as they could make themselves, and did what was right.

You can't beat that.

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Friday, January 14, 2011 7:58 AM

BYTEMITE

I thought the episode Trash covered this, in an awesome way. Simon does find out, and quietly reassures Jayne he doesn't hold it against him because his "do no harm" oath is more important to him than anything else.

Very defining moment for Simon, which sets the stage for a grudging acceptance, even an almost vitriolic friendship where they intentionally get on each others nerves and have nothing good to say about each other, but in the movie, they share a drink of Jayne's whiskey in response to Mal's "aim to misbehave" speech.

Good stuff.

EDIT: Wulf got to it first, but even though River's response was very funny, I thought Simon's was the most impressive.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 8:33 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:

"I remember years ago, we were watching star trek next gen, and some characters were going up to the bridge, through a corridor, and they'd just come off of some planet, Nd I said "where are the footprints?"

And being Trekkies they all said things like "maybe there's a little robot that cleans up after them" or "perhaps it's a special type of carpeting that nothing sticks to"

And I said, "that's not really the point, is it? It wouldn't really be like this. Spaceships would be grungy. You wouldn't being pouring all of your effort into keeping tidy on the final frontier, it would be all you could do to keep the thing running, and you not dying, and there would be mud everywhere, and blood.

It's not just the federation that's spotless, their opponents are. Klingons, romulons, everyone is tidy, orderly, they obey, they conform, and they never have disagreements that stand, different outlooks, everyone is an arm of some one world govt., they don't have independent agendas, motives and outlooks. Riker is going to view the right and wrong of a situation pretty similarly to Picard or Crusher, in fact, pretty similar to Data or Worf even."

Hello,

I've never really thought of Klingon ships as being tidy. Also, Military ships (practically the only ones we see) are indeed regularly scrubbed and polished. That's military discipline. However, I think I get where you're coming from.

DS9 came closest to presenting diverse views in the normally conformist Federation. For one thing, you had civilians who disagreed with Federation. For another, you had Federation officers who defected because they disagreed with the Federation. The Federation itself was seen to be hypocritical by overlooking the vile actions of its own secret agencies. Sometimes, loyal Fed officers were forced to run illegal ops and runarounds of their own government.

You also had schisms in Ferengi culture, Cardassian culture, Bajoran culture, and Klingon culture.

However, even in Deep Space Nine, there were no dirty footprints to be found. The reason for this has less to do with idealistic views of the future, and more to do with production oversight. In Star Trek, people don't step off of a planet and onto the ship the way they do in Firefly. They get beamed up. So if you want your actor to track dirt, you have to remember to add that dirt in when you film the next scene.

The show I've seen that did the best job of depicting a deteriorating ship with deteriorating condition and a variable crew on the ragged edge of the unknown was Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined.) The Galactica started as a pristine museum ship. She ended the show being held together by mud and blood and bailing wire.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 8:49 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I thought the episode Trash covered this,...

Very defining moment for Simon,

Right! Damn, I need to watch the whole series again. Tis been years. Can't believe I forgot that!

Simon's a bigger man than I am.

Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
------
Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 9:11 PM

DREAMTROVE

Anthony

I concur on basically all points. Dr. Who was actually the first show I recall to really give the bedraggled spaceship. There are some nice derelict crafts in Farscape as well.

CTS

You'd probably be surprised at what I have forgiven, There is a very small list of people I haven't, but nothing they can do online would do it. In fact, those who tried to kill me, in reality, don't make the list. There are people I know who have actually killed people, for which I have trouble forgiving them, but I still know them, just not in the same way.

I would have easily forgiven Jayne. Especially from a River perspective, where I would know that I would need him to forgive me soon enough,

Wulf, good catch. You beat me to the punch, and everyone else.

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Sunday, January 16, 2011 11:54 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Joss. When you're right on, you're right on. The writing. The characters/actors. And the music.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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