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Originally posted by Terri:
I think that maybe he saved it up from the war, whose to say the Independents didn't recieve a stipend.

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Originally posted by Terri:
I feel like Serenity is something that happened to Mal not by accident, but she was waiting for him. His whole life he's been wanting to get to the sky. His life on the ranch was lovely, but he most certainly looked to the sky.

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Originally posted by GrayFury:
He worked on his mothers ranch before the war, maybe she passed and he sold it (Before Shadow became uninhabitable) Or maybe the Government made a settlement with the people displaced by the event that undid the Terraforming on Shadow.

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Originally posted by PhoenixRose:

Speaking of mechanics, has anyone ever wondered how Bester was able to get Serenity running again when he didn't seem to know that much about the engine?

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...You sure we never get to see this fanfic?...

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Originally posted by zoid:

PhoenixRose replied, in part:

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...You sure we never get to see this fanfic?...

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Yeah, unfortunately, I am pretty sure. It's only half-finished at 70-some pages right now, and I haven't added anything to it in going on four months. I'm pitiable, really. This is why I'm not an author. I can't finish anything. "Plans that either come to nought, or half a page of scribbled lines."

Besides, I explore other things -- like how Mal and Zoe became 'entangled' during the war -- that many would probably have a hard time believing or accepting. Briefly, and to wit, Zoe was a samurai trained in the 'Way of the Gun' for the Alliance, when Mal found her, and rescued her from a group of would-be Independent rapists. She was the sole survivor of her unit, and her leader is killed by Mal himself. (NB: I've got the actual Japanese words that mean 'hereditary liege lord', as well as 'way of the gun' in the fic). She sees herself as a ronin, fit only to die, but latches on to Mal as her new 'leader for life', because he has (through sheer luck, as usual) defeated her warrior lord and is a man of honor, an embodiment of her own warrior code.

See? That's gotta go against everyone's grain...

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Originally posted by PhoenixRose:

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Originally posted by GrayFury:
He worked on his mothers ranch before the war, maybe she passed and he sold it (Before Shadow became uninhabitable) Or maybe the Government made a settlement with the people displaced by the event that undid the Terraforming on Shadow.

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it says that the whole world was fried in the war.

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...However it would go against canon, since she started out a Browncoat in the 57th overlanders platoon and was the only one to survive other than Mal...

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Originally posted by Cybersnark:
It's also possible (going back to the original topic) that Zoe's own money was needed to finance the ship. If she and Mal pooled their finances, it could easily explain the purchase and the crew salaries.

Note how strongly Mal was "selling" Serenity in OoG. Zoe implies that he's the one who paid money for it, but he points out the crew requirements --maybe Mal could afford the ship, but Zoe needs to pay for restoration and a crew, at least until their jobs start paying off.

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We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Originally posted by PhoenixRose:
Wow, zoid that... that... Wow.
You sure we never get to see this fanfic? Because you've got some great theories as to how things went down.
As for the Companions being canon, I believe they are. The "Brief History of the Universe" that I drew from above was written by the man himself, there's an interview with him as well, and all scripts are in their original form, exactly as the writers wrote them. The Firefly Companion doesn't have some of those tasty details, like a history of our BDHs written by Joss, but it has costume details written by the actual costume and prop people, and interviews with the actors, and again the scripts as they were written.
Short answer: Yes.


Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without. - Gautama Siddharta

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There is no time period given, from what I remember, just the fact that Mal's home was destroyed. And Zoe never said she was raised on a ship.
Must read that story, must have time...

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WASH
And this beautiful baby of ours, you
don't mine that it's going to grow up
on a spaceship?

ZOE
Worked fine for me.

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Originally posted by zoid:
I figured all those little moons, given Earth normal gravity, as Zoe says in the pilot, entailed the application of an artificial gravity generator. Similar to the one Serenity uses, but on a planetary scale.

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Then, I further surmised, "What would happen on say, Earth's Moon, if such a generator were switched off and the Moon's natural 1/16th G was instantaneously returned?" Answer: The Earth normal atmosphere -- at Earth normal pressure -- would leap away from the satellite's surface like a coke bottle shaken and then uncapped, and uproot everything from vegetation and its topsoil, to a significant amount of surface water, to the majority of manmade structures, as though sucked away by an enormous shop-vac.

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So, there's your destruction of Shadow. Not one warhead fired. Simply an executive override of the gravity generator from an orbiting cruiser-cum-administrative office, and poof!, everything bigger than a burrowing rodent dead. In fact, if you wanted to minimize the damage so you could reuse the planet without losing several hundred years of terraforming work: Turn off the generator for only an hour or two, then turn it back on.

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Sudden reduction of gravity to hold a "sea" to the planetary body, in addition to the sudden removal of atmospheric pressure to push down on its surface (think 'surface tension'), might cause it to appear to "boil", even though it might not actually boil as a result of tremendous heat of any kind, but rather as a reaction to a sudden lessening of the weight of air pushing down on it.

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So, is the Visual Companion canon? Or is it like KRAD's novelization, which Joss said was more a work of Keith's own speculative imaginings than anything Whedon actually had in mind? Still, I've got to get me one. I wonder if they sell them at Borders...

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As one further illustration: The liquids in the human body are kept there with the significant assistance of atmospheric pressure. If one suddenly finds oneself in the near-total 'vacuum' of outer space without a pressure suit, your blood and other bodily juices will appear to boil out of your unprotected skin and eyes. Same thing with a "sea", with its containing atmospheric pressure removed.

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You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get a very bad sunburn.

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Briefly, and to wit, Zoe was a samurai trained in the 'Way of the Gun' for the Alliance, when Mal found her, and rescued her from a group of would-be Independent rapists. She was the sole survivor of her unit, and her leader is killed by Mal himself. (NB: I've got the actual Japanese words that mean 'hereditary liege lord', as well as 'way of the gun' in the fic). She sees herself as a ronin, fit only to die, but latches on to Mal as her new 'leader for life', because he has (through sheer luck, as usual) defeated her warrior lord and is a man of honor, an embodiment of her own warrior code.

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Originally posted by PaganPaul:

BTW, liquid water exposed to vacume will boil away at any temperature, so your reference to "boil the sea" makes perfect sense.

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Originally posted by zoid:
since there are no everyday circumstances in which such a hypothesis could be tested.

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Lastly, like I said above, although I never read or heard it anywhere, I always sorta presumed Zoe was career military, and a military brat. Which would mean that she had to be former Alliance, like her daddy (and mommy?). While non-Core Worlds might have militia, most of these wouldn't amount to much more than a glorified fire brigade. Who would they defend their home soil against? Hostile natives? Well, there weren't any. Roving bands of criminals? That'd be a job for police; you might need the occasional posse, but never a standing army.

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