Avast ye Reavers! Argh! by InvaderChat

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Avast ye Reavers! Argh!

POSTED BY: INVADERCHAT
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 15:16
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Tuesday, August 3, 2010 11:54 PM

Howdy fellow Browncoats.

I've been a Firefly fan for many a year now but I'm new to this site and just thought I'd say 'hey'.
I've actually been lurking around here a bit but never had much to say, infact I still don't have much to say but...whatever.

So I had a few discussion points about Firefly that I thought I'd bring up, I've read through a bit of the old stuff on here and haven't seen much discussion on them (mostly because they're very small points without much significance).
I figure if they've been discussed before this thread doubles as an introduction so it's not that big of a deal anyway ^_^

Okay so point number one, in the pilot when we first see Inara when she's discussion stuff with her client what is up with the cutting in that scene? Is it just my DVD? Because when she's speaking to the client she says something but her mouth isn't moving and she just kinda looks off to the side (sort of reminds me of OIS) and then outta nowhere he's just at the door right before he makes his stupid 'rigged clock' comment.

It's a little different on another copy I have and my DVD's are new so does anybody else know what I mean?

Point number two, are Mal and Co. taking bounty hunting jobs which somehow turn into assassinations? :O
It took me a few views before I actually realised this but the whole point of the job they're doing at the start of our Mrs. Reynolds 'The pretty floral bonnet part' is to arrest/capture that dude who's been giving the townspeople trouble. Seems an odd job to take, especially since it resulted in a shootout which Mal MUST have been expecting.

My third and final point of discussion is actually from the BDM, when we see young River in the school (arguments as to whether it's her actual past or visions of Miranda aside)she's all bored and tapping away at her touchscreen.
If you look, whether intentionally or not she is tapping away at the characters and achieving SOMETHING on there, it's probably not able to be proven either way but do you think she's just aimlessly tapping away to alieviate her boredom or is the work they are doing SO easy to her that she's actually completing problems and stuff with such little effort that THAT is making her bored?

So anyway, there's my little things that I haven't seen discussed around the place.
Good to be here ^_^

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Wednesday, August 4, 2010 12:22 AM

MICJWELCH

Welcome!

Point 1: The editing is a little strange there, actually. I think it was supposed to be uncomfortable, because the situation for Inara was also uncomfortable.

2: It's not the only time they take a job as "hired guns." That's what Inara's excuse for calling them in the movie was. I don't think it was as bounty hunters in that episode. It was just to stop the guys from robbing their supplies.

3: I'll bet she was doing something. River may well be autistic, or adhd, or something similar. Typical classroom settings are boring when you think differently than others (I should know). I think it also shows her frustration, as she knows the whole thing is just a dream anyway.

Again, welcome. We're glad to have you here.

"Always be yourself. Unless You suck." - Joss Whedon

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Wednesday, August 4, 2010 4:29 AM

PENNAUSAMIKE

That's about it.

Point 1: The editing was meant to show Inara's thoughts as a contrast to the sunny reality of her words.
Joss has commented that it wasn't received well; an artsy-fartsy camera trick that fell a little flat.

Point 2: Heart of Gold is another "job" that is guaranteed to end in death and bloodshed.
It's a hard world, and part of what they do.

Point 3: River appears to be doing two things at her desk at once. The implication is that she is a high functioning genius. This is a continuance of the concept presented in the series, where she corrected Simon's spelling since she was three years old and noted that the conclusion in his math book was "fallacious".

The world of Firefly is incredibly rich and textured for 14 hours worth of material presented on a tight budget.

Mike

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Wednesday, August 4, 2010 5:06 AM

BYTEMITE

1) Part of the cutting in that scene is to try to show the difference between Inara's real emotions and her mask. It's an attempt to so that inside, when she's talking about when she lived on Sihnon and smiling, that inwardly she's feeling some kind of sadness or weariness or both. It does make the scene feel disjointed, and in later scenes with Inara and her clients, Joss abandons the idea for something more fluid, which is more in keeping with her character.

2) That's a good point. I wouldn't call them bounty hunters in particular because that suggests they try to capture people and bring them in to an authority for money. Mal doesn't necessarily have any misgivings about giving people up to the law, as in the pilot episode, when he asked for a reward for Simon, but it's also probably not his preferred option unless someone is really annoying him or he has no other choice.

A hired gun can have two senses, the first is the ambush/break-in style assassination job (OMR), and the second is just someone to fight for you (Heart of Gold, the movie). In the webcomic The Other Half, they're hired to escort the transfer of a guy with sensitive information in critical medical condition presumably between hospitals, and have to cross some territory with a Reaver presence (some kind of outpost?). Inevitably they're attacked, and they function again in the capacity of a hired gun there.

3) I think she's just doing the future version of browsing the internet because she's bored by the class (Alliance Propaganda and History 101, answer the questions right or you'll spend the next year explaining yourself to a Loyalty Assessment Panel). That's a personal portable cortex terminal she has, possibly the one Gabriel Tam bought SImon, passed down to her. It could be on the coreworlds there's very little loading time, and she's just flicking through webpages as they come up. Specifically, I seem to remember she's looking at brief descriptions of various planets. I can't remember is Miranda if one of them, hidden in the dream/memory as an artifact of what she knows, but it wouldn't surprise me.

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Wednesday, August 4, 2010 3:16 PM

INVADERCHAT

Thanks for the welcome MICJWELCH, feels good to be part of a community like this one.
Honestly, it's so great that even after all this time there's still people willing to discuss random little pieces of information from this show...you'd think someone would notice.

Anyhow, you guys have pretty much come to the same conclusions I had.
I wasn't entirely convinced the editing in Inara's scene was wrong, simply odd.
And if *I* think editing is odd then it has to be pretty darn weird since I'm usually pretty cool with the artsy-pants stuff.

I think the idea that we're meant to feel uncomfortable because that is how Inara feels is an interesting idea, I sure did feel pretty uncomfortable.
It also makes sense that she simply isn't saying what she's thinking, which is the impression I got with her kinda rolled eyes glance off to the side, I guess even when looking for a good spirit in the screening process you can still end up with a dork.

Ah yes I suppose you're right, I didn't really mean 'bounty hunters' in its literal sense, just the fact that the whole cargo transport thing was just a trap to get that guy either in jail or dead but I suppose now that you mention HoG it isn't that far off of their normal job path.

It's just that in HoG it was kinda for Inara and required a little more on-screen convincing, I guess this guy didn't have a laser pistol.
Additionally, his trade jobs 'never go smooth' and tend to result in shootouts anyway, makes me wander why he doesn't do shooty jobs more often.

It's a little strange to me that Mal doesn't mind handing people over to the feds, I guess on-world law enforcement is a little different but you'd think he'd go out of his way to avoid giving ANYTHING to the purple bellies, I guess he just does it to maintain decent relations in each situation so he doesn't get nabbed.

Scanning the cortex makes a LOT more sense than what I thought it was, I thought it was like a touchscreen keyboard using chinese characters and that she was either tapping aimlessly away at random characters or typing really fast 'cause she's a super genius kid.
And honestly...don't get me started on the education system...

Speaking of HoG though, am I the only one who was all WtF at Inara's crying over Mal's little fling?
Okay, Inara is a companion who has sex with many many people, men and women and is apparently 'puritanical' about the whole thing, but Mal, who she has stated she won't 'service' and who she certainly isn't making romantic allowances for isn't allowed to sleep with ANYONE without her breaking down?
I suppose it makes sense that even if sex isn't a super meaningful thing to her, if it is to Mal or if she thinks it is then it would be heartbreaking or whatever but...yes.

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