Complete Joss Freaks and Geeks - illuminate the Shiny by liminalosity

BUFFYVERSE

Complete Joss Freaks and Geeks - illuminate the Shiny

POSTED BY: LIMINALOSITY
UPDATED: Friday, February 3, 2006 12:00
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Friday, February 3, 2006 12:00 PM

Ok, it's everywhere. Shiny. I didn't recognize it until I had seen too much to remember many of the specific instances, but Joss threads 'shiny' through all the shows. This has been driving me nuts for months, and now that I've seen the last of Joss, I'd like to have a go at this with help from all of you.

I just watched the end of Angel last night. Spike gives a read of a reworking of the poem for Cecily, and it's even in the poem from the bloody romantic: effulgent (adj. Shining brilliantly).
"My soul is wrapped in harsh repose,
midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,
but soft...behold!
A sunlight beam
cutting a swath of glimmering gleam.
My heart expands,
'tis grown a bulge in it,
inspired by your beauty...
effulgent."

Besides the blatant use of shiny in FF and Serenity, Buffy says it in the season 6 ep 'Older and Far Away' about the sword dropped by the demon in the teaser...
(lifted from a transcript)
She gets up and sees the sword.
BUFFY: Ooh, shiny.
She smiles, pulls the sword out of the ground and twirls it around. Walks off, holding it.

In the Angel ep with the introduction of the purple caped would-be superhero millionaire, Cordelia says it about the purple cape.

I'm positive Giles says it in an ep, though I can't dredge it out of my memory, and I'm sure there are other examples from other Buffyverse characters. Please use your enormous brains ebullient with Joss facts and fun to come up with a list of all examples of 'shiny' in Joss scripts, including FF and Serenity. I'm looking for exact quotes and context.

I would also like to hear your thoughts on intricacies of meaning in shiny, because Joss always plays an octave beyond obvious, and there's plenty of obvious. Shiny is implied in 'Firefly' in the definition below with the word 'spark'. Cecily's rejection of Wm after his recitation of the bloody awful poem leads him out the door and smack into Angel, Darla and Dru (I enjoy the restating of this flashback from other perspectives), which results in Spike being turned, which eventually results in the shiny of Spike saving the world a lot. And then there's Joss' use of the reworked poem at the very end of all of it, when Spike is shiny.

Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!
Aztecs used the term firefly metaphorically, meaning a spark of knowledge in a world of ignorance or darkness.

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