Firefly meta and shoes
Aug. 16th, 2005 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieWhoa, three episodes in a row with dancing in them. Yay Firefly! And one of them had Viennese Waltz! With poofy dresses! (Kaylee was so cute in that episode, in a "I'm twelve for a day!" sort of way. I get such a kick out of seeing Jewel Staite in this role after her turn as the Heidi-Ho.) Props to Summer Glau for being able to pirouette in combat boots in "Safe."
I think I'm definitely able to call myself a Firefly fan now, but probably still not to the level of some of you folks. I think it's because while the quality of pretty much all the aspects is similar to my two favorite series, Farscape and BSG, the...hmmm...the whole underlying principle, I guess I'll call it, is completely opposite. When I say this, I mean that FS and BSG continually kept/keep me guessing about what's going to happen, and when they're really going full blast, each act contains several new surprises I would never have forseen. Firefly, on the other hand, is on some level very predictable, but it tells stories in such a way that to not come to those expected conclusions would feel wrong. To take an example fresh in my mind, let's use "Jaynestown." I knew what was going to happen around every corner in the story--Inara would teach the magistrate's that sex doesn't make a man; Jayne would show his true colors to the town; Mal would tell Jayne that they hadn't made him a hero because they deserved it, but because they needed a hero and he was in the right place at the right time; the magistrate's son would disable the landlock on Serenity and tell his father that he'd done it because now he was a man--but that was okay, because there wasn't really another way that the story could have gone, at least not while being in keeping with the overall structure and style of the show. And this isn't a bad thing at all. The familiarity is part of what makes it so appealing (along with great characterization, wonderful acting, and really funny dialogue).
To use an analogy I'm sure John Sheppard would appreciate, FS and BSG are those giant freaking roller coasters that turn you upside down and hurtle you downhill at speeds high enough to escape Earth's gravity, while Firefly is more of a Ferris Wheel--slow and not so scary, but it gives you time to appreciate the view from above. [1] But in the end, the roller coaster is what's going to get the number one spot in my personal hierarchy of TV...which I'm sure you all care about so much, so I'm going to stop babbling right now. Consider my meta quotient for the month fulfilled. *g*
[1] This isn't to say that all three of the shows I've mentioned, especially Farscape, don't have elements of both of these styles of storytelling in them, because they do. Just that they have more of one type or the other.
(P.S. I hope none of that sounded condescending to really dedicated Firefly fans. I don't mean it to! Different strokes for different folks and all that...more power to FF fans!)
*
In a completely different vein, I got new shoes today! I'm still unable to find any boots to replace my beloved, discontinued model that got slightly bogalicious on Dartmoor, and while this is distressing, it isn't critical until January. I do have some leather shoes that will keep me out of small snowfalls and some uber-furry snow boots that I could wear if things got really bad, so I have another five months or so to find some.
ANYWAY, I got some tennis shoes for the first time in about three years. They're light blue and white, and they have sparklies! Wheee!
(Yes, I'm way too excited about the sparklies. Shut up. They're shiny!)
Look at the pretty!
And K-Mart was having a mega-uber-fantastic clearance on shoes, so I picked up some brown suede shoes for $3. They'll probably fall apart in a couple months, but for three bucks, how can you say no?
I think I'm definitely able to call myself a Firefly fan now, but probably still not to the level of some of you folks. I think it's because while the quality of pretty much all the aspects is similar to my two favorite series, Farscape and BSG, the...hmmm...the whole underlying principle, I guess I'll call it, is completely opposite. When I say this, I mean that FS and BSG continually kept/keep me guessing about what's going to happen, and when they're really going full blast, each act contains several new surprises I would never have forseen. Firefly, on the other hand, is on some level very predictable, but it tells stories in such a way that to not come to those expected conclusions would feel wrong. To take an example fresh in my mind, let's use "Jaynestown." I knew what was going to happen around every corner in the story--Inara would teach the magistrate's that sex doesn't make a man; Jayne would show his true colors to the town; Mal would tell Jayne that they hadn't made him a hero because they deserved it, but because they needed a hero and he was in the right place at the right time; the magistrate's son would disable the landlock on Serenity and tell his father that he'd done it because now he was a man--but that was okay, because there wasn't really another way that the story could have gone, at least not while being in keeping with the overall structure and style of the show. And this isn't a bad thing at all. The familiarity is part of what makes it so appealing (along with great characterization, wonderful acting, and really funny dialogue).
To use an analogy I'm sure John Sheppard would appreciate, FS and BSG are those giant freaking roller coasters that turn you upside down and hurtle you downhill at speeds high enough to escape Earth's gravity, while Firefly is more of a Ferris Wheel--slow and not so scary, but it gives you time to appreciate the view from above. [1] But in the end, the roller coaster is what's going to get the number one spot in my personal hierarchy of TV...which I'm sure you all care about so much, so I'm going to stop babbling right now. Consider my meta quotient for the month fulfilled. *g*
[1] This isn't to say that all three of the shows I've mentioned, especially Farscape, don't have elements of both of these styles of storytelling in them, because they do. Just that they have more of one type or the other.
(P.S. I hope none of that sounded condescending to really dedicated Firefly fans. I don't mean it to! Different strokes for different folks and all that...more power to FF fans!)
*
In a completely different vein, I got new shoes today! I'm still unable to find any boots to replace my beloved, discontinued model that got slightly bogalicious on Dartmoor, and while this is distressing, it isn't critical until January. I do have some leather shoes that will keep me out of small snowfalls and some uber-furry snow boots that I could wear if things got really bad, so I have another five months or so to find some.
ANYWAY, I got some tennis shoes for the first time in about three years. They're light blue and white, and they have sparklies! Wheee!
(Yes, I'm way too excited about the sparklies. Shut up. They're shiny!)
Look at the pretty!
And K-Mart was having a mega-uber-fantastic clearance on shoes, so I picked up some brown suede shoes for $3. They'll probably fall apart in a couple months, but for three bucks, how can you say no?
no subject
Date: 2005-08-18 04:59 am (UTC)You have a very valid point there. *g*
That is a really good point. Firefly does a lot by the book, although I suspect that would have changed if the show had more time to grow.
After watching "Ariel," I can see that. Jayne in that one really shocked me, although in retrospect, his actions shouldn't have been that surprising.
There are very few episodes that have plot twists that are at all surprising (and even those times you knew something was going to happen), but it's always leading somewhere, both in terms of the episode's story and the larger story. That's the joy of the show for me, knowing that it was all going somewhere (and while we didn't get to see where it was supposed to lead, we at least end at a nice rest stop along the way).
Would it be really spoilerific (for episodes after "Ariel") if you elaborated on this larger story? At the moment, I can see how the Simon/River stuff is leading to something huge, but I'm rather lost on how the others fit in.
But being enough of a Joss fan to know the rhythm his shows fall into, I wouldn't have been shocked if I had started to be shocked more often as time went on. Which, actually, that's kind of how Farscape played it really early on as well...
Yeah, the first eight or so episodes were sort of formuliac, definitely. I think "DNA Mad Scientist" was where FS really made its turning point, and I was thinking throughout most of "Ariel" that that was FF's version of that episode. (Although I like DNA MS better because D'Argo's shilquin piece at the end, and Zhaan's and Rygel's lack of any kind of recognition of what they'd done, seemed less pat and predictable than Jayne's apology at the end. And with Farscape, I felt like I learned more about the characters in that episode than I did about the FF characters--we knew that if anyone would turn the Tams in, it would be Jayne, and again, the ending seemed a little done before, in that same predictable-but-comfortably familiar way I mentioned in the post.)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-18 05:09 am (UTC)I have no clue what the larger story was (the show ended before it got very far into it at all), although I do know enough of the elements of it to know that it existed. Somehow Book, the blue glove guys, and Blue Sun (the corporation that you can see ads for in various background shots throughout the series) all play a large role somehow. I don't know how much of it if any carries through due to the switch to the big screen, and I don't know what any of it actually meant in the first place. But what was filmed really just feels like set-up to something much bigger.
As for Simon and River... there's more on that. And it seems to be the basis for Serenity.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-18 11:45 pm (UTC)Ah, okay. I was thinking it had something to do with the blue-gloved guys, Book, and the Tams, but I didn't know if there'd been any indication of where the others came in aside from transportation.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-19 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-19 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-18 04:55 pm (UTC)As is clear from the previews and surmised by Nick, Simon & River's story goes big, big places in the film. And it kicks butt.
The Hands of Blue show up in the comic book series bridging the series and the film...the final issue isn't out yet, so even I don't know quite how much their plot is advanced or resolved, but it's excellent stuff in any case.
As for the Blue Sun Corporation, there's a lot of fan speculation that we know more than we realize...that they may be connected to the Hands (in fact, I think one of the writers hints at that in some of the DVD extras), that they're also somehow in on or contracted for or controlling the government program River came out of...notice the shirt Jayne's wearing in Ariel when River cuts on him, turning blue to red!
There's also a definite mystery around Book which I'm sure you've noticed, and while the film doesn't get at this one directly, there have been a) vague hints from Joss that it might play into the next film and b) some VERY interesting fan theories that the movie may have subtly told us a lot more than we realized at first about the preacher man. (I can't say more than that 'til you've seen it, but trust me, it's brilliant. The theory, I mean. Well, the movie too...)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-18 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-19 03:55 am (UTC)