Firefly Fic: WAITING FOR U-DAY (PG)

[executrix]

Malcolm Reynolds is a violent man, and he knows it. When he was just a kid, Shepherd Pogrebin preached that Calsayo was nothing more than a brawl with uniforms on, and it was impious that so-called good Christians would flock to watch a debased gladiatorial spectacle instead of coming to Prayer Meeting. And Mal didn't disagree. On the other hand,

Comments

[ana_grrl]

Ohh, I really like this! Great Mal insights (and I love that he almost-but-not-quite-but-maybe enjoyed most of the war.

because everything she owes him is one of the strands of silk in the spiderweb of his own belief that he's a good man

And this works for me so much - we all tell ourselves stories about who we are, and I love the idea that Mal uses Zoe to shore up some of those stories.

Of Comfort and Despair

[executrix]

Thank you, ana-grrl!

It's not just Mal, but clearly there wouldn't be so many wars if so many people didn't get a kick out of them. Mal has an extraordinary number of angels sitting on his shoulders whispering into his ear. I very much think of Jayne as his bad angel; in the martial sphere, Zoe is his good one (as well as representing a more positive fraction of his anima than Inara does).

Re: Of Comfort and Despair

[razycrandomgirl]

Zoe is his good one (as well as representing a more positive fraction of his anima than Inara does).

Ha! thanks for saying!

Re: Of Comfort and Despair

[executrix]

Mal&Zoe has to be one of the all-time great friendships in a TV series, but to me it reads very non-sexually. Hey, there are lot less Mal/Zoe shippers than Starsky/Hutch or Napoleon/Illya shippers even though those are *also* all-time great TV series friendships.

I think Mal really likes both Zoe and Kaylee, and is comfortable with them in a way that he never can be with Inara. (During TV series timeline, River is just too weird for Mal to be comfortable with her.)

I don't see him as broadly misogynistic (he doesn't seem to hate Patience any worse than anybody else who screws him over on a deal, f'rex) but there *is* a problem when a person is compelled either to behave horribly to someone he's in love with, or OTOH to fall in love with somebody he has a compulsion to behave horribly to.

[alinewrites]

I saw my first two eps of Firefly on Scifi France on Saturday and liked it. I'm not a fan but... I really love your fic -you captured what I understood of the characters quite well, especially Mal, who looks indeed like a very violent man. Thanks for sharing it.

[executrix]

alinewrites: thank you. I'm curious about which order they ran them in--in the US, they appeared in a bizarre order with the pilot episode *last*.
Mal *volunteers* the statement that hitting a man with a closed fist is impractical but "occasionally hi-larious," and of course he could find someplace a little quieter to be every U-Day.

[alinewrites]

I think it's being broadcast in the right order - I'll have to check though.
This fic was the first I read in Firefly - wait... I read a crossover, once - B7/Firefly and loved it. I never found it again. Maybe it was one of yours?

[executrix]

I would say that the odds of any B7/Firefly fic being written by me, although not overwhelming, are high.

[beccaelizabeth]

This is good.

[executrix]

thanks, beccaelizabeth. A lot of what I find intriguing about Firefly is that it's not at all clear whether Mal will be a good man when he grows up; it's sort of a moral Superbowl, where the teams are very closely matched.

[vilakins]

I like Mal's takes on everyone, esepcially this one:

River sits mostly in the back row of the chessboard

[executrix]

merci, vilakins.

River is the objective of the game, and also the most powerful piece, but by and large the game is played around her.

Re: awww.

[executrix]

kormantic: of course, he also tries not to get hurt by the ones he loves.