Ship like this, be with ya 'til the day you die.
When you see this on your flist, quote Firefly.
RIVER: The sun goes dark and chaos has come again. Bits. Fluids. What am I?
SIMON: You are my beautiful sister.
RIVER: I threw up on your bed.
SIMON: ... Yep. Definitely my sister.
~ "War Stories"
I can actually participate in this meme, because - guess what - I have finally finished the entire series! And WOW. I get it now. It took a while for me to warm up to the show, honestly - I was really enjoying it but not seeing anything super-special, and then I got to "Out of Gas", and well, yeah. *loves Mal so much* And then "Ariel" and "War Stories" right afterwards, and when you put three amazing episodes in a row like that, there ain't no turning back. I cried twice, that I can remember: "Out of Gas" and "Objects In Space". And dude, I never cry at TV shows.
I thought going in that my favorite character was going to be Kaylee, but now I find it's actually a three-way tie between Mal, Jayne, and River. Firefly isn't quite on the level of My Show! (yet), but I think that's because I knew there were only 14 episodes, so somewhere in the back of my mind I was keeping my distance a bit, saying "don't fall in love cause it's not gonna last". The eps have that slightly-rough-around-the-edges first-season feel to them, which might also have something to do with it - I feel like I'd love the show more if there were more, well, show. We weren't given nearly enough time with these characters. And it makes me very sad that we never got to see what Firefly would have become, because if it was this good its first year, it would have been unbelievably amazing later on.
I need to watch the series again in order to have deep thinky thoughts. This is kind of reminding me of my Farscape experience, where I marathoned the entire series *just* in time for Peacekeeper Wars (in fact, I think I ended up finishing the last ep about 30 minutes before the mini aired). At least this time around there's a little more room to breathe before the big finish.
My favorite thing about Firefly, I think, is that not only is each character unique and interesting in his/her own way, but every character has a very specific canon relationship with almost every other character. Even in just the 14 episodes that we got, they managed to find all sorts of ways to stick various combinations of people together in a scene and see how they react to one another, which is what I really enjoy most about ensemble shows, and it's a shame that most of them don't do this as well as they should. For example, Inara isn't just stuck into the box of "Mal's love interest" where scenes with him take up the vast majority of her onscreen time; she also has clearly defined interactions with Kaylee, Simon, Book, even Jayne. I think it was heres_luck - correct me if I'm wrong - who a while back brought up the idea of a "connectivity web", where each character is represented by a point on a page and you draw lines between the points to illustrate how (if) the characters are related to one another; she made the observation that the web for most shows would look like tree branches or (in the case of a strong lead character) the inner spokes of a wheel, whereas with Firefly you've got all sorts of lines crossing each other every which way. And the series is certainly richer and more compelling because of it.
My friend Mandy is driving 4 hours to come see me this weekend so that we can go see Serenity together. Yay!
EDIT: OMG, I can't believe I forgot to pimp this. Anyone who is going to see Serenity in the theater, which should be my entire flist and if you're reading this and not planning on seeing this movie well then WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU, should go check out sdwolfpup's Super Serenity Challenge! She is giving out cool prezzies for all theatergoers!
RIVER: The sun goes dark and chaos has come again. Bits. Fluids. What am I?
SIMON: You are my beautiful sister.
RIVER: I threw up on your bed.
SIMON: ... Yep. Definitely my sister.
~ "War Stories"
I can actually participate in this meme, because - guess what - I have finally finished the entire series! And WOW. I get it now. It took a while for me to warm up to the show, honestly - I was really enjoying it but not seeing anything super-special, and then I got to "Out of Gas", and well, yeah. *loves Mal so much* And then "Ariel" and "War Stories" right afterwards, and when you put three amazing episodes in a row like that, there ain't no turning back. I cried twice, that I can remember: "Out of Gas" and "Objects In Space". And dude, I never cry at TV shows.
I thought going in that my favorite character was going to be Kaylee, but now I find it's actually a three-way tie between Mal, Jayne, and River. Firefly isn't quite on the level of My Show! (yet), but I think that's because I knew there were only 14 episodes, so somewhere in the back of my mind I was keeping my distance a bit, saying "don't fall in love cause it's not gonna last". The eps have that slightly-rough-around-the-edges first-season feel to them, which might also have something to do with it - I feel like I'd love the show more if there were more, well, show. We weren't given nearly enough time with these characters. And it makes me very sad that we never got to see what Firefly would have become, because if it was this good its first year, it would have been unbelievably amazing later on.
I need to watch the series again in order to have deep thinky thoughts. This is kind of reminding me of my Farscape experience, where I marathoned the entire series *just* in time for Peacekeeper Wars (in fact, I think I ended up finishing the last ep about 30 minutes before the mini aired). At least this time around there's a little more room to breathe before the big finish.
My favorite thing about Firefly, I think, is that not only is each character unique and interesting in his/her own way, but every character has a very specific canon relationship with almost every other character. Even in just the 14 episodes that we got, they managed to find all sorts of ways to stick various combinations of people together in a scene and see how they react to one another, which is what I really enjoy most about ensemble shows, and it's a shame that most of them don't do this as well as they should. For example, Inara isn't just stuck into the box of "Mal's love interest" where scenes with him take up the vast majority of her onscreen time; she also has clearly defined interactions with Kaylee, Simon, Book, even Jayne. I think it was heres_luck - correct me if I'm wrong - who a while back brought up the idea of a "connectivity web", where each character is represented by a point on a page and you draw lines between the points to illustrate how (if) the characters are related to one another; she made the observation that the web for most shows would look like tree branches or (in the case of a strong lead character) the inner spokes of a wheel, whereas with Firefly you've got all sorts of lines crossing each other every which way. And the series is certainly richer and more compelling because of it.
My friend Mandy is driving 4 hours to come see me this weekend so that we can go see Serenity together. Yay!
EDIT: OMG, I can't believe I forgot to pimp this. Anyone who is going to see Serenity in the theater, which should be my entire flist and if you're reading this and not planning on seeing this movie well then WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU, should go check out sdwolfpup's Super Serenity Challenge! She is giving out cool prezzies for all theatergoers!