The Way It Is

[viridian5]

I've started watching a new anime series and innocently went to AO3 to see if there's fic. Hoo boy is there ever. A currently hot fandom, with lots of new fic appearing daily. I forgot what that's like! Don't have the urge to write for it myself though. No spark of inspiration, plus the fandom apparently has lots of other people writing anyway.

Comments

[viridian5]

Yes!

The fact that I looked forward to and had such high hopes for Firefly--a Whedon show! A show that sounded a bit like it would focus on the adventures of a Eureka Maru-type crew! Nathan Filion and Gina Torres in the cast!--made my disappointment in what I actually got worse.

I didn't really like any of the characters--at best I kind of liked Wash sometimes--and I didn't like how Mal treated the Companion character. I was also getting tired of Whedon's obligatory damaged, "crazy"/whimsical asskicking waif characters.

I didn't like how literally the show took the "Western in space" idea in a lot of the clothing, speech patterns, and furnishings. Why would people in a future like that, including a future with a lot of Chinese influence, dress and talk like they came out of a Western movie? (How randomly and arbitrarily the show threw those influences together didn't read well for me either.) Heavy wooden furniture and loose drawers and wooden chairs on a starship seemed so stupid to me. Just remember a scene in Drom's "Fear and Loathing in the Milky Way" for a good reason why.

Though when I saw the originally intended Pilot later, I realized that if that had been my introduction to the show instead of the very Western train robbery episode I might have had more patience for the show from having an idea of where it could go.

[mousebebe]

All good reasons to be annoyed, I think!

I lucked out with the first episode I saw: I forgot the timeslot the first week and missed the train episode, so I got started with "Bushwhacked," which is a lot closer in tone to the original pilot. I also didn't go in with much expectation other than "new Whedon show," which helped, too.

I'm not surprised that the character you at least kind of liked was Wash, since he's the most subversively snarky one. And yeah, River might have all the butt-kicking knowledge, but she's easily snappable at her scrawnyness. At least in Buffy Whedon handwaved the supernatural strength, to make it at least semi-plausible that this skinny teenager could defeat monsters!

In general the characters might have been better if they'd been given more time to develop. I don't know if you saw the unaired episodes at any point, but one has a little bit with Jayne getting a package from his mother that does add a little more to his otherwise basic character. I personally wish they'd have done more with Zoe; I like Gina Torres and Zoe never really got explored at all on the show, outside of being very loyal to Mal and married to Wash. I don't think they ever even officially said her last name, whether it's Washburne or not.

You've got wholehearted agreement from me on the loose items and furniture shipboard. That's not just Firefly, though. I see it EVERYWHERE on the sci-fi shows, and it drives me nuts the more I see it. I don't care how good your inertial dampeners or whatever are, one loss of artificial gravity and you just crushed a crewman underneath a falling desk, to say nothing of that priceless vase in the captain's quarters.

[viridian5]

I saw the movie but not the unaired episodes. It'd take a lot to get me to like Jayne. *g* I too wish Zoe was given more to her character than being connected to Wash and Mal, defined by her roles with them.

It is everywhere, but the Firefly's furniture looked so lethally heavy while also being so incongruous on a spaceship that it further called attention to itself.