Inara/Mal (Firefly)

[butterfly]

Title: Broken Angels (Hallelujah)
Author: butterfly
Spoilers: All television episodes of Firefly, aired and unaired. No movie spoilers.
Email: butterflydm@gmail.com
Personal Website: http://dianamichelle.5u.com

Firefly can be summed as a 'space western' and it means about as much as summing up The

Comments

[goldy_dollar]

Oh - that was utterly perfect. Thank you so much for summing up my thoughts on this pairing about a billion times more eloquently than I could.

I completely missed this pairing the first time around when it first aired on television. And that's because it's so subtle, but so very THERE once you're aware of it. The tension between them nearly kills me.

Then, in Heart of Gold Mal sleeps with a woman (not just a woman, but a 'whore') and, despite the fact that Inara sleeps with other people all the time, she can't handle that he's now doing the same. A reversal of the classic situation, where the woman is expected to be pure while the man sleeps around (with the additional complication of her sex being work).

So, so true. And that's why that's such a poignant moment for this pairing. Seriously great essay.

*runs away to rec it*

[angelfirenze]

Considering I spent most of yesterday watching Jossverse material and could not help but rewind the Mal/Inara scenes on Firefly over and over and over, this was grand justice to such a magnficently frustrating pairing. Thanks for posting it.

[elanna9]

You do a fantastic job articulating the complexities of their dynamic and why a romantic relationship between them would be problematic (even though THEY SHOULD TOTALLY JUST GO FOR IT! ;)

Thank goodness for the movie (and I wish there was more!) I really enjoyed the further evolution and I like to think they wound up together in the end.