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Has anybody (other than me, in that one rant) ever done any meta on Firefly as Space Western, or Mal and his crew as a futuristic Jesse James/Robin Hood parallel (well, they’re much closer to the Younger gang and co. than Robin Hood, but you could make a case for Book as Friar Tuck on the basis of both being vaguely connected to religion), or Browncoats as Confederate analogs, or, you know, any meta at all about anything other than Inara’s occupation or the lack of Asian characters? (yes, I know some’s been done about River, but mostly it’s Inara-the-Companion and Not-enough-diversity).
Or was I the only Old West fangirl who ever watched that show?
And now for something completely different…
Spaceships=Submarines
Because I'm a military history fangirl as well.
As I watched Down Periscope the other day (comedy with Kelsey Grammar, set on a submarine), I began pondering the tropes of the “submarine movie.” Run Silent, Run Deep, Up Periscope, The Hunt For Red October, etc. all share a two major elements in common (well, for one thing, all the ones I named are based on books, but I’ve read those books, and they fit right into all the same genre conventions as the films). And most space ship-oriented sci-fi (Star Trek, Firefly, Old School Battlestar Galactica…) shares them as well.
Trope #1: Hiding/The Sonar Ping
Every submarine flick I’ve ever seen has contained a scene in which the submarine must hide from enemy subs/destroyers/aircraft/whatever, and tries to avoid being detected by enemy sonar. Everyone must be very quiet, the engines must be shut off, the instruments must be shut down, and (inevitably) the background music disappears so that the theater is just as silent as the inside of the submarine… an oppressive silence, tense with anticipation. Even if you know nothing about submarines, I bet you know what sonar pings sound like, and how a repetitive little beeping noise can quickly become the Ev0l Ping of OMG Doom!
Most spaceships, Star Trek and otherwise, are dependant upon “sensors” of some kind to locate other ships; in the blackness of space, as in the bottom of the ocean, you can’t just go out on deck with binoculars (they also have to navigate using instruments, without any visual landmarks, but all ships do that, not just submarines). Hiding from or sneaking up on one’s enemies undetected is a common theme; the Romulans have cloaking devices, while the Red October had specially designed screws with a much smaller noise signature, while the Serenity had to shut off all her instruments in order to sneak through the Reaver fleet (with, notably, a total absence of background music, a dead silent crew, and creepy Reaver sounds coming over the radio).
Then there’s the “dive” alarm and it’s suspicious resemblance to Star Trek’s “red alert.”
Trope #2: She Canna Take it Any Longer, Captain!
Decades (well, only about two decades, but my point stands) before Scotty was warning Kirk that the Enterprise couldn’t handle some particular speed/maneuver/whatever, submarine stories were milking the “the structural integrity of the hull is threatened” plot device for all it was worth. It doesn’t show up as heavily in newer movies with nuclear submarines, but almost every film set on an old-school diesel sub features a scene wherein the submarine must dive to a depth where the water pressure is higher than the submarine was really designed for. Again, everyone goes silent, listening to the ship creak and groan, and, in extreme cases, watching the deck bend. Will the hull hold, or will itbreach, exposing the crew to hard vacuum crumple like an empty soda can, letting the water in and drowning everyone?
Spaceships, in some ways, are sci-fi’s version of submarines: a confined setting, aboard a vessel that is often almost another character, with only the thickness of the hull standing between the crew and certain death, and with a limited supply of resources (most importantly: oxygen). A spaceship’s “life support” is a submarine’s air supply, and while the Enterprise and the Serenity don’t have to surface to refill their air tanks, they are vulnerable in that they’re dependant upon machinery (so easily damaged or sabotaged by Romulans) that makes it possible for people to breathe rather than choking on carbon dioxide or hard vacuum.
It’s not a perfect analogy—the Galactica, for example, is a sort of cross between a sub and an aircraft carrier, with its own squadron of space fighter pilots (and the original series fighters looked an awful lot like Vietnam-era fighter planes), and the Enterprise is more like submarine crossed with a ship-of-the-line, complete with landing parties and jolly boats (though it also has the classic submarine weapon: torpedoes). The Millennium Falcon is as much an 18th or 19th century smuggler’s ship as anything else, and its gun platforms look suspiciously like naval deck guns, but there are still enough similarities to give space opera and sub movies a similar feel.
And now that I’ve thought up all of that, it strikes me that a WWII submarine would make for a great Firefly AU. The Pacific fleet in the 1930s was the naval equivalent of the middle of nowhere, where people spent months at sea, their only contact with civilization places like Shanghai and Hawaii, becoming steadily morecrazy eccentric. Mal’s too young to have been in WWI, so… his previous command went down with almost all hands in a horrible accident he feels could have been prevented (metal fatigue, or something), or possibly his previous ship was destroyed at Pearl Harbor, and he’s scarred and embittered. Wash is his eccentric helmsman. Jayne, well, Jayne would be that big enlisted guy that keeps getting arrested by the shore patrol, but who can work a Thompson submachine gun like nobody’s business (maybe he’s a marine they somehow randomly ended up with). Inara is a nurse they picked up in Hong Kong, Book is some kind of intelligence officer, Simon and River are on the run from Nazis, who want to use River’s psychic talents for evil… Zoe and Kaylee would require some rule bending (let’s say this is some sort of alternate history where they put women on submarines in the 1930s and 40s), but “Executive Officer” and “Engine room guy/girl” are both classic submarine movie rolls.
Niska is an evil White Russian who runs the black market in Shanghai. The Alliance are the Nazis and the Japanese. The Reavers are pirates. Or maybe they’re the Japanese. The Bataan Death March is the sort of thing Reavers would really enjoy. Anyway, it would be really nifty, and the Serenity would make a great old-enough-that-she-should-be-decomissioned-but-there’s-a-war-on-so-we-need-every-vessel-we-can-get submarine.
And there’d be lots of Asian characters, then. Mostly bad guys, but, hey, Asian!
Or was I the only Old West fangirl who ever watched that show?
And now for something completely different…
Spaceships=Submarines
Because I'm a military history fangirl as well.
As I watched Down Periscope the other day (comedy with Kelsey Grammar, set on a submarine), I began pondering the tropes of the “submarine movie.” Run Silent, Run Deep, Up Periscope, The Hunt For Red October, etc. all share a two major elements in common (well, for one thing, all the ones I named are based on books, but I’ve read those books, and they fit right into all the same genre conventions as the films). And most space ship-oriented sci-fi (Star Trek, Firefly, Old School Battlestar Galactica…) shares them as well.
Trope #1: Hiding/The Sonar Ping
Every submarine flick I’ve ever seen has contained a scene in which the submarine must hide from enemy subs/destroyers/aircraft/whatever, and tries to avoid being detected by enemy sonar. Everyone must be very quiet, the engines must be shut off, the instruments must be shut down, and (inevitably) the background music disappears so that the theater is just as silent as the inside of the submarine… an oppressive silence, tense with anticipation. Even if you know nothing about submarines, I bet you know what sonar pings sound like, and how a repetitive little beeping noise can quickly become the Ev0l Ping of OMG Doom!
Most spaceships, Star Trek and otherwise, are dependant upon “sensors” of some kind to locate other ships; in the blackness of space, as in the bottom of the ocean, you can’t just go out on deck with binoculars (they also have to navigate using instruments, without any visual landmarks, but all ships do that, not just submarines). Hiding from or sneaking up on one’s enemies undetected is a common theme; the Romulans have cloaking devices, while the Red October had specially designed screws with a much smaller noise signature, while the Serenity had to shut off all her instruments in order to sneak through the Reaver fleet (with, notably, a total absence of background music, a dead silent crew, and creepy Reaver sounds coming over the radio).
Then there’s the “dive” alarm and it’s suspicious resemblance to Star Trek’s “red alert.”
Trope #2: She Canna Take it Any Longer, Captain!
Decades (well, only about two decades, but my point stands) before Scotty was warning Kirk that the Enterprise couldn’t handle some particular speed/maneuver/whatever, submarine stories were milking the “the structural integrity of the hull is threatened” plot device for all it was worth. It doesn’t show up as heavily in newer movies with nuclear submarines, but almost every film set on an old-school diesel sub features a scene wherein the submarine must dive to a depth where the water pressure is higher than the submarine was really designed for. Again, everyone goes silent, listening to the ship creak and groan, and, in extreme cases, watching the deck bend. Will the hull hold, or will it
Spaceships, in some ways, are sci-fi’s version of submarines: a confined setting, aboard a vessel that is often almost another character, with only the thickness of the hull standing between the crew and certain death, and with a limited supply of resources (most importantly: oxygen). A spaceship’s “life support” is a submarine’s air supply, and while the Enterprise and the Serenity don’t have to surface to refill their air tanks, they are vulnerable in that they’re dependant upon machinery (so easily damaged or sabotaged by Romulans) that makes it possible for people to breathe rather than choking on carbon dioxide or hard vacuum.
It’s not a perfect analogy—the Galactica, for example, is a sort of cross between a sub and an aircraft carrier, with its own squadron of space fighter pilots (and the original series fighters looked an awful lot like Vietnam-era fighter planes), and the Enterprise is more like submarine crossed with a ship-of-the-line, complete with landing parties and jolly boats (though it also has the classic submarine weapon: torpedoes). The Millennium Falcon is as much an 18th or 19th century smuggler’s ship as anything else, and its gun platforms look suspiciously like naval deck guns, but there are still enough similarities to give space opera and sub movies a similar feel.
And now that I’ve thought up all of that, it strikes me that a WWII submarine would make for a great Firefly AU. The Pacific fleet in the 1930s was the naval equivalent of the middle of nowhere, where people spent months at sea, their only contact with civilization places like Shanghai and Hawaii, becoming steadily more
Niska is an evil White Russian who runs the black market in Shanghai. The Alliance are the Nazis and the Japanese. The Reavers are pirates. Or maybe they’re the Japanese. The Bataan Death March is the sort of thing Reavers would really enjoy. Anyway, it would be really nifty, and the Serenity would make a great old-enough-that-she-should-be-decomissioned-but-there’s-a-war-on-so-we-need-every-vessel-we-can-get submarine.
From:
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That said, if you ever write a Serenity sub AU, I would cheer you on madly and rec it to all my friends! So few of my fandoms have any FUN AUs.
From:
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This is understandable, as swords are generally agreed to be much sexier than rifles (Sharpe notwithstanding).
I doubt I'll ever get around to a Firefly submarine AU, since I've got three fics set in the old west still in the works, an original novel about 18th century smugglers that I really need to finish, a half-done James Bond threesome fic, and several fic ideas still sitting on the back burner for when I finish those (two more Old West ones and a X-Men fic).
The Three Musketeers AU fic where they go fight in the Thirty Years War and meet Captain Alatriste has a slightly higher chance of ever being written, since that one could actually be publishable (well, if Alatriste's serial numbers are filed off, since he belongs to Arturo Perez-Reverte).
From:
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because if it's of the "it's OK, she's not REALLY a whore" type then I'm staying OUT of Firefly fandom even though I love the seriesFrom:
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My personal take on it is that she's Firefly's version of Miss Kitty (you know, to Mal's Sheriff Mat Dillon). Or Josephine to Mal's Wyatt. The whole "soiled dove" archetype is as much a part of Westerns as the "strong and silent hero" and the "shoot-out at high noon."
From:
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You know, this is one of the things that really annoys me in fandom (not just the Firefly one). There seem to be so many people ready to root for murderers, thieves, smugglers and spies (yes, Firefly crew, I'm looking at you - most of you anyway) no questions asked, but just because someone happens to be OMG!a prostitute! that fact has to be argued away before anyone can admit to liking them?
I personally feel such people have their heads screwed on wrong. Or at least a really peculiar double standard wherein cheating someone out of his money is OK but taking it in return for sex is not.
*subsides into grumbling*
From:
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I'm betting there's an element of "prostitution oppresses women, so liking someone associated with it makes me a bad feminist" in there, as well as some "I will resent this character on principle, as she's clearly fanservice for male viewers."
Of course, there's also a healthy helping of "nice girls don't have sex drives," too. Witness all the wank in HP fandom over Ginny Weasley being "a skanky ho" for having dated multiple guys. (As if most non-geek people didn't go through multiple boyfriends/girlfriends in high school).