4/24/2023 Question of the day

[petrea_mitchell]

Yup, I forgot to do this yesterday.

Firefly Day: Not the insect but the short lived TV programme! Were you a fan of Firefly or did it pass you by? If you have no interest in it have you ever seen a real Firefly?

I am not a fan of Firefly. I remember it being a big thing in sf fandom, but every time someone tried to explain to me why it was cool, I got pushed further away. First it was a space western, which, meh, not into westerns. Then I heard it was set in an Asian-dominated future, which did sound cool except now, like a million other people, I was wondering why this show about an Asian future was so full of white people. Then someone explained that the main characters had been on the losing side of a civil war, and had turned outlaw to keep fighting the powers that be, which if we're talking about a setting harking back to the Wild West... would make them... the KKK?? Again, this was from an enthusiastic fan! (Well, the description was, not the part working out the implications of the analogy.)

Anyway, I did eventually watch the movie, Serenity, because I'd seen most of the other movies on the Hugo finalist lists that year and figured I'd watch it too so I could vote in that category. I thought the set designs were nice. IIRC my top vote went to Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which is still one of the best movies Aardman Animation has ever made.

I've never seen a real-life firefly.

Comments

[delosharriman]

Fireflies (lightning bugs if you prefer) are something I definitely remember from my childhood in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. Seeing them anymore is rare, which I'm inclined to blame on urban sprawl, Tru-Green Chemlawn, and the clearing of the windbreaks planted after the Dust Bowl, as that horror recedes into memory (people are astonishingly apt to convince themselves, not merely that what has not happened in their lifetimes cannot happen now, but that what has not happened since breakfast yesterday can never happen again). In part, however, it must be because I avoid going outdoors during the evenings in summer, on account of being excessively sensitive to mosquito bites.

As far as the show… Joss Whedon seems to have a knack for putting interesting characters into interesting settings, and then treating them badly. I don't mean in the what is the worst thing I can do to this character right now? way that some writers have of moving the action along, but in the sense of not allowing them any resolution to their stories, or of whipsawing them with sudden nonsensical changes of characterization, and like that.