In 2517 AD, Captain âMalâ Reynolds and his crew of the firefly-class starship Serenity bounce around the Galaxy that is filled with terraformed planets making a living anyway they can (including picking up passengers who bring them more excitement than they bargained for) and avoiding Reavers (cannibalistic mutants) and the Alliance, who Mal and his second-in-command fought against and lost in the civil war between the core planets and the outer planets. (Firefly, TV)
yet again im back on my bullshit so... (gazes with mixed feelings at the TV show Firefly) i could fix him.
my extremely long thoughts about my Own Personal Good Version of Firefly (with plenty of spoilers for the show and the movie) under the cut:
things that are getting axed first thing no question:
out with the whole âletâs add in a thin veneer of Chinese cultural aesthetics out of context for ~flavor~â deal. just no.
instead, letâs hire some actors from a bunch of different cultures and work with them to figure out how their characters would bring those cultures into space with them!! and also hopefully bring some experiences with immigration/alienation/travel into it, since the Whole Core of Firefly is about how humanity always brings our doomed and silly and stubborn and unique warmth with us even into the cold void where nothing is familiar or homey in the slightest.
letâs respect our sex worker character shall we?
i do appreciate that Inaraâs work as a companion is described as legitimate and well respected in the show. however please stop having your captain and hero call her a wh*re every five seconds against her clearly expressed wishes and portraying this as just a totally acceptable thing
letâs be more respectful of our characters of color and also have some more diversity, shall we?
others have put it better than me but yeah, the way Zoe and Book are treated is very uncomfy, and the rest of the show is depressingly monochromatic. come on letâs do better.
stop the weird confederacy hat tips
again others have pointed these out with much more thoroughness than I could, but the names of some characters and locations, as well as some of the language used to describe the browncoats, has uncomfortably confederate vibes. instead i propose we very Clearly tip our hats to the Alliance equaling space capitalism instead! you canât go wrong with space capitalism as a villain.
listen i love River Tam with my whole heart. but you should absolutely not portray your only character with psychosis as violent because of that psychosis!!!!!!! and yeah, a huge part of her character is that her brain got fucked up by the alliance and so she hallucinates and is also a super ninja. but like. she doesnât need to be a super ninja for her character to work, okay? the crew does not need to be scared of her for her character to work, okay??? more on this later bc it would take a lot of care and nuance to make her character work but i really think it can be done
things we are absolutely keeping:
found family tropes my fucking beloved
this should be self evident. this is why the show is as appealing as it is despite its flaws, at least in my eyes.
malcolm reynolds, the knight in dusty armor
thereâs something so appealing to me about what Mal stands for. because at his core is this ridiculous, silly, stubborn, doomed devotion to what he thinks is important and right, a romantic idealism thinly covered by cynical cowboy platitudes that he thinks make his bleeding heart totally invisible. and he is so obvious and entirely incorrect. bless. this is a man who will do anything for his family, who charges into swordfights to defend his friend from a man who wants to turn her into an object despite having no clue how to hold a sword. at his worst, he starts brawls in bars just for the martyrâs thrill of being persecuted for supporting the right; at his best, he inspires downright religious belief from his crew because he represents a romantic and chivalrous and doomed dedication to the right thing over any practical concerns. and then he throws a âselfishâ quip over it with 100% confidence that everyone fell for his clever distraction and believes him to be a dirtbag. heâs oblivious and ridiculous and god he makes me want to be a better person because heâs just so goddamned sincere. stupid, but sincere. 10/10 himbo. <3
Mal and Inara ultraslowburn friends to enemies to friends to lovers to enemies to friends to lovers to friends to...
thereâs nothing i love more than a ship thatâs just two people who know each other way too well, and theyâre each the only one who knows the other well enough to call them out on their bullshit. the way Mal and Inara interact in the show sometimes makes me uncomfy but like. the core of their relationship has to stay.
space western aesthetic
i need the cows on a spaceship scene to stay like i need air okay
that sweet sweet religious shit
mal, who lost his faith in gd and a whole lot else during the war. who lost his faith in himself, and now feels he has to hide the part of him that still wants to be good, because he knows he canât be anymore, and he feels like itâs embarrassing for a guy like him to want something so unattainable. who takes a preacher on board, and the preacher has lost something, too. the preacher has his own past, and his own questions. but not questions like the observant neurodivergent girl, the one who wants to interact with and understand this thing thatâs so important to him, but it just doesnât click with how her brain works and she feels like something needs to be fixed, either the Bible or herself. and Mal takes care of them all, and slowly, he begins to find gd again, not in a prayer but in humanity. humanity doesnât need to be fixed, like the alliance thinks. the shining imperfect strawberry sweetness of it in his familyâs smiles is something to be worshiped and served and devoted to. and he finds he has something to believe in again. (and his crew find that heâs given them someone to believe in, too. and maybe suddenly heâs a saint.)
and finally, my brilliant ideas as to what i would like to add:
TRANS WOMAN KAYLEE RIGHTS
listen her femininity is so important to me okay? itâs so thrilled about everything thatâs pretty, from dresses to the spaceshipâs electric innards, and itâs so non-traditional and grease stained until itâs not and itâs pink and ruffly and twirly, and she never sees any of it as a contradiction, because none of it contradicts, itâs all just her! her gender is warmth and love and prettiness, feeling pretty and appreciating the pretty and making her friendsâ days pretty too.
i want us to find out sheâs trans in that episode with the ball, and i want us to find out alongside Mal who just never asked or never realized. Kaylee gasps and squeals at the dress in the shop window and Mal makes an off handed, ill considered comment, and then... someone yanks him aside and hisses a few very significant words in his ear. and suddenly he remembers what the blue white and pink she painted all over the engine room means, and he knows he has something to make right. so he buys her that dress himself and lets her know just how pretty she looks, and when he walks into that ball with her displayed on his arm like something precious, he looks the proudest out of any man there. and she notices. for a few seconds, of course, until thereâs chocolate, and ânara, and a chandelierâand some horrible girls, but sheâs used to that, untilâsuddenly, she finds her people. a group of old men who light up when she jokes about compression coils and whack presumptuous boys who ask her to dance. they adopt her as a treasured granddaughter, and Mal is beaming at her like a proud dad, and she finds that one of her new elderly friends gazes a little too long at her bracelet, and so she gives it to xem and teaches xem a few new words, and... itâs a good day, huh? itâs a really good day. (of course, then the captain has to go and punch somebody in the face, but it was a real nice party up until then.)
also she and Simon are both transhet t4t im correct and you know it
time for a better River Tam
the first thing weâve established is that this version of her is not unpredictably violent and the crew is not scared of her!!!! it makes no sense to take a kid whoâs primarily brilliant, experiment on her brain, give her telepathic powers....... and tack on the fact that she also has super strength and speed and dexterity and what not, AND say that they programmed her to be super violent. no! no. not only is that extremely harmful rep, thatâs also just stupid.
instead!! my version of River is in fact not terrifying to the crew, but is actually the one they feel safest around. River has always been totally blunt, she was one of those kids you could tell realllllly early was autistic, and she doesnât like being disengenous at all. so you can always trust her to tell the truth and not play weird passive aggressive games or have any hidden agenda, which makes her just a really chill person to be around. also, one of her longtime special interests is music and dance, so whether or not sheâs nonverbal on a given day, there will always be some sort of beautiful sound when sheâs around. she does have the singing voice of a dying crow unfortunately but thatâs ok bc Simonâs is even worse and theyâre both incredibly competitive so youâll at least get free entertainment out of the affair.
my version of River does have psychosis and hallucinations because of the trauma of the experiments, and they are really troubling to her. she and Simon work together to find ways to cope and meds that help, and itâs a process, but there are some things that help.
the only thing she gained from the academy was the ability to hear peopleâs thoughts and sense the future a little bit. and yeah, that led to her picking up a few spooky secrets at the beginning, which, yikes. and for a while, it was hard to figure out which voices were real and which were hallucinations. but around her friends, she always feels safe to ask âdid you just think about triple cheese burritos or was that just a me thing?â, and theyâll always tell her the truth no matter how embarrassing their thoughts are, bc itâs important to all of them to respect her and help her sort accurately through whatâs reality and whatâs not. and bit by bit, she gets better and better at figuring out what kinds of things tend to be telepathy and what kinds of things tend to be psychosis, and that each one feels a little different. and because of the trust and respect and support of her found family sheâs able to do that in a safe environment!!!
trans man Simon rights
listen i wanted to keep him as just a side note on Kayleeâs list but he is my son and heâs important to my heart so here goes
out on the outer rim where Kayleeâs from, gender ainât much of a big deal, thereâs an individualistic quality to life out there, and so if the trail you blaze is the trail of a woman or a man or neither or both, thatâs respected even in the rare cases where itâs not outright encouraged. but in the inner planets, where competition and connections and public faces and family names are everything, you have to be whatâs expected of you to survive. you canât change your brand, you canât be anything other than what your family planned for you since before you were born, itâs incredibly hard to survive in such a hyper competitive environment, and so your very identity becomes just a tool in how to market yourself for better success.
needless to say Simon (just as autistic as his little sister and also very trans) fuckin hated it there. but he was very good at it. correction: he was very good at his very specific field of STEM, good enough to where people stopped talking about how cute he looked in bows and started talking about how impressive his work was from a very young age. and his work had no gender. he could be whatever he wanted to in equations. so that was where he could express himself, and gd, he got so much praise for it, he never wanted to stop.
not until he discovered that his sister needed him, and ran away, and needed a disguise, and realized... suddenly, every stifling rule and prying eye was a million miles away. he was freefloating, freefalling, with none of the charted paths heâd been following all his life... so you know what? fuck it. heâs always enjoyed the name Simon. and since itâs not on any legal records, itâll make him just that much more untraceable.
and on Serenity, starting over with new people who never knew him before his transition feels like an unbelievable blessing that just dropped right into his lap. he has to keep up the secrecy, he has to make sure they never find out who he used to be, because gd, itâs so nice when they look at him and say his name right, and he doesnât know if he can handle losing that, not when itâs so new and so important to the person heâs finally becoming. but then one day, the unthinkable happens, the wanted posters for his arrest have an old name on them, theyâre looking for the Tam sisters, and... nothing changes. the crew of Serenity could not give even a tenth of a percent of a fuck, and it doesnât seem like they even know theyâre supposed to. huh. thatâs new. Simon could get used to that, he thinks.
iâm sure thereâs more i could add, but itâs 4:30 in the morning now, so if more occurs to me, ill simply add it in a reblog tomorrow. if youâve read down this far, i am in love with you. please let me know your Better Firefly ideas, too, bc im always down to yell about this show!!!
Mal: That rather shiny 09-K33 Weston Class? Alas, no. You see the forlorn object facing it and thereby providing it with a rather grim memento mori? That's Serenity.
Monty: Yes, that's what I meant, the 03-K64-Firefly transport.
Simon: Oh, yes. That's it.
Monty: Fantastic. I didn't realize there were any of those still flying.
Simon: Well, there aren't many.
Mal: And those there are barely do.
Simon: That's very impressive, though. Not many people know what it is.
Mal: Most people have to stop and think before saying 'spacecraft.'
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