chapotraphouse

my favorite part is how everyone speaks chinese patois/pidgin and chinese writing is everywhere but i can't think of a single asian character

Cowboy bebop is a much better space western.

I haven't watched Firefly in quite a while, but I generally agree with your criticism. I think the western-ness could have been really interesting if the show had more to say about colonialism, but it doesn't. The show makes fairly milquetoast observations about the west and does very little with them. They're just a cool backdrop to Wheadon. Sci-fi as a genre is one of the few genres I do not think normal libs are capable of writing well. Sci-fi is based in rejecting the status quo, dreaming of a new, better future. Post-modernist irony has essentially ruined lib's abilities to do this. They recognize the American war machine as awful, they recognize a million different issues in the world. But we're widely met by snarky apathy on these subjects, where what's wrong in the world is an unchangeable constant that we shouldn't exert energy fighting against. Plus, being within the imperial core takes away from their ability to even percieve persecution. They can imagine vaguely dystopian future, but can't imagine good enough backing to make the world anything more than a YA book like Divergent. All they make is a hellish world with very little resolve, with no real solutions. The lack of resolve can work, but libs generally don't like it in their stories. I could get into signifiers at this point, but I don't want to.

George Lucas is actually a good example of this. While I don't think he's a socialist, the rebellion fighters of the Star Wars universe were apparently modeled after the Vietnamese fighting American invasion. For all of the questionable implications made throughout the movies, one thing is clear. The imperialists are the bad guys, people fighting for self determination are the good guys. Even though the empire is almost an unstoppable force the rebels will pretty much never take down, Star Wars argues that fighting that hell is the resolve and it is worth it. True freedom in the Star Wars universe isn't making peace with the unstoppable force, or just arbitrarily overthrowing it with good guys. It's about fighting for your stake in the world around you. There is still a resolve here. There is still understanding of who would be on the bottom or top in the sci-fi realm

Let's compare this to what I'd call bad lib sci-fi. Divergent is fucking ASS. People are arbitrarily split into 5 groups based on a single personality trait from birth, but there are some people who have all 5 personality traits and they're DANGEROUS!!! It's arbitrary sci-fi, there's no world where this makes sense. Classes are completely arbitrary, almost ignored. Race is also ignored. In divergent, scifi becomes an aesthetic, a signifier of what it really is. It fundamentally misunderstands what sci-fi is at its heart and leans into what people think sci-fi is. I think this is why Wheadon moved onto Marvel

I don't know about Firefly I never watched it but I'll say my view of Trek also changed over the years, as I moved further left the glaring limitations and the world view portrayed by some of the writers(through some very questionable episodes) made me move from thinking TNG was FALGSC to understanding it is merely some good optimistic future based entirely on western liberal values.

The "dog whistles" people point out e.g Picard saying there is no money are just that, dog whistles at best, a full understanding of what communism actualy means would also lead to some very undesirable changes e.g

-The Earth government is just the UN and it is very much hand waved away, same with the "economy". This wasn't an issue until the whole shit with Picard series and the vineyard.

-The "military" is actualy in charge and people think its fine.

-The way the entire premise is human focused, obviously with rooted in the cold war mentality but it leads to some very silly stereotypes only DS9 realy managed to even begin to tackle properly(ferengi as more than capitalist troupe, Klingons are more than just "barbarians").

There is more but yeah what you went through isn't uncommon, for my take I still love Trek but I am very much aware of what went on behind the scenes and to be quite honest, the franchise is quite top heavy i.e a small percentage of extremely excellent episodes and a huge percentage of average to mediocre TV.

The River character and all of that creepy command-language stuff about her aged like milk, especially now that I'm aware of what a sex pest creep Whedon is.

It was an extremely "normie" friendly SciFi show that got a cult following because it ended too soon. It was in the vein of Lexx and Farscape but not a horny isekai.

I enjoyed it a lot in a recent rewatch, but it’s definitely a “brain switched off” sort of show for me. Had fun while watching, but didn’t find much of substance to sit and think about afterward. The “world building” was really just a backdrop for the characters. But I think that’s OK sometimes. The lack of Asian characters was IMO the show’s biggest flaw.

Last time I watched it i found it underwhelming.

it's good that it got cancelled, really

Great world building (aside from the garbage Confederate cosplay), but the show didn't know what to do with the setting and as a result meandered for most episodes

It would probably get canceled today for being "pro-Chinese"

I watch it like 5 years ago and really liked. No idea if it “holds up” but but I remember it being fun.

The problem with firefly is that even if it is lame now it never had a chance to be enduring because it chose a mishmash of western tropes rather than picking one western type and sticking to it.

The intro slaps. And it’s a space western, so I don’t see how it could lean too much into it.

Edit: oh yeah and the intro song fucking sucks. That was something I thought even back when I liked the show.

I never really minded it, but in any case it's got to be impossible to hate on the Firefly theme much when Enterprise using Faith of the Heart is a thing.

Its aged bad you are right but I have to point out that that kind of dialogue was a lot less grating at the time, before absolutely every movie had to sound like that

It's not just you, my preferred way to enjoy Firefly these days is to play Rimworld

space horses make sense though, they talk a bit about it in the Book of the New Sun where they still use modified animal labor in the distant future because they're self replicating

Firefly was never that good, there was just a lack of scifi TV shows at the time and people liked the quip dialog.

I forget that the term was for the sex worker class in the series, but I remember characters, some of them being friends, calling her names or using her profession as an insult.

And it's like you intentionally made this occupation a supposedly respected class, but then when somebody wants to make a cheap shot, you can use any of the misogyny Whedon finds acceptable.

I should watch it again. I'm curious how I'd perceive it now. I recall it having a very libertarian idea of space, and that mentality depends on the endless new "free" land we don't have any more of. I probably would think the characters are pretty reactionary. The core planets have that strange evil psychic experimentation with zero ethics thing and otherwise seem pretty nice, but our main characters are clinging to that as proof that civilization is fundamentally evil and that's why they prefer to hang out in the outskirts, never mind that they're run by violent crime syndicates that are always trying to double cross them and murder them.