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My Firefly Essays (fandom ditties)

by X. Ho Yen
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A Different Spin on the Firefly Characters (08 May 2006)

In this article I aim to misbehave. I intend to push you to the edge of your comfort zone in terms of how you view the Firefly characters.

Now, I love Kaylee as much as anyone. I identify with Mal and River as much as anyone. Inara and Wash fascinate me, too. And Zoe, Jayne, Simon and Book fill the same roles for me as they do for you. At least to first order.

We’ve all heard lovely articles about how Kaylee is innocent and emotionally honest, how Zoe’s sense of duty can allow her to...do the job...and to protect the crew even after losing her beloved husband. Simon’s nobility, Mal’s fierce love for his created family euphemistically called his crew, and so on. Sure. Absolutely. I do not disagree. We’ve heard a lot about why we love these people and how they love each other, and rightly so.

But to me the beauty of these characters is that they’re not as simple as that. They’re clear, but they’re not transparent. They’re comforting, but also challenging – they break stereotypes. To first order, we see overt and covert love and bonding. Let me share some of the second order aspects that I see and love about these characters.

Simon

To first order, Simon is a very noble character. Noble as a grape, as Jayne said. But what of the flip side of Simon? No, I’m not talking about how he keeps Kaylee at arms’ length, I’m talking about Simon the Conformist, Simon the Collaborator. Recall Barbara Youngbauer’s superb article on slavery in the ‘Verse as we move forward with this bit of iconoclasm.

Before River’s life was co-opted, Simon was a good little rich boy who found a comfortable way to protect his conscience and still make embarrassingly large stacks of money among society’s elite (i.e. the rich and powerful). He willingly participated in sake-fueled rites of passage into what we would call the good ole boys’ network. Remember that painted plate that Kaylee considered buying him? Remember how his snobbery came out when he saw it?

Now, do we really believe that Mr. Tam washed dishes and did housework? Do we really believe that Mrs. Tam services the family hovercar? Mmmm, not so much. No, the Tams very likely had their own servants, perhaps even indentured servants or maybe even, yes, maybe even slaves. So when I call the pre-rescue Simon a “good little rich boy” I want you to understand my full meaning. Simon was fully complicit in an unjust and stratified class-driven society. He was not a rich beatnik, writing novels about worker repression or creating starkly compassionate paintings of the underclass that would make the Camersons turn red, or bring any sort of pause to Magistrate Higgins’ lifestyle. He did not refuse to wear clothing made in 1 credit a day foreign sweatshops. He did not stand and fight with the underclass for their basic human rights, using his wealth and power to at least try to influence society for the better. No, until he entered a black zone in pursuit of his sister, he had apparently never performed a single non-conformist act in his life.

And while onboard Serenity we do not see Simon abandoning that world in his heart, instead we see him clinging to it. He has even told Kaylee that if things were different, he’d go right back to that life.

So. Noble Simon, eh? Hmmm...maybe not so much.

Jayne

I’ve heard fans refer to Jayne as the least dimensional of the characters, but I disagree. Personally, I find Zoe to be the least dimensional of the characters, but let’s forget about that for a now. What about Jayne? Is he really just a dumb mercenary with a smidgeon of humanity that sometimes shows itself?

Let’s look at Jayne in a hopeful light. He is not a Jubal Early. His Reavers speech in Serenity clarifies that he’s not a rapist and does not kill arbitrarily or for fun.

Jayne is not some disenfranchised hardcore criminal, either, despite his reppin’ out as a stone killer. That reputation building is likely intentional with Jayne, and very necessary in his line of work, but remember his parents? Yes, Jayne’s parents. He mentions during a game of horseshoes that his father taught him anyone who can’t find a job ain’t lookin’ hard enough. At a skyplex he gets a package and a letter from his mother who has knitted him an adorably dorky lookin’ hat and keeps him up to date on how damp his sister’s lungs are.

So Jayne keeps in touch with at least one of his parents and doesn’t speak ill of them. Jayne is somebody’s “good son”. We don’t usually think of him in that light. But whose fault is that?

If Jayne really were a stone killer psycho mercenary, would he have joined Mal’s crew? We see him shoot his current boss and hold a gun to his bunkmate in order to finalize a deal with Mal and Zoe, but did such a deal only represent better pay for Jayne? I submit that it represented much more than that. It represented a way out of the crappy, totally amoral watch-your-back life he had been living. Jayne recognized the difference between Mal and Zoe and the crew he was running with at the time. After all, Mal was selling Jayne on the idea superficially based on money but there was more to it, Mal was representing a life to Jayne, painting a picture of a life where the boss treats his crew better than he has to. I won’t harp on this any more, but if you think further about it, I’m sure you’ll see the decision facing Jayne at that moment. Stay in a truly crappy dog-eat-dog existence where one must be inhuman to survive, or climb onto a ship where the crew are treated like human beings and you don’t have to sleep with one eye open among your own crew.

Sure, Jayne is crude and mercenary, but he wasn’t born into money like some people. Maybe he was being a good son and following his father’s advice when he fell into that line of work, which fits his physical characteristics and lack of schooling. And of course he’s just plain used to it, he knows little else, but he’s willing to explore. Deep down he doesn’t love that life, including the killing, it’s just a job and he’s used to it. And deep down, Jayne doesn’t want to be thought of as a low down dirty deceiver, as we saw after the hospital job on Ariel.

Jayne really enjoyed being loved and revered by the mudders, and he openly expressed a sense of responsibility about the whole thing. Among the mudders Jayne resembled a big teddy bear more than a stone killer mercenary. And it wasn’t just celebrity that he was enjoying, he was genuinely happy that the mudders stuck it to the man. Who can forget his joy at learning they had a riot in his name, against the Magistrate?

And then there’s the aftermath of the Ariel heist. Would Jayne have asked Mal to make up a story about his death after the Ariel heist if he were nothing but a stone cold mercenary? Of course not.

I find myself wondering if some of the coin Jayne insists he needs finds its way back to his father, mother and sister. Is Jayne a good son, out there doing what has to be done to provide for his family? Now that’s a different spin on Jayne. Cunning, dontcha think?

I think Jayne represents an entire class of people in the ‘Verse who, because of people like the Tams and Magistrate Higgins, continue to be given harsh, unjust choices as to how they must compromise their morals and ethics in order to survive. This is a condition we can see all around us here on Earth that was, if we look and allow ourselves to see.

Jayne one dimensional? Mmmm...maybe not so much.

Kaylee

Just a few words about our dear, sweet Kaylee. Did you ever notice through all that love for Kaylee that she’s a slut? Now I’m all for physical love, don’t get me wrong, but really, Kaylee would probably sleep with anyone who’s available. You know? I mean, she seemed pretty ready to have a go with Tracey, didn’t she? When she and River are playing Jacks after the Jubal Early affair we see her apparently telling River about some boy she’d indiscriminately had sex with and how her daddy whupped her for it. She’s all over Simon, who happens to be literally the only guy in the world. And she did, ahem, have Bester in the engine room, didn’t she? (And I might add that moments later she stole his job right out from under him, or at least made him look the fool, unfazed even as he stood there and objected – it seems safe to say that she didn’t... love the guy) Yes, my friends, our dear, sweet Kaylee is a loose woman, a slut. If she likes him, she’ll have him.

Granted, Kaylee had not yet broken through Simon’s propriety by the time Tracey showed up, and she owed Simon nothing, but it seems to me it sure didn’t take long for her switch gears and start thinkin’ about Tracey that way. I think what was more on her mind at that time was how long it had been since anything not run on batteries had been twixt her nethers.

Now, we’re typically trained to think badly of loose women, to consider them not lovable so much as...dangerous in various ways. By recognizing Kaylee’s other side we’re forced to examine our own cultural training and traditions, and we love Kaylee all the more for being so honest that it’s physical.

Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not being puritanical about sex, I actually love the idea of Kaylee being a loose woman, ahem, but I point out that most of the time people don’t talk about this other honestly open aspect of Kaylee while we’re all gushin’ about her sweetness. Am I lyin’? Mmmm....not so much.

Back to Simon

Now that I’ve annoyed all you Simon lovers out there by bringing him down, I’m gonna misbehave further and bring him back up. Yes, Simon is a conformist, but he, like Jayne, doesn’t really know any other way to be. He carries his culture with him, as we all do, no matter how independent and self-made we fool ourselves into believing we are. Just like people on the other side of the ‘Verse, we are just as much a product of our culture as they are, as Simon is, at least to first order. Can we truly hold it against Simon that he holds onto propriety? Nnnooo. I mean, would we prefer that Simon adopt the kind of life that Jayne has struggled to escape? Would it really be better if Simon threw propriety to the wind and took Kaylee in a manly fashion the first time she expressed interest in him? Of course not. Was Simon a conformist? Sure he was. But his bold and astonishing act of sedition against the Alliance on so important a matter makes up for his weakness in childhood. When the time came for Simon to stand up and courageously be a non-conformist, he made serious sacrifices and put a huge wrench in the inhuman Alliance machinations, on a grand scale. Even someone as coddled and conformist as Simon can be a responsible and heroic human being if he adds love and courage to his wealth and power. And that’s the power of the Simon character.

Hopefully I’ve given you a glimpse into how I personally experience the depth and unspoken potentials of the Firefly characters. This is why I love these characters. Not just because they’ve bonded in ways that we all relate to, but also because they’re not perfect, just like us, but their imperfections don’t close the door on their humanity, just as we all would like to believe that our imperfections don’t close the door on our humanity.

A Different Spin on Book (06 May 2006)

In this article I aim to misbehave. I intend to push you to the edge of your comfort zone in terms of how you view Shepherd Book, mostly because I intend to push myself to that edge and take you with me.

(before I get going, let me just state for the record that I’m not a big forum user, and I haven’t read a single piece of Firefly fan fiction, so everything in this article comes from my own thoughts, and any resemblance to other works is purely coincidental)

Okay, now, as I’ve often said, art should be disturbing, challenging. Art should not just be about aesthetics, it should make us think, and the best art does. Now, I’m as sentimental about our big damn Firefly characters as anyone, but let’s be truthsome. It cheats the creators of Firefly and us fans to claim that it’s all just about the happy bonding side of things. I think I can safely say that we all love these characters because there’s more to them than meets the eye, and to talk about created family and bonding and sweetness and light and leave it at that is just too antiseptic and frankly not nearly as interesting as really digging into the potentially disturbing stuff. So let’s push on this.

Book should not be judged by his cover. To say he’s a strong man, a man of god, the ship’s conscience, and so forth is all reasonably accurate to first order, but there’s room for more. To be sure, that’s his cover, that’s how he presents himself and it seems to be what he’d like to believe he has become. But let’s skip past that well-established first order and focus on several key glimpses into the unseen life of Shepherd Book, glimpses that we usually just put into the “it adds mystery” category.

Until today, I had interpreted Book’s “I’ve been out of the world a spell” line to mean years, possibly many years, like a decade, maybe even more. When he breaks down in front of Inara after Dobson is shot down on Whitefall and they finally escape from the Reavers, we see a man who really does appear to be in crisis, emotional crisis, crisis of faith, that sort of thing. It seems to support a first order impression that yes, he’s become just an innocent Shepherd once again having to face the nitty gritty of real life. But as I dig deeper I’m finding that I just can’t believe that any more. And that means some of the face that Book presents to our crew, and therefore to us, may be a lie.

First, note that we always see Book in excellent, tip-top physical condition. Okay, it’s easy enough to imagine monks staying in shape, but only certain kinds of monks, and usually bowing, kneeling and gardening type conditioning. And remember how handily he disarmed and knocked out Dobson, an armed lawman half his age? Clearly he knows unarmed combat techniques, and he’s fresh with them, not rusty at all.

He took three really hard hits to the head with a metal object and yet he gets up and walks to the cargo bay, and later when he’s talking with Inara he sort of shrugs the whole thing off, saying “it’s not that bad”. Anyone who’s ever taken a hard knock on the head by a piece of metal knows that it stays with you for a while. And three of them? You have to be toughened up to take that and shrug it off, and even monks who are in good shape are not toughened up unless they happen to be Shaolin Monks (i.e. Kung Fu practitioners). Granted, we also see pasty white Simon get hit in the face three times during this episode and shrug it off, so it’s possible that we’re just talking about tv-show exaggerated machismo, but Simon’s three hits are not the same as Book’s three hits. I do not recommend that you test this at home, but those who have experience in rough and tumble physical situations will know what I mean.

Book’s ident card gets him special medical treatment at the nearest Alliance cruiser. We get the distinct impression that Book might have some special ties to the Alliance.

When Saffron first sabotages Serenity we’re shown Book’s inexplicable knowledge of the chop shop underworld and their use of EM nets. Does Book know about this stuff because he used to be a Fed? Couple this with the ident card incident and it becomes very easy to assume that Book used to work for the Alliance. But what if he used to be a criminal, instead? What if his time at the Southdown Abbey represents his life in a witness protection program?

When the catalyzer on the port compression coil blows, we’re shown only one crew member on the verge of breakdown in the face of their collective demise, and that was Book (yes, Kaylee was shaken, but she was not teary-eyed). What could that mean? I think it represents further evidence that Book has not been a Shepherd for very long, and possibly has not been a christian for very long, by the time of this episode. Of all people, an experienced Shepherd would have been rock solid under those conditions. Their belief system is all about being happy about their afterlife. This particular so-called Shepherd is found huddled over his Bible, teary-eyed and admittedly frightened, so it can’t be claimed that he’s weeping about the fate of the heathen crew. It’s almost an unbelievable sight, and yet we tend not to push on things like this because we have so little solid factual evidence about Book, we usually just make heavy use of that “it’s a mystery” bin. Isn’t that an interesting bit of metaphor? Book is almost a god figure in that sense – we have no evidence of his true nature, so we tend to form a belief about him and stick to it. But I digress.

At the kidnapping site, we’re shown Book’s not only detailed but fairly current knowledge of esoteric weaponry. Now, the following analysis is a bit lengthy but stick with me here.

Remember when he rattled off the exact model of sniper rifle he thought had been used? Knowledge of esoteric weaponry doesn’t lean us one way or the other regarding a past with the Alliance or a criminal past. It’s his mention of the exact model of sniper rifle that I find interesting. I get the impression that in our real world, such weapons have deployed lifetimes on the order of several decades before they’re replaced by something better. With nothing else to go on, let’s assume it works about the same in the ‘Verse.

So, assuming the writers know exactly what they’re doing with Book’s words on such matters, which seems like a good assumption, why would Book bother to mention the exact model of the rifle? If he’s been out of the world for long enough that an older model might not be in use, why specify such a model number and reveal the time frame in which he used to be familiar with such things without providing much value to the analysis? Could it have been a slip up? I don’t know about you, but one doesn’t slip up when talking about technical stuff, it’s just too unwieldy and doesn’t flow off your tongue. When you talk about a 54R sniper rifle, you have plenty of mental time to stop yourself and cut out the “54R” part, and just say “sniper rifle”, especially if you’ve been out of the world for “a spell”. In other words, if Book’s whole Shepherd shtick were just a recent disguise, one might argue that by sheer habit he might spout out this kind of analysis data. But do we really believe that?

Book’s behavior in general really does support the belief that he has been studying at the Abbey for some period of time and really is trying to be a Shepherd, or at least a christian. So it just doesn’t seem plausible that spouting field military analysis data could still be so habitual with him that he’d just spit this data out, unless he’s also a master actor, a master spy, but that seems even less plausible. So why would it really matter which exact type of sniper rifle was used? The only thing I can think of is that certain kinds of sniper rifles are used by the Alliance and certain kinds are used by the criminal element. By specifying the model, Book is helping to narrow down the possibilities of who took Mal and Wash. In this case, since we know it was Niska’s people, presumably that means the 54R sniper rifle is one that’s typically used by the criminal underworld.

Would that necessarily suggest that this model of rifle is old? Hell no. It seems safe to say that Niska would outfit his teams with the latest and greatest equipment. And that implies, by this lengthy reasoning, that Book has knowledge of the newer esoteric weaponry, AND not just the stuff used by the Alliance but also the stuff used by well-equipped criminals. By specifying the exact model of rifle he thought had been used, he was intentionally revealing this tidbit about himself for the greater good of narrowing down who might have kidnapped Mal and Wash.

And, of course, during the subsequent rescue Book is shown to be very comfortable rigging explosive materials, wielding an assault rifle, shooting and possibly killing people, and with general tactical deployment. If he had been at the Abbey for years, he would have been a little rusty at the very least. But he was not rusty at all.

So the evidence examined so far seems to strongly refute the idea that Book has been a Shepherd for numerous years and instead supports the belief that he’s really only recently become a Shepherd, perhaps even fresh out of seminary, assuming he truly is a Shepherd and truly has gone through some kind of officially required training to become one.

If the crew hadn’t dropped him off at the Southdown Abbey before their trip to Ariel, we would have no evidence at all that he actually has anything to do with the Abbey, and even that reference is vague enough to leave room for alternative possibilities. Actions speak louder than words, and Book’s actions are those of a current agent or operative of some kind, with the Shepherd veneer seeming more and more like a mere disguise. All he has to do is drop stories of times at the Abbey and his order’s rules and no one questions his story at all. But truth be told, it could all be an elaborate deception.

As Jubal Early closes in on Serenity, we’re shown through River’s eyes some piece of Book’s mind, when he says in a mean tone “I don’t give half a hump if you’re innocent or not. So where does that put you?” And Early, who’s been researching and tracking Serenity since Ariel tells Simon unequivocally, “that ain’t a Shepherd”. This is particularly interesting, since Book wasn’t even on the ship until some time later when they presumably picked him up from the Southdown Abbey. How could Early have such confidence in a statement like this unless his outsider’s view, his informants and methods of building dossiers on the crew between “Ariel” and “Out of Gas” gave him insight into Book’s real identity? Whatever it is, it’s insight that the crew simply doesn’t have because they believe his cover story and leave it at that, just like we, the audience, do.

The “half a hump” mind-reading thing has always struck me as very closely resembling the Federal Marshall’s famous line in the 1993 version of “The Fugitive”. When Dr. Kimble (played by Harrison Ford) is cornered in a tunnel and insists that he’s innocent, the Federal Marshall (played by Tommy Lee Jones) says, “I don’t care!” Book’s “I don’t give half a hump if you’re innocent or not” line always reminds me of this exchange, and the idea of a government agent who pursues people regardless of whether or not he thinks they’re innocent. Note that this theme is apropos of the Operative in Serenity as well. One starts to wonder if Book used to be an Operative and had experienced a similar disillusionment not too long ago. But that’s not the only explanation that fits. It also happens to fit the mindset of a professional hitman. (keep in mind the witness protection program notion)

A very key piece of information about Book is presented in the graphic mini-novel “Those Left Behind”, which takes place some time between the Jubal Early incident and the vault job on Maidenhead. That key piece of information is the explicit explanation, in Book’s own voice, as to why he leaves Serenity: Following an earlier argument in which Book actually slugs Mal, Book later comes to Mal and says, “I’m leaving the ship. Don’t know where for just yet, but it’s time for me to move on.” Mal says, “It don’t matter to me that you hit me.” and Book replies, “which is exactly why I need to be away from you. Because sooner or later, it won’t matter to me, either.”

This is yet another piece of indirect evidence that Book has not been a Shepherd for a long time, if indeed he really is a Shepherd. If he’d been a Shepherd for many years, his lifestyle and his faith in that lifestyle would not be so fragile that it would disintegrate when challenged by life on the edge. After all, Mal still has his morals and ethics despite living life on that edge, and Mal lost his religious faith at the battle of Serenity. If Mal can still maintain a working moral framework despite doing what he does, then surely a Shepherd should be able to do so. And a Shepherd’s life on Serenity would be far easier than, for example, a Shepherd’s life on that salvage ship, the one captained by that lowlife vulture who shot Mal in “Out of Gas”. Is Book really a Shepherd, then? Or is his veneer rapidly peeling away to reveal his true nature underneath? Note that he did not return to the Abbey but ended up on Haven instead, with his hair cut short, in violation of the rules of his order.

And Book’s true nature is taken to another level altogether in “Serenity”, when he shoots down an Alliance ship with an anti-aircraft gun. How many Shepherds even know how to operate such equipment? Is it believable that he had the Haven colonists teach him how to use this equipment “just in case”? He even admits that it wasn’t a very christian thing to do, and yet he reveals that he has an intimate understanding of the power of belief and even of the kind of men the Parliament is like to send after them. In his death scene, it’s as if the christian veneer of Book is finally and completely gone and all that remains is the real Book, the Book who knows all about fighting and belief that’s hard enough to make a man kill without asking why. His last act is to try and convey this to Mal.

I’m reminded of the big speech at the end of “Jarhead” where the marine talks at length about how once you reach a certain relationship between you, your rifle, and your enemy, that transformation stays with you forever, no matter how “normal” a life you lead afterward. From my interactions with former military personnel, I see no reason to believe that this expression is just Hollywood fluff. It seems to accurately reflect what happens to people who are thoroughly trained that way and who must achieve a level of belief, or at the very least a suspension of disbelief, in order to justify facing death in the pursuit of killing other people. And it’s a mindset not exclusive to the military. Hitmen, and zealots of all kinds are able to bring themselves to that state of mind, and it sure seems to be a one-way trip.

I don’t know about you, but my initial assumptions that Book had been at the Southdown Abbey for several and possibly many years and that his violent past is a distant one, have vaporized. I’m really starting to think that Book had only been at the Abbey for a short time, and may even have been an Operative of the Parliament, or an Operative in training, or a hitman in a witness protection program, or some such. I find myself wondering if the story of the Operative in Serenity is actually Book’s story, and when I allow myself to believe that, it gives me closure on Book’s death. One thing’s for sure, though, that ain’ no shepherd.

Mal, Book, and Inara - the Rolemodels (May 2006)

I like to make fun of our tendency to focus almost exclusively on the bonding between our heroes and their sense of created family. It's important to look beyond that first order, to be challenged, to be disturbed, to think new thoughts, to sometimes see the darker side of a person in order to better appreciate the whole.

That's partly why we love Firefly and Firefly Talk. It's like having a hundred different interactions with browncoats from all over The 'Verse, sometimes intellectual conversation, sometimes just warm human contact for no particular reason.

But let's face it – we very often do not think beyond the first order, and we just default to the big, warm fuzzy. So sometimes we need to be kicked out of our comfort zone for our own good, and out of artistic respect for the writers who masterfully left so much room for other facets of these characters.

But in this article that's not what I want to do. Here I intend to drink deeply the water of love, to focus on what makes that created family so special, and to bask in it.

To do that it's important to first look at how unlikely that family really is. We're so familiar (no pun intended) with Firefly that we probably don't even think about it any more. But seriously, my fellow travelers, think about how amazingly different everyone is on Serenity, focusing specifically on Mal, Book, and Inara.

Mal is a former rancher who volunteered to fight against the Alliance. It's well established in Firefly and Serenity that he lost his religious faith at the battle of Serenity Valley. This is a fact that's central to his character, and Joss has referred to this on more than one occasion. And it's also well established that Mal has an old-fashioned sense of honor, decency, and morality. One simple example is all that's required to drive home this point. Unlike other men, he's not on Saffron inside of ten minutes, and resists her articulate temptations as best any man could.

Book is a christian shepherd, and even though he's newer to that role than he allows the crew to believe (in one of my other articles I line up the evidence on that point), even so he does believe, and he does try to play that part faithfully. There's some kind of relationship with the Alliance in Book's past, and it's clear that both of Book's former lives were very different from a rancher turned browncoat.

Now, Inara is a member of a guild of prostitutes. She's well educated, and the guild is legal and respectable, although some apparently consider it immoral as well. She's a member of what we call polite society. She's apparently a buddhist, and she supported unification.

Now, let's be honest. When was the last time you had a sense of bonding and family with someone who is as different from yourself as these three people are from each other?

Ask yourself how easy it would be for you to live in close quarters and for long stretches of time with someone who supported the other side of a war that took place only a few years ago and, in Mal's case, a war you volunteered for and whose horrors you can never forget.

From Book's standpoint, even ignoring his mysterious past and focusing solely on his current role as a shepherd, how easy could it be for him to stay on that ship, what with the combination of offenses to his religious sensibilities and the numerous temptations to slip back into a familiar tactical role as we see him do so easily during the rescue from Niska's skyplex?

Imagine what it must be like for Inara to live on that ship, with the likes of Jayne Cobb, with Mal calling her a whore every few minutes despite caring for her at some level, and knowing that Book, despite his pleasant demeanor, must surely consider her deplorable at some level.

Ask yourself how easy it would be for you to live in close quarters for so many months with people from completely different social and economic classes, and who practice completely different religions than your own. We're talking about a former rancher browncoat athiest, a christian missionary monk with mysterious Alliance ties, and a buddhist highbrow professional prostitute who supported unification.

If you haven't really been out in the world and haven't experienced for any relevant length of time people who are truly and completely different from yourself, you may find it difficult to grasp how strong these factors are. Sometimes even people who grew up in the same culture, have the same political leanings, are from the same socioeconomic class and have other experiential factors in common, sometimes even such people can't get along. Maybe all it takes is a few years difference in age, with that difference in life experience creating a rift that prevents trust, closeness, and friendship let alone loving bonding and sense of family. Sometimes people who have been married for years get divorced and can no longer be in each others' presence.

So Mal, Book, and Inara have huge gaps between them. Yes, they share trauma, and struggle against common enemies, but is that enough to create the respect they have for each other, the loving sense of familial inclusion? Maybe, but I don't think so. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that in the absence of absolute proof I choose to imbue these characters with maturity and warmth that motivates them to choose to respect and care for each other despite their major differences. Maybe I need to have, as Kaylee says, faith in people. Maybe I need to hope that humanity can learn to see that our similarities outweigh our differences.

Love is a choice, like many other aspects of adult maturity. Let's look at some of the actions our heroes take which demonstrate that they choose to respect and care for each other beyond a mere war buddy conflict-based context. There are many examples of actions they take within conflict situations which you'd expect them to take on behalf of people who they consider their war buddies, people they rely on. But let's step outside conflict situations and see what remains.

In the pilot, "Serenity", Mal appears in Inara's shuttle when Simon is there. As presented, he rudely barges in, but in fact what he's trying to do is protect Inara from Simon. Remember at this point Simon is an unknown element to Mal, and possibly a walking disaster. "You'll ruin her, too, you know," he says to Simon. Mal is willing to pay the social price of being seen as rude in order to protect his people.

In this same episode, Book chooses to bring Inara food rather than ostracize her, and he even breaks the ice by joking about sermons involving hellfire and lepers. This is his way of declaring that rather than focusing on judging Inara and dehumanizing her for her wicked ways, he's choosing to acknowledge that she's an experienced woman of the world and to relate with her on a basic human level, differences aside. And that's a gift that Inara does not take for granted. The result of Book's gift and Inara's acceptance of it is the formation of a precious bond of respect and love. Later in the episode we already see that bond paying a dividend. When Book has a crisis, he now feels safe enough with Inara to confide in her, and Inara gives Book a very similar gift in return. Instead of lecturing Book on how a shepherd is supposed to behave, or focusing on the vulnerability he shows her, she not only tends to his battered brow but she comforts him, even within the context of his chosen role as a missionary. "Maybe you're exactly where you ought to be."

In "The Train Job", Book expresses to Inara his concern and desire to somehow help, despite the fact that the context is thieving. Inara responds by focusing on what they have in common, a notion of praying for the crew's safety, even though as a buddhist her idea of prayer is different in a religious sense from Book's.

In "Bushwhacked", Mal allows Book, Inara, and the others to have their moment of dignity in terms of how they treat the dead. He could just as easily have shouted "bizui!" and confined them to quarters while sending Zoe and Jayne to finish the looting. Instead, he chose a more respectful solution, even if not a perfectly honest one.

In "Shindig" and in "Heart of Gold", Mal and Inara both are willing to get truthsome with each other, and that's no small thing, even though it did not always result in a belly full of warm fuzzies. In the Atherton wing of some fancy building they gave their honest appraisals of each other's issues. And after it's all over, sitting in Serenity's hold, Mal admits his mistake and grants Inara the respect of her world. And Inara does something very similar and grants Mal the respect of his world, embodied by the ship. In "Heart of Gold" Mal broaches the subject of their relationship, and Inara, knowing that she must leave, cuts him off before he says anything that'll really hurt and that he'll really regret after he learns that she's leaving.

These are acts of respect and love, even though sometimes the topic of discussion itself is their differences and disagreements. Such conversations could've gone very differently, could easily have been hurtful instead of coming from a place of respect and caring.

These are just a few examples of actions outside of high-stress conflict situations, actions these characters took which demonstrate that they've chosen to not focus on each other's differences but to rely upon and build upon their similarities. These choices are what I find so endearing about these characters. They are in some ways much better people than we are, even though in some ways they're much worse people than we are. And that makes them accessible to us, makes them larger than life personas that we can still try on, giving us a chance to respect and care for each other for no reason other than it's the way we are and the way we'd rather be. To me, that's what we mean when we call ourselves browncoats. It's not just fandom, it's a human connection despite our many differences. Thank you, Joss Whedon, for giving us that gift.

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