Capt: A dozen years have pass'd since this took place,
And all that time hath Parliament kept hid
The secret of this world, till River here
Unearth'd it from their minds. They feared she knew.
And right they were to dread, since many more
Among the spinning worlds would know it too.
And someone has to speak for those now dead.
And all that time hath Parliament kept hid
The secret of this world, till River here
Unearth'd it from their minds. They feared she knew.
And right they were to dread, since many more
Among the spinning worlds would know it too.
And someone has to speak for those now dead.
Via Making Light.
samatwitch | April 20, 18:00 CET
Madhatter | April 20, 18:02 CET
To me, this definitely proves - besides Browncoats are creative mofos with imaginations to rival Joss himself - is that Joss needs to be this era's William Shakespeare! He uses all manner of truly absurd plot ideas to convey what it is to be human and I bow down to the altars of both. Now...all I need is a bust of Joss to match my bust of Shakespeare;)
And Madhatter? Were you trying to say that you actually didn't think this Firefly as Shakespeare was any good?!
;)
BlueEyedBrigadier | April 20, 18:32 CET
leafblown | April 20, 19:02 CET
And no, not at all.
Madhatter | April 20, 19:06 CET
Pointy | April 20, 20:08 CET
ETA: sorry, the Pulp Fiction one was actually linked to on the Serenity page! Turns out it's a different author, and the Serenity one was inspired by the Pulp Fiction one.
[ edited by MattK on 2008-04-20 18:50 ]
MattK | April 20, 21:49 CET
RhaegarTargaryen | April 20, 21:57 CET
I was hoping for the "I mean to live . . .Get to work" scene. That would be a challenge, with choppy sentences, multiple speakers and swift changes of tone.
/science geek warning/
The compass needle simile lifted my eyebrow, but it works with a little retconning. Many planets and moons in their natural states don't have magnetic fields. We have to assume that the equivalent of iron cores was added during the terraforming process, That makes sense since the magnetosphere shields the planetary or lunar surface from cosmic radiation.
"North" would be a local direction, relative to the field orientation of the planet or moon one is standing on. Compasses would still be in regular use on outer planets like the one Mal grew up on, which probably did not have the money for a good satellite navigation system. People from the inner planets would orient by GPS or an imbedded beacon system, and wouldn't know a compass from an astrolabe./geek off/
janef | April 20, 22:56 CET
Madhatter | April 20, 23:27 CET
UnpluggedCrazy | April 20, 23:35 CET
Nice bit of geekitude janef but personally I don't think the compass needle is much of a stretch - we all know (at least roughly) what a sextant is, does and looks like even though not many sailors use them nowadays and most of us here may not have held one or even seen one "in the flesh", right ? And we know literature from today and longer ago is still read, even by folk like Mal so I think the cultural significance of "true north" and the needle pointing there would still survive (and Mal refers to Northerly winds earlier on in the film so we know people still use the compass directions, even if only figuratively). Though of all the issues I have with their terraforming process, adding a molten iron core to their moons/planets has to be up there. That's some pretty big tech ;).
Saje | April 21, 00:29 CET
Saje, I love you with all my heart, but you kinda' lost me there. Thinking UnpluggedCrazy is right. Why wouldn't Joss love us, we give him his ideas!
Madhatter | April 21, 01:34 CET
To all you Browncoats, I have finally ordered a copy of Firefly. After the twitter thread, I figure I better find out what y'all are talking about.
MysticSlug | April 21, 01:34 CET
I'm so impressed. (And kindof inspired.) But mostly impressed...
QuoterGal | April 21, 01:46 CET
Lovely. What a nice way to end my day.. Thanks for linking that!
Tarheelfan | April 21, 02:31 CET
'Tis Serenity, pursuéd by Blue Sun.
Demise, Blue Sun, and end the Alliance
Who is already sick and pale with theft...
Back to writing finals. Oh, but what a joyous break this was! This is even better than when Dave Barry turned a few lines from Hamlet into rap...
BandofBuggered | April 21, 02:59 CET
Did you get a good deal because Firefly is $17.99 at Target this week. Also I have to ask, you have seen Serenity the Big Darn Screen continuation of Firefly. There is a Serenity Collector's Edition with cast commentary.
Anonymous1 | April 21, 04:17 CET
Shey | April 21, 05:09 CET
So, well done to evilrooster on her work.
I hope the plug here inspires her to write from the perspectives of other characters- Zoe and Wash ala Taming of the Shrew would be a hoot!
missb | April 21, 07:14 CET
One of my favorite things on BtVS was when they'd allude to the Bard, like Cordy's perspective on Shylock, or St. Crispin's Day.
One of my favorite Shakespeare misquotes is Dave Barry's "'Romeo...Yo! Romeo! Wherethehellfore art thou?' 'I art down here! Throw me the car keys!'"
And, of course, "To be or not, I got to know, might kill myself by the end of the show."
Word.
BandofBuggered | April 21, 09:12 CET
Z- Sir, We cannot tarry for their graves...
M- Tie them up, array them on our ship.
Z- Our friends not buried but defiled?
And to defile our home...for some mad ruse?
M- This is my command, that we go on
where we can, and by what ruse, and that we sail
in cloak of blood and bone until
we find the reason for these deaths
and perhaps prevent our own.
dreamlogic | April 21, 12:47 CET
When I wrote this, I was more relying on the way that figures of speech get preserved long after their literal meanings are dead (how long has it been since we've even *seen* a phone with a dial? And yet we dial phones.)
Also, like the Tarantino one that got me thinking of this, I was trying to blur the line between what Mal said and what an Elizabethan Mal would have said. The Tarantino one uses a knife instead of a gun, for example.
evilrooster | April 21, 13:42 CET
Two reasons I did this. The first is simple: I wanted to end with a rhymed couplet, and I wanted to preserve River's comment "The storm is getting worse", because it fit the meter and the line length. So I needed a rhyme for "worse", and "disperse" is a good one.
The second reason is that I see the turn in Mal's attitude during the film a little differently. He started out feeling that he was being rushed into actions that he really hated. He simply didn't have the resources, financial or emotional, to wait out the problems that the crew were experiencing. The ending is about his feeling that the clock has been reset; that he can endure the inevitable problems that he will encounter.
evilrooster | April 21, 13:48 CET
I love the images you've woven into this(we sail/in cloak of blood and bone). It's a nice condensation of the first part of the scene. How would you tackle the "my way or the highway" bit at the end?
One metrical note: Shakespeare tended to write lines with ten syllables (sometimes eleven, if the last one was unstressed and kinda dangling off the end). The challenge, of course, would be to expand your lines and shuggle the meter about without losing any of their intensity.
Because they are intense and vivid. Really good show.
evilrooster | April 21, 13:52 CET
dreamlogic | April 21, 14:20 CET
I can imagine, for instance, compasses being given as antiquarian gifts to flyers in the same way sextants are to sailors today i.e. symbolically and as an acknowledgement of tradition rather than for practical use.
The ending is about his feeling that the clock has been reset; that he can endure the inevitable problems that he will encounter.
Yep, I like that way of reading the change in Mal. I don't agree but I like it (or rather, I think we're saying similar things a bit differently ;).
Saje | April 21, 14:50 CET
Pretty pleeeaaase!
Jakob Schmidt | April 21, 18:18 CET
verily i say to thee,
thou doest rock
and mightily.
(yeah, that was lame...but i had to try)
AmazonGirl | April 21, 19:49 CET
I write a lot of sonnets, so let me give you a quick and dirty lesson on Shakespeare's meter.
His lines generally had 10 syllables, alternating between stressed and unstressed ones:
daDA daDA daDA daDA daDA (oh, SHE doth TEACH the TORCHes TO burn BRIGHT, as Romeo said on seeing Juliet)
Sometimes he'd add an extra unstressed syllable at the end:
daDa daDA daDA daDA daDA da (to BE or NOT to BE, that IS the QUEStion, as Hamlet said.)
Shakespeare did swap his stressed and unstressed syllables around, so you don't have to be too rigid about them if the line sounds right doing it otherwise. The meter should serve the language, not vice versa.
The best way to get the ear for this stuff is to write a bunch of it. Try things out, and see what works. You have the intensity, and a real gift for turn of phrase, judging by what you've written above.
And you have an audience here. I say you should do more!
(The other thing to remember is that Shakespeare ended his scenes with rhymed couplets: the last two lines generally rhymed to give a feeling of closure. If you're stuck for rhymes, I use www.rhymezone.com)
evilrooster | April 21, 21:59 CET
Just wonderful.
This has become a whole new school of lit, and one I liketh much.
Yay. Verily. Yay.
QuoterGal | April 21, 23:52 CET
dreamlogic, I like your rendition of that scene a lot.
/more geek tech/
Saje saith,
Though of all the issues I have with their terraforming process, adding a molten iron core to their moons/planets has to be up there. That's some pretty big tech ;)."
Me, too, that's why I said "the equivalent of". A really big supercooled electromagnet might take care of it. We can justabout do that now. Access to large amounts of power doesn't seem to be a problem for them. Serenity's power plant appears to be a fusion reactor and it's an old design.
A more brute force approach would be to take whatever materials are already at the core of the planet and somehow dope them or realign their molecular structure so that they become magnetic. How would this be done? I dunno. Has a materials scientist ever tried to make magnets out of any element but iron?
Finally, if the terraformers knew how to make artificial gravity fields five centuries before our story starts (which isn't clear; that technology may have been invented later), they were subatomic wizards and probably would have no trouble turning the core of a moon into a magnet.
janef | April 22, 06:07 CET
(wouldn't a superconducting electromagnet actually draw a proportionately quite small amount of power anyway ? Thought once you started them off they pretty much did their thing because of the low/zero resistivity ? Though I guess on that scale it'd still be a whopping amount - that's the SI "whopping" BTW ;)
Re: doping etc. I dunno either ;). But if their gravity control is through advanced manipulation of elementary particles (e.g. gravitons) then the sky's the limit in principle, they could literally change the moons' core atoms into any element they wanted. I doubt that though, seems difficult to reconcile widespread subatomic manipulation and plentiful power with any sort of scarcity based economy (which the 'verse seems to have).
(even if they can only specifically control gravity though, you could still imagine them using that technology to maybe create some sort of artificial dynamo effect to generate the magnetic field - and handily, the dynamo effect just needs a moving conductor, it doesn't need to be iron)
Saje | April 22, 19:04 CET