River. Killer woman who deserves tea and dumplings.

Bytemite wrote:In It's Never Easy River has to save Mal because he forgets how to fight back against a guy who can't even aim a gun and admits as much.

She's already pretty much overshadowing everyone left and right whenever she appears.

in which case; oh balls.
see also; is river a fetish???
which, i realise, you may have already. d'oh!

Interesting thread.

Someone said this, here: "From River’s comment in Those Left Behind, “It smells like sex in here,” to a scene in the original Serenity script in where she acts out a sexual memory of Inara’s, (complete with moans) I really think Joss was trying to show that River was becoming sexually aware."

You know, I think what bothers me more than anything is that people seem to think SEXUALITY is what defines womanhood. It's a very male point of view. :/ And I hear it from women too... Yay patriarchal sex-obsessed society.

Becky Mears wrote:

Bytemite wrote:Because fiction is just so starved of supernaturally powerful femme fatal nymphs.

HA HA!

But Joss Whedon has always been a creepy perv like that.

wytchcroft wrote:do we have the necessary hair lacquer, short skirts, air-brushing skills and digitally enhanced boobage to sustain us???
snort!

Plot for next 50 Dark Horse "Firefly/Serenity" Comics:
1. Mal screws up. River saves the day.
2. Jayne screws up. River saves the day.
3. Mal screws up. River saves the day. In a short skirt.
4. Mal and Jayne both screw up. River saves the day. In a short skirt. With digitally-enhanced boobage.
.
.
.

ebfiddler987 wrote:

Plot for next 50 Dark Horse "Firefly/Serenity" Comics:
1. Mal screws up. River saves the day.
2. Jayne screws up. River saves the day.
3. Mal screws up. River saves the day. In a short skirt.
4. Mal and Jayne both screw up. River saves the day. In a short skirt. With digitally-enhanced boobage.
.
.
.

and brings us neatly from the debating table to the writing desk:
i.e. how do you approach River in your pics or your canon plotting.
on a narrative level; do you include the fighty skills etc -
and how do you avoid using her as the escape clause/deus ex machina??
how old is she? (not an issue so much for fics set during the show)
and what does she wear?

spoil us with examples please if possible!

and how do you avoid using her as the escape clause/deus ex machina??

Uh...

Okay, you got me. I totally do this. But I try to make the times when River has to go all out with her intelligence and abilities both sparse and as terrifying/disturbing as possible.

>and what does she wear?

Post movie, mostly loose sundresses because for some reason that seems to symbolize the innocence she's lost for me. Makes her slightly more creepy. In white, she looks like a ghost.

Though I'd like to start writing about her schizo fashion too, just easier to drop "sundress" in there for a clear one word description.

Bytemite wrote:
Though I'd like to start writing about her schizo fashion too, just easier to drop "sundress" in there for a clear one word description.

see? useful. right there.
duly noted. clothing description, definite weak spot for me. cheers!

wytchcroft wrote:
how do you approach River in your pics or your canon plotting.
on a narrative level; do you include the fighty skills etc -
and how do you avoid using her as the escape clause/deus ex machina??
how old is she? (not an issue so much for fics set during the show)
and what does she wear?

I tend to minimize super-powers and let her behave like a regular human being, albeit one with great intelligence and special training. In my stories, she's really smart and catches on to new activities (eg. piloting) in a hurry, learning rapidly, and even surpassing her teachers. She also clearly has some awesome martial arts training. But I don't tend to rely on the supernatural powers for plot development and resolution. She *might* be able to "read" people's minds -- most of the crew is certainly under the impression that she can -- but perhaps it's just that she's very perceptive and good at reading cues. I write most situations so that the exact nature of River's skills is open to interpretation. Most of them *could* be resolved by means that are explicable without supernatural powers. My notion is that *everybody* aboard Serenity has skills that they can contribute to resolve any given situation. Sometimes it's River's skills that are called for, sometimes it's someone else's skills. They each get to save the day, on occasion.

And what does she wear? The same clothes she wore in the series. She didn't throw them away; they're still in her drawer. She might have acquired a few new outfits since then, but she's not out to impress the men by showing skin (that seems OOC to me). They're just regular clothes. In my headcanon, she's taken to combing her hair more regularly since Miranda, but that's just my response to a funny comment Summer Glau made about filming the pilot: something like, "They put me through hair and make-up, which for me just meant that they messed up my hair, and then I curled up and took a nap in that box!"

And how old is River in my fic? She's almost 19. My stories are set post-BDM, and my timeline has progressed to nearly 6 months after the events on Haven and Miranda.

I really like it when both her powers and her intelligence are used in a clever way. Like in ScrewTheAlliance stories, even though not everything was perfect, one of the best uses I'd ever seen of River was when she used her powers to figure out a code that the main villain had memorized that had the potential to destroy his armies. There was a confrontation between her and the villain and the results were extraordinary.

I also technically like stories that use River's intelligence more than her powers, like in Objects In Space where she simply outsmarts the bounty hunter - while laying on some eerieness about her powers as a misdirection.

My stories tend to be character driven, so I do get a bit of River acting like just a person. But in a pinch, using River's superpowers is an acceptable story telling technique, so long as it doesn't become a crutch.

One of the things that might actually resolve this potential problem, where Joss makes River too powerful and she's always saving the suddenly incompetent seeming rest of the crew, is if they show River being wrong now and then.

I'd like River to try to set up a situation based on what she sees will happen, that doesn't have a good outcome but which River thinks is the best possible, then Mal screws up the plan and defies that outcome for a better one through sheer determination. That could ALSO bring River back down to the same level power wise as the rest of the crew, if it turns out that everything River sees and does is suggestions or guidelines, and not inevitable.

wytchcroft wrote:the Universal poster took a heavy drubbing

I didn't know that. From whom? Firefly fans? Because Mal's in the distance? Or because River looks so very silly? I remember seeing it on the side of a bus and it genuinely stopped me from going to see the film.

Bytemite wrote:only with underaged skirts and high kick martial arts.

When I first started watching Buffy I was absolutely baffled by her martial arts. Er - WHY?

Do any of you remember on the DVD commentaries, Joss says that the footage of Inara taking a sponge bath was ruined, so they had to do it again? Chortle chortle from Joss. Then the footage of Inara kissing the councillor - also needed to be done again. More chortles from Joss.

Do you have to be a woman to find that not very chortle-worth?

Bytemite wrote:
Okay, you got me. I totally do this. But I try to make the times when River has to go all out with her intelligence and abilities both sparse and as terrifying/disturbing as possible.

But don't worry, Bytemite. What you do in your story is different. Because you don't have all the other characters minimized and acting OOC just so that River can come fix everything for them with her superpowers. You actually have a *story*

Becky Mears wrote:not very chortle-worth

Agree! All that stuff...not chortle-worth.

ebfiddler987 wrote:

Becky Mears wrote:not very chortle-worth

Agree! All that stuff...not chortle-worth.

seconded - or thirded or whatever the math.

also; re River's character and use in fic, e.b. your posts (and Byte's) are really insightful

Becky Mears wrote:When I first started watching Buffy I was absolutely baffled by her martial arts. Er - WHY?

Why? To appeal to a certain (mostly young) (mostly male) demographic. But not being quite so young and definitely not so male and I don't much care for vampires anyway...well, I thought it was kinda stupid.

I *do* however, like the basic premise of Buffy, the turning-the-horror-movie-cliche-on-its-head premise: little vulnerable blonde girl walks into a dark alley, where the evil bad guy lurks...(ominous music)...he menaces her...and she beats the crap outta him. Now *that* I like. And it's even better that she has a silly name like Buffy.

But the short skirt high kicks...that's just Hollywood silliness.

ebfiddler987 wrote:

Becky Mears wrote:When I first started watching Buffy I was absolutely baffled by her martial arts. Er - WHY?

Why? To appeal to a certain (mostly young) (mostly male) demographic. But not being quite so young and definitely not so male and I don't much care for vampires anyway...well, I thought it was kinda stupid.

I *do* however, like the basic premise of Buffy, the turning-the-horror-movie-cliche-on-its-head premise: little vulnerable blonde girl walks into a dark alley, where the evil bad guy lurks...(ominous music)...he menaces her...and she beats the crap outta him. Now *that* I like. And it's even better that she has a silly name like Buffy.

But the short skirt high kicks...that's just Hollywood silliness.

i love BtVS and after the first few episodes SMG demanded no short skirts - that she wore them is a bit of a myth, not helped by cut and paste promos, posters etc etc.

always thought the characters River most resembled were Dru and Dana (the 'psycho' slayer).

Glau herself can act and make you forget she's wearing a tiny skirt as she does in the best episodes of T:tSSC, the 'dance' episode of which is very plausible as River in the Academy. But she doesn't fight in one as far as i can recall.

The real question is just how OOC would it be for River. They dressed her up as a gorram doll. She wasn't happy about it.

Becky Mears wrote:

Bytemite wrote:only with underaged skirts and high kick martial arts.

When I first started watching Buffy I was absolutely baffled by her martial arts. Er - WHY?

Do any of you remember on the DVD commentaries, Joss says that the footage of Inara taking a sponge bath was ruined, so they had to do it again? Chortle chortle from Joss. Then the footage of Inara kissing the councillor - also needed to be done again. More chortles from Joss.

Do you have to be a woman to find that not very chortle-worth?

Well... It WAS kinda funny, but also pretty bogus. It's both. Because on one hand, lol pranks, but on the other, inherently exploitative Hollywood practices that demean and degrade women. You're familiar with the term casting couch and the connotation it takes on when the person auditioning is female?

Yeah. :/

ebfiddler987 wrote:

Becky Mears wrote:When I first started watching Buffy I was absolutely baffled by her martial arts. Er - WHY?

Why? To appeal to a certain (mostly young) (mostly male) demographic. But not being quite so young and definitely not so male and I don't much care for vampires anyway...well, I thought it was kinda stupid.

Vampires are dumb forever. Bram Stoker tried to make them cool, but in the end they were just old dead guys with a fetish for girls way too young for them. And the occasional lesbians, who are cooler, but guilty by association of the guy vampires being so boring and laughable, and also are problematic because victorian lesbians are immoral and modern lesbian vampires are fetishes and therefore can't be taken seriously.

In fact, nothing thhat can be fetishized can really be taken seriously, because you just know someone is enjoying it too much and ruining it for everyone. Like that person who laughs way too loud in the theater, only tainting the experience with weird creepiness instead of joy.